Ensuring Long-Term Team Success in a New Company. Podcast With Brian Signorelli

Sell Like A Leader – Episode 15

In this episode, we dive into:

– Stepping into a new team: Understanding the company context, evaluating key differences in early-stage vs. later-stage company needs, skill adaptation by stage, aligning vectors for scalable growth, adjusting managerial skills over time, putting the right team in place, and navigating the intersection of AI and sales

– Rapid Fire Q&A

About Brian Signorelli

David Kreiger talks with Brian Signorelli, the advisor at Tome. Brian began his tech sales career at HubSpot in 2012 as one of the first 50 AEs. Over nine years, he helped grow the company from $30M to $1B in revenue and later held senior sales leadership roles at Vendr and Lattice before joining Tome.

Podcast Key Takeaways

• The approach a leader should take in the initial months depends heavily on the context of the company they are joining.
  
• In early-stage companies, the primary focus should be on understanding and engaging with customers. Early customer interactions are crucial to validate hypotheses about the problem being solved and to grasp customer pain points.
  
• For later-stage companies, leaders must adapt to a more mature phase. Leaders need to navigate larger teams, more established processes, and a higher number of stakeholders, ensuring that functions across the company are aligned and effective.
  
• Whether in an early or later stage, the initial months should focus on people and strategy.

Connects

Connect with Brian Signorelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-signorelli/

Connect with David Kreiger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger

Subscribe to the podcast and follow our Podcast LinkedIn page so you don’t miss any episodes!

Transcript

David: Welcome back. This is the Sell Like a Leader podcast, the podcast for revenue leaders who are on a mission to cultivate a high-performing sales team within their organization. I'm your host, David Kreiger, founder of SalesRoads, America's most trusted sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm.

Today, we are bringing you another great revenue leader: Brian Signorelli. Brian began his career as a research analyst at Gartner in 2007, where he advised Fortune 500 executives on leadership challenges. He started his tech career at HubSpot in 2012 as one of the very first 50 account executives. And he held leadership roles at HubSpot for nine years as the company grew from $30 million to over a billion in annual revenue.

Brian has since held senior sales positions at Vendr and Lattice, and he is now an advisor to Tome, a really interesting AI company, which we will dive into in a little bit. Brian [00:01:00] also published Inbound Selling in 2018, detailing HubSpot's sales playbook. He's currently developing an online training course for early-career sellers at quotarelief.co.

Brian, thanks so much for joining us on the Sell Like a Leader podcast.

Brian: Great. Thank you, David. Appreciate it, and uh, excited to be here with you.

David: So let's dive into it. So, you know, what I'd love to chat with you a bit about today is the steps a leader needs to take when they come into a new company, um, and really what they need to do in the first couple, you know, the couple of months, which obviously are critical in, you know, figuring out your strategy, proving yourself to your leadership, uh, proving yourself to your team, um, and really trying to figure out, you know, what is going to drive long-term success in your company.

You know, your, your, your sales portfolio. And so you recently, um, joined Tome as an advisor. Um, and previously you were leading a sales team at Lattice. [00:02:00] And so I'd love to talk a little bit, uh, about some of the framing, you know with, with you coming in as an advisor to Tome, some of the things that you thought about when you were coming in.

Um, so when you're joining a new team, you know, um, what are some of the lessons that you bring specifically? Let's start from, from Lattice to your advisor role at Tome.

Brian: I'm happy to share some perspective there. I think that, you know, like big picture to answer the question, like, you know, um, how do you kind of, like, what do you do in the first couple of months? Uh, is it kind of, you know, want to get the team going or set a vision or strategy? Um, I think it's totally dependent on the context that you're walking into.

Lattice, for example, was a $70 million business growing probably 30 or 40 percent year over year when I joined. When I left, you know, well over a hundred million of ARR, um, with five or six hundred employees. 

That's a very different context than Tome, which has had a ton of success in its own right, but [00:03:00] had decided to make a pivot away from, uh, you know, applying generative AI to building slide decks, which I think is kind of a clever application because a lot of people struggle with that. It's not, not super easy. Um, and they had 20 million active users to show for it.

But even, you know, in spite of that, they said, you know, I think that we want to go even bigger. We want to do something different. And so they completely kind of quote, um, to reinvent themselves, uh, towards serving, uh, sellers and sales leaders, mostly in mid-market and enterprise, uh, still applying generative AI there.

So I think that, you know, the context matters. So, I mean, you know, Tome is really trying to go from zero to one again.

Whereas Lattice was trying to go from call it a hundred million to five hundred million or maybe a billion. And the teams look totally different. I mean, Tome didn't even necessarily have, I think, its first customer, you know, when I, when I started. So if you're joining the super early stage, um, or even if you do have your first handful of customers, it's still all [00:04:00] about customers.

Really, the only thing that matters — your potential users. Um, you're going to have a hypothesis on the problem you think you're solving. Um, your customers will lead you over time to understanding the true nature of the pain and the extent to which the pain is real.

So anyway, that's, that's, I think the earlier stage. The later stage, uh, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that your customers are definitely still going to lead you to most of the right answers.

The difference is that you've moved out of, you know, uh, you moved into a different part of, um, I think the product life cycle curve or the market adoption curve where, you know, very early on, you're looking at like early innovators, early adopters, people who have a really high tolerance with like testing new technology.

This is why most businesses start selling to very small businesses in the first place. They just have a much higher risk tolerance to try new things. But as you mature and grow, you're getting into kind of like the early majority. And as [00:05:00] you get into the early majority and kind of go up that, that growth curve, the good news is that the market is a lot larger.

The bad news is that the tolerance for like jankiness and things that don't work so well is quite a bit lower. Um, and so, and then on top of that, you have so many more people, you have so many more kind of cooks in the kitchen. You have so many more mature functions. You have like usually much larger sales teams, more marketing people.

You have a customer success and service team. And so it's both. You know, I think at a larger, at a later stage, the first thing that I would spend time on is people sliced a couple of different ways.

So I want to understand, you know, from my AE's perspective — what's working, what's not. From my manager's perspective — what's working, what's not. From my CRO's perspective — what's working, what's not. 

From my customer's perspective — I want to get on 20, 30+ customer calls or at least listen, you know, to recordings through tools like Gong and otherwise, to really understand, like, what is the nature of, like, where are we at in terms of, [00:06:00] you know, skill, in terms of what customers want, competitive landscape, et cetera.

Um, and that should inform at least some of your early thinking on, you know, where, where people are at and kind of how that, how that might influence or inform your early vision and strategy, you know, in the first few months.

David: So I think that's great. I want to dissect a few things, uh, there. Uh, so I think there is a pressure that sales leaders feel when they come into an organization, where they need to have — or they feel like they need to have — all the answers.

But what you said, Brian, which I like, and I've also seen the best sales leaders do this, is that you listen first and you spend time just hearing. Not telling, not giving all the ideas, not the whole strategy, right?

You just gotta learn. You gotta learn. You're going to bring your perspective and your acumen to it, but you've got to learn [00:07:00] from the AEs. Listen. Listen to calls — what's working, what's not working from the executive team, from especially your customers.

And so I think that's, that's an awesome perspective in some ways, even though obviously all sales leaders have tremendous amounts of pressure to perform really quickly. It's important to have that perspective.

You sometimes have to slow down a little bit at the beginning before you move forward, because you've got to have something that you can use to leverage to craft that strategy.

Because you can't have all the answers just coming in.

Brian: I agree. And there's, there's, you know, the sales — I don't want to make a blanket statement — but like there is a little bit of a concept of like bravado, I think, in the sales profession, of kind of like, you know, chest pounding a little bit, which I think is mostly dying out but still exists in pockets.

But I think that there is this — even in spite of that — I think there is this concept of like, you know, fake it till you make it, or having overconfidence. And I don't actually think that that serves people really well.
I think that that leads to [00:08:00] like — I mean, I've seen so many times — leaders come in, and I'm guilty of this myself, where I'll come in and say, “Oh, like, well, the way we did it at HubSpot was blah blah.” “The way we did it at Vendr was blah blah blah.”

It's like, that's great. And that might work, but it also might not.

You're just dealing with a different context — usually different customer set, different leadership team — a lot of, there's a lot of variables. And what worked in those previous contexts may or may not work in the new one.
And so, you know, it's not to say that the leader shouldn't be confident or, you know, have conviction in some of the things they're thinking or putting forth for the team, even if they might be a little bit uncertain.

But I do think that leaving yourself at least a little bit open to the possibility that you're wrong, as we often are, or at least we're not going to get every single thing right. I think that that's ultimately going to lead to much better decisions for the business and for your customers, which frankly are the only things that [00:09:00] actually should matter.

Like, if you're not solving for a customer, you're not solving for the business outcome, then who are you solving for?

Probably yourself.

And I don't know — if I were a CEO, like I don't think I'd be so — or a customer, like, I don't think I'd be so in love with that.

David: Yeah, and, and I think the other intangible thing when you approach it this way, and you started, you said, you know, first is people. And the intangible part about approaching this the way that you said is that you've got to earn the respect, you've got, uh, uh, not, uh, you know, there's lots of ways to earn respect, but in my opinion, you know, earn respect in the right way where people are gonna, you know, your team is going to trust you, that they are going to know that you are going to empower them, things like that.

And the best way to do it is not to come in and say, I've got all the answers, and here's what you're going to do. 

It's to listen to them and ask them and ask them for what their opinions are. And you're not going to go with all their opinions, but you're going to probably, there are going to be a lot of things you didn't think about.

And when you are just through the action of asking them. First of all, that is a huge [00:10:00] part of gaining the trust of the team that you're, you're working with. But then you're also going to have a lot of ideas that you didn't have with, from people who've been here in the trenches a lot longer than you.
And so it's just a win, win, win.

Brian: Of course. Agree. Very much.

David: And so looking at it through the context of Tome, because I think this is really interesting when we look at coming into an organization like Lattice or definitely HubSpot, uh, though you were, you were very early there, so HubSpot was a little bit, a little bit different when you came in, I guess, but you saw it through the whole, whole growth trajectory.

So when you're thinking about this with Tome, um. And this is a very interesting case because it's a pivot from Tome. So they have some current customers and things like that, but you're potentially looking to service them in a bit of a, or in a vastly different way. Um, how do you create, you know, create that approach of trying to ask some of the questions when everything, like you [00:11:00] said, is kind of new.

Do you just have to then come up with some hypotheses and then test them? Or can you walk us through a little bit of the specific difference of a Tome versus a Lattice?

Brian: Yeah, I can tell you a little bit. I mean, I wasn't there for it. Um, but, uh, one of Tome's co-founders, Keith Peiris, and, uh, their now Head of Sales, Justin King — they I think, did exactly what I would have advised them to do. So, at least from that perspective, they didn't need me as an advisor, so to speak.

They had so many—yeah, literally millions of users on the original product. And when they had the hypothesis of, you know, could we serve sales leaders? Um, the good news is they already had tons of sales leaders and sellers that were part of the user base. 

And then they spent time, I think, doing at least, I want to say 50 or 100 different, um, you know, first-person [00:12:00] research interviews with, um, with, with their users, with those, with those, those sales leaders and those sellers.

And, you know, I think initially they said something like, yeah, you know, what do you think of, you know, like we've, we've built this kind of this GenAI tool to build like, you know, slides more effectively. What if we kind of reposition to help your sales team kind of rapidly build like their pitch decks?

And, um, I think the feedback was like, why would you do that? Like, that's one of the last things that we kind of care about. Like, we have pitch decks. They kind of suck. Like no one, no customers really take them seriously anyway. Like, thank you, but like, that's not the thing.

And so, so naturally, the next question that I think Keith and Justin started asking was like, okay, so like, what's the thing?

Like what, if we could solve like kind of any of your things with generative AI, what would it be? And the number one thing that they talked about consistently was, is there a way for you to help us really understand [00:13:00] which accounts we should be trying to break into and then how to have really, really relevant, timely messaging to get the attention of the executives that we want to talk to.

And that kind of spurred the product roadmap initially as to where Tome went. So, you know, when I talk about very early stage, listening to your customers, if you don't have any customers yet, that's fine. Go find your hypothetical customers, your, your potential like ICP, go talk to them, really walk a mile or two — ten, for that matter — in their shoes or try to, um, come with kind of very open mind, curious mind to try to figure out like what are the most pressing problems.

And then once you kind of get a little bit of a theme from those first, like say three to ten conversations, then it's a matter of like prioritizing and see if you can like revalidate through the next ten conversations, the next ten conversations.

And I'm pretty sure that team spent at least, I want to say six to [00:14:00] twelve months, kind of like doing the research and the validation. Um, before they went into more of a product build mode and they're kind of in that very late stage of getting that initial product out now. Um, but it was preceded by a lot of that research really by just having genuinely great conversations with their prospective customers.

David: I think that makes a lot of sense. It takes, it takes, um, a lot of guts to — how many users did you say that they had with?

Brian: I think they had over 20 million on their like initial core product.

David: Wow. So that takes a lot of guts to really go in a, go in a different direction. Um, and I think that methodical approach makes a, makes a lot of sense. Especially since, you know, you've got a base.

You don't, you only wanna make that change if you really have a good hypothesis as to what is next there.

 So, so I love we touched a little bit on people. Um, and when you come into a new [00:15:00] organization, um, you know, and you can draw on any of the different experiences, obviously, you know, HubSpot, Lattice, and, and if this, you know, Tome might be too early at this point with this type of stuff, but if you're coming in as a, as a leader, um, you, you talked about talking to your team and understanding them, but, but, but obviously there are also, um, uh, a role for, for understanding and benchmarking your team, right. And making sure you have the right people in place, because you can have the right, best strategy in the world.

If you don't have the right people to execute it, um, or sell on it, it's not going to work. So, do you have any perspective or, you know, what advice would you give to leaders who are coming into an organization? There is an existing team, you know, how to evaluate them and figure out who is, you want to have as part of your team?

Brian: Yeah. Um, I think again, this is going to be different depending on like, [00:16:00] are you very early stage? Are you much later stage? Uh, you know, if you're later stage, like, you know, when I, when I started Lattice, for example, um, I had a concept in my mind. I had a benchmark in my mind from working at HubSpot and remembering, okay, what were we doing around like the 80 to 100 million ARR mark.

And I remember, you know, we had really high command of like the different KPIs and metrics that we held the sales team to. We had really transparent reporting and communication on people's performance. I mean, I'm talking down to like the individual, like daily activity, discovery calls run, demos run, deals won, dollar value, I mean, like everything you would need in one place to really understand, like, you know, where are we producing relative to the targets every month.

Um, you know, we thought about, um, we had this thing called a monthly rep pack, which went out to every single AE and every sales leader. And it would show you — today, you'd probably see it like in a Looker or a [00:17:00] Tableau or something like that. Um, but you know, back then it was in Excel. This is not even seven or eight years ago.

Um, but it would have every single seller's statistic benchmarked against every other seller. So you could see exactly like what was, you know, your conversion rate from discovery call to second meeting, from second meeting to demo, demo to negotiation, etc. Like, what was your loss-for-loss rate? What was your win/loss rate against specific competitors?

Um, what's total number of calls you're running or, you know, how's your pipeline progressing over time? It's total amount of pipeline. What's the source of your pipeline?

Um, all those different things that really — what it really helped sellers understand was what are the best sellers doing? And is it any different from what I'm doing?

And so what it helped the seller and the leaders do was understand, you know, what are the top AEs doing and where are there the potential gaps for maybe like your B and C players that you want to move the Cs into the Bs, the Bs into the As.

Um, so yes, there's like tons of these [00:18:00] KPIs and metrics you can look at, especially at the later stage. And you also want to look at things like, you know, I think maturity of sales process, you know, so like, do they have defined sales stages? Um, do they have clear entry/exit criteria?

Um, I think understanding how business forecasts is also a pretty good indicator of like the extent to which it's mature. Um, you know, so I won't be too specific here, but certain businesses that I've been in, um, have literally — and I also lived through this at HubSpot — um, where we went from like having really no concept of forecasting or like, you know, the forecast was like, well, like, let me take a look at the deals I have here.

Like, I think these are coming in. That might be fine very early on, but as you get bigger and bigger, I mean, you know, it's all about predictability and being very, very accurate, especially in the VC world, uh, being very accurate with delivering on exactly what you say you're going to deliver on. Because ultimately, like if you're shooting for the moonshot of like the IPO, [00:19:00] guess what Wall Street cares about?

They want beat and raise every single quarter. And so if you're not incredibly accurate and have a super high command in your business, you are going to get punished. I think investors, like all sorts of investors, pay for, yes, growth, but also predictability, um, over time. I think earlier on, um, you know, I'm not sure I'd look at any of those things. I'd be looking at.

Um, I think I'd be measuring AEs really on like the quality of conversations they're having. You know, the early stage AEs are really more like product managers, um, especially before you get to that first million, two million of ARR. It's, it's, it's actually not about the revenue growth. It's, it's about your retention.

Um, and making a product that's so good that a customer says, like, I would be very disappointed if this was no longer something I could use. Or like, you want to get into like, I have, I have to have this type of category. 

But to get there, I think you need like an [00:20:00] incredibly intellectually curious and and detail-oriented AE, who is really good at taking notes, is really good at working with the product team, sharing specific feedback and soundbites with them, uh, from the customers with them to kind of like continuously iterate to get to that, you know, so-called product-market fit initially where, you know, you go through your first renewal cycle or two. 

And, you know, ideally you're at a, at like, you know, a hundred percent net revenue retention or, or more. It's just, it's, they're very, I think they're very, they're very different. Um, so yeah, I could ramble on longer, but

David: No, I feel like I should have had this thought before, but I think it makes a lot of sense that I hadn't thought about it. Is that the type of AE... um, can be, listen, there can be—AEs can do both. But the type of AE you want for an early-stage startup, [00:21:00] definitely pre-product-market fit, potentially even early product-market fit, 'cause you're still gonna need to iterate a lot and really understand what's working and what's not working, is different than the AE that can run a process and just really go after it. 

And the disposition and kind of the skill set is different. Um, for, for, for both of those. Because the very—I mean, curiosity is good in different ways, but if you just get mired in curiosity when you're a later-stage AE and you have to execute on the process, you're not going to hit your number, right?

And if you just want to run the process early on, you're not going to get the insights, uh, that, that, uh, the product team needs. So that's really interesting, Brian. I hadn't—maybe I should have, but I hadn't thought about it through that prism before. That's great.

Brian: Yeah. It's something that, um, it's not like—it's not something that's like been in my face constantly. It's just something that like over a long stretch of time, I've just kind of noticed. You especially [00:22:00] notice it when you're in a context where the seller is out of place. 

So, you know, if you're like—like at Lattice, you know, for example, there were some sellers that were just excellent with like—I like, they would come in and say like, just give me the playbook. I'm going to memorize the playbook. I'm going to figure out how to make it my own.

I know exactly how to pick accounts. I know exactly how to like get my prospecting activity up. I know exactly how much pipeline to build. Like they know kind of what it takes to succeed when you're at scale and you're into like a territory model or a segmentation model. And it's really more about like, how do you capture as much of the market as you possibly can very quickly?

'Cause that's actually—that's actually the big picture. It's like once you're at that, like, 50, 100 million in sales, like it's really about rapid—uh, it's really about getting to ubiquity as quickly as you can, because of course there's going to be competitors like in the market. And so, how do you kind of like stand out and kind of rapidly gain that market share?

But I've seen certainly—so I've seen some AEs do that really well. And I've seen other AEs that are like, oh yeah, like I just ran like a two-hour demo [00:23:00] with this customer. And I'm like, why? Like, we don't—like, there's no value in doing that. Like, I'm glad that you created like a one-off very good customer experience, but the stage we're at, that makes no sense.

Whereas if I were a leader at a pre-product-market-fit, pre-revenue, you know, maybe even sub a million or two, I'd say that's great. And my question would be, what did you learn? Like, what are the top one or two or three things that you learned? And yeah, anyway, that just kind of reinforces the point. 

Like, it's just—they're—I wouldn't say wildly different skill sets, but very, but very different. And then you got to kind of like change that over time as you go through the different stages of growth and scale.

David: Yeah. So to pull on this a little bit more, and maybe there are other insights here, maybe differences, but maybe they are from, from your perspective—but given that prism where the skill set or what you're looking for from an AE [00:24:00] is slightly different, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you still want both of them to sell.
And—and—but it—but it is an important, I think, nuanced difference between the two at different stages, um, a Tome versus a Lattice, potentially the early stages of HubSpot versus where it ended up when you were there. When you're thinking about it as a sales leader and a manager, through that prism, is there a difference between the type of training or management that the leader should be doing in those circumstances to foster that behavior?

Um, and what—what—if the AE has a slightly different skill set or perspective, is there something similar for the manager? Or is it really just knowing that prism and then the leadership skills are still similar between the two companies?

Brian: Um, no, I think that, you know, the—the—the types of managers I think, even that you have in, are probably gonna look a little bit different at that later stage. And I think that they [00:25:00] also err much more toward like, you know, high levels of accountability, inspection—like, are we following the process? Where are things going well?

Where are they not going well? Because really you're trying to get, you know, tens or hundreds—or, you know, when I left HubSpot, there were already like 800 account executives globally. Like you're trying to basically figure out, like, is everybody rowing in the same direction? 

And, um—and I—like the—the—the kind of side thought I'll share here is, um, one of the co-founders of HubSpot said this. But it's not his—Dharmesh Shah—it's not his original idea. I don't think. I think it came from maybe Elon Musk. Regardless of whether or not you think he's controversial, I think he did have like a really interesting point. He said like the—um, it was something to the effect of like, you know, the sum power of your company is the extent to which all your vectors are aligned.

It's like very, you know, engineering, like physics, uh, concept. But, you know, he's like, [00:26:00] every person in your company is a vector, and they're all pointed in different directions. Then you add them all up, then that's going to amount to nothing. But if you point all the vectors in the same direction, then that is essentially going to be like the sum force of the progress you're going to be able to make over time.

And that's—I think why—that's part of the reason why the inspection, the accountability, the process adherence—that's why that kind of stuff matters as you get to scale. Whereas early on, um, again, you're trying to go from like—again, you're going from zero to one. Like, you're going to have to really understand, like, what is the pain that you think you're solving?

Um, you're also going to need to like, I think, do a lot of like influence and inspiring, uh, people. Um, again, depending on what exactly you're selling, who you're selling to—like, are you building a, uh—you know, are you doing a category creation? Or are you kind of like building a better mousetrap, so to speak, um, in an existing category? [00:27:00]

So—so yeah, I think that like the skill sets I'd look for early on would be people that, you know, in a perfect world, um, I'd be looking for people who have actually been my ICP. So like if I'm selling to accountants, like I might want to actually look for people who were like an accountant before. If I'm trying to sell to sellers, I might look for a seller.

A marketer, I like—might look for a marketer. Um, I would—I would be less concerned. I think this is part of honestly what made like some of the magic happen early on at HubSpot. A lot of the early salespeople at HubSpot did not actually have sales experience. Myself included. Um, but we did have a little bit of work experience and, you know, people came from like—like I came from—like myself, I was a research analyst, a consulting background. Uh, my manager was one of the most successful sales reps there. 

She was also from a consulting and research background. We had people from accounting, from insurance. Like we had former Olympic athletes. Like, there were just a very [00:28:00] motley crew of people. And so early on, I just think it's a very different game. That's kind of like this witch's brew of some—some magic you're trying to create, you know, early on. Whereas later it's—it really is more about—it really is more about a machine.

David: Yeah, and so, um, I like the Elon Musk analogy of the vectors in this—this prism too, because I think it crystallizes what you're talking about in the sense, especially even from a management perspective, that at the beginning, at any startup, um, the vectors are going to be kind of going in lots of different directions.

And you kind of want that because you want experimentation, you want it, and you want the type of manager who can facilitate that, can start seeing where the vector should point, right? And, you know, understand that. But then the second, and sometimes the sales leader, is talented enough to do both. Just like you know, some founders can start a company and grow it.

Um, but sometimes it's two different skills. And, um, the second part is just that [00:29:00] person who now knows where the vectors are going and can keep them going the right direction. So I love that visual. So we're running out of time here. I do want to make sure we touch on AI, especially with what you're doing, Tome, before we get into rapid-fire questions.

So, um, so just from your perspective in working at Lattice, which has also, I think, been pretty AI forward um, as well. Um, and now, advising a generative AI startup, you know, could you talk a little bit about your perspective on AI and how you think it's going to fit in, you know, this debate of replacing salespeople, aiding salespeople, you know, what, you know, what is it?

I think, you know, there are certain processes that maybe are more likely to be changed. Can you talk about what those are and just your overall perspective on how this is impacting sales right now?

Brian: Yeah. So, you [00:30:00] know, um, it is a hot topic. I think if you asked me five or seven years ago, maybe longer, I'd say like, yes, like I think Gen AI is going to probably replace salespeople someday. I think I've tempered a little bit of that perspective with, I think, a little bit more experience and seeing things play out over time.

I do think generative AI is just endlessly fascinating. Uh, to me, it's the same as—I'll, I'll like date myself here—but like, I remember the moment that I got access to AOL and got access to an internet browser for the first time. And it was just magical. And I really do feel that way about generative AI.

Now, is it going to work from like a cost perspective and compute perspective, and are we ever going to get to AGI? Um, I hope we do, but I don't know. Um, so anyway, in the here and now, I do think that trying to replace salespeople with AI is kind of a fool's errand. I just don't think that the world, like, will we get there someday? 

Maybe, I don't know. I don't think the world's ready for that right now. I don't think buyers are [00:31:00] receptive to that right now. Um, I don't think that businesses have thought through all the potential risks that are associated with that.

That said, like, I don't—I don't, uh—I wouldn't, I wouldn't suggest you'd be like a Luddite either. I would suggest that you kind of like, you know, embrace what AI can do today and what it can do. Um, I mean, a lot of companies already exist at the application layer, you know, leveraging the LLMs, doing things like account research, the way that Tome is helping.

Doing prospecting and finding intent signals the way that businesses like Clay—Clay is like a really fascinating, wildly successful company based in New York.

Um, you know, using Gen AI to do things like data enrichment, or content creation, the way that you see companies like Copy.ai doing—I mean, just wildly fascinating stuff here. Or even, you know, there's this other company that I've been following recently, founded by a former HubSpotter I worked with, called Triple Session, which is [00:32:00] applying AI as an internal tool—as a sales management call coach—where it can ingest like hundreds of call recordings and spot areas of relative strength and weakness for AEs. 

Like, that's wildly fascinating to me. That was never ever possible when I was a sales leader. And being able to quickly spot these trends and be able to pinpoint where people need help—I think that's where some of the magic happens today.

So anyway, long, long way of saying I think it's all about where sales teams and sellers can be more efficient, productive, and frankly, more relevant with the potential prospects and buyers that they reach out to. I think that's the biggest value add right now. Longer term? We'll see.

David: We'll leave it on that. We'll see. Um, it is a fascinating time, I think, to be in sales and thinking through these technologies that I, you know, [00:33:00] like you said, at least on the research side, it allows salespeople to do what they should have been doing all along a lot more easily. So, um, so that's awesome.

So what I'd love to do is—we always end, Brian, with what we call our rapid fire questions. And so I've got a few for you. And I'll just throw them out at you. If you can, uh, you know, give your perspective on each one, and we'll run through it. Sound good?

Brian: Let's do it.

David: So, what is one thing people don't give enough value or attention to in leadership?

Brian: I think recognizing when people are doing really good work. I think it's too easy to just gloss it over, but I think that taking that moment to say to a manager, to an AE, to really anybody—in the front office or back office for that matter—and saying like, thank you. I see you. That was awesome. I appreciate it.
Um, I think it happens, but I still don't think it happens enough.

David: Yeah, that's powerful. What is one [00:34:00] skill you advise everyone in sales to master?

Brian: Transparent communication. I thought that this was like a given at most businesses. I was very lucky to see this at HubSpot. Um, I don't—I don't know the root cause, but, um, I just don't think transparent communication is like the norm everywhere. And I really think it should be.

David: Favorite business leadership or sales book.

Brian: This is really hard. Um, my favorite business book is probably Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Um, I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Peter Thiel, but I do respect his thinking, at least in this book. Super fascinating if you've never read it.

And then from a sales perspective, I've got to go with like my sales—he's either like my sales grandfather or great-grandfather—Mark Roberge. He was the first CRO of HubSpot. Um, he wrote The Sales Acceleration Formula, phenomenal book. Um, pretty well known. That's probably [00:35:00] my number one from a sales leadership perspective.

David: Yeah. Great book. Great guy. Um, favorite quote, mantra, or saying that inspires you as a sales leader.

Brian: Um, I had this written down, and I'll share that. Uh, the one that I also had, it's like this random plaque that somebody dropped on my desk one day, and it just said, “It can be done.” And I carried that with me for a long time. I actually don't have it on my desk right now, but it's packed away somewhere.

Um, the other quote that I did write down, which I do like a lot—a little bit longer—is, “Water cuts through rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence,” which I'll just leave it at that. I'll let you think about that.

David: I love that.

Brian: For your listeners.

David: And lastly, what's the most important goal or project that you're working on?

Brian: I am two and a half years into my tenure as a dad. Um, so that's the most important project I'm working on right now. I've got [00:36:00] a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I also have an eight-year-old dog, which is kind of like my first daughter, so to speak—or at least fur daughter. Um, love them both.

And so that's like my most important thing. The second up is—you mentioned this earlier—I'm working on an on-demand sales training course for earlier stage. It's all based on the HubSpot sales playbook that I learned and used myself, which you can find out more about if you want at quoterrelief.co.

David: Right now? We'll put in the show notes so people can check it out.

Brian: Great. Thanks.

David: Well, Brian, this was a great conversation. You got me thinking about some things that I hadn't thought about before. So, really appreciate you coming on, sharing your perspective, sharing your experience.
If people want to connect with you, how should they do that? Where can they find you?

Brian: LinkedIn is the best. Uh, you'll find me—there are a bunch of Brian Signorelli's, strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I don't know. Um, but yeah, I'm the one based in Boston. I don't think there's more than one as far as I know, based in Boston. So, LinkedIn is the best way. Feel free [00:37:00] to reach out, connect, follow, whatever.

David: So we'll put that in the show notes as well. So, um, well, fantastic. So thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Sell Like a Leader. If you got some value out of today's episode—I know I did—please subscribe on your platform of choice.

Also, always love to hear feedback from our listeners. You can always find me at David Kreiger. Um, that’s K-R-E-I-G-E-R. Uh, not too many of us there. Brian Signorelli's, but, uh, sometimes hard to find because of our spelling, but hit me up on LinkedIn. Love to hear from you. Any topics you want to hear from, any guests you think we should have on?

And also, you can always find out more about SalesRoads at SalesRoads.com. Thanks so much for everyone tuning in. Brian, thanks so much for your time today.

Brian: Thank you, David.