Ian Tickel, GM, Domo | Be Genuinely Curious, Be An Individual - Sales Confidence

Hi good evening everybody thanks for coming tonight. My name is Ian Tickle I'm responsible for Domo in Europe, been there for about three years, started with four people were now up to about 46, so relatively large growth. My background is I've been in cloud SaaS hosted when I started since 2003, so a really a long time in the industry with regards to the transformation from on-premise to cloud and also all the associated challenges that we face as organizations trying to A, build out those organizations and support change for that as well as the ongoing class success. I worked in a variety of organizations from startups where I tend to build or do transformational environments, I've been acquired several times by Adobe and then right now by Oracle, and prior to Domo I was Oracle for four years helping their cloud transformation, which was a fascinating process about how to take a large organization and convert it into what's a very dynamic world that we live in. 

So one of the things James wanted me to talk about was what have I seen across those cultures of small organizations and large organizations, because acquisitions do happen if you're in a smaller company, and sometimes if you are in a larger company like Ollie was in LinkedIn you do want to make the change and go to a smaller one, is it possible can you do, it are we the same character do we need to act the same way, how do we behave, and how do you handle that transformation. Because one of the things I saw in right now was acquired by Oracle was with the minds that shut before they even gave Oracle a chance, because of the preconceived ideas about what an a large organization looked like, they didn't really take advantage of all the benefits of that organization, and the training, and the education, and brand name, and also the ability to make a phone call and suddenly know who you are and where you're from, that's always a benefit. And there's several things that I saw that really resonated with me and I think they're great for us as we move forward especially in this profession of sales marketing operations whatever it might happen to be, with regards to how do we have this transformation that's going on not only in the industry with technology, but also with the buyer, the buyer is changing dramatically and if you think about any of your buying experiences it's changing as well. We were talking earlier on about when you go to buy a new car, you don't want to talk to the salesperson do you, you know you want to test-drive and do the finance, you've done all your research so how do we build that environment where we can engage with people.

And I think there's a couple of things: the first thing for me that is essential for all of us as we carry on this journey is agility. Being open to things that we have to try in a slightly different way, we have to be able to look at the environment and not continue to repeat the things that aren't working and challenge ourselves and challenge ourselves to the point where we go outside our comfort zone because what typically happens is we end up in our routine of doing the things that we do every day and we don't challenge and push ourselves to find this very different way we can do it. Could we try something else? So the first thing I'd urge you all to do is really get comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s a great place to be when you're changing the game you're trying something new, you're looking for something else that hasn't worked so far if your LinkedIn outbound campaigns not working there's no point thinking oh I did have a great day today us in another 50 LinkedIn emails, if they're not responding they're not responding, find something different try something new, find a different way to which we can engage. And one of the ways that I think I've seen and I'll be please to talk about this later that's really starting to resonate with people is if you are genuinely curious about what people are trying to do. Genuinely curious. Not asking the medic questions, and the asking spin questions, not asking the questions because that's what you need to do to get through your sales process, but truly care about what they're trying to achieve, really understand it. And I think what happens as tech drives our industry as AI will start to do lead nurturing as the email campaigns will start to be more efficient, the targeting will start to be better the bit that's going to resonate that will make you different is you, use an individual, your personality, your character, your style, your engagement your enthusiasm the bit that sells you. Because if you think about everyone here who's been for an interview, who interviewed remotely, who interviewed over the phone only, no because why because people still buy from people. Even if you're selling yourself is still a people game, and I think the challenge is we don't challenge ourselves enough sometimes to look at have I really done something today that's changing the way that I execute, have I done something today that's going to resonate with the person I'm trying to talk to. So if you're trying to get to the c-suite and the c-suite won't speak to you what you do, well you have to hold yourself accountable, that's what you're paid to do to get to the c-suite. There’s no point saying that oh the sales play didn't work or the marketing is not very good or haven't got inbound leads, because I don't know about you I've asked for credit on my quota because the leads aren't working, and it's never worked, it's never worked, so why worry about it there's nothing you can do about it, so change it go down the layer below, find out what they're interested in do a targeted email campaign on the Monday, drop something on the Wednesday send their selling can the post on recorded delivery, call them on the Friday, do something different stand out from the crowd. Because I think if you stand out and you have the ability then for people to go but you know what they actually seem to be interested in what I was doing, I think it puts in a greater position to actually execute and be interested than anything else. 

And the other part there is about being honest with ourselves as well many times we hit metrics because we have to hit the metrics, did you make your dials, did you make your calls did, you do the pickups, did you do the meetings, we can all hit the metrics we're very good at position who we are and what we do but we do need to hold ourselves accountable was that really effective. Did it really do anything apart from hit the metric, did I progress something as I move forward, was there something that I could have done that was slightly different, and I generally think in the world when we're going to move into so much automation, use individuals and human skills are going to be the difference between the people who buy and the people who don't from you. So that's where I kind of see the market the other part of agility is you do have to understand the culture, you have to understand the culture, you do have to understand who you're selling to, so this is this is great us running medic, it's great us running spin, but what happens if the person you're selling to doesn't buy that way. There's no point taking them through that process it doesn't help us right it helps us back at the office because we're trying to sell something, but it doesn't help us as individuals, it doesn't help us to actually get to resonate with the person that were generally interested curious and trying to help them.

And that's when I think there's the final bit I want to talk about is your brand, your individual brand. In this modern era we have to be considerate of who we are how we present ourselves what people's perceptions are because it is a small world, it is a very very small world and I think in everything we engage we have to understand about every in action we take has a downstream ripple effect, positive or negative, client side and customer side as well, and I think one of the things we can all do as sales professionals this is one of the hardest jobs in the world, we have to take hits every single time, right there's more no’s than the right yes’s, we have to look at how do we handle those no’s do we blame other people do we blame marketing again do we blame the SE because the presentation wasn't right, if the presentation wasn't right well how come your dry run wasn't right, let's take accountability for it. And I think what you will find the supporting resources inside companies if you take the accountability, if you are curious, if you are interested, they will then start to resonate around you and you will build a strong virtual team of people who want to help you be successful.

And that would be my final comment which is your brand is key, make sure you represent yourself the way you want to be represented the way you want people to perceive who you are but also so you can go back and look at I did a good job that day, it was right I tried the right stuff, so I hope that was of use, I'll be here for the panel and I look forward to talking later on thank you very much you.