Welcome to Toffy TV, I'm joined by Roche and Parker who are part of the team that will have written having a ball with Kendall and Harvey 84, 85, the greatest year of Everton's history and you were there, you were there and you've written a book about it, it's like a diary isn't it, but of the year, your experiences and as we sit around at the moment watching other teams have a good time. You'll need a little bit of a pick me up and this book could be, so tell us about how you got into writing and how did you remember after stuff I think more importantly. I think with memories like that you never lose memories like that because we love football don't we and we just love Everton and some memories like that never go with you and we haven't had many since. I started writing, I've been an actor for 20 years on the telly, I was in Bruxard. Does that make you an actor being in Bruxard? Yeah well that's a full crop of Scout Saxons on, I don't know the things as well. So we're also first booked a kid that sparkles which was like when I was there it was great news mainly. And then I just told us I was writing this one and going locked down, I was like we couldn't go anywhere so I put a pen to people and come up with that. I was phoneing them in Parker's getting back in there saying remember what happened that can you remember bits on that. I haven't come to memory cos it was always amazing we'd done this, we'd done that. He's just told me a story coming here but I said why don't you remember the memory of that story he said I'm not telling. Don't tell that one. Was it like a case of just the more you started speaking to people the more those memories just started flowing back and then seeing them from different perspectives as well did that all help with writing it?  But it was great memories really, it was just great memories at a time and it was great writing it, it was enjoyable writing it you know what I mean. And especially for the younger fans and even the older fans like the feedback that we've had now people love the book, they love it and it says it's the life that it was with us on the coach or on the train. And for the younger ones who have like what's the name of this? Add this like that. It needs to read it and have it with the greatest team in the world. But it weren't just the greatest team in England, it would be the greatest team in the world. Oh yeah and we know what happened. But it's a completely different world now isn't it? It's completely different world when you think back up to what we've just been talking then off camera.  That experience on its own was something unique then.  No one really had season tichets. Going down, they're queuing up outside of goodness and hoping that you got there early enough. I mean I don't remember that in 1994 but you obviously had to do it for this and had a few more. Yeah well do you know can I just mention this right now? We had junior discount cards right and we had to apply for them right. And when the family tickets come out, the first numbers were in it. We said numbers what got the tickets in it. I think you used to get a stub in the game before or something like that. But I don't think it was, I don't think it didn't work for that. I think we got like, it was like three, five, nine, seven got called out. And that's why we got tickets and like Johnny Force I didn't get a ticket. Because we got our number called out on the junior. Maybe on the older ones might have been like that but as juniors it was setting numbers. I can remember that. Yeah I had me, I've still got me a little junior at Evertonian card. Again it was just one of those things wasn't it? Where kids now have season tichets and stuff. You had your junior at Evertonian. Well I remember it was 50 pence to buy it. I remember one season it jumped from 50 pence to a five. And my mum went absolutely mad. She was like that's 100% increase. But it got you saved you like a fortune off the match ticket. And she was moaning about it. But that's just though it's like, it just, you can't get these things over to people kind of how different the game is. Like cos when you're getting tichets and stuff did any of you mates ever miss out on tichets? Cos my dad went to all the finals, he went to Rotterdam and everything. And it never seemed a problem with the tichets. Did anyone, did you ever experience anyone who actually missed out? Well Johnny Airport, Osford didn't cos we always bumped in if you didn't have tichets. I mean there you go. Cos we bumped in many of the grounds, you know what I mean, we bumped in. I remember going to Wembley in the van. And then like Screamach is done that. When he got there he didn't even sang it in. He sat in the van and just to tell you in the van. Covered in plaster though. That was one of the things of me going to Wembley. We'd always go on a van and I'd always end up being covered in plaster. Cos it was someone's van who had joined the week. Was doing paint and decorating or just fixing ours or something. You got there anyway you can. I was in the booth just ways we went. Evo Tuckers. Evo Scouse is caffeine, nice lane. Like it's a great heaven of caffeine you know what I mean. And he always took us. He was a bit old in us so we always drove. He didn't have a licence. But he always drove slow. So we didn't get a pull. You know what I mean. On the most ways he did. He took us a bit longer sometimes. But he always drove slow. And it's like the stories we got there. We were 15. We were 15 going on 2030 weren't we? We were kids, we were from Canary Farm. So we were like... We were wise you know what I mean. And it was just the right time to be 15. And winning everything. See when my lad was 14 and 15 I took him to the match. Yeah. Now... We wouldn't have met that at that age would we? No. And we'd go to the away games. You didn't tell your mum about that. There you were. No.  We used to sack schools cos we couldn't tell them that we were going to the match. So we'd have to say we're off schools today. Why are you off? It's only half day. Teachers sick. And maybe going to Wishbitch or Southampton or somewhere. Do you know what I mean on the coach? We wouldn't pretend them. We were wise kids you know what I mean. That was the way to do it though wasn't it? Yeah. That was the way to do it. Like before... I don't know. Before it became like you know... Everyone's watching now aren't they? You know whether they like it or not. I remember going to Crystal Palace in the League Cup in the 90s. Where I was given my mum knew I was off school but then I was caught on. I was caught on telly. And the next day the teacher was like... The general appointment was like yeah into South London. Yeah. But then you could probably get away with all those things couldn't you? Because it was just completely... I don't think people appreciate how different the world was then. Do you know what there's a lot on unemployment these days right? And Maggie Tattier ruined our city right? The only hope and happiness we had with the match wasn't it? And we were 15. We didn't even have a paper down because of it. You could have fought with the match then. In a way but like compared to today.  No. We talked to a lot of the players in them days. A lot of the players and they interacted with us and we talked to you. And they were like... Tattier now. You can't even get near a player. You can't even get near a player. I think it's... The game's gone. It's gone too far hasn't it? No you're right because in them days like even though the footballers were put on a pedestal you could still sort of... You could get in the conty. If you know he's wearing old enough but you get in the conty you could probably make mates with some of them. If you could get on that level with them. But I don't know. It just seemed... I know it's like old men's reminition but it just felt like you were a little bit closer to the game. Like film stars now I think. Don't get me wrong. I don't think that's a terrible thing. It just... The show managed everything. I don't think it's after time the players. I think it's the clubs keeping them at arms then to project that image of them being stars. But then it was so down to earth. And you know... I mean what a year. What a year you must have had to come round to see. But we had a good few years as well. That was just a start. 84 against Walthford was the... You know what I mean? That was the start. Yeah that was the start. We had the Milco fan against Liverpool with Alan Hanson and Baldy. But from then on 84 we were just like whoa this is a team. And I think the team believed in themselves. It's won a trophy. So they went from being just normal players to winners. Because once you win that trophy you're the winner. And then the next season they were just... But don't get me wrong. We had some games where we didn't play well. You know what I mean? So like the Everton fans now they go we've got beat. But that team got beat. But you know what I mean? But they come back the next week. What was it like being your age then when Everton did lose? Because now like you just said when Everton lose there's just like it's like the end of the world. You go on like social media every time there's like it's the end of the world and it was this reason that reason and the other reason. Did you just think about that as much then when you were a kid or did you just go we got beat and next week there's another game or on Wednesday there's another game? We still got upset but one of the moans we listened. We were just playing on 25 on beaten none. So we weren't getting beat weekend. It was like 25 games. It was like you forgot how to lose. You know what I mean to lose. So we were upset but then you think well we're still top of the league. So it was a bit different you know what I mean then. But we got beat by Greenfield and we won nil and they scored and things like that. Me and Paul Wilkinson have all players. Have you bought the money? Yeah. What was that like? Well that was bad because we'd never won the milk cup. No and it was just like we were gutted maybe. And we just I mean you obviously this is all about that year but the cup you know a year before it wasn't too dissimilar to what sort of it's been like in the last few years has it? Up the club loads of players in and out young players who ended up being good but you must have been you go on a match when obviously all the Kindle stuff was going on. Covency and all that. We were going we started going to match in 1977 that was with our dads and cousins and all that. We started going to match ourselves in 1981. But they were there when Bob Blackford and all that. Bob Blackford and all that yeah and Matt and Dave Thomas George Wote you know what I mean. So we started going then and we were going as a gang lads you know what I mean and then as we got older it was just and then we just we just seen it all and it was great to me in Evertonia. But what was it like what was it like when those dark days of Kindle though because in the last few years with Devon what we've seen is just every year there just seems to be turmoil and players and I mean Kindle bought the Magnificent 7 and it was only Southall who survived and then he nearly got the sack if it wasn't for Carter keeping him in so what were your feelings then about Everton like did you think this is going nowhere and does that make this year even better? We had Gordon Lee right it was like and we had the 77 I remember the 77 Cuff Farn against Aston Villa so like you know it was a great team and the nice 74 Billy Bingham I can't remember that much but you nearly won the league in the Derby so 77 when we got B-Pie Aston Villa like we were like what's going on here I always remember me mate going and we were gutters because we didn't go we were only seven and then so then it comes to 1988 we saw Bob Lathford I think Bob Lathford was a sad time wasn't it that was our main thing wasn't it wasn't him scoring wasn't Bob Lathford that was like Duncan Ferguson for me that's exactly the same like having that one hero you pin out your hopes on it's like when people say when people laugh and go I had Duncan Ferguson only scored this amount of goals and you never won anything but we did won a cup and I was like he was all we had it's all we had it's all we had in the 90s was done but that was like Bob Lathford and that was like Duncan McKenzie because as you know as we all know in here we love everything and no matter what we love and we get beat and we all you think you're the only one who's eating don't you but it's everyone eating don't you but we all know now that everybody's eating because of social media you know but like at one time I was thinking it was only me and my dad and my brothers who were eating and then you go and see none of it but now you know what I mean it's the same with everyone but I think we can do good I think we can do good and we always have I think we're missing that now I think we're missing like that one here like that one person we can pin our hopes on like you said you've had Lathford I had Ferguson and obviously we had others in between but I think that's what we sort of missed now someone to I thought we had it with La Carcha yeah I just feel like we need now someone to carry us forward as a you know it's funny because I look back at the 80s and I was just going on the match starting to go on the match and like you know I asked my dad why I couldn't go to Lathford but I look at the 85 team and I never go he was my hero on that team or he was my hero because it was just a collective yeah it was a team of no stars yeah it was a collective you know what I mean it was a team of no stars and it wasn't just 11 plays it was like 13 it was 14 it was Wittison it was Alan Harper it was all the Terry Cuddins all the ones who come in all the ones who come in and play and they all done a good role John Bailey do you know what I mean he done his role everyone at the place who come in with that team it was just it was just a team and it was a team of no stars but do be a stars yeah no no it's we were talking before about like you know Alan Harper and Kevin Wittison some so important that never self will always says they were the best players because they come in and when you look at the way the game changes nine subs this season you can only bring three on but nine subs then you know you wonder if you track how football has changed it's with the subs when a club can say come play for us yeah you know and you've got nine amazing plays on your bench and in them days you couldn't do that to every team you know right and you just mentioned them before like if switch if switch had a good side or Swansea had a good side for a while Villa and the European Cup everyone had good plays because you couldn't you couldn't like you wouldn't sit on the bench I want to play football I'm not on it especially if you're not if you're on wind bonuses near paying the mortgages now it's I mean people want to chat why football's going wrong it's because of the subs real simple as that you can just have and yeah well you know I mean I wouldn't say that that was the cause why football's going wrong I'd say it was you know you're talking about squads you know when you look at like Man City you look at it their second team would beat us now no problem and that's what's scary about football now but so your players must be happy to sit on the bench yeah or the evening I said you'll get a chance you'll get a chance to play for us in them days you didn't you know Kevin Richardson left Everton he went to Wofford and a year later he was winning the league at Amfield on I mean it's my one of my favourite games of all time of course winning the league at Amfield and he's like that doesn't happen now because of the subs real because the team's overstocking but have you got like a stand out memory like you know not a not obviously winning something but if you've got a stand out memory in the book from from that year something that you look back at and think that was you know that was the moment something changed or that was a that was just a big moment for us when we beat Manchester United's five-nil at Godderson that was a big game really we won the five-nil and we knew we could beat anyone United were up there and the top they were one of the top teams and we destroyed them and that was like that was when we went whoa, where are you? I think after Wofford and the FA Cup final as well yeah but we played Tottenham didn't we we got beat off 4-1 and that's when we knew we were going to still win and to number I think once we beat man United's five-nil I think that was and then we went to Old Trafford didn't we beat them to on the Mill Cup and then that was like we beat United twice in the space of three days and then Liverpool and then Liverpool, yeah and it was like and I'm filled as well so but I think man United's beat United's five-nil is the game you sit and someone take notice it was a slow start wasn't it to the season we won the first game wasn't it was that Chelsea wasn't it we won Old Silver that was the third game we got beat by Tottenham at all and then we got beat by West Brom and then we played frag United the first time and played the Silver case and we won them one-nil that was the first win of the season and it was like and then but the team always believed in themselves do you know what I mean it's just we go to some games and like you'd be getting beat one three-nil but you knew you were going to win and you'd come back home Baz always says that because he's obviously he's a few years old and me he says like if you whenever you were getting beat a goodness and he knew that was it my favourite game I think one of them is when we beat Sunland and even there he scored that for a minute didn't he? but I think I see him right I think so you join me every time right I've seen the best pass I've ever seen in my life Paul Blaisewell when he played it and a full Paul when I was writing this book and he said I meant it and I said I know you did then you can't play a ball like that and not mean it because I think I think I've seen the best save ever never saw someone win to Tottenham oh yeah yeah I was going to say Shiffy Wednesday but Tottenham yeah Tottenham is full one yeah yeah I think I've seen and you take that to memories in life people were there when they saved seeing Gordon Banks saving the World Cup we were too young then but we've seen never saw someone make a save and we needed to save it they were the ones going up against us we were like a bit of Ed but that saved it took us further away and what a great night that was and it's some story even Ray Clements clapped that one I don't remember like he didn't end and he clapped that because it was an amazing save oh yeah it was an amazing keeper though it was the best keeper ever just the best keeper but the thing about 85 is and we always say because we're at Evertonians it's the greatest team that's been forgotten you know and made up we got the documentary Howard's Way to show other people but it's the team that got forgotten everyone says that yeah the greatest team that we'll never see yeah yeah because of everything that was happening around then because of like the fact of what happened afterward with the European band the fact that the telly was a little bit like you never had proper games and it was just like the season people forgot and the team people forgot and you used to say to people now well never South Wales the best goalkeeper you're just being biased and you're like no I'm not he genuinely was the best goalkeeper and not only was the best goalkeeper in the world I also think you should have a statue in the new stadium but never kick the ball towards Wales you should have a South Wales a player went through and the ref had blown for offside and he'd still carry on trying to score and South Wales still wouldn't have been beaten because that was his mental thing he knew he was just going to save it all at hand no he was incredible it was just an amazing team and as I said we've always had it obviously as a pinnacle but you just want other people to know it don't you as well you want other people to know it's what a team it was and that's what the book is about and you know who was an amazing player at the beginning of that season Aidan East he was amazing he was an amazing player A lot of people don't appreciate what a versatile player he was and play centre midfield and obviously he lost most that season through the injury which we now brought who knows now with technology how long that would be out for but for him it must have been devastating missing out on the cup fan you've got to many got injured with me you didn't know Graves going to come and do that again it's still strange that season with the story Graves coming in and being a player his knees were shot he's played this season before he's won the final but Aidan East that season he was just about to get called up for England he was and that was the disgraceful time when we did on him no, yeah and you know what you always want a reading he said he was the gentle he was a player you're having your side you know you're just going to be winners cos you're not around and we won't let no one and him and Bracewell they were brilliant way in team they were just in the centre Bracewell had the flair but he had the flair as well you know what I mean but it was just a team it was just a great team no to watch you just watched them and you go oh my god you'd want to play football after you watched them but didn't run yet you just want to go out and play football yeah well he said you know if you wanted to play you could play if you wanted to fight yeah if you wanted to mix it mix it and obviously having people like Pat in there and Andy Gray and Peter Eid and then they'd bring all the people into it and Mount Phil was Mount Phil is it you know and Radcliffe Radcliffe is it one of the worst nights ever he was horrible and I think he was only Kevin Sheedy he didn't want to fight he'd just ignore it but then if you had a left foot like him why would you want to fight yeah because I mean he was just a team he was just a team Rad everything Teffa Steven as well was a great player oh he was an amazing player just an amazing player just a ticky Teffa really and these players were lost because of them because of the band you know going to places like you know Derek Malfield went to Billy you know players Gary Stevens everything going to Rangers Rangers you think about it you know the players everything it can insult and it leaves it is like he went to Marseys as well he did go to Marseys he went to Marseys afterwards yeah but it's just a and do you know what we're gutted as supporters do you imagine how they feel yeah yeah as players do you know what I mean but it was just at the time it was just just sad times and it was a lot of employment and it was do you know what I mean it was bad that gave the city Liverpool a lot of the blue side a lot of enjoyment and it took away a lot of art taking everything that's sad that's seen done more than what people can ever imagine do you know what I mean nowadays you've all got you play station fans and play station six or whatever that's all we had was them that's all we had and it was centre pride isn't it in Liverpool obviously had the same thing with their team and also the other side from that is it meant like blues and reds we're getting to experience like the world because they were going and then bringing all that stuff back the cost and say to the senior and all that and so that gave the city something and the city because of what happened in the 80s you know I always think that the city expanded its view and that's why the city is so different now is because where everyone else is quite insular Everton and Liverpool fans were going all over Europe and mixing together and the mix together the Liverpool fans went the Everton games and the Everton games went to the Liverpool games and it was on their way they were going abroad with them to know what I mean and it was like the city the old city united together we were like fighting if you're from another city or a town and you're lucky you think how lucky are you to have like two great teams and you're winning everything we look at Manchester now and do the same thing but I thought the same what was your just before we finished what was like your match day then what was your match day experience like you know what did you do before the match and where did you go sitting on the ground all standing on the ground and stuff like that for the old games you want to get there about half one with me get a spech you got it in early cos you had to queue up and we just got like just right to the goal when we stand on the eye on the gladusly cos that was the other thing wasn't it you know I was on the bar in the gladusly near the church it's like you have to get in there at a certain time because you knew if you didn't you wouldn't get your spech and this was something we went to Germany a couple of years ago went to Dortmund and this was something we experienced about being on a you know being on a proper terrace because you have to get there early and the atmosphere starts building up around you and now when people come in five to three or five to eight or whatever it is you just sit down and you punk down in your chair and it's like entertaining me but then it was like the atmosphere grew yeah it started the last one but after the game we used to go and get all the programmes all the stands there's all the programmes you're in the stands them days you've got the programmes free so all the fellas are leaving we get about 30 programmes we sell them to the lad in the shop and then so we sell them for half price and they sell them for like 50 pence and then they'll pay for one of our matches or a coach strip you know what I mean there's a coach strip the old games were great but the way games were just brilliant the way games were brilliant band savel band savel I used to go with Amberlan coaches as well get picked up Jolly Miller I've always been double-deck away it was a day out way we loved it and there's some great stories in the book about them days I remember the first away game was the end of the first Premier League season Man City away we won 5-2 and I stood in the kick-backs and even going to band savel like to get me ticket three days before was an adventure getting the 61 up from Egbert all the way up there that was part of the adventure and then going up to Manchester and it's like so everything's just I don't know it's so much easier now and people take it for granted but then it was like everything was new and an experience people say I can't be bothered going to London the further was the better because you're all together having a laugh you'll never take that memory away from us and that's what the book's about where people might have forgotten about their memories people are reading the book and they're going I'll remember that and remember this and that's what we wanted to do share the memories of the greatest team that we'll never got to see and what a great team that was I know what a great team it's just sad that and the book as you see pegg it's endorsed by all the players from that team so that was it not only was it a great team but there were also great people who've come on board with the book and put their name to it because they know they are all good people I've been very fortunate to speak to them most of them I've played with some of them as well in games and they're all good fellas and they all obviously when you speak to them that's whatever it is whatever they've done since that's what they want to talk about you know whether it be like Grame Sharpies in the institution in Evan or whether it be someone who doesn't have something to do with Evan anymore like Kevin Richardson you know I spoke to him and he was shocked that we still remember them you know when Paffan then I came back from South Africa and he moved back to the city he was shocked that people still remember them and he was like what are you talking about you're idolised you're absolutely idolised as part of the 85 because that's another good thing about that team I think it's always remembered as a bloch a team like you've said before not stars not this individual not the year after when Gary Linnach has scored all the goals I think of the 87 team quite similar because no one ever stood out in the 87 team which is mad because we've run the league in 87 which isn't talked about enough we're like a team full of like Janeyman at some point because everyone was Neil Adams, Kevin Langley do you know him? Nati Neck Nati Neck book but there's one there's a book coming out 87 of fellas just wrote it's coming out but it's just good but I think the 85 team the stories the 85 team there you go the stories in the book which you need to go out and buy any good book shop you can get most book shops when you get out on Amazon and it's all well while they're sold in 14 different countries buy it try leave Amazon till last and go to the other book shops first yeah just time to go over we've also got a we've also got a cat and a do you sell anything you want? no I'm not selling these cats does that motess you do no we've got to put on the social out to 10 doors and we're going to be at the ground giving these out but before the old matches where at the ground? all around the ground and they'll be in all the tippies and the pubs and then you'll be five months get yourself in the church upstairs there you go the first two games but there's another okay but we do the there you go we sign books there and say Luke's minutes when we read the letters back in there you go big thanks to the gents for coming having a ball with Kendall and Harvey, 84, 85 make sure you check it out we'll put a link in the description the video as well for where you can get it as well so big thanks to the lads make sure you check it out and we'll see you soon


Okay, we're here to talk about sales and nobody left yet. Fantastic. Okay, so what I'd love to do in the next 30 minutes is tell you the importance of sales, right?  So you make money and with that money, you can grow your company or you can go to a VC and say, look, I can sell products. You should invest in myself. Two years ago, probably you could get away with not selling and still getting funded, but today, unfortunately, that is not the case and I think that's actually really good. So in the next 30 minutes, what I want to share with you is a bit of my personal experience on this sales journey and hopefully that's going to be useful for you as founders. We're going to be talking about three main things. The first one is sales basics, sales fundamentals, things that you should really think about when you're building your sales team, when you're building your sales skills, especially as a founder. The second thing that we're going to talk about is something that I find extremely crucial for early stage companies and that is start building your sales team.  So I'm going to try to decompose a bit of that and try to give you some tips and tricks on what to look for when you're looking for those people. And then the third piece that we're going to be talking about is how to sell to bigger customers. Selling to small customers tends to be quite simple. Sending to bigger customers actually is quite complicated. I'm going to try to share with you a bit of the experience that I've had throughout these years and give you some frameworks that you could use on Monday when you go back to work and you can actually go and sell your product. Probably the first thing that you're thinking about is like, why is this guy talking to us about sales? For those of you who just joined, I'm Pablo Rodriguez. As you can tell from my surname, I'm originally from Spain. As you can probably tell from my accent, I've spent half my life in Ireland. So I'm a bit of a hybrid. But I'm also a hybrid in my professional work because I am a computer science graduate.  And sorry, let me just go back a slide. So I started my career as a computer science grad. I spent 10 years building technology stuff. I did cybersecurity. I did a lot of incident response. I run engineering teams and then I had an illumination moment and I decided that that was not really for me and that I wanted to do something else. So essentially what I did is I started pivoting into sales. So in 2011, I was lucky enough to join Google when Google was starting their cloud business. And for me, that was a really enlightening moment because that's where I started learning what sales was all about. Up until then, as an engineer, I was like, oh, I had this image of the used car salesman. I was like, yeah, this is slimy salespeople trying to sell me dirty stuff. And then I understood three main things when I worked for Google. The first one is that selling to mid-market and selling to enterprise is an actually really complex process. It's not trivial. You need to put a lot of work into it. The second thing that I understood is that you really need to understand your customers really well to be a good seller. One thing that showed me the reality of that was that for some reason that I still failed to understand, somebody at Google thought it was funny to send the Spanish guy to sell in Finland. So here I go to Helsinki in my first customer meeting. I've been working with them over video conference for a really long time and we go to a board meeting and I'm a pre-sales engineer.  And there I am, like, look at this process that is very inefficient today. With Google Apps, you can do it really well.  And everybody sitting there, straight face. And the biggest interaction that I got was the CIO nodded once. I was like, okay, they're going to kick us out and we're definitely not selling in this account. And I handed over to the sales rep and the sales rep started talking about pricing and he asked them, what do you think? And there was this really, really, really long silence. And at that point I was absolutely sure that they had one of those buttons underneath the table that they click and then security comes in and kicks you out and then they said, we're buying. I'm like, what?  And what happened is that I did not understand my customers. That was a very good humility check for me. I did not understand how Finnish customers purchase. I did not understand how Finnish customers behaved. And because I didn't understand it, I could not sell to them. So that taught me a really valuable lesson on how do your customers behave and how do you adapt to them. It was not about me doing this great flashy demo as I used to in the Spanish market, it was about me changing that completely. The third thing that was really important to me when I was working at Google was to help people, sorry, I blanked in there, but this is what happens in sales when you're alive. I'll just move to Dropbox. So when I moved to Dropbox, I left Google, I moved to Dropbox, and it was a completely different business. Dropbox, you probably all know it, it's a B2C business. It's very, very efficient. It's product-led growth. Silicon Valley has been selling us this wonderful dream that product-led growth is the way to go. That's fantastic and until it stops working. And I was the one responsible for making that thing that stops working work. So I work in the B2B division. And the biggest learning from me in all this was really around how do you take a very simplistic process in B2C where the person that has the money to buy the product, the person that implements the product, and the person that uses the product, it's all in one. That's what a B2C business is. When you move into B2B, that is not the case. The person that buys is the head of the department. The person that uses the product is the end user. And the person that implements it is the head of IT. And I think our biggest failure at Dropbox, and my biggest lesson learned, is that we were not able to understand that those three personas were different in the B2B world, and we could not transpose our product into those. And I say failure under quotes because we took that business from $2 million to $200 million, which is not too bad. But our potential was actually massive. We had a time of $5, $6 billion, and we just couldn't capture all of that. We only took $200, which is still pretty good. And then I actually did the most finished thing that you can do. I quit my job. I bought a Nokia phone, and I went to Spain for three months with a Nokia phone if you need me to call me, and if not, I'm not going to listen to you. And then when I came back, I joined Vanta, which is a startup that has a pure B2B model, right? And what I'm going to try to convey to you is the lessons learned in all these years of experience. So before I continue, how many of you are founders? Raise your hand. Okay, this is much better than the last time that I did interactive stuff and things. Like, keep your hand up. Keep your hand up. If you're founders, keep your hand up. All right? Okay, 50% of the room. How many of you keep your hand up? Don't raise. Don't lower. You just don't raise. How many of you are... So all of you that are really excited about sales and you can't stop thinking about sales all the time, lower your hand. Okay. Nobody lower their hand. Good. This talk is for you. If you have your hand up, you're going to get a lot out of this talk. If you don't, you're going to get a few good things.  That's a joke. And whoever from his losses backstage having a heart attack, it's okay. It was just a joke. All right. So let me talk about the first topic, basics of sales, right? The most important things for you if you had your hands up. If you're a founder, you must be a seller. If not, honestly, I don't think you will succeed. If you have a kid, you're responsible for your kid's education. If you founded a company, you're responsible for selling the product that they have. Nobody can do that better than you. Honestly. It's impossible. All right. Why did I put that picture up? That's Christina Cachopo, founder of Vanta. For the first two years, she was our only seller. She would go to every single meeting, pitch to anybody that would listen to her, keep refining the process, talking to customers, getting the feedback, taking the feedback, bringing it back to product, get product to address, the feedback issues, and being the glue that put the company together. A salesperson is not going to do that for you. You have to do it yourself. The second thing, and if you need to remember one thing, just one thing from this talk, this is what you need to remember. It's not about you. It's about your customers' pain. Nobody cares about your product. Nobody cares about your technology. Your customers care about the problems that they have, and if you can solve them or not. And Holly did a magnificent talk. Two talks ago, Holly spoke about how you speak to customers. Review that. That's actually the way you should do it. Go and figure out the customer pain. Perfect example for this is Vanta. What do Vanta do? Well, Vanta does a software as a service that automates and lets you manage your security program. Do you know how much I sell with that pitch? Zero. Because that's not my customer pain. That's what my company does. However, when a customer comes to me and says, hey, I'm trying to go up market, I'm selling to this enterprise customer, and they're telling me that I need a SOC 2, or otherwise they're not going to sign a million-dollar contract.  I'm like, yeah, we can automate all that and you can do it in three months.  Because that's their pain. It's not about my technology. It's really cool, but they don't care. And as you are a founder that is starting to sell, you need to learn how to articulate your value proposition. Don't vomit a list of features.  This is what we do. Here's my feature list. No. Think about how it benefits your customer and start articulating that. How much money are they going to save? What's the return on the investment that you're going to make? How fast are you going to get that back? Another thing that is super important from those sales basics is to be curious. As a salesperson, curiosity is probably the most important feature that you have. The way I do it, sometimes I lack an ignorance. Like, okay, tell me more about that. I have no idea. I've never seen that before. Help me understand it. Again, Holly did a really good job on explaining that in more detail. And the last thing on these basics of sales that I want to share with you is my personal biggest learning coming from an engineering background. I always had this allergy to sales and saw it as something not cool, but sales is just a process. It's like cooking potatoes. You take the potatoes in unedible format. You wash them. You peel them. You boil them. You mash them. You eat them. Not very complicated.  If you don't peel them, it's actually not very pleasing. And sales is exactly the same. You get leads. You discover and understand the customer problem. Then you say, hey, this is what my product actually does and this is how it addresses your problem. And then you figure out if you can get to a commercial agreement on it. It's that simple. But it's just a process.  You've done something way more complicated. So don't be scared about this. Let's move to the second topic. How do you hire a salesperson? Now, if you've done all of that other stuff, you've probably come to a very repeatable process where you're starting to see success. If I keep doing this and I sell to these people, so if you can define your buyer, who is the person that buys? Is it an IT manager? Is this the CFO? You need to figure that out for your product. Once you have that and the ideal company profile, like it's an established bank, it's a smaller startup, once you have that and it's repeatable, go and hire your first salesperson. Because then it scales. In Vantas case, for example, it was when we figured out that our target customers are a scale-up startups that are trying to sell up market. That's it. And we would sell to founders and CEOs, basically all of you, at some point in your life. And when we had that, we hired this guy, Eric R.D. Eric was our second salesperson. And that second salesperson is basically an extension of you as a founder. So what do you need to look for? You need to look for somebody that is curious and likes the hustle. It's a game. You want to play that. But also, you need somebody that is a hunter. Probably much more of a hunter than you are. Somebody can go out there, will not take no for an answer. It's a bit more insistent than you. And can just get the deals through the line. Also, you want somebody that has experience in similar persona or similar vertical. If you're selling to a CIO, do they have experience selling to the CIO? Do they understand it? Or if you're selling to FinTech, do they come from that industry? Do they understand how the FinTech industry operates? And ideally, you also want somebody that has experience in the similar motion. If you're selling to the enterprise, don't hire a startup seller because the motion is completely different. The timing is completely different. The complexity is completely different. You need to adapt to that. Things to avoid. Avoid big logos. Somebody has worked for IBM or SAP. No disrespect to those people, but they actually grow 5% year over year. Your startup, you probably need to grow 300, 400% year over year. It may not be a good match. Unless what you're looking for is their contacts. Avoid people that have lack of urgency. Urgency is probably the most important thing for an early stage startup. Why is that? Because your next sale is probably the one that is going to turn you into a slightly more profitable company or is going to put you under. Maybe it's going to get you to the next round or maybe not. If you have people that are happy to wait, those may not be the right people for you at this stage. And then the last thing is don't look for sales managers. Hire for somebody that you need right now. You need somebody that can go and do the job in the trenches, sell, and then hopefully they can grow up to be a manager. And I think Eric is probably the best example. He now runs our mid-market team, so he kind of grew with the company, but he started as a plane seller like anybody else. All right. Cool. So we've covered basics of sales, how to build your sales team. Let's have a look at how to go up market. So you're going to hear these words again and again and again, right? It's going to be the mid-market and the enterprise. Let me tell you one thing. After 12 years doing this, nobody knows what the mid-market is. Nobody knows what the enterprise is. The only thing people can agree is that enterprise is a Star Trek ship and that's pretty much it. The way that we define mid-market in Vanta is 2 to 100 employees, 10 to a billion dollar in revenue, which you can see is a very wide range, right? And everybody's going to define it differently. But what you're going to find is that there's a few common things that you're going to figure out, right? First one is that customers start to buy, like, enterprises. Like, they have complex buying processes. And especially when it comes to security. I've done this, like, I saw this at Google where we had to explain security to a guy that had an exchange server under his desk and we had to explain our security procedures. When I moved to Dropbox, the same guy or probably a cousin of him had a file server under his desk and I had to explain to him, okay, here's our security procedures. And at Vanta, we do exactly the same, right? So this is something you cannot avoid. It's really important. The second piece is that people don't know what they don't know, right? Selling to a small business is super fast, right? You talk to one person. Probably that person can make the decision. Maybe you need to talk to a second one. You're okay. Enter prices, super complex, but they know how to do it. They have a super structure process. If you're willing to go through it, okay, that's fine. But mid-market is kind of like this messy middle that they're not big, they're not a small, and most likely what's going to happen is nobody even knows who makes the decision, right? It's the classic... No, you made the decision. No, I made the decision. Who does it? And most of the time, you're actually going to have to figure out who the hell is responsible for this, right? And that's a lot of the work that you're going to be doing in the mid-market. So how do we solve all this chaos in this mid-market space? What's the playbook? So a few things that you need to keep in mind. First thing is start building your security and your privacy story from the get-go. You need to have a good talk track around this. Hey, this is how I treat customer data. This is what I do for GDPR. My data is located in the EU. If you have it located in the US, then you need to have a conversation with your customers about how you're using Chapter 5 of GDPR, which nobody reads, but you need to explain to them anyway. If you're selling to the US, you probably will need a SOC too, so you need to start getting those things in order. And the other thing that is important if customers are starting to buy like enterprises is to build what is called a mutual close plan. And this is somewhere where you put in black and white, this is what you're committing to do. This is what your process is going to be to close a deal. Okay, for this deal to close, it needs to be approved by finance, which needs to be signed by the CFO, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You put in black and white, you start giving people deadlines, and then you have something to hold on to. The second challenge that you have that you want to address is that they don't know what they don't know. So what you need to do is ask a lot of discovery questions. Sometimes you need to go extremely deep like, hey, what's the problem? Why are you not solving it today? How do you envision this problem to be solved? What is the pain that this problem is causing you? And one thing that for me is probably like one of the things where my biggest achievements from trying to solve this problem is to give people a roadmap. Sometimes as a smaller startup or a small company, we feel a bit shy about imposing our methodology to others. You would go in and it's like, oh, I'm trying to sell to Amazon. They probably know what they're doing. Well, the reality most of the stuff is probably put together with duct tape and a couple of sticks. You just don't see it. You just see the big logo, and that's how you feel. So one of the things that we were struggling with a lot at Dropbox was taking customers from the discovery phase into closing because the way that we were demonstrating our value to them was not very clear. Dropbox was a very horizontal problem solver, right? So you could basically solve any collaboration issue with Dropbox, but you can't solve all of them. So that process was extremely tedious. What we did is we built a roadmap for customer evaluations. We called it the three-track plan. And guess what? It had three tracks. So we divided that process in first security review. Every single customer needed to do a security review, and that's what we built in the plan. First track, security review. Second track, it was a technical review. It was a software as a service. It works exactly the same for everybody, but the technical teams wanted to deploy it, implement it, and test every single feature. Perfect. Go ahead and do that. And the third one was really the important one. First and second were just check boxes. We just were making people feel good about it. Once they say, cool, the security of this product is good with me, we were fine. Once they said, this product can technically be implemented in my organization, we were fine with that. The key was the business track, which essentially was the pain track. We were trying to identify what was the pain in the customer's shoes, how were they suffering that pain, and how could we solve that with our product in a live scenario. And that was the one that was the key. That's how we built our business case. And we were very aggressive with that. We would go to the customer and say, if you want to buy from us, you be in a small, medium, or large customer, you're going to buy this way. There's two weeks of an evaluation process. These are the three tracks. We want commitment from your side. So you're going to put people on all those tracks. We will put people on all those tracks. And in two weeks, we'll know if this is the right product for you or not. And guess what most people said? That sounds reasonable. Because it is actually reasonable. If you're not willing to commit people to evaluating the product, you're not the right customer for me because you don't care. Looking at the used car and kicking the tires, and you're like, yeah, they look like good tires. I have no idea what I'm doing. So that was super important for us. And that actually helped us close a lot of business. But most importantly, it helped us avoid going into a lot of trials and a lot of tests that were not going to get us anywhere because the customer was not willing to commit. And you need to also think about as a startup the cost of opportunity. If you're spending time there, it means that you're not spending it with a customer that actually cares about your product and that is going to buy your product. So that was the second challenge. And the important thing about the third challenge is the multiple stakeholders and being multithreaded. So these three tracks would run in parallel. In the beginning, we would do them sequentially. First, we do the technical evaluation. When the IT team said, yeah, this is fine, then we would do the business evaluation. And then somebody from security will drag us for six months in the sales process. So we decided to be multithreaded and do things in parallel to make sure that we were much more efficient on the way we were doing things. And when you're doing that, you always need to be qualifying your buyers. Always make sure that you're checking if your buyers are the right people, if they're willing to commit to you or they're not.  And sometimes you can be blinded by the lights and the dollar signs and you would feel, oh, my God, this could be probably the biggest deal we've ever done in a company. But in the reality, you're just following a pipe dream and trying to close a deal that will actually never go anywhere. All right, so those are the three things that I wanted to talk to you about, like kind of basics of sales, how to build your sales team. And that's all from my side. Thank you.


Don't mix up these ten English homophones from espressoenglish.net. The English language has many homophones, words that have the same pronunciation, but different spellings and meanings. A lot of English learners confuse these, but in today's lesson, you'll learn how to use ten English homophones correctly. Stare The verb stare means to look directly at something for a long time. We often stare at things we are interested in or surprised or shocked by. A stare is another word for a step. A series of stares can be called a flight of stares. Roll The verb roll refers to the action of a ball when it is moving along a surface. The noun roll refers to someone's position, responsibility, or area of effectiveness, such as your role in your company. Flower A flower is a beautiful, colorful plant. Flower is a white powder made from grains, which is used in baking. Idol The noun idol refers to someone or something who is greatly praised, admired, and worshipped. The adjective idol describes someone who is not productive, not doing anything. Deer The word deer is used to begin letters. It also means something is special or precious to you, for example, a deer friend. A deer is a type of animal that lives in the forest. Deer is irregular, and the plural is also deer. Council A council refers to a group of people who discuss and or make decisions, for example, a city council. Council refers to advice. It is uncountable, so you can't say a council, but you can say he gave me some council. It can also be a verb. He counseled me about my academic plans. Waste The verb waste means to make bad use of something in a way that's not useful. For example, throwing away food that is still good is wasting it.  Ascent Ascent refers to agreement or approval, or expressing that agreement or approval. It can be a noun or a verb. For example, the manager gave her ascent, or assented, to the project. Ascent refers to going up, either physically, like up a mountain, or in status or hierarchy. It is only a noun. The verb form is ascend. For example, I was hiking up a mountain and broke my leg during the ascent. Hole The word hole is another way to say entire, or 100% of something. For example, he ate the whole cake, means he ate all of the cake. A hole is an opening in a surface or in the ground. When these are in the road, we often call them potholes. Illicit Illicit is a verb meaning to cause or bring out. For example, the teacher tried to illicit answers from the class. Illicit is an adjective describing something that is against the law. For example, he spent 10 years in jail due to his participation in illicit activities. These 10 words are pronounced the same way. However, English also has many words that have very small pronunciation differences, like bit and beat, share and chair, and many more. When you master these small differences, you'll sound more like a native English speaker, and my American English pronunciation course can help you do that. Click on the link in the video or in the description for more information and to sign up. This course has a lot of listen and repeat exercises, as well as a pronunciation evaluation at the end. You can also get my Shadowing with Shayna course for additional practice and training.