First things first…

As I said last week, I went to run a half marathon and made it to 18km, but the Dutch winter finally beat me.

From sitting on the couch a year ago to now. I’m still very proud of the achievement.

I’ll update you all when I’ve done the 21km!

Content of the week

• Holiday plans?

• Best marketing ploy of the year?

What am I seeing this week: What is your why?

The photo below is from before I found my 'why'.

Let me explain...

When you start in your new role in SaaS, it's tough to focus on your long-term career when you are scared about keeping your job, hitting your quota, trying to impress everyone and everything else in between!

However, getting a focus and purpose in your career is vital. Instead of having goals you hit and hit, meaning that you continuously focus on the next thing and can never reflect and enjoy your success, think about this differently: what is your why?

What is that keeps you getting up every day?

Mine was being financially well off and ensuring I had a roof over my head for my wife and I.

It means my 'why' is my underlying focus versus constantly pushing and pursuing the next thing and never being satisfied.

So, in closing, instead of always going for the next thing and being unable to rest, consider thinking about your career development differently.

What is your why? Let me know in the comments below!

For those new to the newsletter and like what you are seeing, please click on the subscribe button, and you’ll receive this top-quality newsletter in your inbox every Friday morning!

Five Questions of thWeekek: Tyrus Abram

One of the top Sales Development leaders in the USA is joining Mastering Sales Development today. Tyrus Abram has been leading the Americas SDR org at Snowflake for over five years. We are grateful that he will share his unique perspective today!

How have you seen the SDR function evolve over the last five years at Snowflake?

When I joined in 2018, we were operating off of spreadsheets, with a funky point system-based comp plan, no segmentation and very few solidified processes. Critical things like SFDC hygiene, stage definitions, meeting criteria, attribution tracking, and SLAs didn’t exist – we were starting to roll out Outreach to automate our outbound efforts better. We were prematurely promoting talent and setting folks up for failure at multiple levels.

Fast forward to today, and we have all those things in place, along with an elite Sales Development Academy to usher top talent recruits through an 18+ month training/development program to ensure they become productive closers for SNOW. We’ve grown, shrunk, grown again, segmented, then verticalized, tried 8+ different compensation structures, calibrated on what meetings the field needs from us, and how to track pipeline value (or lack thereof) for all of our efforts. It took years, but we successfully unified our efforts globally across NoAm + EMEA + APJ. Today, we’ve never had more of a foundational understanding of exactly what titles we should be targeting, at precisely what accounts, with the right messaging, at exactly the right time (thank you, ABM - Hillary Carpio).

The challenges we’re up against now might be akin to the organisation's being so large that it fell apart. We’re not immune to what any massive organization faces when they get this large — how do we maintain culture and standards across the board (hiring, training/developing, promoting) without becoming siloed (again) and essentially devolving?

If you could go into a time machine and speak to Tyrus as he begins his sales career, what would be the one piece of advice you give him?

Tyrus, everything you do either adds to or detracts from your brand. You don’t own your reputation; everyone else does — but you have the power to influence it daily with everything you do and say. How you treat everybody matters, from the prospect that ghosted you at the 1-yard line to the server bringing your mai tai at the club. Be humble and give yourself some grace. Take it easy….but take it. You’re never as good as they say you are when you’re winning and never as bad as you think you are when you’re losing. Control what you can, and don’t waste energy worrying about what you can’t. You can have it all, just not all at once, so take the memories when you can get them. Breathe. Have fun out there; it’s going to be a helluva ride!

Who are some of the leaders who have made the most impact on you?

Aaron Levie - CEO Cofounder of Box – my first foray into SaaS/Tech Salorganisationrenches and has never considered himself “above” any and every role within his organization. At 24, he was a man of the people, primarily product-oriented but with a business acumen years beyond his age – he’d consistently get time with all teams, especially sales. He hired people who were better than him in areas he didn’t understand and constantly sought out their counsel. Aaron constantly visited the sales floor and would stay late at sales’ happy hours to ask us why deals were pushed, what customers wanted to see next on the roadmap, and get our take on various pricing strategies. Unsurprisingly, he led Box to such a successful IPO in 2015 and now to $1B+ in revenue.

Steve Kerr - As a true player/coach, he’s the 5th most winningest individual with 9 NBA rings. What I appreciate most about Steve is how he presents himself on and off the court, talks to his players, and conducts business with journalists. He’s cool/calm/collected, and always inspirational, even when things don’t go his way. He finds a way to smile and laugh in the worst of times, and you can see that it’s a contagious attitude when he connects with people.

Sam Altman - I only know what most now do if they’ve read and researched what’s available to us all online, which is to say there is still more I could be educated on with the OpenAI situation. What I have learned, however, throughout the chaos/turmoil that has unfolded so far, is that alongside weaknesses at the board level, the other thing that has been exposed is how rock solid of a leader Sam has been. Despite alleged disagreements between Sam and the board regarding the pace of commercialization acceleration (Frank Slootman would recommend the board all read The Speed of Trust and Amp it Up), a letter was written by employees and sent to the board calling for their removal and asking for Sam’s reinstatement – with the threat of mass quitting. This letter was created by the people who make up the company and signed by 700+ of the ~770 staffers (including the original co-founder/board member who led the coup and has since publicly denounced his efforts in removing Sam). Critical researchers and the president/cofounder also decided to walk independently without knowing their next move. Throughout all of this, Sam has maintained a steady head and even offered words of encouragement and gratitude upon his exit, along with solutions that include his return. Almost immediately, Satya Nadella happily announced that MSFT would hire Sam and anyone he decided to bring with him to lead an advanced research unit of his own at MSFT.

None of this happens without being a true leader that people want to follow. This is a once-in-a-generation leader, responsible for building some of the most influential technology we’ve seen, that folks admire and enjoy working with to the point of staking their careers on him as an individual. This is the kind of leader I aspire to be and work alongside.

UPDATE 11.22.23: After being ousted as CEO by the organisation on 11.17.23, Sam Altman has returned to OpenAI as CEO.

Snowflake is a large organisation; how have you navigated that to create cross-functional alignment?

Listen more than I speak—default to trust. I assume I’m getting everyone’s best and aim always to give my best. Share my wins and my losses frequently. Be upfront and immediate with what I need from folks and what I can (and cannot) do for them. I try to find myself in situations where I’m the dumbest person in the room as often as possible. Own it—deposit before I withdraw. Don’t make it about me. Make it about everyone around me. Fail Fast (@Aaron Levie), and ideally, never the same way twice—80% today rather than 100% tomorrow. Try to (honestly) connect with people through humour + food as often as possible.

And Finally!

I’ve been building out my first Infographic to help GTM leaders, and I want to share it with you!

Check it out here!

Let me know what you think!!