Recapping the best sales advice from 2021 to get promoted in 2022 w/ Carl Ferreira, Anna Rofsky, & Tyler Lindley

The Sales Lift Podcast
Episode #76
Recapping the best sales advice from 2021 to get promoted in 2022 w/ Carl Ferreira, Anna Rofsky, & Tyler Lindley
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley

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[00:00:00] Tyler Lindley: Hey Sales Lift Nation it's your host Tyler Lindley today is a solo episode, with just me, I'm so thrilled to be here with you really want to look back on 2021 and some of the most impactful episodes. There were two that released. And they actually happened back to back back in March of this year, we're going to dig deeper into those episodes today versus with Carl Ferreira, where we talked about crushing the role in your one at a billion dollar scale up.

And then the second is with Anna Rofsky, where we talked about taking calculated risks in your sales over a now Carl and Anna stand out HubSpot eight. They've actually gone on from HubSpot. Now, Carl just transitioned to refine labs where he's the director of. There. Anna Rofsky is a sales manager at forethought, so they both have gone on to do great things in their career.

And we're going to revisit some of the lessons that we learned from these two episodes. So let's dig in first to what Carl Ferreira and I discussed around mindset. Let's talk a little bit more about that mindset, because I think in sales, a lot of us have that go-getter hunter mentality. We want to be at the top of the board, but it does take more than just that to be the top new rep at a big company or a small company or any company for that matter.

Tell me a little bit more about what that mindset looks like for you on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. In

[00:01:27] Carl Ferreira: the beginning. What was the mindset? It was just dive in. I see this a mistake. I think a lot of reps make in the beginning is they're timid. They're like, Hey, I'm the new guy or the new gal. They have this new guy, new gal mindset.

They don't want to ruffle any feathers. They don't want to cause any waves. They want to slide in, stay under the radar. Get to their number. Yes, sir. No, ma'am very straight laced and I think that's fine, but I reject that mindset to a degree because I was hired for a reason I'm getting paid the same in general, as all the other AEs at my level.

And HubSpot is trusting me with a large. Patch of land and customers. They need me to jump in immediately. I'm not going to be timid. I'm not going to wait. I'm not going to dip my toes in I'm diving right. In a couple of ways that I practically did that was just removing from my mind that I was a new person.

I've been selling for years. I'm not new. At this in any way, shape or form. I know how to sell. It's just a different product, different motion, different story now, but same mechanics. So I came in with just that confidence. Like I gave myself that pep talk. I'm not new. I know how to sell. I'm very good at selling.

These are just new things. So I wanted to come in and just jump in and be super valuable to my team. I remember early days I was answering questions about the HubSpot product. That's. To other reps that had been here a lot longer than me. That's one thing I did. I just became obsessed with learning the product that helps you to really skyrocket through the ranks of Carl knows what he's talking about.

Not just internally to bring value to my team, but also to. My customers. You don't want it to sound like you just got hired when you're talking to a customer, right? You want it to sound like you've been doing marketing, you've been doing sales. You've been selling software like this your whole life. Not that you want to fake it till you make it, but you got to catch up pretty quick.

And that's one of the first things that I focused on is I got to become an expert and become valuable to my customers and my own team internally. Love

[00:03:27] Tyler Lindley: that what Carl was talking about there, where he talked about diving in, I think as new reps, we really want to have the ability to dive into a new role.

You were hired for a reason, and you want to have that confidence, even if you're first time selling, if you're selling before you were hired, because you have a specific set of skills that that company valued and you needed to take that opportunity. And run with it. Another thing that Carl touched on there was learning the product.

You need to know your product inside and out better than anyone else, because you are the expert and learning that product can really help to have better conversations, deeper discussions with your customers and your prospects around those business problems and challenges that your product helps to solve.

Let's dig in a little bit further continuing with that episode with Carl, where Carl talks a little. Standing out with his own internal brand and external brand that he built. People just waiting

[00:04:23] Carl Ferreira: for jobs to come their way, or I hope that I get these jobs. No, you gotta take control of that. Controlling your internal brand of your company is super important and you're right.

I wanted to do that early on. My LinkedIn presence is part of that. It separates me. It's my own differentiator. Carl's graded. Say. He's went to president's club, rising star. He ramped really fast. Guess what? Those things are pretty cool, but a lot of other reps are really great at sales and went to president's club.

I've never been around a better cohort of salespeople than my time here at HubSpot. So those aren't all necessarily super differentiating. But now I add in cool. Carl does all. And he's really well networked outside of HubSpot. He's in revenue, collective he's in all these other groups and channels building a brand for himself and for HubSpot, but also internally, it helps me too.

So two things, LinkedIn was a big part of that and it set me apart where people pay attention. Carl's doing this new thing also internally, really early on. I wanted to meet other people in other departments. And man, this is always nerve wracking. You don't know if like other people internally are going to be receptive to meeting the new person.

But HubSpot. I remember jumping on because I sold CMS before in a previous role, a CMS that was specifically designed for really large churches nonprofits. And I mentioned that to a CMS product owner in my very first month. And she was like, oh, Let's put you on this team to give feedback into some of our new CMS features.

So instantly just by sharing my experience and stepping out of my comfort zone and talking to somebody in a different vertical of HubSpot, I was now in month two, speaking into CMS roadmap. I did the same thing with the team that oversees sales hub and task queues. If you look at tasks use today, I'm super proud of it because a lot of the awesome changes we made.

I was in those conversations. I helped to shape that. A lot of the features that you don't see are because I was like, those aren't going to help me to sell more. So there's even features that you don't see that I didn't think were that great. And we removed them. That is so cool to be able to contribute to HubSpot more than just dollars and MRR and ARR, which is awesome.

I

[00:06:34] Tyler Lindley: love what Carl had to say there about standing out. Carl did a great job of standing out as just another eight, ye at HubSpot using his LinkedIn presence to actually promote some ideas and thought leadership around sales and specifically around HubSpot also sounds like when he got to HubSpot, he shared his background.

He shared a little bit about what he had done. And that opened up opportunities and doors. So you have to be willing to raise your hand, share your background, and then sign up for things outside of your day job. The only way you're going to spread your wings as an a E and learn more network better, and just become a true expert within your industry and your company is to write.

Your hand. Carl did a great job of raising his hand and look what that's done for his career. Let's dive into the third clip from their Carla episode where he, Carl and I talk a little bit about how to onboard rockstar sales reps, and I

[00:07:28] Carl Ferreira: ramped 80% faster than other people. Yep. First thing, answer your question.

Look for that weirdness and be open to it. Second thing is this is driven by my personality. My manager, shout out to Katie early. She gave me space. She trusted me from day one. She said, Carl's creative. Carl is very what I like to call intrepreneurial. He doesn't have a business outside of HubSpot, but he very much sees his role as HubSpot as he's the CEO of his domain and his territory.

I'm going to give him space and support in a different way than I might do another new rep that needs a lot of handholding. So she's so perceptive and saw that really early. And man, that paid dividends, honestly, for me, for her, for HubSpot, because that space is exactly what I needed just to move, just to share ideas, to fail.

So this fall on my face and experienced. First-hand and maybe have a slow month. I did last August and be able to win and learn from that. So she gave me the breathing room and was it focused on knowledge transfer, but competency transfer, Anthony Wiener. Reno talks a lot about the dynamic of these two.

So. Advice to sales leaders is, and this is where I think a lot of onboarding things go wrong. The focus is knowledge transfer, right? Everybody makes a joke, oh, you're gonna be drinking from the fire hose for the first month. That's great. And that's necessary most of the time, you just got to get the information out, transfer the knowledge, but how does our enablement, how does our training, how does our onboarding has our ongoing development transfer?

Not just knowledge, but competency and competency means taking knowledge. And using it, practicing it, failing with it, winning with it. What's the process for that piece so that we're creating people that are super competent and not just information meeting information that transfer their knowledge to competency.

Super important. HubSpot obviously did a really great job of it. And that's what I would encourage other sales leaders to think about their onboarding training processes, my transferring just information. Or am I really transferring competency and I, new reps and reps. I

[00:09:37] Tyler Lindley: love what Carl talks about there, where he talks about transferring knowledge versus transferring competency.

And really, I think as you're onboarding reps, it's not just about shoving as much knowledge as you can in front of them. It's about giving them that space to become. To learn, to fail, to innovate, giving them that space and support because we all need support when we're just getting started from enablement, from managers, from training.

But we also need the space to learn how to be competent on our own. Learn how to fail, learn how to get better. I really appreciate Carl for coming on back in March. If you want to catch up with Carl, he is now the director of sales at refined labs. Interestingly, we also had Chris Walker who leads refine labs back on the podcast on episode 18, where we talked about how.

Starts with better marketing. So if you want to check out episode 18 with Chris Walker Duso or go back and listen to episode 37, the full episode with Carl Ferrera, let's dig in a little bit deeper now into episode 38, which was another standout episode in 2021 from another former HubSpot AAE, Anna Roski, Anna and I talked a little bit about consultative selling in episode 38.

Let's dig in a little bit to that part of the. So in your mind, what have you learned? Because being a consultative seller in SAS, I think that's a phrase that a lot of folks here, but what did that mean to you? Especially coming from a more transactional sale at India. How did you become a better consultative seller?

And what does that look like in the SAS world?

[00:11:05] Anna Rofsky: Yeah, that's a great question. How it happened. That's the nature of HubSpot's selling lotion is you have to be consultated. You have to be an advisor. It's not a job where you can just say, Hey, buy this, buy this, buy this, buy this. Not that I was doing that on indeed, but we won't be successful.

If you do that at HubSpot, you have to. Qualify your prospects and disqualify your prospects. Just as much as they're qualifying and disqualifying, you, you have to understand their tech stack. And if it plays in, somebody might really want HubSpot, but. It might not be a fit for a technology reason, for whatever it may be.

You have to really not only understand their pain points and why they would buy, but you have to understand their whole structure as a business, their whole organization. You have to understand what their goals are in the immediate three months. Just as much as you need to understand what their goals are in the next three to five years.

And that really, I think, shifts you from being. Hey, I have this product. I think you would be good for it. Buy it to really saying I am your partner in this evaluation. And I am going to help you think about this from both your short-term ROI and long-term goals affect.

[00:12:19] Tyler Lindley: I love thinking about the goals and the short-term and the long-term because.

Sometimes you just focused on the short-term goals where you want to see, where does the tool, or where does this strategy fit with where your business is going as well? I think that's a great point. Great point there by Anna and I loved how Anna talked a little bit about being that advisor, that partner, when we do consultation of selling and B2B software, we want to be.

Consultative. We want to advise, we want to be a partner. We want to think about our prospects and our customers long-term goal, just as much as their short-term goals. And I think Anna did a great job of that when she crushed it at HubSpot. And now she's gone on to do great things at four. But I think just understanding that consultated motion and how can you learn more about their business, their goals, the overarching themes and strategies that they're working on, and then hopefully figuring out does your product and service help to move those goals forward instead of just pushing.

The product let's understand more about the customer and about their business. And then let's advise if we might can help out further another standout moment from the episode with Anna, we talked a little bit about finding passion and opportunity outside of your regular duties. As a sales rep, let's dive in there.

That's such an important lesson call for air. And I were talking about it on the last episode is intrepreneurs building some of those connections. Some of those opportunities, it sounds like this one was just someone on your team. Saying, Hey, are you interested in doing this? And even though you didn't have the confidence to say yes, you said yes anyways.

And I think that's a lot of what we have to do throughout our career. Especially working in whether it's a small company or a big company, you've got to find those opportunities. Or if they land in your lap, you've got to say yes, because most people will say no to those things. Most people will say, no, I'm too busy.

This won't help me hit quota this month. This is not important, but actually it is important. It sounds like this training that you read. You were six months in, you're running a new, hard training, but you don't really feel like you're on solid footing yet. It sounds like that was a key catalyst. How else do you think folks can either from the top down, like from a leadership level or just from a culture perspective, how do you think companies can promote this culture of networking and opportunity and entrepreneurship, if you will, of finding opportunities to expand your skillset and get you ready for those next opportunities within that organization?

That's a really

[00:14:40] Anna Rofsky: good question. I think we all need to remind ourselves as AEs, particularly. Yes, we sell and we love that, but we have passions outside of that. So for me again, it's the leadership and mentorship kind of thing, which played really nicely into this new hire training. It's also how I take opportunities to enhance my SDRs and I work on that relationship.

So my passion is in this mentorship is coaching. The teaching. And so really finding those opportunities to say, okay, outside of my quota-carrying responsibilities, where can I hone these skills? Or where can I practice? Where can I contribute to my organization with that? In the example of the training, it fell into my lap.

And I was lucky to have such a supportive team and people who really wanted to lift me up. But for example, a. I was like, Hey, I ran this new hire training. So if there's opportunity to do that in some capacity, please let me know. I'd love to do that. Finding where your passions are outside of it.

[00:15:35] Tyler Lindley: And I love that and it took her passion for coaching, for mentorship, and had an opportunity to do that at HubSpot continued told that story.

Theme telling a little bit of your story internally. How can you raise your hand, tell your story, find those passions outside of the responsibilities of your day job, because that's where the magic happens. That's where opportunity happens. And that's where you find opportunities to be a future leader, a mentor, AEs working with SDRs managers, working with AEs there's opportunity, no matter what your role in an organization, there's opportunity for you to find additional.

Opportunity to find additional passions, find additional ways to network internally, build that brand. It's funny, these consistent themes that showed up between these two top performers, these two AEs who have now gone on to be sales managers and sales directors at other organizations, all the AEs SCRs out there.

All you frontline country. Think about what are you doing right now to set yourself up to be the future leader of your organization or for other organizations, raise your hand, take those chances and make sure that you are taking advantage of the opportunity. And that is in front of you to not just hit your quota, but to hit your quota and do a lot more within your organization and for your own sales career.

I really appreciate you hopping on this episode. This was fun to take a look back at the episode 37, crushing the roll in year one in a billion dollar scale up with Carl Ferrera as well as episode. Eight with Anna Roski, taking calculated risks in your sales career with Anna Roski. If you want to go back and listen to those, those are episode 37 and 38 familiar this year, and just a couple of really standout episodes that I wanted to revisit.

Really appreciate you hopping on today as always, if you want to learn more about the sales lift, head to the sales lift.com. That's the sales lift T H. Sales S a L E S lift L I F t.com full show notes will be there as well as this episode and all the previous episodes. I hope you're having a fantastic start to your 2022.

These first few weeks are really exciting people making goals. Resolutions. I want you to take advantage of these opportunities in front of you as well this year. And I look forward to continuing. To have great conversations with folks like Carl and Anna and others. If you want to join the podcast, go to the website, fill out our form, or just hit me up on LinkedIn.

I'm happy to chat more and definitely make sure you try to connect with Carl Ferrera and Anna Roski. We'll link to their LinkedIn profiles to sales thought leaders that you want to get to know better in 2022. And I look forward to seeing you next week, right back here on the sales lift. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks.

Thank you so much for listening to today's show, you can find all the links discussed and the show notes@thesaleslift.com. That's the T H G sales, S a L E S. Lift L I F T. I have questions for me, email me@tyleratthesaleslift.com. We look forward to seeing you back here next week, and we hope today's show brings you the sales lift.

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