Merchants of Change

00:00:01:03 - 00:00:16:17
Speaker 1
Today on the show, we have Zeke Testa, former all-American goalie for the BAPS and Beavers, current senior director of sales at the trio. We get to hear about Zeke's path from PDR to running sales organizations and.

00:00:23:06 - 00:00:48:03
Speaker 2
I'm J.R. Butler, co-founder of the Shift Group. And you're listening to Merchants of Change. Oh, this is a podcast about transferring the skills and behaviors we acquire as athletes into being a professional technology salesperson. Each week, we'll introduce you to a top performer who will help us understand how they became professional merchants of change.

00:00:53:22 - 00:00:55:16
Speaker 1
What's up, Kid? How are we doing?

00:00:55:16 - 00:00:57:16
Speaker 3
What's happening? Rather good. How are you?

00:00:58:11 - 00:01:04:07
Speaker 1
Good, man. I'm excited. We got Zeke tested here today. Zeke, thanks for joining the show with us, my friend.

00:01:04:23 - 00:01:11:13
Speaker 4
Yeah, J.R., John, great to be a part of this. Thanks for the invite. Looking forward to our conversation today. Absolutely.

00:01:11:19 - 00:01:20:19
Speaker 1
Absolutely. So. So Zeke's another another Massachusetts guy, John Zeke, you you grew up in in Wellesley, Mass. Right?

00:01:21:10 - 00:01:40:20
Speaker 4
I sure did. Yeah. I my friends make fun of me today, but I haven't gone too far from home. I grew up in Wellesley, Mass. I went to Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. And my wife and I moved back to Wellesley, Mass. Back in 2019. So I haven't stray too far from home, but love every second of it, that's for sure.

00:01:41:08 - 00:01:46:01
Speaker 1
Everybody I grew up with, their goal is to live in Wellesley, so they're right there.

00:01:46:08 - 00:02:01:02
Speaker 3
I was going to say that's a nice part in that I'm from Mansfield. They come, I'm familiar with that. But you talk a little bit about your background. Did you go to Wellesley High or did you go to private school and talk about growing up there and what you're up to?

00:02:01:02 - 00:02:35:17
Speaker 4
Wellesley Yeah, no, I mean my background. I went to Wellesley Public Schools once Wellesley High. I graduated in 2008 to further my academic and hockey aspirations. I decided to pursue a post-grad year. So I went to Berkshire, the Berkshire School and Western Mass. So I did one year there and ended up falling in love with Jamie Rice and decided to pursue my collegiate career and academics and athletics at Babson College.

00:02:35:17 - 00:02:56:07
Speaker 4
But I loved growing up in Wellesley. Some of my best friends today are my high school friends that I grew up playing hockey with and Wellesley youth hockey. We still skate today. We have a game tonight where I'm still skating with some of my buddies that I use hockey with. So I love the community, I love the town.

00:02:56:10 - 00:03:12:10
Speaker 4
The location is great. I just couldn't say enough great things about my experience and I think that speaks to why we moved back here to kids. Now. And we want to give our kids the same type of experience that I had coming through Wellesley. So very appreciative and thankful for my experience.

00:03:13:23 - 00:03:15:19
Speaker 1
Did your wife grow up in Wellesley, too?

00:03:16:14 - 00:03:28:24
Speaker 4
No. She grew up in Connecticut. She's from Connecticut. We actually met at bats and now she was getting her MBA. I was coaching field hockey and lacrosse and I was coaching ice hockey. So that's where we met. Yeah.

00:03:29:22 - 00:03:48:21
Speaker 1
Very cool. Now, obviously, I know Berkshire isolated Cushing. We used to drive out to Berkshire. We had some awesome farmers out there and hockey and football. So were you were you a good student at Wellesley at Wellesley High School or did you go was part of it academic for Berkshire?

00:03:50:03 - 00:04:11:03
Speaker 4
I to answer your question, no, I was not a good student. I'd say I was an average student below average student and I have no one else to blame but myself. And I think it really came down to I mean, if you think about it, the way I like to think about it today is I was a good student for the amount of work that I put into it, right where I didn't apply myself as much.

00:04:11:04 - 00:04:37:08
Speaker 4
In Wellesley, at Wellesley High, as much as I probably should have. And I got the results that I put into it, right? So I was a B minus C plus student and I didn't have the structure. I think that Wellesley High School and that's by my own doing to be ready for the college curriculum and work life balance and needing to manage your own schedule, carving out time to get your work done.

00:04:37:08 - 00:05:01:20
Speaker 4
But then you also have to balance the athletic schedule. So I needed that extra year from a developmental standpoint, academically, most importantly, but also athletically, because I wanted to play right aspirations to play a high level of collegiate hockey. And I didn't think that that was going to be possible out of Wellesley High. So I kind of knew heading into my senior year where other people are looking at what colleges do I want to go to.

00:05:02:04 - 00:05:22:23
Speaker 4
I didn't even look at colleges. I only looked at prep schools because I knew that that that that was the path I was going down. So visited the the Salisbury's the Kent Low schools and landed on Berkshire just really fell in love with the place and the coach over there so I couldn't say enough great things about my experience.

00:05:22:23 - 00:05:29:19
Speaker 4
I know other people might have other comments, but I really embraced the PPG here and got the most out of it. So very great.

00:05:30:02 - 00:05:48:06
Speaker 3
So a lot of our listeners do they do junior college or the post-grad or prep school or things like that. So when you got to Berkshire, did you have any idea what life was after that or was it hockey the whole time? Or can you talk a little bit about what your thoughts were on prep school?

00:05:48:06 - 00:06:06:17
Speaker 4
I mean, you go from, you know, five days a week at Wellesley High and that's that's it's similar in every other town. But at Berkshire, we went to school six days a week. Right. So you talk about someone that didn't love being in the classroom and all of a sudden I'm signing up for something where I'm going to class six days a week.

00:06:06:17 - 00:06:43:24
Speaker 4
You have half days on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so you can go out and play sports, but you're still going to school on Saturday morning. For me, it was definitely an adjustment, but it was a great bridge for me. I think being thrust into a competitive, as competitive of an academic curriculum or schedule as colleges, it's a good balance intermediary between jumping in from high school straight to college where that post-grad year, yes, it's helpful from what you learn in the classroom, but I think it's more helpful from what you learn in terms of schedule, structure, you know, how do you build on that structure that you create?

00:06:43:24 - 00:07:19:09
Speaker 4
You know, you're forced to mandatory mandatory work studies or working work study, study group study sessions from 8 to 10 every single night. And that's why that so that those types of habits that were forced upon me stuck. Right. And they definitely played a big part in terms of preparing myself to be somewhat successful in college. And I wasn't going to say that that carried me to be a lot of students for graduate dramatic engagement, but it definitely helped in terms of understanding how to balance the workload, setting aside time, knowing how to be efficient in that time.

00:07:19:09 - 00:07:25:07
Speaker 4
So it was incredibly helpful to gain that extra year there. Absolutely.

00:07:25:07 - 00:07:47:19
Speaker 1
The option is like it's one of the best schools in the country. And I similarly, I never really went far from home either. I grew up in Central Mass, grew up my my grandparents were from Worcester. So like for me, Holy Cross was always something that I strive for, honestly. Like I would spend summers up there working out.

00:07:47:19 - 00:08:05:11
Speaker 1
Like I think that was my goal was it's similar growing up in Wellesley. Did you guys view that in the same way? Was like that was or was it like, I know Coach Racer he's on rail? Was it was it more about Coach Reiser or was Babson always something that you were like, Wow, that would be amazing if I could go to that school?

00:08:06:00 - 00:08:25:06
Speaker 4
Yeah. You know, looking back, I realize how I had been a part of the Babson Adoption College Skating Rink at least for my entire life. That was the first place I received it where I was doing many of my stairs. You learn to skate at the Boston Skating Center. I used to go to the bass and hockey games.

00:08:25:06 - 00:08:46:10
Speaker 4
My uncle coached the bass and back in Sterling. So I always, you know, I'd always been around it and it's funny you ask that question because when I was playing at Wellesley High, I never thought I would end up at that person. And I always look at those banners at Down on the Wall, and it's the NASCAR, the other school, and it's like, Go, where do you want to go?

00:08:46:21 - 00:09:07:19
Speaker 4
And you know, it's funny because one of the guys that worked at the rink was like, Have you ever thought about playing for the one in the middle of the banners, which was obviously that's like, you know, I never thought about it. Maybe it was from an academic standpoint or just being in Wellesley, but I'd been so around it my entire life that when Coach Rice called me and said, We can get you in.

00:09:08:08 - 00:09:25:02
Speaker 4
I didn't finish the question before. I said, Yes, this is exactly what this is. Where I want to be. This is where I want to go. This is what I want to do. So I think suddenly it was always something that I was excited about pursuing or having the opportunity to do it. And then once it became a reality, it was a no brainer.

00:09:25:02 - 00:09:26:10
Speaker 4
An absolutely no brainer for me.

00:09:27:19 - 00:09:57:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I could see that. And the first time I skated was at Holy Cross. So we share that common. That's really cool. You talk you talk a lot about like your habits as a student and how they changed. Like obviously you had an unbelievable hockey career. Like how how did you approach hockey differently than you approach being in the classroom and like looking back now, you see kind of how you could have applied that for sure.

00:09:57:17 - 00:10:17:04
Speaker 4
Yeah. I mean, I try not to go through with any sort of regrets, but I think if there's one thing that I would say that I wish I did a better job of in in college, was applying myself more academically. And again, I don't think that that necessarily would have changed where I am today for my own professional career.

00:10:17:14 - 00:10:36:20
Speaker 4
But I think that there's just so much there are so many great resources there at your disposal that you don't even tap into. You know, as a hockey player, you're going to go to any trainer possible. You're going to get on as much ice as you possibly can to try to get better every single day. You know, that's the mentality you have as an athlete is if I stretch, I'm going to be more flexible and be able that's it.

00:10:36:21 - 00:10:54:19
Speaker 4
You know, if I work out, I'm going to be that much stronger to make a stronger push, to make that you do anything to try to be the best athlete. And in school, at least for me, I wish I had taken that similar approach where I tap into every resource possible, or I applied myself the same way because who knows what I could have learned?

00:10:54:19 - 00:11:12:02
Speaker 4
You know, I think it's there's no regrets because of where I am today, but it's what I missed out on because I didn't take that similar approach to academics that he did with athletics. So I think if going back, I would say, you know, how how would you have done that? I would have I would have networking more people outside of athletics.

00:11:12:12 - 00:11:32:05
Speaker 4
I would have volunteered for more groups or more office hours that professors gave their valuable time to. Those are great resources that I just never I never bothered to do it because I went to my classes, I did my work. That was it just kind of status quo. And everyone knows that an athlete, your status quo, you're going to fizzle out pretty quickly.

00:11:33:07 - 00:11:54:00
Speaker 4
And it's the same thing in a professional set. If you do average or status quo, you're going to be lost in the back or get left behind. So yeah, there's a lot of things that I look back on that had I applied those lessons and I just came naturally as an athlete to academics and who knows what I could have absorbed or learned, or maybe I'll be in the same position today.

00:11:54:00 - 00:12:04:24
Speaker 4
I just think looking back and I take a lot of that with me today and make sure I'm moving forward, I don't I don't need that on the table.

00:12:04:24 - 00:12:29:11
Speaker 1
I'm on the hockey side. Obviously, you've had an unreal all-American career apps like and then you went on to the you played a little professional. Very little. Yeah. Well, talk a little bit about like what's your favorite moment of your playing career? And then explain what you mean by very little.

00:12:29:11 - 00:12:56:16
Speaker 4
So I think the biggest moment, the best moment of my playing career was definitely winning the league championship or ECAC East Championship. My senior year at that collectively as a group, we had not won a championship before, where adaption to a championship is almost a rite of passage where your class at least win one. And we were we made it two times before we lost very close games to the same team both times.

00:12:57:10 - 00:13:33:00
Speaker 4
And it just really turned our senior class, our group, that we hadn't been able to get away from athletically or as a team to win. And personally, I was a goalie. As a goalie there's only one net. And heading into my senior year, I'd been the starting goalie for three years heading into my senior year, and I started the season as a starter and as a captain and then I quickly two games in, we had a freshman goalie who is an absolute stud, Jamie Murray, who took over as a starting role cycle.

00:13:33:21 - 00:13:51:07
Speaker 4
So two games in my senior year, which was the best year yet my last year putting a all my career, I was on the bench. Only one guy can play so personally and not the way you want to start your senior year. But you know, I wanted to be there for my team. I wanted to be a leader.

00:13:51:07 - 00:14:14:13
Speaker 4
I wanted to still be a captain on the ice, tried to be the hardest worker on the ice. Try to support my teammates no matter what, and just knew I would get another shot. Friday night games in D3 at least this Friday. Saturday games Friday night after games I'd be in the weight room until 10:00, 11:00 at night knowing I wasn't going to play the next day because you just want to was on a roll is getting myself prepared.

00:14:14:19 - 00:14:32:16
Speaker 4
So then when I did get a shot, I was ready and I didn't know that was going to happen when I was doing it. But this is, I think, a good lesson, something that I've always I've always lived up to or tried to live up to is when I did get my number called performed and I executed and I won the starting job back.

00:14:32:19 - 00:15:02:19
Speaker 4
Right, and became an all-American and won the championship and got an opportunity to play professional hockey. Right. So the only reason why I say that is not to say, look at all the things that I did personally. It's just more of the lesson in terms of I was so proud of that season of winning the championship from everything the team had gone through, the program had gone through, and then I had gone through personally with losing the job early on and then fighting back to get it, and then also when the ultimate title of the ultimate title, but for our goal of winning our league championship.

00:15:02:19 - 00:15:08:22
Speaker 4
So definitely the best hockey experience I've been through. It was winning the championship that year.

00:15:09:02 - 00:15:28:15
Speaker 3
That's sexy. Good. I think like over I love I love the two kids absorbency mentality but because I'm a football guy, I got to ask because I've heard things and they are. But our goal is usually like weird dudes or you know you talk about that ever is like I play hockey and say I'm a goalie. It's like, oh yeah.

00:15:29:13 - 00:15:51:00
Speaker 4
I would say the first time I heard that, I would say my friends always say I'm I'm an outlier. You're not, you're not. You don't get the goalie more. Maybe they're just saying that to me to make me feel better. But yeah, I mean, I think I think I think boys have a reputation and goalies I've known have definitely been a little bit off.

00:15:51:00 - 00:16:07:09
Speaker 4
But I think you have to be to, to want to sign up to do something like that. But you know, I look at forwards that are blocking shots, no pads on and thinking that they're the ones that are crazy. You know, I play defense now and I'm like, Oh, you want to play? And I go it and I pick my leg up every time a shot comes through.

00:16:07:09 - 00:16:17:16
Speaker 4
And, you know, so I'm paying back the boys for all the defensemen that scream through my days. But yes, goalies aren't a different breed, that's for sure.

00:16:17:16 - 00:16:27:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. You sign up to get in front of a hard disk, John. You got to. There's got to be a little bit of a screw loose there, man. This is the that. It's just like you know, the cost of doing.

00:16:27:21 - 00:16:34:07
Speaker 4
Business a little bit like a slot receiver in football. I don't know what you're signed up to be a slot receiver in football.

00:16:34:19 - 00:16:53:18
Speaker 1
Right. Who's coming through the middle on purpose? So, Zeke, you're you're an all-American. You're at one of the best schools in the country, and you probably just can't wait to get into technology sales. In my right, is that kind of where you're at odds the whole time or what more years.

00:16:53:18 - 00:17:27:13
Speaker 4
Training to be in sales? Absolutely. Dreaming about. That's what I was dreaming about. Yeah. No, I had I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in college. I had no idea. I was so focused on hockey, hanging out with friends, enjoying the college moments that I think are super important, incredibly important. But I was not thinking, what was I going to do once this ended and everyone is met with that reality at some point.

00:17:27:13 - 00:17:45:24
Speaker 4
And that's when you start thinking about, well, that I really put myself in the best position to pursue a career that I wanted to after, and I think that's the hardest part. What do you want to do after you graduate? It's so easy to say, Well, find something that interests you. Well, I'm interested in hockey, right? That's what I was interested in at the time.

00:17:46:10 - 00:18:05:00
Speaker 4
So I pursued that for a little bit. I was fortunate enough to go play down in Florida and again, I'll say play very loosely because I played one preseason game. That was it. I stuck around because there was an injury in the NHL and as a goalie, just rise with the with an injury. You stick around and once you get healthy, do it or pack those driving north.

00:18:05:00 - 00:18:28:10
Speaker 4
And then I got into coaching because I didn't know what else to do at that time. Excuse me, but I got into software sales through my network. Right. And I think this is a it's a big lesson for people that are going through evaluating their own options of where to look, who to reach out to. Right. So I reach out to my family.

00:18:28:10 - 00:18:45:04
Speaker 4
I reached out to my friends and started talking to them about companies that they've spoken with or that they work for. So I really just opened up my network and that resulted in two jobs, two job opportunities that I applied for. And that was it to me was, Hey, these are people that know this and this is where I'm going to apply.

00:18:45:15 - 00:18:55:08
Speaker 4
So again, it was a little bit of a learning lesson learned in terms of opening up and broadening your search and putting a little bit more work into a company that you want to go and work for.

00:18:55:08 - 00:18:58:04
Speaker 3
Those two jobs were those two jobs, tech sales jobs.

00:18:59:01 - 00:19:23:08
Speaker 4
They were completely different, completely different industries. And I knew that. So I guess going back to like what I wanted to do, what I wanted to do in terms of a career, I'm not sure what company. I've always known sales to a degree because my dad had been in sales for 30 years. He then moved into marketing and that the management, the product manager kind of got in talking with him.

00:19:23:16 - 00:19:41:15
Speaker 4
You know, I said, What do you think? This is why you touch every facet of the business in sales. You know, you're talking, you're working with marketing, you're working with your finance team to see if deals can work you out. You're working with your channel, you're working with your employer. You touch every facet of the business when you're in sales.

00:19:41:24 - 00:20:04:10
Speaker 4
And the way that he described it that I use when I talk to younger people that are looking to do you get your MBA in sales by being an entry level sales professional as the RB, you get your MBA in sales and you learn other areas of the business that if for some reason is more interesting or exciting for you, you can move over that, right?

00:20:05:01 - 00:20:22:05
Speaker 4
So I just found that this was a great foundation to start in, to absorb as much of what companies are possibly good. And the best way to do that is to understand how to talk about it, understand how to pitch it and get someone to buy it, and then listen and learn from your customers about what they enjoy about that and apply that to your message.

00:20:22:05 - 00:20:27:22
Speaker 4
So I just think it's such a good down day. It was such a good foundation propelling my career. Yeah, but.

00:20:28:09 - 00:20:49:17
Speaker 3
I think you're in a I don't want to say you're lucky, but you're in a fortunate position that you were surrounded by people that kind of in your network talk about tech sales. Because what we found in the past and I've talked to people plenty of times where they stop playing lacrosse and their uncle tells them that maybe they should go to the Marine Corps officer training.

00:20:49:22 - 00:21:14:13
Speaker 3
Right. And then they're like, you know, their art says, hey, why don't you go sell insurance at Liberty Mutual? That's what my husband did. And a lot of athletes, when they stop playing, they fall into what is their brother do or what is their neighbor do or their sister. And we can kind of guide them at that point because all of a sudden they start thinking NHL, NHL, NHL or MLB, MLB, MLB, and they're like, okay, what do I do next?

00:21:14:13 - 00:21:36:17
Speaker 3
So I think you're you're in a fortunate position there that they weren't like some other job that it took you many years to get into Texas. And I think that's an important thing to talk about to J.R., because J.R. is always telling people, how did he know? And I agree with him wholeheartedly. How do you know that Texas sales was an option after school?

00:21:36:17 - 00:22:00:18
Speaker 3
He would have taken a deep breath in college and said, okay, you know, I have an idea of what I might want to do after. But a lot of people spend time pursuing the law degree or their MBA or all kinds of degrees because they're not sure what they can do. So part of the ship's group is for the whole reason Chip's group is here is to educate athletes that this is a world class career.

00:22:00:18 - 00:22:02:06
Speaker 3
So I think that's an important thing.

00:22:03:24 - 00:22:23:17
Speaker 4
Yeah, I think just going I couldn't agree with you more and then going off of that to as an athlete, you tend to you want to be part of that team. So you look to other people on your team, what are they doing right? So if you have a group that have been successful before you going into a certain career path that you know what they've done as athletes, as people, as part of a team and they're successful in that.

00:22:24:11 - 00:22:39:08
Speaker 4
You want to be a part of that, right? So talking back about the ship, that doesn't exist for something for someone like me back in the day. But had I known about it and I'd seen oh, a player from Trinity was part of the ship group, got a job, particular job and is making a ton of money being very successful.

00:22:39:15 - 00:22:57:07
Speaker 4
However may you success for me that's I want that I know that I know what that looks like I can do that. It shows it's less of a hypothetical. It's more of a reality. And a lot of people don't have that, those types of resources today or connections to be able to have those opportunities.

00:22:58:14 - 00:23:29:22
Speaker 1
Totally and we have work because of that and because I think it was one of your one of your teammates, Derek Lederman, who like unlike us, didn't make the jump right into tech sales. He was working at like PepsiCo, I think in sales and sales leadership doing pretty well. But you started to see guys like you guys like Ball, the guys like ROCE, you know, Terry Woods, there's the captains Unique John and like there's a lot of guys that played hockey at Babson that actually end up in tech sales.

00:23:29:22 - 00:23:52:04
Speaker 1
They've got a bunch of alumni that kind of push, push the people there. So I think Zeke was definitely lucky in that. But Zeke like stepping out of that like apps and kind of bubble a little bit. Like what advice would you give to some of the kids that are listening to this in terms of like what what should they be doing outside of calling chip group but like what other things should they be doing if this is a career that is interesting to them?

00:23:53:15 - 00:23:54:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I.

00:23:54:18 - 00:24:18:04
Speaker 4
Think I as a sales leader, I always appreciate when people always reach out to me to just pick my brain for 30 minutes about my own experience. So one thing that I would say is eliminate any fear factor in terms of, I don't know this person, I'm not connected with this person. If there is a career path, a company, a position that's interesting to you, even the slightest reach out to them.

00:24:18:04 - 00:24:36:00
Speaker 4
Right? I think it takes understanding. All right. I want to get to sales. What kind of sales or I want to get into. Okay. I want to get the tech sales. You can research a list of top tech companies in Boston. You can start that's a starting point. And then you start reaching out to different sales people in different roles, asking for 30 minutes of their time.

00:24:36:07 - 00:24:55:12
Speaker 4
And I'd be very surprised, maybe not at the CRO level or VP of a multibillion dollar company, but I'd be very surprised if a sales professional some of them played sports two wouldn't give you their time to talk about their experience with you. So for me, it's about taking the initiative and being proactive, and I think that will solve for two things.

00:24:55:12 - 00:25:17:23
Speaker 4
One, you'll get the you'll get the information, their experience, what they went through. But two, you're also creating door openings for yourself, right? You're connecting your brand, you're expanding your network, where if someone that I don't know reaches out to me and ask for 30 minutes, I'm more and more to give them that time. If I ever have a job opportunity down the road, that road, I'll circle back and say, Oh, so-and-so reached out to me.

00:25:17:23 - 00:25:31:07
Speaker 4
I know that they're interested in this. They took the initiative to reach out to me, which is bold, which I appreciate, and you have to be in sales. Maybe I reach back out to them and say, Hey, we talked to you months ago. I actually have an opportunity now. What do you think? Do you want to be shot?

00:25:31:17 - 00:25:55:14
Speaker 4
So is that there's a bunch of different ways you can go about doing this, tapping into your own network, etc. But for me, just reaching out and showing initiative, if you're interested in it, is a great starting point. Don't be nervous, don't be intimidated. I would say articulate what you're looking to get out of that conversation and then just do it and see what happens.

00:25:55:14 - 00:26:08:12
Speaker 4
Because I'd be surprised. I think I think people would be surprised with the types of responses they get from people in those positions, talking about their experiences. And give me some color and guidance for someone that's just starting out. This is great. Talk to people.

00:26:08:16 - 00:26:33:08
Speaker 3
That's that's it. Talk. Don't be afraid to talk to people. Get out there. I mean, it sounds like the the typical requirements, job requirements for an SDR sales development at an organization. So I mean, you start reaching out, showing confidence. I totally agree. Z Can you talk a little bit about your early days when you did get into sales and what you remember from that?

00:26:33:08 - 00:27:01:17
Speaker 4
Yeah, I was I was making $40,000 a year and then I got a $10,000 bonus and I thought I was a millionaire. Right. So early on. It's really fun when you start earning significant money for yourself, right, and you got money to spend, etc.. So I was I was enjoying every second of it. And this is just this I promise this comes back to the sales part of it.

00:27:01:17 - 00:27:19:04
Speaker 4
But when you're there, it's, you know, you got the snacks, you got the camaraderie, you got the PTO, you're having fun in the office. And then that moment, right, like about two months in where that kind of waives flavors off or off a little bit and you have to get yourself back or you have to get yourself in.

00:27:19:04 - 00:27:36:12
Speaker 4
The right mindset of this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. If you want to make this a career, it's got to be a marathon. And when you run a marathon, you don't just go out one day and say, I'm going to run 26.2 miles. You have to prepare with a plan and then you go and actually do it and execute the point.

00:27:37:24 - 00:27:58:13
Speaker 4
So I think early on as an SDR, it was different in the sense of a lot of activity. I didn't pick up the phone as much as I had prior to joining us, so it's a little bit of a shift in that. And I had I had approached the SDR position as I'm going to show up in an open salesforce and I'm going to take my calls and send my emails.

00:27:59:05 - 00:28:24:18
Speaker 4
And what I realized pretty quickly was I was getting very low conversion rates, right? No one was really answering. When I did get someone to connect, I was fumbling it or I wasn't sending it out to the right message. Right. So what I learned earlier on, I was fortunate to have good people around me, but it's putting discipline in to your day where your day should just be executing off of a plan that you've already put in place versus just showing up and doing the work.

00:28:24:24 - 00:28:51:12
Speaker 4
Right. And I think there's a it's a hard difference to make. And sometimes you have to go through the challenges and experience of doing it the other way to see that type of failure or shortcoming that you're not wanting to or expecting to see. But it was definitely a learning curve for me. More of that light switch moment where you're planning for days ahead of you versus planning for the day that's right in front of you.

00:28:51:12 - 00:29:11:15
Speaker 4
But early on it was a lot of activity. It's a lot of rejection. It's a lot of not seeing the results based off of what I'm used to for the effort that I'm putting into it. But that's where the mental discipline and determination that you get as an athlete pays off. Yeah, let's.

00:29:12:02 - 00:29:30:23
Speaker 3
Let's talk about that. Zito I totally agree. I, I switched into sales and finance and I had a very structured day to day in finance. You know, 1:00 to do this, 9:00 to do this. 340 do that. The SCC needs this five 430 whatever it is. So when I got into sales, it was kind of like the free snacks.

00:29:30:23 - 00:29:52:04
Speaker 3
You know, the corporate culture was a little bit No. Three D suits it's a polo in slacks in your and phones when you can and a lot of friends around you so to talk about I totally agree you need discipline and you need a structure that will pay off down the road. It's tough to see that, but you mentioned having strong people around you.

00:29:52:04 - 00:29:58:16
Speaker 3
Can you talk a little bit about what you think about sales discipline and sales leadership and how important that is?

00:29:59:07 - 00:30:17:10
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean, to me, again, I know I've said this before, but I'm such a believer in it in anything that you do. But it comes down to the discipline comes, I believe, from time management. Right. So how are you structuring your days and when are you doing certain activities? At a certain time, I think is incredibly important.

00:30:18:07 - 00:30:36:15
Speaker 4
Early on, I was calling chief information security officers at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. or 1 p.m.. What season or C-level executives is going to be free at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. or 1 p.m.? You know, they're probably in meetings of their own, so they're never going to pick up the phone. So it was a waste of a dial because we have a contract.

00:30:36:15 - 00:30:46:23
Speaker 4
I was calling, I was thinking more who are working smarter versus harder, right? I do believe in activity. I do believe activities they change, but it's smart activity.

00:30:47:22 - 00:31:09:02
Speaker 1
So Zeke, I think like a lot of the stuff you're talking about isn't necessarily things like you had to kind of figure that out. You were doing high activity, not seeing the conversion rates typically like for me, I call that operating rhythm and I learned what that meant from mentors. Did you have some mentors in your early career that that really helped you develop that?

00:31:09:24 - 00:31:33:08
Speaker 4
Yeah, absolutely. So I was one of the fortunate stars that had a great account executive or inside sales representative that really took to my own development. And the reason why I say Lucky is because I think to find you, I think to comment is an account executive or sales representative that has an SDR thinks that the CEOs are there to work for them and just source them meetings.

00:31:33:18 - 00:32:03:15
Speaker 4
And I was very fortunate to have an inside sales rep named Steve Taylor, an incredible rep, be my ESR that really worked with me weekly hours on end to develop my pitch, to develop my how to build out a territory plan, who to reach out to, what message based on the persona or the role. So you really took the time to invest not only in activity and numbers and meetings generated, but understanding the why behind that's really important.

00:32:03:23 - 00:32:26:09
Speaker 4
Understanding the why behind you have to take the time to to put this plan in place or to develop your territory plan. You can't do that at 9 a.m. on a monday, then it should be done off working hours. So then when you get to 9 a.m. on a monday, you can execute against it. So Taylor was was the first mentor that I had, and I was very fortunate enough to be paired with him when I first started.

00:32:26:09 - 00:32:48:13
Speaker 1
Are definitely now you've actually been a leader now for like five years. Zeke Right. You moved in from that individual contributor role into leadership. I love to just understand, I imagine that your experience with Steve and other I know a lot of the early leaders have been not only carbon black, just phenomenal human beings, phenomenal leaders of humans.

00:32:49:14 - 00:33:03:08
Speaker 1
Can you talk a little bit about like what your leadership style has been because you've been doing it for a while now. You made that transition pretty early in your career. What what is what is that been like being a leader? And like how do you try to approach that?

00:33:04:03 - 00:33:30:00
Speaker 4
Yeah, I think every new leader that gets put into that position, they say, and again, this might be a wide generalization, but I think they changed their point that position because they're the best at what they did before. Right? I was a best seller, so I've now been promoted and now I have to you my knowledge on every single one of my reps to tell them how I did it and why I did it and how was the best thing going.

00:33:30:21 - 00:33:49:20
Speaker 4
And I will say I fell victim to that right away. And again, by no means is I the bestseller Harvey Black. I got promoted. I was having a great year and I had already expressed to my manager eight months prior to being promoted that I wanted to get into management again. I can go into this a little bit more about having such conversations up front early on, but I was given this opportunity.

00:33:49:20 - 00:34:07:15
Speaker 4
So I think early on, like the first month in, I was kind of like, all right, this one should do, you know, I was less coaching as more directing as a leader and I was exhausted. And we weren't doing we weren't accomplishing much of anything. And it hit me. I was like, Well, I'm trying to have ten people be like me.

00:34:08:05 - 00:34:29:05
Speaker 4
And five people aren't going to be like, the way that I work is very different, vastly different from someone else, which is very similar to athletics. Right. Taking a goal out of the equation, you know, Brad Marshawn can conform to in impossible, you know, you like them to brand qualities in each other. But if he tries to be a different player, they're not going to be the best version of themselves.

00:34:29:05 - 00:34:54:11
Speaker 4
And I think that hit me approaching my team where I then took a step back. And my mentality as a leader is I work for my reps, I work for my team, my team does not work for me and easier said than done. That's a great statement. But how do you do that? I really took the time to observe, to learn how each one of my reps not only operates, but what are they motivated by individually?

00:34:54:21 - 00:35:18:10
Speaker 4
And then create a plan with each individual person after a period of time of letting them do it their own way without any type of or any type of coaching, and then apply it to them specifically. Uniquely. I'll give you an example. Right. There is one performer on my team that was a great person, great member of the team, but was hovering around like 85, 90%.

00:35:18:12 - 00:35:37:16
Speaker 4
Maybe we hit a quota every once in a while and he was trying to really invest his time into building relationships and building reports, and it just didn't come naturally to him. He didn't necessarily love that. And again, we want to develop that skill, but his skill was action, right? So for him it would be more along the lines of heart rather than reaching out.

00:35:37:16 - 00:35:57:19
Speaker 4
Your KPIs might be 50 emails a day. Physical cost. Let's change your plan. 100 e-mails, 100 so you don't have to build those risk to get the volume. Whereas another app on my team was just as natural to her. She was in it. She's an exceptional rep, very successful today. But for her, I didn't need to see a lot of pipeline.

00:35:57:19 - 00:36:26:16
Speaker 4
I need to see a lot of activity because everything she had in there was rock solid, right? So it's not and I didn't want to tell her make article calls. They got her egos and tell him, well, you don't have sexy relationship, the CIO, why aren't you out there? And so you can't transform how the euphoric sales rep, the individual you really have to pay attention to each individual person as a human being and then apply, you know, sales, training, sales, coaching efforts to each individual.

00:36:27:17 - 00:36:48:15
Speaker 4
So that's kind of how I have approached leadership is dissecting it, motivating each individual person to push for the collective of the team. That's that's my vision for team is how do I get each person competing, not necessarily against one another, but wanting to be the best without wanting to step over one another and pushing for the collective success of the team too.

00:36:48:15 - 00:36:50:09
Speaker 1
Well said. That was awesome.

00:36:50:18 - 00:36:51:24
Speaker 3
That's a very good outline.

00:36:52:24 - 00:37:15:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think of that as like that servant leadership style and just realizing that everybody is so unique, right? You know, when I take a mediocre sales leadership, there's two, two things that I see or three. One is the guy who was an unbelievable sales rep. It's like Michael Jordan trying to coach people how to play basketball, which is not going to work like they don't they don't see it the same way.

00:37:15:22 - 00:37:36:05
Speaker 1
Right. So you have to understand that number two is they see their team is working for them, whereas like you said, that you work for your team more than anything else. And I think three is just treating everybody like they're the same. Their motivations are the same. You could influence them the same. I think great sales leaders understand everybody has a unique, unique kind of motivation.

00:37:36:05 - 00:37:56:03
Speaker 1
Like I had a rep that worked for me and all she cared about was making a lot of money. So like every deal, I would lay out what her condition was going to be on the deal. And we would talk about like, how are you going to get this $40,000 check? Like, what are we going to do? And that would be like she'd be dialed in because of it.

00:37:56:03 - 00:37:58:22
Speaker 1
So I love that answer. That was awesome.

00:37:59:05 - 00:38:19:19
Speaker 3
It's great to spot on, but you started off by saying Easier said than done and it's so true because, you know, sales leader said it's like Michael Jordan. I'll just step back and take a three easy but yeah you want to kind of do that promote your perspective, but you keep asking that.

00:38:19:20 - 00:38:43:02
Speaker 4
Absolutely. And I love that about showing how much exactly to the center, how much that would make and the pushing of that. It's people are motivated by different things and it's not always money and it's okay if it's not always money or if it's not money at all. But uncovering what that motivation is, I think is is the most important, if not the most important, important factor.

00:38:43:06 - 00:39:02:19
Speaker 1
Totally, totally. Now, now you're in a really cool position. You've had a bunch of success at some companies that had very cool exits. And now. Now someone gave you the keys to the car, right? You're in you're in a new business. You guys are early, you're growing. You're in a very exciting space that privacy management space data, privacy management.

00:39:02:19 - 00:39:19:23
Speaker 1
It's you know, there's new laws passing like every single day that are going to make your value prop very, very exciting for companies, very exciting to sell. What's the playbook, man? You're you're going to go build out a sales organization. What's what what are you what are you thinking about?

00:39:21:00 - 00:39:37:18
Speaker 4
Yeah, it's it's so funny. And just hearing this question out loud and going through it and even I'm thinking back to the interview process when I was meeting with the CEO before I accepted this position and you have this vision of how it's going to work. And this is what I've been doing for the past five or six years of management.

00:39:37:18 - 00:40:01:06
Speaker 4
You know, you're thinking of the plays and then you're calling the plays, and then you have a management team that goes and runs it with your change of reps to go and run it. And it hit me when I was doing my first campaign or I was like, Whoa, I haven't done this in quite a while in terms of, you know, putting a list of people together and being No, I'm a senior director of sales, but I'm a PR, you know, like it's such a humbling experience in the best way possible.

00:40:01:15 - 00:40:30:03
Speaker 4
Right. And I took it for this experience where I love VMware, I love Carbon Black, where I was. I could have seen myself there for another 15 years. And that's when it really hit me where it's all right. I'm 32 years old. Do I really want to be doing this for another 15 years or do I want to see what I can what I can do on my own, on my own, necessarily, because it takes a team and it takes the right opportunity to market the right leadership, etc. But can I go build something?

00:40:30:14 - 00:41:02:20
Speaker 4
So now it's I hired my first KDR, so working on building out our VTR team, which then hopefully pull into organic growth into a position where we get a number of opportunities there. But my vision is to I'll be running inside sales. Hopefully we'll have a bigger team by 2023, which we're in talks of doing that already, which is great, but I'm going to take a lot of what I've learned and what I've learned that I liked and what I didn't like from my prior job, prior experience and applying it here.

00:41:02:20 - 00:41:30:01
Speaker 4
Right now we're just focused on top of the funnel activity. All right. So it's back to creating that ideal consumer customer profile, understanding where our target market is. Right. Plays against those. We're doing a lot of testing in terms of messaging, what's working, what's not working right. And in terms of my sales experience, that carbon black or carbon black as an SDR, there are a lot of things that you can do there in terms of branching out and reaching to other departments that apply down the road.

00:41:30:02 - 00:41:54:18
Speaker 4
For example, I would meet with these sales engineer solution engineers. I've even marketing marketing event coordinators and understand how they message. And that's really applicable today. Where I'm marketing, I'm our sales engineer, I'm a rep, right? So it all ties together. But I guess here it's understanding really who your target market is that we're going after what's the right messaging to be able to hit them?

00:41:54:18 - 00:42:13:08
Speaker 4
Fortunately, we have, as you mentioned, state laws that are being passed to help in this area, but it's about the right timing there. So it's it's been fun. I don't think I have the secret sauce. I think you just have to be agile. You have to commit to something and do it, see if it works. If it doesn't, it didn't work and move on.

00:42:13:17 - 00:42:28:01
Speaker 4
So we're in that phase right now. What we are trying are trying to come up with different things that we can do until we experience seeing what the results are and then either adopting it or continuing it through trial and error.

00:42:28:16 - 00:42:52:23
Speaker 3
And it's crazy. I want to try to solve together, she said a few good things there and also the beginning. You said at the beginning of the show you said getting into the initial SDR, VR role in an organization you kind of looked at is like your MBA for sales and you're learning all this, all these different campaigns and how to network with people and how to be disciplined.

00:42:52:23 - 00:43:15:03
Speaker 3
I think it's funny that you learn the core competencies of sales at the entry level, and then when you get into this role where you're building out a sales organization in the sales team, you go right back to square one. Okay, how do we generate demand? How do we go to market? How do we get meetings? Like it's it's all I, I've seen it a million times over the best sales reps.

00:43:15:03 - 00:43:20:19
Speaker 3
I know we're the best business development people. I know they just are know that's how it is.

00:43:20:19 - 00:43:44:23
Speaker 4
So I could not agree more with you. I'm a believer in a BTR, SDR, whatever however you want to call it. I am a full believer in that program, in the development not only for what it means for the company, but from an individual professional going through it or a person going through it. You're going to learn so much in that time as the offer that's going to carry you through the rest of your career, through the rest of your career.

00:43:45:23 - 00:44:12:09
Speaker 4
I actually tell people that are evaluating going to be an SDR or jumping right into the position where the O.T. on target earnings is a lot higher. Take a step back. Go and do it the right way, in my opinion. Right. Go and do it the right way as an SDR, because that's not going to get you. You might not get the as quickly as you want it to in your mind, but I can guarantee you once you get that position, you're going to be a lot more successful and you're going to be stable that you get.

00:44:14:01 - 00:44:34:24
Speaker 4
It's crazy to me. And sales, as everyone on this call knows how it's two years down the road seems like a lifetime away. But We live a quarter at a time and those quarters seem to fly by. Right. And if you put yourself in SDR position for six, nine, even 12 months, I guarantee you the next 12 months you're going to be paying dividends for then if you just jump into an eighth position.

00:44:34:24 - 00:44:40:23
Speaker 4
So I cannot say enough good things about an SDR program. And just for people pursuing.

00:44:40:23 - 00:44:49:23
Speaker 1
We got we're going to skip that four shift group right there. And by the way, like, you know, I know a guy that has some beady eyes for you when you're ready to scale, buddy.

00:44:49:23 - 00:45:02:22
Speaker 4
So just let me connect you with something. Yeah, we talked about this a few months ago, and we're working on the funding, but you're the first person account is when we're building Outer Banks. You know we're going to connect. Absolutely. Can you.

00:45:03:23 - 00:45:08:13
Speaker 1
Zeke, can you think of a memorable commission check and what you did with.

00:45:08:13 - 00:45:25:20
Speaker 4
The cash again, I can and I'm laughing because it came right to my mind. Once you said commission checking, it's the first thing I think of. And it's I was fortunate enough to be in accelerators early in 2019. I had a full queue for being in accelerators and I got a commission check at the end of that quarter.

00:45:27:15 - 00:45:47:10
Speaker 4
Six digits, $150,000. And it was one of those that was one of those moments for me where I don't had that to go. But it was I was really proud of the team. How we accomplished that year. It was the first time that I was like, This is what they mean about not making it in sales, but the benefits of being in sales.

00:45:47:20 - 00:46:09:18
Speaker 4
And once you taste that, once you get exposed to it, you never want anything besides it. You never want you. Think about winning a championship in sports when you get a commission check for seven figures, which is not unheard of, made a lot of big large commission checks, and that feeling will never go away. And it's not all about money, but it's about what you can do with that money.

00:46:09:18 - 00:46:30:13
Speaker 4
You know, I use that for a down payment on our house. Well, you know, which got us into Wellesley in 2019. And that's what we wanted to be in this town want to be in because of that check, we were able to do that. So full circle and yeah, you never want another piece of it. You always want to be in accelerators and put it that way, actually see that we.

00:46:30:23 - 00:46:34:11
Speaker 1
Thought you sold your way back into Wellesley. That's unreal.

00:46:35:04 - 00:46:37:23
Speaker 4
Yeah, exactly.

00:46:37:23 - 00:46:57:03
Speaker 1
Love. That is. That's unreal. So, listen, Zeke, we appreciate this. So I kind of stole it from my old man. He used to tell us when we were a little. A lot of people play hockey, but not a lot of people are hockey players. Right. There's a difference, right? You can show up, go through the motions, or you can be a pro.

00:46:57:03 - 00:47:18:18
Speaker 1
So we like we learned pretty early on what it meant to be a pro when it came to athletics. Right. And that turned out to be a great career for me. And all my brothers, but especially Bobby. Obviously now I see the same thing to the candidates we work with early on. We talk about like, Listen, do you want to sell software or do you want to be a software sales professional?

00:47:19:03 - 00:47:26:22
Speaker 1
So the highest praise we can give to a salesperson is is calling them a pro. What does being a pro mean to you in this career?

00:47:26:22 - 00:47:49:05
Speaker 4
Because I love that phrase. Do you want to sell sell software or do you want to be a sales person? I love that phrase. It really is a great way to phrase the question, to answer your question. And I don't think that I think you would hear this a lot, but it comes down to two things. One, I think you generally have to be passionate about it, right?

00:47:49:06 - 00:48:02:01
Speaker 4
I don't think you can just wake up and say, I want to get into sales. And what does that mean? Sure, you can do it, but you're not going to see the benefits of actually being into it. So I think there's a there's needs to be some sort of passion there and it doesn't have to be. I love building relationships.

00:48:02:01 - 00:48:18:07
Speaker 4
I love being an extrovert and talking in front of people. I love the attention. You might love negotiation. You might love the complexity of a deal. You might love the prospecting side of it. So it has to be some sort of natural passion there to be considered a pro because once it gets tough, you're going to have to push through the hard times.

00:48:18:17 - 00:48:39:24
Speaker 4
And when you face the rejections or the passion, the first step. And the second thing is consistency. Right. And that's the one that I'm sure you're going to probably hear whenever you ask that question, too. But consistency and consistent sales, professional or person in sales is incredibly hard to come by. What is the most valuable component to your sales team?

00:48:40:11 - 00:49:01:09
Speaker 4
Right? Companies live and die based off of their forecasts, their projections, their targets. And if you have a consistent sales rep, which shows me that's invaluable to the business. Now, unpacking what consistent means is that it takes a lot of work to be consistent, right? It's not. You show up and you said a number is what you do day in and day out.

00:49:01:09 - 00:49:29:16
Speaker 4
So at the end of the day, you hit that number, right? I always talk about behaviors versus results to me, if you're focused solely on the results, you'll never get there. If you're focused on the behaviors day in, day out, week in, week out, you'll get to the results that you want. So focusing on the behaviors like finding 15 new people that you can reach out to, like taking the initiative and taking a chance, even though your guest telling you this the most painful thing you've ever had to do is send a cold email to pick up the phone.

00:49:29:16 - 00:49:55:17
Speaker 4
Cold call. Those are the things. Those are the behaviors that change. Hitting your quota not just once but consistently. So. Consistency is by far to me what separates professionals from one hit wonder. I take a I take an average consistent, but I think a consistent performer any day someone is going to hit a homerun once every four quarters, which is much better for the business.

00:49:55:17 - 00:49:58:11
Speaker 4
And I can work better with someone like that. So to me that that's key.

00:49:59:16 - 00:50:23:13
Speaker 1
Well said. Do passion and consistency like so I couldn't have said it better myself. That's awesome. Well, Zeke, this was an unreal conversation. I think we might have lost John there halfway through, but thank you so much for spending some time with us, buddy. You really excited to see what you build and hopefully we get we get to partner up with you again when you start really building that Glock.

00:50:23:13 - 00:50:30:03
Speaker 1
And thanks again for joining us, my friend.

00:50:30:03 - 00:50:52:08
Speaker 2
This wraps up this episode of Making Some Change. If you enjoyed this episode, the most meaningful way to say thanks is to submit a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're interested in working with us, please come find us at WW Dot Chef Group Dot I.