Sell Based on Value & Encourage Change | Lisa McClure

Justin Keller: Welcome to Revenue Talks, the show where we get real about what it takes to build pipeline and drive expansion as a go to market team. I'm Justin Keller, the Vice President of Revenue Marketing at Drift and on this show, I'm here talking to folks across the entire go- to- market organization, which means marketing, sales, and customer success, about how these conversations, technology and cross- functional alignment to build more pipeline and drive expansion because revenue, it's everyone's business now. Hey, it's Justin. Welcome to another episode of Revenue Talks. Today we've got a special episode for you hosted by Drift's Vice President of Sales Armen Zildjian. Armen is going to talk to Salesforce's regional vice president of Revenue Cloud, Lisa McClure, all about what it's like to lead sales for an add- on component of a larger product. We'll let them get right into it.

Armen Zildjian: Welcome to Revenue Talks. I'm Armen, and today I'm thrilled to be joined by Lisa McClure. Lisa is a regional vice president of Revenue Cloud and SMB at Salesforce, a cloud- based software company for CRM services. Lisa, you have over 10 years of experience building and reconfiguring teams, specifically with build outs, what you call startups within Salesforce. I definitely want to dig in on that, that's very interesting and we're going to do a little bit about learning exactly what startups in Salesforce mean, but also get to know you a little bit too. So thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. To start off, I actually love asking sales leaders how they initially got into sales. It's never like a straight line and especially your background, the degrees that you have in neurobiology and a Master's and all the volunteering work that you do, it's pretty amazing and so how did you navigate towards a sales career?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, I think probably similar to most people that start in sales, it was a total fluke, it was-

Armen Zildjian: Yeah.

Lisa McClure: ...I graduated from undergraduate with a degree in neuroscience from Purdue. I initially wanted to go to medical school, decided not to, and it was too late at that point to start over so I didn't, and then I thought, okay, so what am I going to do? So I lived with my parents for a few months and then that got old as you can imagine.

Armen Zildjian: Yeah. As a 22 year old, I got to get out of here.

Lisa McClure: Yeah, so I decided I was going to move to Chicago and live on a friend's couch and I got a job at a place called CDW. They paid me this amazing salary of$ 25,000 and gave me$ 0 to start with my book of business and said inaudible.

Armen Zildjian: Listen up reps, this is really-

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: ...grinding it out early days.

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: Come on now.

Lisa McClure: You're going to sell in the K12 accounts.

Armen Zildjian: Oh my God.

Lisa McClure: In six states, good luck and I thought, okay, cool. I'll do this for six months and I'll find something new and 12 years later I was still there.

Armen Zildjian: Wow, that's amazing.

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: And you've worked your way into some leadership roles and an amazing one at one of the premier software companies in the world. What is it like and what do you love most about leading sales teams?

Lisa McClure: I really care most about impact and so leading sales teams has been really very rewarding for me because it's not just about my own success, which I do enjoy, the thrill of sales. I enjoy more when we've accomplished something bigger and many people on my team have succeeded in accomplishing something big together at the end of a fiscal year.

Armen Zildjian: Yeah, it's always that we're not, at the beginning you're like, we're not sure we can do this and at the end you're like, wow, that person stepped up, that person did this and you celebrate all of the potentially unusual things that happened to get you there and people going out of their comfort zone right?

Lisa McClure: Right.

Armen Zildjian: It's amazing.

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: It's always funny-

Lisa McClure: inaudible

Armen Zildjian: ...'causepeople don't celebrate like, " Oh well we did this or we did that." They celebrate each other at the end usually-

Lisa McClure: Exactly.

Armen Zildjian: ... whenit really works well. Right?

Lisa McClure: Yeah. I mean, five years after you've been on a team that you really loved and you accomplished something you don't remember, I achieved 140%. You remember I felt this way and we experienced-

Armen Zildjian: Yeah.

Lisa McClure: ...this thing together. And so-

Armen Zildjian: That's right.

Lisa McClure: ...yeah. That's what's rewarding.

Armen Zildjian: That's awesome. Okay, let's jump into it because I do want to hear about this role at Salesforce. Tell us what, first of all, Revenue Cloud product is and how it fits into the broader sales organization then we'll dive into the startup pipe part of it.

Lisa McClure: Yeah, yeah. So Revenue Cloud isn't a startup as much anymore.

Armen Zildjian: Okay.

Lisa McClure: Revenue Cloud is legacy steel brick and so two out of three roles that I've held at Salesforce have been acquisitions-

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: ... which iswhy it's got that startup feel and then one really was a startup, but Revenue Cloud the family, it's a product family inside of Salesforce, which covers specifically quote to cash so it's our CPQ product, which is configure-

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: ...price quote.

Armen Zildjian: Mm- hmm.

Lisa McClure: Billing, and then subscription management, which is branding for Salesforce.

Armen Zildjian: Got it. Got it. And so the personas that buy those products or across a couple of different, the sales ops in there, there's potentially finance in there. How do you focus on selling to, you've gotten multiple personas, multiple add- ons and buying processes. How do you navigate that with a team?

Lisa McClure: I think we have an advantage because we sell a product where we are talking to ops, rev ops and finance and typically Salesforce still has this perception of we're just a line item that's an expense to finance and when we come in and we start talking about Revenue Cloud, we become value to finance and so we start to shift the conversation to actually become partners because we're saying, yes, you're spending a lot of money on Salesforce and you don't know what Salesforce is doing because you're not touching-

Armen Zildjian: That's right.

Lisa McClure: ... whatthe sales teams are touching.

Armen Zildjian: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa McClure: But we can show you how you can get visibility into that with Revenue Cloud. So we can give you controls over quoting, we can give you visibility into margins, we can give you better forecasting and we can help you collect cash faster.

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: All inside the platform. And so it is a conversation that transforms our partnership with customers and it truly does become partnership versus selling.

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: And that's the thing that I enjoy the most.

Armen Zildjian: Is it a consolidation play with them? Oftentimes do they have a inaudible and replacing pieces of other things that they're doing that or they all doing it on of manual spreadsheet this, that, all that other stuff kind of bootstrapping it together versus under a platform?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, so there are peace meal products out there like a ZORA or sometimes the ERP can really extend into the pieces that we cover, but then there's still that separation of either your sales rep has to get into multiple tools and then your sales rep has access to your finance tools or-

Armen Zildjian: Yeah, not great.

Lisa McClure: ...the opposite happens so I think the integration of being on the Salesforce platform and then passing everything to the ERP because we do not replace an ERP, it does help, but I'm covering small businesses so a lot of them are spreadsheets and so it really is error and revenue leakage and all those things that we can help solve for.

Armen Zildjian: I got to believe with the current economic conditions of people tightening their belt. You probably got different objections than you had in the past. How are you guys dealing with what's going on and how are you changing positioning to people that have to make these decisions or you're hope and make these decisions?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, I love this question because I'm actually training my team today on this.

Armen Zildjian: Oh great.

Lisa McClure: I actually think-

Armen Zildjian: We got a little lesson here. I love it.

Lisa McClure: ...yeah, you're going to get the lesson before my team does. I think we're kind of a recession proof product and I say that because we do provide that visibility and our play when we're not in a time now where it's uncertain, is really about how do we help you become IPO ready? Or how do we help you report back to PEs and with compliance tools. So we're talking about ASC 606 and we're talking about SaaS compliance and those are things where Salesforce isn't really in that conversation most of the time and so when we think about recession and you're laying off your sales team, what are ways that you're going to keep your business afloat? You want increased visibility, you want tighten up your margins, you want better forecasting and possibly if you're a SaaS company, you want ways for your customers to self- serve.

Armen Zildjian: Right.

Lisa McClure: And we do all of that inside a Revenue Cloud.

Armen Zildjian: That's awesome. That's great.

Lisa McClure: Yeah-

Armen Zildjian: inaudible.

Lisa McClure: ...it's exciting.

Armen Zildjian: So as an add on, you have the purchasers of Salesforce, especially in a small business, usually sales leader, maybe like you said, an ops person, but then these other folks get involved. So as an add- on, how do you leverage the sales leadership that's likely a fan and maybe the original buyer of Salesforce towards the rest of the revenue engine that incorporates billing and subscription management and all that other stuff?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, that one's actually a little harder. I'm in sales so I can say this about my own persona. We're the most resistant to change in an organization and Revenue Cloud poses more changes because there's restrictions on the way we go to market and the way we sell. So typically it's really about selling the here's how we can help get deals done faster.

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: Here's how you can help influence how we're getting things done through the funnel and then the biggest thing that we fall back on is let's talk about where you're having problems with forecasting and what that means to you as a sales leader and how putting this product into place will help you but outside of Rev Ops, nobody's worried about the synergies between finance and sales.

Armen Zildjian: No, not usually. And usually-

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: ... thenthat's not the biggest problem they're solving.

Lisa McClure: Right? Exactly.

Armen Zildjian: So sales leaders paying, the biggest one that you guys kind anchor off of is speed to revenue in terms of the CPQ process I'm assuming is-

Lisa McClure: Right.

Armen Zildjian: ...wrapped in that and then forecasting really having the inability to really call their shot.

Lisa McClure: Right. And then there is the model that's coming out more and more of sales people not getting paid until cash is collected, which-

Armen Zildjian: Oh boy.

Lisa McClure: ... I think is agreat model and I think more and more startups are doing that and that's another value add of if you can see that all inside of Salesforce as a sales rep, I don't need visibility into the financial system of records, but I can make sure we're getting paid.

Armen Zildjian: Sorry, salespeople. Gone are the days of getting paid up front for a two year contract.

Lisa McClure: Yeah, blessings and curses, right? We started with$ 0 in our book, however we didn't have to collect cash.

Armen Zildjian: That's right, that's right. So on another sort of front that you work with on the marketing side, so you've got this largely, let me make an assumption first and you can correct me. Largely, it sounds like you're selling to an install base, you're not the leading sort of inroads into a new customer, right?

Lisa McClure: Correct.

Armen Zildjian: And so what's that customer marketing motion look like with you and your team? How do you leverage one another? How do you attack accounts and it's SMB, so I would consider it sort of peanut buttering and volume, but you might do ABM too for really maybe a small pocket of customers that are really good fit accounts. So how do you guys organize that and work together?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, I mean we are lucky because we do have world class marketing teams here that support us. We leverage the greater marketing team as much as we use the few resources that are dedicated to us specifically for Revenue Cloud.

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: And what's interesting is we need both internal and external marketing'cause we're one of what 15 clouds now that Salesforce sells so we need internal mind share as much as we need customer mind share. For customer go to market, it is a combo so account- based marketing does happen with our tier one strategic segment accounts and really what we're finding is Salesforce will have relationships but not in the offices that we need relationships with.

Armen Zildjian: Right.

Lisa McClure: So we're going out and providing messaging and typically we're leveraging off the grid type sessions where it's customers that are happy with Revenue Cloud, are running sessions where Salesforce is not in the room, but we are coordinating quarterly events around specific topics to say-

Armen Zildjian: Oh, that's great.

Lisa McClure: ...why don't you go to this event, learn about what we're doing, learn about how we can help you and our sellers are not going to be there. We're not going to be in the room pushing you towards the product. We're going to trust that this customer is as happy as they say they are. They are. And you guys are going to have a conversation.

Armen Zildjian: Well that's tight roping without a net.

Lisa McClure: Exactly. Yes.

Armen Zildjian: And what are your reps most excited about around how marketing helps them? Where do they like, " Oh I got to get after that." Because when they do this, this is really hits home for creating pipeline and closing.

Lisa McClure: I think it actually comes in that middle page, right? So I think we can do a training and we can identify here's great targets that are Salesforce customers and they really like us and want to grow on the platform, but we create pipeline and then getting Revenue Cloud in is different, right? Because we're talking to different people, it's not our traditional champions. We have to do things differently and so that's where marketing really helps us because we say, " Hey, can we get someone from your Rev Ops team to attend this event?" " Can we get someone from your Rev Ops team to look at this particular content?" " Could we leverage someone from your finance team to be a speaker for us at Salesforce?" Those are different ways that we're kind of-

Armen Zildjian: Little ego trap. I love that.

Lisa McClure: ...inaudible. A little bit of a mind game there but it's definitely something where we have to get strategic because our cycles are already longer than the traditional Salesforce play. And then on top of that, we're typically taking 90 days just to get the customer to really enter into a true cycle after we've-

Armen Zildjian: Right.

Lisa McClure: ...generated an opportunity.

Elizabeth: Hey, it's Elizabeth, the producer of the Drift Podcast network. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Revenue Talks. If you're looking for even more go- to- market best practices, check out our ebook GTM Lab, you'll get go- to- market hot takes and secrets from the industry's brightest minds on how to ignite every phase of your strategy, giving you even more ways to energize your marketing and sales efforts. Give it a read at drift. ly/ gtmbook. Now back to the show.

Armen Zildjian: Gotcha, Gotcha. And now let's dive into the startup feel within a really big company. There's lots of people that don't big companies, they like smaller companies or vice versa.

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: And you've got to cut a hybrid here. And so what's the mindset that you try to set with your team and how do you make sure they don't feel like siloed and can get all the resources and see the impact they have on the greater business and also have the speed and versatility that a smaller team can come with as an advantage?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, so inside of Revenue Cloud specifically, and this is something that Salesforce has done really well with a lot of our acquisitions where we still have a product team dedicated specifically to Revenue Cloud. We are still really engaged in... Our product team gets engaged in customer conversations daily with us.

Armen Zildjian: Wow.

Lisa McClure: They're making customer product tweaks and our roadmap, based on these conversations that they're having every day. However, with that said, our customers are still getting the advantage of we're pushing out updates three times a year via the Salesforce updates and we are giving you all of those enterprise feels but the experience you have in working with our team, we're still a really small team. I think there's 120 of us. We're not a big organization.

Armen Zildjian: Yeah, yeah, wow. And so as a rep sitting at their desk, how do they feel? So how do they feel connected to the larger organization even though they're focused on this specific cloud. What do you guys do? Are there events? Are there meetups? How does that work?

Lisa McClure: We're lucky in that the SI community that supports Revenue Cloud tends to be very niche. So they help us to make our reps feel special. I won't lie, there's still the redheaded stepchild feeling that sellers have in general. That definitely still happens and we don't have the same spiffs and we don't have the same resources. However, we are a faster growing cloud and that is something that they should be proud of because they're contributing to that and we do have more customer facing events, so our AEs get a little bit more exposure in terms of that. So those are the ways we kind of sell it as, yeah, there are some perceived disadvantages, but on the whole you're making more money and you get to do cooler things.

Armen Zildjian: Gotcha. Gotcha. Now let's shift a little bit. I'd love to hear again more of the start up feel. So how did you get involved with running this part of the startup, the Revenue Cloud startup portion of Salesforce? How did you get involved there?

Lisa McClure: Yeah so I should actually take us back a role, so the role I had before this was a business unit called Small Business Essentials and I think it was now maybe three and a half years ago, Benioff said, " Listen, I started this company and we had small businesses and now we focus really heavily on the enterprise and I want to make sure that we don't forget our roots or our customers that are small." And so we built this model where it's not efficient to just keep throwing bodies at accounts and there's always new accounts coming and so we started this operating unit inside of Salesforce that operated completely independently and we were focused only on small business, but how do we shift the way Salesforce goes to market in this space? And so we worked with an online sales team that helped build self- service options for Salesforce customers. We built an essentials product that was for brand new startups, 10 people or fewer, and they could just sign up and then as they grew transition into the-

Armen Zildjian: Gotcha.

Lisa McClure: ...other Salesforce products. And then we built a team that was focused very specifically on optimization of those accounts that were just in that growth stage. So as customers were coming out of like, okay, now we're 12, 15 users, it was, we're making this change, we're investing with Salesforce and we just need guidance. And so we went to market very differently. It wasn't a traditional, Hey, I'm your sales rep if you need me, let me know throughout the fiscal year and typically we're lucky, we have the brand name and people are coming to us. Small businesses thought we're not coming to you because you're too big and you're going to be too expensive and we don't want to do that. So my team here in San Francisco was laser focused on how do we get really strategic with accounts that are getting funding and that are growing and how do we help them to both self- serve but also use us as a consultant in their technology decisions for growth. And so we did some really cool things in building partnerships with MasterCard and Visa and Discover to help small businesses and we built programs during the pandemic that helped with funding and grants to keep small businesses alive. And it's the only sales team I've ever been part of where in an all hands call, product led, followed by marketing, followed by online sales go- to- market and sales was the last 15 minutes of an all hands call.

Armen Zildjian: Wow.

Lisa McClure: And that was how we learned to go- to- market and so we really learned to rely on how do all of our business partners come together and really serve our customers so that they know right from the very get go what they can gain from partnering with Salesforce.

Armen Zildjian: That's amazing. That's...

Lisa McClure: Yeah, it was really.

Armen Zildjian: The thing that comes to mind as you said in the beginning is like it's not cost efficient to do it this way, but you've got so many resources to bear, so it's not like you're pairing anything down. So they're getting still the full force of a, like you said, product team, marketing team, customer success, all that stuff. So how do you prove out the ROI and efficiency as you bring all these to bear? Somebody probably looks and says, Okay, is this getting out of whack? And from a financial perspective, how do you prove and continue the ROI and efficiency to the great organization?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, I mean it's still about sales numbers. And so the sales teams inside of this business unit, instead of being a small business account rep where I might have two or 3000 accounts that I'm targeting, my reps had at max 35 accounts and those 35 accounts, we were strategically going into saying, you've purchased online, we want to help you grow a Salesforce.

Armen Zildjian: Right.

Lisa McClure: What are you doing for service? What are you thinking about for revenue? What are you thinking about as you're growing your platform? And it was very strategic and if we weren't getting something out of those 35 accounts, we weren't growing. And so we built enterprise style relationships with small business customers.

Armen Zildjian: Wow.

Lisa McClure: And gained a lot of trust and those are customers that I believe will be with Salesforce for the lifetime. That's a partnership where, in their earliest days, they're surviving because of the partnership with us.

Armen Zildjian: That's amazing.

Lisa McClure: Yeah. Yeah. It's fun.

Armen Zildjian: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of you guys have taken clearly the long view from a relationship perspective. In early days, I've been a bunch of different startup companies when we're 10, 12 people and the vendors that are seeing through good times, bad times, helping us and when we're struggling or grinding to get it out, those are the ones where loyalty is really built and so it sounds like you've got that really built in to how you just address the market in general, sitting separate from just your sales team right?

Lisa McClure: Right, yeah.

Armen Zildjian: So what kinds of sales people, because salespeople as you know, focus on their quota and probably not often as much as you want sometimes, the customer in that relationship. What do you look for when you're hiring reps to do this that they can keep both, I want, they obviously want to be aggressive and hit their number, but also this loyalty and relationship type style that really you anchor your business on. What do you look for as the attributes or characteristics for someone on that team?

Lisa McClure: Yeah, it's slightly different because it's not just account executive where we're hunting, it's truly a farming role and so it's more like an account management role in the SMB space, which is-

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: ...pretty different and so we're looking for people that have more curiosity than others because you really have to want to understand what is a small business trying to accomplish and you really have to care about what they're trying to accomplish'cause otherwise this whole model doesn't work, it kind of falls apart. And then two, it's people that are ambitious to do things potentially beyond sales because you do have to step outside of your swim lane more often when you're operating in a unit like this.

Armen Zildjian: Correct.

Lisa McClure: So examples would be, we didn't cover all small business customers. We had a pool of customers that were pushed into self- serve and then we had a team that kind of round robin helped those customers and then they would determine should we move them to a seller or not? And sometimes they would find their way to one of our sellers and we had to decide, do we help this customer? Do we push them back into a random pool? And you had to find the right AEs that were willing to balance their time and to make those decisions and to be curious to find out, is this going to be worth the time for both me, the customer and Salesforce? And I'd say that's the last thing is you really need people that are bought into the company to be successful. They have to believe in the mission that we're trying to accomplish because otherwise all those three things have to really be there or this doesn't work.

Armen Zildjian: How do you test? So what kinds of, I'm just curious now, what kinds of interview questions or how do you test for that level of, I think it's awareness, right? And I'm making an assumption, a relatively young age, these reps are-

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: ...right? And so how do you-

Lisa McClure: Yeah.

Armen Zildjian: ...find that prior to getting them in, getting them in and on your team?

Lisa McClure: It's not easy. It's definitely not easy.

Armen Zildjian: I didn't think it was, that's why I was asking.

Lisa McClure: It's the things you listen for. So curiosity comes out in what are the types of questions that they're asking? Are they interested in actually understanding what we are trying to accomplish and what makes us different from the rest of Salesforce? Or are they just trying to get into Salesforce? Because if it's just-

Armen Zildjian: Yeah.

Lisa McClure: ...the latter, they're probably better suited for a different team in Salesforce.

Armen Zildjian: Got it.

Lisa McClure: And then when it comes to growth desire, I think it's asking the question and really understanding where do you see yourself in 18 months? Where do you see yourself in 22 months? Where do you self see yourself in 24? And the really young people that are just hungry for the cash, those are the really aggressive sellers. And those are, again, probably people that are suited for different roles inside of Salesforce.

Armen Zildjian: Right.

Lisa McClure: And the people that say, " Maybe I want to be in customer success." " Maybe I want to be a solutions engineer." " Maybe I want to explore some other things." Those are people where it's, okay, great, we'll give you exposure to all those things. You'll likely be successful and stay in sales because that's what happens but this will be a great training ground for you to get exposure to all those things.

Armen Zildjian: That's awesome. Well, it sounds like you've got it pretty dialed in. So first, lastly, I want to say thank you, I've learned a lot. I had no idea the depth of... I'm just really impressed with the depth of resources that you guys have on what traditionally is a pretty lean team that they just want to have really low costs so I appreciate learning a little bit and sharing. Now I can't let you off the hook without answering Revenue Talk's signature question, which is, what is the one thing that your team is focused on to accelerate revenue this year? What's the one thing?

Lisa McClure: Number one thing for us is value. If you are buying right now in a time of economic uncertainty, you need to see value in what you are spending money on and so I am really dialing very deep into can we articulate a true return for the customer on how they're going to see value and how fast will they see value by investing with us? And if we can't articulate that story, I'm inclined to move on to the next opportunity.

Armen Zildjian: Wow. Well, I agree with you at this point, you can get pretty far along in a sales cycle and if the value isn't clearly articulated when it comes time for the economic buyer, whoever signs to look at this thing, they could quickly-

Lisa McClure: Right.

Armen Zildjian: ... say, "Yeah, this is priority number three for us right now, we're in cost saving mode."

Lisa McClure: Exactly. Exactly.

Armen Zildjian: And you can spend all that time. So I think you're dead on in that one. I wish you well and-

Lisa McClure: Thank you.

Armen Zildjian: ...thanks for coming on today.

Lisa McClure: Yeah, thank you for having me. It was great to join you.

Justin Keller: Thank you so much for listening to Revenue Talks. If you liked this episode, please consider leaving a review wherever you're listening. You can connect with me on Twitter @ justinkeller and at the entire Drift Podcast network at @ DriftPodcasts. Remember, revenue. It's everyone's business now.