Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 06:43
Name an impactful sales mentor: 14:52
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 17:17
Most important tip: 26:12
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 37:17
Inspiring thought: 39:17

EPISODE 140: ViON Sales Leader Dave Kushner Speaks to the Market Shift from Cloud First to Cloud Smart and How Top Sales Professionals Can Flourish in this Transformation

DAVE’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Be humble because sales is a humbling experience. There’ll be times that you’re on Cloud 9 and deals are flowing and things are happening and everything’s going right, and there are times you’re wondering if anyone is actually going to call you back and engage with you. Never forgo your principles in those down times or the trust that somebody has in you. The best scenario for a salesperson frankly is to be humble but hungry for success.”

Dave Kushner is the VP for Federal Sales at ViON Corporation.

Prior to coming over to ViON, he held sales leadership positions EMC, Legato and OTG.

Find Dave on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us a little more about what you sell today? Tell us a little bit about what excites you about that.

Dave Kushner: ViON has been around for 39 years and for the last 16 of those years we have been the pioneer of what is called the as-a-Service model for the federal government, essentially allowing our customers to consume technology in a cloud-like manner utilizing OPEX funds versus CAPEX. People actually look at me sideways when I tell them how long we’ve been doing the as-a-Service model and I usually tell them that we were doing cloud before cloud was cool. Today in our federal government, there’s such a need to modernize and with so many legacy systems in play it’s important for us to work with our customers to figure out the highest priority elements of their business to modernize.

With our data center as-a-Service model, we provide our customers the flexibility to modernize as slow or as fast as they’re willing to go since it’s a true cloud-like consumption model either behind their firewall or in a hybrid model. They don’t over provision, they don’t over buy, they instead modernize at their own pace and customers appreciate the way that we do business that way, and frankly so do our partners. In the federal space you’ve got new technology coming into play. You’ve got changing work force needs in the federal market, you’ve got budget constraints, you’ve got the proliferation of every conversation that I have includes cloud and we now talk about cloud smart instead of cloud first because for our customers, it’s not one dimensional, it’s not one cloud fits all. It’s a hybrid or multi-cloud approach that provides customers the flexibility to keep up with the data volumes and manage complexity and costs.

ViON’s in a unique position to provide solid answers to this approach. We have the past performance and frankly it’s funny, I usually talk about our as-a-Service model, we’ve been doing it so long we know the good, the bad and the ugly. To answer your question, what excites me is that our customers lean on ViON Corporation to help make these changes easier which is why we’re seeing a growing demand for our data center as-a-Service model, our ViON marketplace, our cloud migration services, our managed services and being able to couple all that with our data center as-a-Service model. Technology is always going to be evolving, but our as-a-Service model allows those IT leaders to be more agile, to respond to their user demands and drive mission success faster tapping into the best available technologies that we can bring to the table without compromising their budget. That’s really one of the things that certainly excites me.

Fred Diamond: Dave, I have a quick question for you. Again, you work for some of the best storage companies in history, EMC, of course now you’re at ViON, Legato and OTG. I’m going to ask you a separate question. You mentioned here and you kept mentioning in the introduction the as-a-Service model. There are a lot of people listening to the podcast that have had to shift from selling on premise type products to services. What are some of the major changes you’ve seen as a sales leader now that you’re in the as-a-Service business as compared to historically where we’ve sold products into a company?

Dave Kushner: Some of the major changes is just how they think about the consumption of technology. As I mentioned before, the over buying, I would walk into customers and see racks upon racks of stuff just sitting there not even being used yet because from a budgetary perspective, “I had the money, I needed to spend it now” and, “We’re not turning this on yet but I now have it.” Little do they know, the maintenance and warranty clock has started on that equipment, on those solutions, that infrastructure and they just spent money on things that they didn’t need at that time yet. The actual proliferation of cloud has actually helped us with contracting officers and financial folks to be able to truly understand what does it mean to utilize OPEX funds in a consumption model versus me going out and buying because I had money and I know I’m going to have this need maybe 3, 6, 9, maybe 12 months down the road but I had to do it now. I’ve seen a mind shift or a change in mindset for organizations that truly value being able to consume and adjust in time manner.

Fred Diamond: How about from the sales side? How have you had to adjust, how have you worked with your teams to adjust when you’ve sold items now to the as-a-Service model?

Dave Kushner: The teams that we’ve got, the guys and the salespeople we’ve brought in here have varied backgrounds. There’ve been folks in the IT side, there’s been folks from the OEM side, there’ve been folks from other partners and resellers in the DC area. One of the things that they have certainly looked at is the value that the ViON’s as-a-Service model really brings to the table. They get excited about that because it allows us to have a very unique conversation rather than just being able to say, “You’ve got stuff that you want to buy, I’ve got stuff that I can sell you.”

It’s a deeper conversation around mission requirements, around budget, around operational requirements that they have, around technology requirements that they have that get our salespeople excited to go have those deeper level conversations rather than, “You want to buy something and I have the capability to sell you some stuff.”

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer, Dave. There’s a lot of themes that we keep hearing through the Sales Game Changers podcast, you just used the word mindset before but one of them is the need today to bring even more value than you’ve ever had to bring before. I liked the notion there of how you answered that question with the deeper conversations to truly get to the heart of what the customer’s trying to do and what they’re trying to solve. You’ve had a great career in sales, how did you first get into sales as a career?

Dave Kushner: Actually, two stories come to mind. I started my work career at 16 years old as a bus boy and then earned an opportunity as a waiter when I turned 18. I will tell you, the food industry really exposes you to all types of personalities and provides you with a classroom on a daily basis to better read people, how to connect with them. I got really good at reading folks, being able to upsell things and it also made me really understand how to take care of a customer. I honestly think everyone in sales or who wants to go in sales should work for tips in the food industry at least once in their life, it’s a great experience.

The second story actually is one when I was in college. One of my last classes, my spring semester in my senior year, we had a business class that essentially all 30 people, seniors like me, were basically failing the class. It was a new professor at the college that didn’t have tenure and I began to get to know this professor through the semester to figure out how to get through the class and graduate in 4 years. What I found out in getting to know her and reading her a little bit more deeply was she was a very kind, goodhearted lady but she was just as eager to impress her peers in her quest for tenure. A week before the final I made it a point to run into her “accidentally” and have a conversation about the class that everyone was failing, that we have the upcoming final and let’s just say I persuaded her in that an entire class being failed probably wouldn’t look too good for her in the prospects of tenure.

Fred Diamond: Interesting. What kind of restaurant was it that you worked at as a bus boy and then a waiter?

Dave Kushner: It was a Red Lobster.

Fred Diamond: Do you still go back to Red Lobster?

Dave Kushner: I sometimes do. [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about you specifically. What are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Dave Kushner: As a solid B or B- student, Fred, I definitely don’t profess to be an expert in anything in particular. I truly enjoy building sales teams, but I think being able to work across and build consensus across an organization is something that I take great pride in, to be able to drive sales forward. I’ve been at large organizations like EMC, smaller organizations that were growing rapidly like OTG Software and there are a lot of qualities that you use both in sales to a customer and also driving consensus internally at an organization.

Being able to listen to all the points of view within your organization and working to be an ambassador to those various groups to address what their concerns, what they’re trying to do and then you have to merge those various points of view to help your organization transform itself into what you envision will drive the ball forward. I’ve learned that consensus building within the organization is a team effort and it’s important to over-communicate and make sure everyone understands what does success look like.

Then I take it upon myself to lead that effort to the best of my ability to be able to drive sales forward for my organization, whether it was ViON, EMC, OTG, didn’t really matter. I always felt it was very important to be able to build that consensus across the organization to help drive sales.

Fred Diamond: Dave, every Sales Game Changer we’ve interviewed on the podcast has had some great mentors along the way that have helped them get their career to this level. Why don’t you tell us about a mentor or two and how they impacted your career?

Dave Kushner: You actually interviewed him a couple of weeks ago, I think and now he’s going to get a big head because I’m going to mention him yet again on your podcast but Randy Cochran was the first sales leader that I had that didn’t lecture you on what you were doing wrong, right, “here’s how to do it”, but he coached you up. He was very good at being able to guide you rather than lecture. At the time that I worked for him at PSINet and InterCon I didn’t know a sales plan from a dining plan, but Randy was instrumental in teaching me key lessons that you and I will actually discuss in a few minutes when we talk about what are the important things that I want to get across to junior salespeople.

I’ve stayed in touch with Randy across the years, got career advice from him, was able to bounce different things from him throughout my career. I would say, having a sales mentor is key not only from a tactical business perspective being able to go, “I got this deal that I’m working on and I’m kind of stuck” but also from a long term career perspective. When you associate yourself with someone who’s enjoyed a long successful career in sales, you try to learn as much as you can from that person. What I did through the years was I found myself merging things that I learned from my mentors with things that I’ve learned from my own career. You merge that from personal experience and it served me well.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great episode we had with Randy Cochran, we’ll provide a link in the show notes but a lot of great examples when you went back there. We’ve actually had a bunch of people from EMC that we’ve interviewed on the podcast as well, Christian Woodward and Bill Rowan. That was probably a great place to learn some great sales skills, great sales culture there as well. Dave, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Dave Kushner: First of all, I think hiring top talent. That’s my #1, I’m constantly selling myself, my sales leadership, my sales philosophy and ViON Corporation as a whole, as a great place to be. We were voted one of the top 100 places to work in the DC area several years in a row. I pride myself in hiring the right people that fit our culture, that will bring a certain expertise and not just hire what I call the “right now” person. You want to try to hire the right person. I’ve actually passed on hiring really good reps because I feel like our CEO, Tom Frana and our president, Jeff Henry rely on me to bring the best talent possible to a business that we’re all very passionate about.

I recently brought back a key resource who left ViON a couple years ago but has returned to the family and it’s interesting because there’s many reasons that people leave organizations, but when they want to return I think it says a lot about the culture we’re building and that we’re continuing to build here at ViON.

The second challenge, I’d say getting the most out of our reps. Getting them to understand that there is an entire team behind them and working behind them to help ensure their success. As I talked about earlier, gaining true collaboration across the organization, across ViON or across any organization, really. Then getting these folks to perform at their highest level and engage customers at that deeper level that I mentioned to understand what they need, whether it’s helping our DOD in intel customers from a mission perspective or helping our federal civilian customers. It’s very interesting because I try to help these guys really connect with their customers and frankly, qualify in or out quickly. Is it something that ViON corporation can really provide to that customer and will it have meaningful value to them, their mission, their organization? If it doesn’t, let’s move on and make sure that we save their time as well as ours.

Fred Diamond: The ability to quickly qualify is something that comes up not infrequently as well, so that you make the best use of your time and we always say the next best thing behind a quick yes is a quick no so that you’re not wasting time going after the wrong types of customers. It’s interesting, you mentioned the company’s been around for 39 somewhat years, there must have been so many transformations, especially over the last couple years as you’ve moved to the service model. Why don’t you take us back to the #1 specific success or win from your career that you’re most proud of?

Dave Kushner: One of the best I think I had was a software OEM deal that I did at OTG, that I worked for, frankly, two and a half, almost three years on with a large healthcare IT provider. It was a company called Cerner Corporation that’s one of the largest healthcare IT providers out there today. The reason I’m proud of it is because it took a long time to get it done and it made me appreciate the need to develop patience when you’re in a long sale cycle. It also made me appreciate the value of developing meaningful relationships with your partner, your prospect, your customer, whatever you want to call it, to separate yourself from the competition doing the little things.

Spending time with them outside the office, knowing their wife and kids’ names, birthdays, those are little things that we as individuals appreciate. You remember that person, they remember something about you. That deal also made me understand that keeping your focus and having a plan was key. I was always asking in this long sale cycle, once we’re successful here, with this aspect of the – whether it’s the evaluation or the negotiation around this contract or this particular area of the contract – what’s the next step? What do we need to do now? Whether that next step was a technical hurdle or whether it was a contract, it’s always important and it made me learn the importance of making progress on a daily and weekly and monthly basis.

No matter how little the progress may be, you’re moving the ball forward. It’s the little things that you can do to build momentum and drive a deal home. I developed that relationship for years and still stay in touch with a lot of folks that we worked with on them.

Fred Diamond: Dave, before we get to our break, we have a lot of younger sales professionals listening around the world to today’s podcast. You just mentioned that deal took you almost 3 years to make and you talked about how it taught you patience. We have people here, millennials in their 20’s who are looking at the next day let alone, and I lie what you just said. You saw whenever there was a progress that you acknowledged the progress. Can you give a little more insight to the people listening on today’s podcast on how they can be monitoring that, how they can be visualizing that to ensure that they keep the course? If someone’s sitting on the podcast saying, “It’s going to take me 3 years to get my biggest sales deal?” they may move onto a different industry before it even happens.

Dave Kushner: The challenge is that not everybody should be in sales, frankly. I always thought early in my career, “Is this something that I can really do?” I had a lot of success early on which really got me rolling and some of it was because of hard work, some of it was luck, probably more luck than hard work, but I’ll take it. You have tough days in sales, you have tough days in business and life in general and there’s nothing more rewarding to me than trying to change the game, changing your attitude, making sure you’re trying to make the next day a success. Whether we do that or I do that by making sure I serve my customers and partners the best way I can, or thinking of a new way or a new solution to a problem that’s been playing you, it’s a rewarding experience. It’s funny, I’ve made mistakes in the past, I’ll continue to make them but its key is how you learn from them. Just be humble, sales is a very humbling experience.

Fred Diamond: Dave, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the selling professionals listening to today’s podcast to help them take their career to the next level?

Dave Kushner: Fred, as I mentioned that long sale cycle before, what I learned was that planning was key. Being able to make sure that not only you know about that person’s background and getting to know them at a more personal level but also understanding the agency or the industry as well. It shows you did your research, it shows you know what you’re talking about, you came in prepared and you are somebody that they’re not going to mind listening to because you actually did your research.

Being able to also create and use sales plans as a map to where you want to go. That was like I said when I was talking earlier, when I started my career I didn’t know a sales plan from a dining plan and that certainly helped me be able to focus and crystallize what I was trying to accomplish. I learned very early on you’ve got to be flexible in meetings but you have to plan not only before the meeting, but plan every meeting you walk into and execute that plan.

There are going to be times that your prospect or your customer are going to throw you curve balls, you’ve got to be quick on your feet and be honest. Say, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I will be back to you in 48 hours with a full answer and anybody else that you need to talk to, to be able to put that issue to bed.”

The other thing that I think is important from a sales perspective is to never burn bridges. We talked before you came in here, this is a very large industry but it’s a very small industry. You never burn bridges, folks in federal agencies moving around all the time and if you’re associated with something that you didn’t deliver or a promise you didn’t keep, that’s going to stay with you, that’s going to stay with your organization. Your reputation is very important, so you always keep your word. I know that you’ve probably heard this 700 times, but for junior reps listening is key. It’s funny, I learned early on if I found myself in a meeting and I was bursting at the seams to interrupt the person who was basically telling me all his challenges and giving me gold, I would grab my coffee or a water or something and just take a slow drink. I made it a point to make sure I didn’t interrupt him and kept listening.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great strategy. One thing that comes up not infrequently in the Sales Game Changers podcast is the whole notion that you need to be a much more effective listener, especially when you’re early in your career. You just want to blurt that out, “Here’s how I can solve your problem” and I ask people all the time, give us an advice on how you, Sales Game Changer, can be a better listener. I like that approach, people out there listening, pick up your water, pick up your cup of coffee, put it in your hand, take a nice, long drip and let the customer talk. A lot of times, the customer doesn’t really get that much of an opportunity to talk. We talked about your relationship with your spouse before who’s in sales, but most people who aren’t married to IT leaders want to talk about the ins and outs of bits and bites of the latest version of whatever they’re bringing in. It’s an opportunity for them to also talk about what their challenges are and I like that strategy about allowing them to continue to talk and continue to listen.

Dave Kushner: There’s one last thing. The folks getting into sales, I have always been a very big proponent of learning from the sales folks that have been in it a long time who are successful in your organization. One of the things that I’ve always encouraged my reps to do is find those guys, find those people whether it’s a lady that’s been doing it for 25 years or a gentleman who’s seen success. As them to present to you and how do they tell the story of ViON Corporation or whatever organization you’re with? Then present back to them. It’s the hardest thing to present to somebody that is your peer in the company, but it also accelerates your learning curve. That is one thing, that person could also be a mentor or turn into a mentor for one of those junior sales reps.

Fred Diamond: On those lines, what are some things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Dave Kushner: I do a fair amount of meeting with my partners, our OEM partners in the federal space and public sector space to make sure that I understand and know what their challenges are. What’s going on in the market, all the ones that we do business with, all of our partners, the Dell EMC and Nutanix, NetApp, Pure, Hortonworks now Cloudera, Hitachi Vantara, Federal Microsoft, IBM, all of them, meet with all of them. I even meet with other partners similar to ViON in the industry to understand what their view of the market is.

I do a lot of attending dinners that have end user customers at where they’re talking about whether it’s their operational, technical, financial challenges and I try to do a lot of engaging with my sales reps and really coaching them up as well and not preaching to them or lecturing them. I’ve made a ton of mistakes in selling, I try to impart some of that wisdom that I’ve learned, especially the ones who are younger, malleable, willing to learn from someone who has had success and has made mistakes along the way as well.

Then in the mornings, we mentioned listening to the podcast in the morning, research over coffee just reviewing the latest news and events. I want to make sure that I am aware of what’s going on the IT space, and the IT space in general is ever-changing. It’s almost a job in and of itself to keep up and make sure you stay relevant to your customers as they advance their mission in IT transformation.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success.

Dave Kushner: Good question. Last year, ViON launched our ViON marketplace. Essentially, it’s a single platform portal for our as-a-Service customers to provision, manage, report on usage, maintain governance over the technology solutions that they’re consuming from us as-a-Service, all from a single pane of glass, if you will. Customers like it because they can actually shop for what they need, Amazon like experience, compare solutions and things within what ViON can provide to them and then choose the best solution that’s going to solve their issue and consume that technology as-a-Service either behind their firewall, in another data center.

The bottom line is this helps reduce the administration time and helps the IT leaders that we work with and our customer manage the SLA’s that they have with their customers, and maintain complete control. It also allows our customers the capability to modernize their technology infrastructure, like we talked about, in a just-in-time capacity, not over buying. Now we’re working on the delivery of a cloud platform that has workload provisioning, management and orchestration giving our customers an enhanced and customized experience to manage and create workloads both in a private or hybrid public cloud instances, so while they continue to consume the technology as-a-Service behind their firewall they can also do it in a public cloud or as we talked about, in a multi-cloud fashion.

The goal is for ViON to help our federal agency organizations to be able to manage all their cloud instances, their technology consumption and workloads all from one portal with orchestration. More to come on that, we actually just announced that to our sales team at my kick off two weeks ago and it was well received. Even though ViON is a 39 year old company, we understand the value and the importance to transform ourselves to best address our customer requirements and the hybrid multi-cloud strategy is definitely the future of our federal customers.

Fred Diamond: What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going? Tell us a little bit about why have you continued as a sales leader and why you’ve made this your career’s work.

Dave Kushner: It’s simple: I love what I do and the fact that it changes daily and almost hourly certainly doesn’t make it hard, it makes it easy to love. Whether it’s working on a deal with one of our customers to advance a mission requirement while making sure it fits into their budget or strategizing on an opportunity with one of my reps, I just enjoy it. I enjoy and I’m lucky, actually that I work with so many top notch people both here at ViON and also across our partner community. When you surround yourself with good people, good things happen. Frankly, the bottom line is if I can’t be optimistic in February of a new year, I better go find something else to do [laughs]. Frankly, I could be more optimistic for what lies ahead for ViON and our federal team.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire our listeners today?

Dave Kushner: As I mentioned earlier, be humble because sales is a humbling experience. There’ll be times that you’re on cloud 9 and deals are flowing and things are happening and everything’s going right, and there are times you’re wondering if anyone is actually going to call you back and engage with you. You’re going to lose deals, actually you’re going to lose a lot of deals, you’ll lose more than you win but my one thing is to never forgo your principles in those down times or trust that somebody has in you. You’ve got to trust in your ability that if you’re doing all you can, you’re making that extra effort, you’re working hard, you’re working smart, whether it’s that call that you don’t feel like making but you know you should or that other meeting that you need to attend because you had a busy day, just get it done, show progress. The best scenario for a salesperson frankly is to be humble but hungry for success. I think that’s the thing that has made me successful.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 140: ViON Sales Leader Dave Kushner Speaks to the Market Shift from Cloud First to Cloud Smart and How Top Sales Professionals Can Flourish in this Transformation first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 05:02
Name an impactful sales mentor: 11:20
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 15:05
Most important tip: 31:12
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 38:23
Inspiring thought: 42:11

EPISODE 089: Lotame CRO Eric Marterella Shares How an Early-Career Meeting with Bill Marriott Inspired Him to Become an Innovative Sales Leader

ERIC’S CLOSING TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “There’s so much opportunity outside of the office so get out there and meet new people. Get out in the marketplace and challenge yourself to have new conversations and meet as many people as possible. You’ll never know what might come of it.”

Eric Marterella is the Chief Revenue Officer at Lotame.

He has consistently built high performing teams, heightened demand and consulted with major global clients, at companies including Digex Business Internet, AT&T, and Cisco.

He was the sales leader at Sprinklr, which was one of the fastest growing SAAS unicorn companies.

Find Eric on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Tell us about Lotame.

Eric Marterella: Lotame succinctly could be summed up as a data management platform and exchange that helps you locate target and then message specifically to your consumers and also provide them more relevant content so in a very crowded space of marketing clouds we remain a 12=year young company right here in Columbia, Maryland and independent. Some of our agility that we bring to the customers is our ability to integrate with other systems to get that holistic view of the consumer.

Fred Diamond: What really excites you about that, what gets you going about what you’re bringing to the marketplace?

Eric Marterella: What excites me is I believe – and I’ve been around the world 3 times in the last 7 months – that everybody is just getting started and the world’s still unstructured data and I am excited.

Prior to this serving at Sprinklr bringing out the social media management category and sales team to see what happens with our first, second and third party data providers with DMP. Succinctly we’re just getting started and most folks are crawling if not walking fast so I believe there’s endless opportunity to enhance experiences and make that connection stickier between consumers and brands.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about specifically who you sell to. Who are the customers that are interested that you’re trying to bring this solution to?

Eric Marterella: We work with publishers, agencies and brands and each one of them have different business outcomes so focusing on brand side specifically there are a time of day where content can be served better. There are so many things that brands should know about their end users and readers and even podcast listeners and ultimately we have an opportunity connecting that first, second and third party data that exist to make those decisions more scientifically.

Fred Diamond: How did you first get into sales as a career?

Eric Marterella: I’m glad you asked that. First I’m going to tell you my first sales role I think was having my wife of 17 years say yes. I met her in high school, we’ve been together 25 years, she was my blind date to junior prom and I definitely married up but before that I did work for an independent pharmacy in Rochester, New York at 15 and that is when I started my sales career. I didn’t know at the time I was in sales but I was cashiering and then I ultimately dropped off prescriptions to folks that could not get out of their homes which was a common practice back in the day. I think something that’s missing today with the large enterprises like CVS.

I’m most proud at 16: I took a role at the Dulles Airport Marriott and I will say that that is officially when I learned the science of selling as I worked in the lobby lounge, room service and any department that would take me. I was hooked from the beginning not only with hospitality but the ability to walk out of there with a bit wad of cash if I delivered results.

Fred Diamond: Tell us some of the things that you learned from those jobs, 16 years old at the Dulles Marriott, you walked out with a wad of cash. What are some of the things that you learned that you’re applying today or that you’ve applied throughout your career?

Eric Marterella: You get out what you put in, it can be that simple and I believe that whether you’re in a senior leadership or an intern in a business that if you wake up and you show up with a plan and execute that you more or less will take away whatever it is. Sometimes it’s not monetary and I want to be clear what motivates me.

At 41 I didn’t have the same motivations at 16. Of course there’s an ability to make connections daily and I would say in a hotel the cultural differences, the different people that need specifically different service levels varies and it makes you adept to serving them and meeting them in the journey.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about you specifically. Tell us what you’re an expert in. You’ve worked in various spaces, of course in social media, some of the companies that we talked about are some of the biggest brands in technology like Cisco, but tell us about you specifically. What are you an expert in and tell us about your specific area of brilliance.

Eric Marterella: Sure. I’m actually proud in many ways of a choreographed career but I will let you know that I went to Virginia Tech and I majored in hospitality and tourism and business management so the impression from Marriott propelled me into an undergraduate study where I thought I was going to come out and do just that and what I recognized early day as well, I still have a brand affinity for Marriott doing over a thousand days, by the way, over the last six years on the road that I wanted to work within the industry in the sector but I didn’t necessarily want to be at a hotel level.

I started at Digex and I went up the road to Beltsville, Maryland if there’s anyone listening. That’s where the web farm was and I worked in an ASP space so I hit the crest of the wave at the dot com boom and I’m sure many can relate to how that felt if you were coming out of college during that time in 1999 but it was a wild ride and probably the most impressionable time in my selling career where we would sell in terms of lead generation with print outs from who is which is still a domain registration source how you get your website and I’ll never forget James Hoffman, if you are to be listening, my first sales manager handed me a stack of who is leads and said, “You’re going to get started today and we’re going to get you trained up but I need you to just hit the phones and your bogie is 50 calls.”

He said, “Here’s a way to get started but there’s no real great lead in here. The best leads are going to come from your innovation and your passion and interest.”

And I went back to my cube and I put an email together to Bill Marriott. I had actually prepared his room one evening which I’m very proud of this story and I’ve actually shared it with him since while he was coming to visit before he did a long haul trip to Asia and he slowed down and spent some time with me and specifically told me how excited he was that I was a young college budding hospitality graduate that he would love to welcome me into the company someday. That type of confidence that he instilled and also the leadership that James Hoffman gave me by saying, “You’re going to need to be innovative, not just do what is the going concern or what are easy things” was the first time in my life where I truly knew I was on this planet to deliver sales and leadership.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned that you have told that story to Bill Marriott. Have you had other relationships or interactions with him over the years?

Eric Marterella: I have. When I was at Sprinklr, several sales kick offs I planned turnkey just because I have a passion for event management as well and making sure the experience is great for all the partners in the business and external and I choreographed our sales kick off in Fort Lauderdale in 2014 because I knew Bill Marriott was there with his wife. It’s his favorite property and it’s no secret, he blogs about it but I actually had him sign the copies without reservations for my board and my leadership team and I shared about 10 minutes with him in the lobby when he was in his track suit just taking care of business.

He graciously gave me those 10 minutes and what I took away from that conversation because we were evolving technology that was intended to connect to spare parts of the organization he had just had an organizational change and specifically was siding connecting silos inside the business and serving and observing the business.

I failed to mention, I covered Marriott for 10 years after Digex, I went on to Cisco and I really did choreograph my career but one thing I always notices was the disparate differences between a property level experience and the different, vast amount of people involved at corporate keeping it all together. Bill Marriott was very self-facing, didn’t need to share and be as transparent certainly with a guy who he had met several times before but slowed down, met me in the journey and it was a story that I took back to my team as we grew through A rounds to D rounds of funding where you know things get different at every one of those stages.

Fred Diamond: I’m really impressed and I’m going to imagine most of the people that we interview for the Sales Game Changers podcast would not have missed that opportunity as well. When you see Bill Marriott in the lobby of a hotel, you better be prepared to say something because it’s going to be a value for him. Obviously the demands on his time and we’re talking about one of the leading business persons in the country and you had your message ready to go, you’d met him a couple times over the years and you knew exactly what you wanted so good for you. You mentioned James Hoffman but are there any other, or him, impactful sales career mentors and how they impacted your career?

Eric Marterella: Absolutely. A lot of folks will go to people that know them best so we’ll say my father, Jerry Marterella who is a very well-known executive in the DC metro area ran the commercial division during a down turn for CSC in the 90’s and the catalyst to bringing me here and meeting my wife but he has always been somebody I’ve looked to and he started his sales career in the streets of Philadelphia selling life insurance and worked his way through the ranks and many points of the network where I’ve effectively coined my career. I pivoted to software about six years ago. He was always curious and his questions and the exposure he gave me at a young age gave me the opportunity to become bigger, have bigger experiences than I probably would have and it had nothing to do with financial implications.

He was the kind of mentor to me that said, “Go earn it” and I definitely was afforded a great ability to get through Virginia Tech with his support but I lost my mother when I was 10 years old and he took me on the road and ultimately gave me experiences that were just beyond appreciation at the time, including the leadership ruckus which he founded here locally and he was a huge Stephen Covey fan, he since passed from melanoma about 5 years ago. We still keep that group going, I’ve been going to it for 25 years, I often joke because when I close it down that I appreciated it more when I was out in the work force but I can still reflect back when my dad dragged me there at a teenage and early college student about the lessons I learned.

Another person I wanted to cite because I think it’s so important working in large companies versus small, at Cisco I worked with a lot of amazing engineers and people but John Chambers was someone I wanted to go work with and specifically fought hard to get in there when I made my pivot from AT&T and I believe why it’s interesting or should be to the listeners. The second email that I sent that day was to John Chambers and he didn’t answer it for about 4 weeks and that day in 1999, a cocky 21 year old thinking, “Of course John’s going to respond” and I hadn’t told him I was very proud to be supporting a company that used Cisco equipment and I just needed some career advice.

I had no angle to get in there, by the way, at the time. He responded and he said, “Eric, I really appreciate you slowing down and sending me a note and asking.” I had specifically asked in the note, “Can you give me one sage piece of advice for a young, hungry sales professional?” and he said in closing, “Never lose sight of the customer.” That gave me an ability to have confidence, to send a lot more emails, I ended up getting Empire, Blue Cross, Blue Shield.

If you take anything away from it is sell high and get kicked down but I had an opportunity, John Chambers many years later at Cisco and confirmed that it was an actual, official response and I believe that’s a trait of many great leaders that take public opinion like Abraham Lincoln and truly slow down to give folks feedback and advice.

Fred Diamond: Very good. It would be great to have John Chambers and Bill Marriott as mentors. By the way in passing, your father definitely was a great man who did a lot of great things for the DC area business community. Tell us about 2 of the biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader.

Eric Marterella: Love this one because being gentle with myself and I suspect there’s a lot of folks out there that say there’s not a lot to this if you have confidence every day. I constantly remind myself and my children – by the way, I have 4 boys with Jill spanning from 2, 7, 11 and 15 years old. Each one of them has different challenges in their head and their life is as complicated as ours, if I think about it. It’s just different set of responsibilities day to day that they wake up with but my opportunity every day is to show up and believe that I have the tenacity and traits but also accept that there’s so much to learn and be curious and continue to learn in the journey.

The time is probably an easy answer, I wish there was more time in a day and I’m beginning to accept that my naps and power naps and things are essential because my mind is going and I manage a business globally so there isn’t a whole lot of time but I will also note that being resourceful is probably our greatest opportunity. I hear so many folks in businesses I’m serving and even internally that there just isn’t enough resources and I believe that’s a function of ourselves. In fact I watched Tony Robins recently just in a social clip that was shared specifically challenge the community that he was talking to that you have every day the opportunity to discard 80% of what you wake up and think you have to do so I’m focused on what matters most or to quote Stephen Covey, “First thing’s first.”

Fred Diamond: That is a great answer. One of the themes that comes through in a lot of the podcasts is the whole concept of having the right mindset. I’m just curious, what are some of the things that you do to stay confident, to keep yourself going? You mentioned naps, but what are some of the ways that you stay focused? Again, you manage a team, you mentioned that you’ve been on three world tours over the last seven months, you’ve worked for some great companies, you worked for some of the great SAAS success stories in Sprinklr. Tell us about some of the things you do – and I’m actually going to ask this question later about how do you sharpen your saw, but we’ll get to that – how do you keep the right mindset going?

Eric Marterella: Physical and mental answer. I work out every day at least 30 minutes even if I’m pressed for time in an airport I’d find a way to not take the shuttle and make a walk happen. I’m also that guy on an airplane in the galley. A lot of times winning my way to stand there with the flight attendants with a smile or kind word which I encourage everyone to do, it’s a very tough role and I’ve certainly been not the best example of a traveler in my day but I’ve been very focused on making the experience good for everyone around me but there are ways to physically stay active every day and I believe that’s a big part of it to include eating and drinking and there’s a lot of folks listening that are in sales know the temptations every day that exist to over indulge in both categories.

That’s just self-discipline, but mentally I believe there’s a way always to find your confidence. In fact, I lose it probably three or four times a day. What brings me back immediately is of course you can get a great call. I think the higher you get in an organization you don’t get much good news. You get a lot of tough stuff but I love hearing from the team in terms of what’s winning that day. I look for the wins. If I have four bad things happen or we’ll say opportunities to correct, I make a call and I do a lot of calls throughout the organization to business partners and calls bring me back.

The toughest job that I did in that cube in Reston, Virginia was the drive to make one more call. That next call could be somebody that is interested, has a need, there’s a timing that is in your favor and all of the sudden the seven hours prior you’re banging your head against the wall and it’s different not. It’s a digital wall but it’s an opportunity to feel great again. I’m a simple human.

By the way, I love calling elderly folks in my family, relatives that are out of the game that love talking about professional development still in stories from the roads and my father in law managed for 20 years an account in the telecom space and he can almost finish my sentence if I give him a case study of what I’m up against because it hasn’t changed a whole lot in 50 years, let’s face it.

The last but not least, I have a 100 year old grandma through my relation to my wife, grandma Bea and there’s nothing better than getting her on the phone when you’re having a tough day so call your grandma or grandpa if they’re still alive.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you take us back to a specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of?

Eric Marterella: That’s such a tough one, Fred, but I don’t think that’s why you’re here to ask easy questions although some of these have been softball. Thinking through the toughest ones I think a lot of people want to talk about their successes and prep for this discussion that I sent you my CV, my bio, you can’t find much bad things on there, right? It’s all great stats, etcetera but what happens when your business goes south? What happens when someone that you’re selling to, consuming a lot of your product decides to make their own?

That happened to me and I was at Cisco and the time and I think enough time has passed so that I can share specifically the client that was Amazon. I was a assigned that account and concurrently managing Marriott globally and a little of the Amazon web services at the time had never really had anyone on the east coast so it was my opportunity and I befriended a lot of the architects, amazing people at Amazon.

It’s hard to teach them a lot, especially with the black belts they have designing their own equipment but I went back to the core in terms of when your business is challenged but you still have awesome goals and I’ve never been insulted by the goals that I had been given in sales. Sales leadership has always put lofty ones on me but I was faced with a herculean effort and I actually went back to a mentor, Carlos Dominguez who served John Chambers in his office for many years.

He was someone who was an executive sponsor in the business and gave me great insight to go differentiate early in my career at Cisco so I spent time with him and my father at the time had been going through hospice. I asked my dad, “You worked at Xerox, what happened when they centralized these printers versus you having to put them in the back of your car and go sell them?” and he goes, “We created a new business model.” Smarter people than me partnered at Cisco but I spent the next few months writing a business plan around a sell to or sell through engagement model with Amazon.

If folks know who AWS are, I’m sure you do now, they had a market place and there weren’t many people in it. My business plan was all about creating intrinsic value for both Amazon and Cisco to essentially de-couple software from hardware. During that time I think with my father – and by the way, for folks that have experienced cancer, I know that you have felt the same, you’re torn and it’s the toughest emotional and physical thing I’ve ever been through and I didn’t have cancer, but everyone will encourage you to stay home and stay with the people you just never would regret it.

I did that but my father was still working and he was still very lucid and I got my best work done over those few months and ultimately led to us convincing a product lead in the security department to de-couple the software and hardware and put an instance in the AWS. Today, it’s one of the most downloaded firewall applications. I didn’t get to see that economic lift from that and I’m very fortunate that I made that decision to pivot to Sprinklr because I’m still rooting for the Cisco folks but I’m probably most proud of that because it was a transformational model and it served for value to the future versus just a transactional model in exchange.

Fred Diamond: You’ve had a great career so far, you’ve given us some great examples of some big wins. You’ve worked for some great small companies and of course Cisco and Digex companies that were very instrumental in the technology growth in the country and in the world. Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s just too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Eric Marterella: Yeah, about 1 am this morning because I knew I had to get up and do this. I think we have to be very honest that every day creates a different set of challenges, specifically at 1 am I was actually engaging over WhatsApp with a colleague working through a business challenge. There are self-doubts that you have in your ability to actually give great advice and coaching. I didn’t say it out loud but in my head I definitely had a weak moment. As I took a nap and woke up, the solution came to me on the treadmill this morning at 6 am.

Fred Diamond: By the way, you said you took a nap 1 o’clock in the morning.

Eric Marterella: [Laughs] I did, I slept for a few hours.

Fred Diamond: Most people call that sleep.

Eric Marterella: I did. In full disclosure, I took a really big nap on the airplane the other day in the middle of the day so you just get your winks whenever you can. I’ve also been very self-aware of not trying to impart my work ethic on others and I would say it’s actually been a flaw of mine especially in my early days of leadership being self-critical, not outward in the actual business about folks taking too much vacation.

Of course, we now live in a day where there’s unlimited vacation policies, etcetera but the demands we put on ourselves sometimes we often don’t slow down and reflect that it’s not really essential a lot of time and it might turn people in the other direction if you’re too hard. Sales is that game, as I said earlier, the Marriott opportunity going in it was so transactional. If you worked hard, you hustled, you delivered an exceptional experience to a hurried business traveler or a family in just wanting to relax for a meal, you sell 25 or 30%. If you didn’t you sell 10% or you got a negative common card and no gratuity so I like to think back to that as some of the early days’ example.

The other aspect of this is we all have relationships outside of business and I think the lines blur especially the higher you go in an organization. I want to not correct what you said, it is tougher to gain that time because the demand on the time of the executives is more but I believe the conversation is actually easier. Why? Because I think there’s a more humanistic way that executives do relate in a conversation because there’s a macro point of view and you can certainly not be invited back a second time if you get too finite in that discussion but I really enjoy and I coach my team to take that opportunity whenever you have it, just be ready to bring content that will beckon a second conversation because that’s when I think the rubber meets the road in a friendship and a business relationship can go much further.

Fred Diamond: What’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Eric Marterella: I think we’re all junior sales professionals still. We’re all learning every day, as I established. I want to bring a bigger point to bear and that’s if you have a high IQ, congratulations, I’m not sure what mine is, I’ve never been formally tested but my belief is especially now more than ever that we need to link your EQ and your IQ. Self-awareness and motivations and the skills of empathy matter more than ever.

I am what I’ll affectionately refer to the PTC early leaders for demonstrating if you haven’t followed them and I forget how many years but let’s just say 7 years of growth and never missing a number, one person in particular, John McMan was a mentor to me during the journey at Sprinklr and still is and many of these folks have a disciplined science that came out of there and there were exceptional leaders no doubt that ran the business and I’m not picking on PTC but what I want to point out is when folks mimic behaviors of just process driven command control leadership – and I am a huge steward of process, I appreciate it more now than ever with the responsibilities that I’ve had – it can somehow be distorted and turn people away.

My belief is especially with the multiple channels of communication and the misinterpretation of data that happens on those channels that your empathy skills and being direct but also self-aware about when the message makes sense to deliver it or not will make all the difference and how your team responds to you. I’ve made many mistakes early days, I made a few coming into Lotame where you think your program that you had 5 or 10 years ago is a carbon copy and you want to replicate it. I work and I challenge my direct reports to really work hard on that personal style leadership and back to my coma around the lines blurring between your vocational life and your personal life, my belief is you can exercise that muscle 7 days a week, 365 because I know there’s folks with partners and families out there that give them the ability to get that blazingly blunt feedback on who they really are.

By the way, my wife, no one knows more about where my strengths and weaknesses lie and she’s not afraid to amplify either one of them. [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: Very good. We mentioned this before, we talked about some ways you keep the confidence going in a profession where there’s always shots being taken at you and deals going south, people not taking your calls, etcetera but tell us one or two of the things that you do – you mentioned exercising every day – but what are some of the other things you might do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Eric Marterella: No surprise kind of things here because I do wake up with a disciplined routine and I’ve read a lot of blogs that say you shouldn’t look at your email and I will say that is the worst channel of communication for me. It is essential to executing day to day and business but I do turn to many things. Your podcast has been something that’s come up, I’ve spent time with books, my father left me an entire library of Abraham Lincoln and one thing that he always did was he highlighted points that he loved and circled them so I can get the sage wisdom from him.

Anyone who’s listening out there, there will be a way to contact me and I’d love to share with you after reading 50 books he actually delivered at the leadership breakfast here shortly before he passed, the leadership lessons that he learned and it’s succinctly and broken out categorically by communication, ethics, execution, etcetera.

It’s just amazing so I love going to some of those go to things but of course you have LinkedIn and I want to make sure every day when I put my head down that I’ve helped somebody so my tag line on digital properties is add value at every touch point and I stay very disciplined and I’m not always the best version of myself at a grocery store while I’m multi-tasking, checking out on the phone but if I do make a connection with somebody I always try to follow through and ensure I see the opportunity to make them better. LinkedIn is one of those ways where you can quickly get through that.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Eric Marterella: I’ve taken some opportunities to work with local business owners in the community to help them with social media, marketing, not for fee, just to support them because they’re small business and I’ve worked mainly in enterprise my entire life so I always like slowing down if I have a great experience with a contractor at my house and help them perhaps take their business further.

What I identify mostly and I have an appreciation for these folks is they’re comfortable in their skin and they only want to paint 100 houses a year and have no dreams of creating big enterprise so that always stops me in my tracks to think, “Wow, we always set such bee hag goals out there, big, hairy, audacious goals and some folks are just very content delivering premium experiences and services at their speed and schedule.”

I’ve done some advisory work, I work with a great entrepreneur, David at Bounce Pilot. It’s an email re-targeting platform. It just exercises my itch to make experiences better with retail and e-commerce better. I recently registered a domain, I have not created the company but a play around link in and EQ called Link EQ. I will not go into a great detail of what that is yet, what I would love to do is sit down with folks out there struggling with how to break the chasm of process and institutional style management and embrace some of those inner skills that are covered around EQ that include empathy, social motivation. If that something that interests you, I think it’d be more of a breakfast chat or coffee, it’s not a service for fee.

Fred Diamond: Eric, I think we’ve gathered through today’s podcast some of the things that you love about sales and why you’ve continued. You just mentioned something, try to offer value at every touch point when you have with a person, with a customer or prospect and you’ve talked about some of the ways that you’re continually looking to provide value for those who work with you and your partners and also people in your life as well, not just on your business side, but very succinctly, why don’t you tell us what is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Eric Marterella: The opportunity to connect business outcomes when you’re working with a prospect or customer over the years. Really special opportunity at Marriott to provide guest safety as a traveler, there’s been projects that I’ve worked on that include that you would not necessarily feel as if there’s a strong connection to technology in a guest in a hotel room back in the early 2000’s and there wasn’t. In fact, I was in Asia and I had to present to a group of general managers and I made the mistake of looking at the survey results as they all showed up for this annual conference and we’d just paid to be a sponsor but I got a three minute speaking gig out of it and the survey question was how much do you care about technology, it was a write in and a majority of them said, “We only care when it’s not working” because that’s when they get all the complaints.

But over the years I’ve had an opportunity to have a lot of transformational projects with Carlos actually cut the ribbon down in Miami, Florida for a project and it was an amazing opportunity. In fact, it was the pinnacle of what I wanted to do bringing about six different architectures together in a hotel with an owner that really wanted to make sure he differentiated the guest experience. I love those types of efforts and of course I went into what was not really a category in social and then in big data, unstructured data with Lotame category. We’re still looking for those outcomes every day, there are certainly ROI stats I won’t go back to the elevator pitch with Lotame but there’s some great success stories.

There are more often not folks that consuming technology is easy, it’s the people and process that I obsess over getting right day to. The contract starts when it gets signed but really the solution and the value realization is where I like to spend a lot of my effort and energy and that’s what keeps me in the game of sales but I don’t necessarily think just correcting the opportunity to say, “We’re all in sales” so my business partners keep me in the game of sales, finance, legal, the developers, folks that are back office that get very little credit, the beloved marketing and events team that enable us to shine.

They need to feel part of the solution as well and that’s another thing that I believe I’m not a master in anything but one thing that I believe leaving a trait or a mark in an organization is bringing the company together as holistic as possible and that they all feel like they’re achieving sales when that win report goes out.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought for the Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast around the globe?

Eric Marterella: I’ll give some homage to another executive, built an empire here, David Rubicon. I saw him at the World Business Forum in 2015 and took a lot of notes that day but I circled one and it specifically spoke a lot about a lot of complex financial models and certainly claimed as someone who has cracked that. He spoke in a way that was very direct and maybe some would say is trite but I’ve quoted this several times and woke up this way thinking what this in my mind is the most important thing I can do and we talked about it as we were setting up for this conversation here.

He said there’s so much opportunity outside of the office so get out there and meet somebody, the energy and the activity will inspire you and you’ll never really work another day in your life which is probably a mashup, something that my grandfather said who fought in World War II actually, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work again.” That opportunity to think about just getting out in the marketplace is it’s all within our reach so I challenge everyone to do that, I challenge myself.

It’s certainly when you travel as much as a lot of us do, it’s easy to keep the PJ’s on and work out of the home office, but even getting out to your local community to work at a WeWork or Starbucks sometimes, you can meet the most interesting folks but you have to opt in and you have to engage and one thing that I would say that riding the Amtrak up to New York for the last 6 years, there aren’t a lot of people leaning over and having conversations. There isn’t as much of that going on anymore on airplanes and it used to.

Everyone should be self-aware to know when to turn it on or turn it off, but I would say turn it on because you never know what’s sitting across the table and that solution might be answered. I wanted to close by just saying thank you, Fred, for the leadership that you deliver with these podcasts. This was a great opportunity to share my story but I more importantly look forward to hearing from some of the folks listening and find a way to help you. I guarantee it will be bidirectional. Thank you very much for having me on this morning.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 089: Lotame CRO Eric Marterella Shares How an Early-Career Meeting with Bill Marriott Inspired Him to Become an Innovative Sales Leader first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.