Productize Sales Before You Hire More Reps | Heath Barnett

Heath Barnett, VP of Revenue at Mixmax, challenges the traditional 'growth at all costs' mentality of scaling sales teams by simply hiring more reps. Instead, he advocates for 'productizing sales' by fixing the core engine, explicitly defining what good looks like, and building automated, sustainable go-to-market motions before adding additional headcount. Barnett emphasizes using AI to augment rather than replace human representatives. He introduces his 'FORCE' framework (Foundation, Ownership, Real-time coaching, Customer obsession, and Enablement) as a system to drive scale when combined with hiring for 'grit.' By aligning internal sales processes with the actual buyer's journey, companies can stop forcing buyers into rigid, linear sales funnels that cause friction. Additionally, Heath shares his controversial move of eliminating the SDR function at Mixmax, choosing to automate the lead filtering process and focus sales capacity on higher-value opportunities. He stresses tracking 'unique accounts engaged' over vanity activity metrics like raw call volume, empowering reps to play the long game through strategic multi-threading.

Discussed in this episode

• Why the 'growth at all costs' mentality is obsolete and must be replaced with sustainable business models.
• How to build a go-to-market strategy that aligns sales-led, sales-assisted, and self-serve motions to specific ICP tiers.
• Using AI workflows and agents to automate enablement material creation and handle 80% of administrative data tasks.
• The definition of 'productizing sales' as breaking down and defining exactly what good looks like before scaling.
• The 'FORCE' framework for scaling: Foundation, Ownership, Real-time coaching, Customer obsessed, and Enablement.
• Why marketing, sales, and customer success misalignment often stems from a lack of clarity around the ideal customer profile.
• The rationale behind Mixmax eliminating their SDR program in favor of automated filtering and product-led growth.
• Why tracking 'unique accounts engaged' is a significantly better performance indicator than raw call volume.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — The growth at all costs hangover
2. 4:30 — Traditional vs. autonomous GTM motions
3. 8:15 — How to insert AI to augment reps
4. 11:00 — What it means to productize sales
5. 16:45 — Breaking down the FORCE framework
6. 21:30 — Aligning marketing, sales, and CS via ICP
7. 24:15 — Why Mixmax eliminated their SDR program
8. 29:00 — Building a go-to-market org from scratch
9. 35:20 — Why call volume is a flawed metric

Key takeaways

• Fix the go-to-market engine before adding more headcount to revenue problems.
• Use AI to augment your reps' capabilities, not replace human relationships completely.
• Productizing sales means explicitly defining what good looks like across your organization.
• Align your sales process to seamlessly match the buyer's actual purchasing journey.
• Measure unique accounts engaged instead of tracking misleading vanity metrics like call volume.

Transcript

My mentality with AI is, how do I insert AI that actually augments my reps, not replace them. Paradigm has shifted so far in the other direction of hire no one. AI is going to do everything. You don't need a single human being.

And that is not true at all. You're going to have a foundation, it's impossible to actually figure out what's working and what's not working, because everybody is doing their own thing. Welcome back to another episode of the bridge the gap podcast powered not by revenue imagine today, because I'm mad at Dale. Powered by Adam J.

Today's guest is Keith Arnette, who's the VP of revenue at Mixmax, and one of the sharpest minds in GTM scale and execution. He's helped build over $50 million in revenue by fixing the engine behind growth, making every rep, every system, every customer motion, two words that are important to us y'all, more predictable and more profitable. He's led teams at small little companies like Uber, Airwall, and now Mixmax. And today, we're going to break down how to turn chaos into clarity so growth doesn't just get bigger.

It actually gets smarter. Keith, welcome to the show, man. Man, that is the best introduction I think I have ever been a part of. I love that.

I'm telling you, record it, use it as a walk-on song. I'm doing good, man. I appreciate you. You should hear Dale's introduction.

This is Dale. It's the only thing he does well. It's the only thing he does well. That's the only reason why he's on the show.

It is. And then, he doesn't do, he doesn't get paid. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. I don't get paid regardless. You work for yourself, you don't get paid. Keith has this thing called a W-2.

He gets a check every two weeks. I don't know what that's like. I'm kidding. I've been on both sides though, man.

I've been on both sides. I I started my first company in what, 20 2016. Um, it takes me back to the days of like, the grind. I got nothing but respect for people who are willing to take that that leap of faith.

Um, so yeah, it is nice when you have that cushion of the W-2, um, but there is also something about like, going out and building your own thing. Um, I remember when I start, I had my first startup, man, like, my routine was one, I would have no idea how I was going to make rent. And so like, my normal routine was, I'd wake up at 3:00 a.m.

I would go Uber from 4:00 until 8:00 a.m. Then I would work from 8:00 till about 6:00, and then I would go Uber the rush hour from like, 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Like that was my like day for a couple years. Damn. So. Damn.

That's that's hustle. Oh yeah, man. Oh yeah. I was uh I would say I was young and dumb.

Um where a lot of people are like, oh, like I got bit by the tech bug so I joined a startup. And I was like, oh, I was 23 and I got bit by the tech bug and I just said, fuck it, I'll start my own company. And uh I learned a lot, a lot of a lot of hard lessons that way. But it was one of those I thought was a red light in life that ended up being a green light.

So, here we are. Everything happens for a reason. Um Cool. Well, let's get.

I don't know if I could I don't know if I could Uber. I don't know if I could do that. I'd imagine you meet some pretty cool people though. You meet some really cool people.

I think at the end of the day, like, it was the most cash flow positive. So I knew like, if I was like, starting the week and I was $500 short from paying rent, I knew exactly what I needed to go and achieve in order to make sure like, you know, rent was covered and there was food on the table. Um but I also had my like, I did not do after 10:00 p.m.

because that's when all the the dumb-dumbs come out. Um so yeah, there was a lot like, you you learn the. Is that a technical term and do we still use that in work today? Oh no.

I like it. So. But to your point, man, like, that's why I did 3:00 a.m.

Because 3:00 a.m. like you got the guaranteed airport trips and those were you're making, you know, your decent money that way. So, there was definitely like you figured out the system.

Sweet. Let's get this episode started. Um we are starting. We're talking about work, man.

So, So you so you talked about Ubering, Keith. I like it. I do. I love the hustle.

I'll I'll close it this way like, full circle. I went from a startup and Uber driver to actually scaling teams for Uber. That's pretty good. That was when I had a full-circle moment.

Yeah. That that that was pretty amazing. And like, once again, like, where are the dots and how they connect in life and and as you go like, where you are today and what your journey's been. Like you find out as we were talking about earlier in the show, uh before we started the show, like things will end up connecting and then like 40, 50, when you get older, you'll be like, wow, that really did all connect and make sense to me.

Um and I try to explain that to my kids as they like go through like trials and tribulations, like this will all make sense at some time. It may be five minutes or it may be five years, but it'll all make sense at some point in time. It's it's the whole rear-view mirror fallacy, right? Like, I don't know if you all are fans of Matthew McConaughey, but uh his book, Greenlights is one of the best books ever to just make that so obvious.

Um and it is, like we always in and when we reflect, we're like, oh, looking back, I'm so glad that happened to me, but in the moment you're like, life is hell, I'm going to die, like what is going on? Um, so I couldn't agree more with you, man. Like, if nobody's read that book, like, and you're trying to understand. Greenlights is so good.

Go read that. Such a good book. Yeah. Dale listens to audio books because he hasn't quite figured out that like, the the words go left to right, but It this is the way I read.

This is the way I read. So, Keith, very quickly, funny story, like, I I rag on Dale a lot. He does the same. It is who we are.

We actually did have someone write into the podcast that I'm so mean to Dale and he's going to need therapy because I'm so mean to him. He's totally mean to me. It's it's complete crap. Cool.

So, um, Keith, let's talk about a little bit about fixing the engine and not adding more head count. Like, is this something big happening right now, as my dog barks at somebody. Um you, he's barking at you, Dale. Yeah, exactly.

So, um, we talk about adding head count all the time. So you talk about two ways of scaling. Hire more people or fix the engine so people can produce more. Why do companies default to the first option?

It's easy. It's lazy, right? Like, I I I I'm going to actually like counteract that for a second. And I think that's one is it's it's a behavior that we created, right?

Like I scaled at Uber. Uber created that, the growth at all costs mentality. VCs supported that. And so like we naturally created this problem in the market.

Like let's just call it what it is, right? Call a spade a spade. Um, I think that the also the old way of sales also allowed us to operate that way. And what I mean by that is, when you think about the buyer's journey, the buyers used to come to us for more of that education before they actually made that selection.

Now they do most of that before they even want to talk to us. And so, I say that because old old forecasting used to be like, okay, you want me to triple revenue? Here's what my capacity model looks like. Here's how many reps I need to hire in order to actually achieve that number.

That has now been flipped on its head, especially with a lot of the advancements in AI and technology. Like you can actually rethink about like, how do you actually build not a scalable business, but for me now it's about building a sustainable business. And and a bit of an autonomous business. You know, I I think the um, I I think you said something really interesting, which is people are just used to doing it, it becomes a pattern.

And so we as human beings are pattern-based uh people. And we see it happening in the past. One of the things that we've been talking a lot about is as you're building a go-to-market strategy, as you're building a go-to-market motion, there's two ways to do it. You can do it traditionally, which is like, hire the people, like train the people, find out six months later they suck, fire the people, hire.

Like, you can go through that process or you can look at how do I speed that process up, maybe taking some of the jobs to be done in a particular motion and maybe push that to AI, push that to an automation platform. And and maybe it's not just AI. Like, I was looking at when I was looking at Gemini 3 that just came out, which is actually pretty amazing. And then like all the new stuff that's happening in make.

com that's enabling some of the workflows. So like, we don't all we talk we keep talking about AI, AI, AI, and a lot of it is just like simple workflows that you can actually actually end up executing that is not AI. So we're like conflating the two together. And I'm curious your perspective on the traditional versus the autonomous slash, you know, process automation world and how what's the best way for founders, customer uh companies to get to a place of getting to automation?

So I think like, to answer that question, it it kind of goes back, like, let's let's just remove AI from this conversation because I think that before AI, we could still do this, right? 100%. So I think like, challenge number one is actually understanding there's a difference between knowing your ICP and then knowing the go-to-market motion behind that ICP. Okay?

Let me be very clear, what I mean by that is, if I have my ICP and I know what my great ICPs are, my okay ICPs, and then my long-tail ICPs, that right there tells me exactly what go-to-market motions I need to build. I need to build a sales-led for my top ones. I need to be build a sales-assisted for my medium tier, and I need to figure out how to self-serve the rest of that long-tail. And then it's like, okay, now let me understand what does that buyer's journey look like, and then let me build the right like, go-to-market motion behind that that actually aligns the sales process with the buyer's process.

The problem we the reason we don't do it is because it requires us to actually think. It requires us to actually like, make a hypothesis, and it requires us to step out of our comfort zone. And just like what you said, Dale, is like, we're humans, we like our safe space. And so, it's like I always talk about with like, sales engagement tools, right?

I mean, that's what Mixmax is. I always say like, no VP is going to get fired for bringing on outreach. Right? No.

Well, they may now. I mean, now they may, but historically, they would they would not. Correct. Yeah yeah.

But my point is though is like, it's the same thing is like, I think there's this generational shift to where the board that you used to report to also grew up under that same mentality. The CEOs used to be like, pushed on that same mentality. And I I really think and this is could be very confrontational, but I think like Twitter was a great example of like, when Elon Musk came in and basically cut out all the middle management fat, and was like, hey, like, we can be way, way more efficient. And look at what happened.

Every board now is like, how do you actually be more efficient? Like everybody's actually like focusing on the rule of 40 again, right? Um we're actually starting to change our mentality again. Yeah, it's we we went through and it's so cliche to say, but this like growth at all costs, right?

Hire people, hire people, hire 100 people. Um, you know, that doesn't work anymore. The problem is I think now we've to use a Dale term, the paradigm has shifted so far in the other direction of hire no one. AI is going to do everything.

You don't need a single human being. Um, and that is not true, um, at all. You have to have the balance somewhere in the middle. Yeah.

Yeah, if you're purely transactional, I would buy that, right? But if you're not purely transactional, like, at the end of the day, people want to buy from people. Like that is not going to change. Uh unless it's something where it's like, I can put my credit card down, it's very transactional.

I think it's actually like people don't want to talk to people, right? Like, you remember like, we we've all been there. Like I used to get so upset where it was like, you're forcing me to be a hand-raiser when I should be able to actually self-serve this. Um but when you think about the B2B space of like true like, you know, 20k, 25k plus ACVs, that's going to require a relationship still at the end of the day.

And so I think you're spot-on, Adam, to where my mentality with AI is, how do I insert AI that actually augments my reps, not replace them. Yeah. How do you do that is the question though. There's there's so many tools, um, out there, some of which are good, some of which are aren't.

But I think this actually, you know, will tie into where I want to go and you you talk about productizing sales, right? Um, and I think that's a great term. Um, but what does productizing sales actually mean and how does it actually affect head count and performance? So, when you think about like the different phases of like a like a company's growth life cycle, right?

The first phase, it should be founder-led sales, which is very much like, I am finding product-market fit, maybe I have one or two AEs that report directly to me. But like, that phase is just wild, wild west. Don't get me wrong, I love that phase because it's fun because you're breaking shit, you're just trying to figure out what works. But you hit this inflection point to where that doesn't work anymore.

It starts to become highly inefficient. You actually don't know how to define what good looks like. And so for me, if I was to give you the most like Eli 5, explain it like I'm five answer of what does productizing sales means? It is just simply being able to define what good looks like, and then building your go-to-market motions around that.

That's what productizing sales is. I keep thinking about breaking it into its smallest pieces and like trying to figure out what each part is. And I liken it to, and I talk about this a lot, like if you were to if I was to ask you what what do you do before you leave the house on a day, like if you're if you go out to work? And list all the activities that you do?

You'd probably miss like 40% of it because it's just like so ingrained on what you do. It's like, oh, I go brush my teeth. Oh, so you didn't get out of bed? Oh, so you didn't like go like, there's like eight or of eight other things you did.

Wait, wait, wait a minute. You don't brush your teeth in bed? Yeah, well. Weirdo.

So, so it's like those those things are very difficult, especially at a founder level or when you're like when you're running so fast that you're like I don't I can't stop to write everything down. So, one of the things we talk to a lot of founders about is just write everything down before you try to bring somebody on because if you're trying to onboard people and get them to know what you're doing, like you once you bring them on, it's too late. Like you got to get all that stuff kind of in a digestible format. And then the other problem that I'm seeing a lot is there's just so much data.

Like what is the important data versus what's like just noise? And how do you like distinguish digestible data? So there's two things I want to dig on that and I agree is like, so the first thing I do every time I join a new company that's at this phase is just go interview the reps. And just ask them one question.

What is your process to be successful? And when you get a different response from every single one of them, that right there tells you, we haven't figured out how to productize sales. We have not actually understood how to define this to where we can hire, onboard and actually ramp up people to be successful in their job. So true.

And that's actually the biggest reason of why I challenge a lot around hiring because a lot of times we hire reactively and you're not setting up the rep for success. You're just throwing head count at a problem where I'm like, stop being lazy and actually like focus on the problem. Figure out the crux, everything else becomes solvable after that. Yep.

I love that. Yeah, the the root cause analysis is so important. And I do think a lot of companies and we're we're dealing with this even with a couple of our clients right now, absolutely are hiring reactively. And you know, certainly in early stage, like there is no onboarding, there is no documentation.

Um, and this mindset of, you know, hire someone, throw them in and they'll figure it out. Like, listen, if you're seed stage first rep, founder led sales and that is your skill set, certainly. Um, but when you're growing and and attempting to, you know, I'll use the word scale loosely, um, figure it out isn't an option. And you wonder why, you know, four, five, eight of your last hires, you know, didn't make it past six months.

At some point, when do you look in the mirror and say, it's not all them, it's us. Yeah. Um, and we're playing with people's lives. So true.

So, and enablement is like the biggest challenge. A lot of it comes down to enablement. Um, it's funny because I actually just like vibe-coded this like like two weeks ago. I'm about to share it into the community.

Um, because I I've done this, right? Is like, we always think we have to have like the perfect environment. We have to perfectly understand our ICP and the problems we solve before we can build our enablement deck. I call bullshit on that now.

Um, I think that so, for example, what I vibe-coded was, you can just put in your URL. I have an agent that's going to go scrape all the information, pull out your potential positioning, problem statements, etcetera. Uh and then it actually creates an output that actually puts it in a gamma structured format to where you can just copy the text, paste it in the gamma, there's your enablement deck. People buy from people.

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com. Don't give me another excuse that you can't like actually like build enablement quickly now. Like those excuses like don't work anymore. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the benefit of, you know, AI, right?

Is we can do things in a much faster way that historically we couldn't. I, when I worked for Toast, we had an enablement team of 45 people. Um, it was like insane. And I think those days are gone.

Um, arguably that was too much, but like, every new hire got flown to Boston and you sat in a classroom for a week and then you were out in the field for a week. And like, there was tests and like, if you failed, it was by certainly not because you were not set up for success and you were not given the tools. Now, am I suggesting that everyone go hire a 45-person enablement team? No.

Um, but do I think that there are ways to create enablement much faster and easier now? Absolutely. So, Keith, how did how do go-to-market teams like systemize coaching, content, deal review so that it actually scales similar to a product release? So, I'll break it down.

I actually kind of put this together because people ask me quite a few times. I've been I would say blessed to where every company I've gone to, I've had people who have followed me. Let me be very clear, I do not poach. I have had people that have followed me into other companies though.

Um, which that tells me something, right? Because I'm like, if somebody's willing to like actually like give up their safety net of a comfortable W-2 and go with me into a company where I'm like, it is utter chaos and I need your help to organize this. Like, there's something there but I couldn't really figure it out. And so what I came up with like after thinking about it was like, when you hire for grit and you build force, that's what drives scale.

So let me break that down for you. When you hire for grit, grit means like, do they have a grit and growth mindset? Are they resourceful? Are they intelligent both from an IQ and EQ perspective?

And then do they have process, practice, and preparation? You give me those four, I will you can train, right? You can train sales, you cannot train character. And so I think that's the first one is like, actually understanding what is good look like and who we hire here.

So true. We don't even answer that question a lot of times, right? Nope. So that's the first one as I'm paying attention to is like, well, what is good look like?

Who are we actually trying to bring in here? The force piece is actually like, how do I operationalize this? And so for me, the force is like, foundation and frameworks. First and foremost, if you don't have any foundation, and what I mean by foundation is it doesn't have to be like medic or NEET or bant, but it's something.

No, bant. Something that your team though is consistently using because the problem is when you don't have a foundation, it's impossible to actually figure out what's working and what's not working because everybody is doing their own thing. So it's impossible for you to understand what are my controls, what are my variables, right? When you look at this from like a a scientific experiment perspective.

Um, the second one I'm actually looking at is like, okay, we have foundation, is there clear ownership? Does everybody clearly know what they are responsible for doing? A lot of times I go look at comp, right? Nine times out of ten is we we expect a behavior, but the compensation actually tells us it's it's trying to drive the complete opposite behavior.

And so right there, it's like, how do I expect people to take ownership when I'm incentivizing them to actually act a different way? Um, after that it's like real-time coaching, right? It goes back to that enablement. We don't have to have like a perfect structure.

Like I live and breathe by the 70/20/10, which is like 70% of your enablement's going to be on the job, 20% is peer review, 10% is actually formal training. And so like, let's just be really focused, really involved. Um, the C is customer obsessed, right? Like you have to be customer obsessed in order to actually figure out how do I productize this, how do I build this to be repeatable?

And then the E is just plain and simple enablement and execution. Right? Like so that's the force. And so for me is like, when I hire the grit and I build the force, that's what then allows me to actually scale.

And so with scaling is like actually looking at what are the systems that we're putting in place? So that kind of goes back to the go-to-market motions. Do we have customer clarity? Have we actually aligned our go-to-market motions with that customer's buying journey?

And then actually have we built the right leadership later layer to actually enable us to expand? I love that. And so for me that kind of gives you the layout, right? Because first is like if I'm talking about scale.

Systemized. Right? Like, do you have a system in place? Yes or no?

Do you have customer clarity? Yes or no? Have you aligned your motions to that? Yes or no?

Do you have the right leadership in place and then actually like, do you have like the machine that's going to build this compounding thing that allows you to expand? I love that. And so based on that question, I'm actually going to jump a question because you just actually answered what we were going to talk about, which was signal systems and scale. And I think in that motion, like you just outlined that really well.

And I think people can take that and and jump off with it. So, um, I'd like to go a little bit into the future of GTM leadership. And I think this is really important because I don't think there's a small majority of leaders that do this that that do leadership well. There's coaching.

There's a lot of things. Like very, very, very small majority. Yeah. And so, you've talked about building GTM teams as like a bow tie shaped machine where marketing, sales, and success are one system.

Um, but what's the hardest part of achieving that alignment and and generating that into a leadership for the future? I think the the hardest part is I'm going to go back to the customer clarity. That is what it all comes down to of like, nine times out of ten. And I say that because a lot of times where I notice a disconnect is marketing has a different version of what they think ICP is in the personas.

And so, guess what, their messaging is different than what sales is actually saying or doing. Then you actually have customer success who might not understand, you know, what how are we actually optimizing, who are we optimizing for? Unfortunately, customer success always just gets thrown the shit of the pit, where they're just like, figure it out. And so that's where the disconnect usually happens is just like, we don't have alignment on who our ideal customer actually is.

And what that does is, too often we focus on what should we say yes to. When you have customer clarity, it is very easy for you to say what you say no to, which makes it a lot easier to have that conversation of what we're going to say yes to. That is like I like what you just said. What we say no to.

That's not talked about enough. It's not. It's not. Everyone there there's this mindset that we have to say yes to everyone and every dollar is a good dollar and every revenue is good revenue and every deal is a good deal.

And listen, all all of us I believe we're we're reps at one point or another and we all wanted to close business, we all were sales leaders that also got paid on closing business. And I think what reps don't realize is even as executives, we get paid on closing business. No one wants to say no to revenue. Like, we all want the numbers to come in to hit the quota, get paid, however we get paid.

But at the end of the day, where do you say no because not all revenue is good revenue, not every deal is a good deal. Um, and and I love that you brought that up and I think it's something that needs to be talked about much more often. So I'll give you a a great example. When I joined here at Mixmax, I mean, we if we talk about inbound, like inbound is one of our biggest channels.

Um, we don't spend on performance marketing. It's all organic. So it's awesome. But it also, if you start messing with your positioning, like you'll see that we just relaunched our website, new positioning.

So like, we're dealing with the whole scramble of re-optimizing SEO, AEO, all that fun stuff. Um, and so to that example is, it's one thing I challenge. Um so Mixmax like killed our SDR program, right? I'll just go out and say it.

And part of it is, I went back to the definition where I'm like, well, what are SDRs actually hired for? Like, what what were they hired for before like, technology became in place? In my view, SDRs were just the filtering mechanism of how to filter your leads, right? Where now I feel like we can do a really good job of that.

And so one thing that I I implemented immediately was actually understanding like, what goes to sales? What goes to our go-to-market engineering or marketing to like actually like warm it up until they become a clear like a better hand-raiser? And then also like, who are we just going to say no to? And so for example, like there were strong correlation that like companies that are under the size of 50 employees, my first question is, we're a PLG company.

Why do they feel like they needed to talk to sales, right? Because a 50-person company probably has like a sales team of like two to five people. So that's my question number one. But question number two is when I look at the data, out of our conversion rate from demo request to close one was 2%.

So that's the question that you have to start answering, right? Is like, on paper we're like, oh yeah, these SDRs are generating a shit ton of pipeline, here's the conversion. And you just look at it and you accept it for what it is. What I looked at was opportunity cost.

Where I'm like, okay, so we're going to ask people to do 100 demos to actually just close one deal. And that one deal is probably worth 10k. Where if I automate that, when that's 50% of my lead volume, that means I just increased my rep capacity by 50% for them to go focus on the channels that are actually going to be bring more value to the company. It's it makes such logical sense when you talk about it.

The hard part is is digging into the actual numbers and actually and most founders don't think like this. Yeah. It it's I I'll tie this to another problem that Dale, you talk about a lot is when we're talking about um AI tools. So think tools like Swana, if you're familiar, tools like attention and their super agent, the the mindset of how to go into these AI tools and ask the right questions to get all the answers you want.

And in be it 36 seconds, right? Like, I I went into attention yesterday based on just some stuff that Dale was doing and asked the question and it got me everything I needed, where we're so used to, well, I got to go look here and I got to go look here and I you have to understand what are the numbers, how do I look for them and what do they mean versus the the broader approach of, yeah, well, we just need some revenue and some sales numbers and like, go hire some people and like, we have to have a who doesn't have an SDR team? Like, it it's all of go go to market's changing. Man, you hit a good one real quick because I think this is where at least for me as a revenue leader, AI has just unlocked my capabilities to the next level is we always, you know, 80% is good enough, right?

Because that other 20%, you waste time trying to get perfection. I do actually believe this though where AI when you use the right way, can actually do the 80% for us. So we can actually focus on that 20% because that 20% does make a big difference. 100%.

When you think about that way, so to your point, Adam, is like, I don't care is that data like perfectly accurate to the percentage point? What I care about is is it directionally telling me the insights that I need to make informed decisions? Because there's no like, what's the difference between 35% and 37%? Right?

That's the other problem is we get too hooked into like, is the data accurate? Where now for me I'm like, let AI ingest it, let it give us directional information, and then let's go focus on the actual action. No more of this like, talking to talk and like, let's book a meeting to have another meeting to have another meeting to figure out what we're actually going to do is like, no. Dude, we we we have a client.

I I shit you not, Dale, I don't know if you remember this, but we were talking and they were like, well, why don't we have a pre-meeting to prepare for the meeting? It's like, fuck no, I'm not having a pre-meeting to prepare for the meeting. Like, that's insanity. Um, I I don't understand.

All right, we we we have to get into rapid fire because we have to wrap it up, but I do have one sort of quick question before that that I would love an answer to. Um, and it ties to everything you're talking about. So, let's pretend it's not Mixmax. You you're going into a brand new startup and well-funded.

So, money's not an issue. You're designing the go-to-market org from scratch. Not for future, but for let's just say the immediate future. What is that go-to-market org look like?

We will assume they are not a PLG company. They do have what they believe is product-market fit and decent revenues. You're the VP of revenue or the CRO. What's this org look like?

First thing, and this is my requirement in every organization is like, having my right-hand man, which is RevOps. Um, I feel like RevOps has been under-invested in for way too long and is also looked as I think RevOps and sales operations are very different. Sales operations Massively different. is just managing the tools.

But the problem is is like, we've we've bucked both of those roles into the same persona. Right. Because you're my sales force admin, you're my RevOps. They're wildly different.

I I I am a hubspot and salesforce admin. That doesn't mean I'm your RevOps person. Exactly. So that's my first one because we can move 10x faster when I have a partner next to me who can actually help own like, the analysis, the forecasting, like, the reporting, everything like that.

Then I'm actually going to look at uh I'm going to hire like, your core AEs before I even hire SDRs. I'll say this, on the SDR side depends, what's their ACV like, right? And so I went straight into solutioning. So I'm going to take a step back of like, what am I looking for first off, right?

First off what I'm looking for is I want to understand who's your core customer? Who are you selling to? Right? Is this a very enterprise motion?

Is this more mid-market? Like what is the market that you're going into because then I can have an understanding of what the actual buying journey should look like versus what it actually is like today. Okay? So that's the first thing I want to understand is actually like, who's your customer and then what are your current operations around that customer?

That shows me where the low-hanging fruit is of like, where can I actually go and optimize? So, for example, I mean, I'll use Mixmax as an example when I first joined, um, our outbound our average sales cycle for outbound deals was about six months. But the average selling price was only like 10, 15% more than inbound. And so I'm like, well, why would we keep investing this?

Like, why not make inbound just super efficient, knowing that we have, you know, we have about 200 demo requests a month. And then we also have about 3,000 signups per month on our product. So that right there, I was like, okay, we don't have a product-led sales motion. So I'm like, if we have 3,000 signups and none of those are our actual ICP, we actually do have a product-market fit problem, right?

And so that's the way I I looked at it was just like, where where are most your customers coming to you from today? Where are they hanging out? How do we make sure that we're meeting them there and then how do we build the right operations around that? That can be a two-step sales cycle with an SDR and an AE, that can be a one-step sales cycle, like, it all just depends on what that buying journey actually looks like and then I'm going to try to align our actual sales journey with that.

The problem is mostly is we try to force the buyers to match our sales process. Our process. Yes. Our process, we treat sales as a linear process that is not true in any way, shape or form.

And I think now that our buyers are much more educated and much more sophisticated, they're calling the bluff now. Yeah, I uh could not agree more. I say all the time like your sales processes, your sales journey needs to align with your buyer journey. When when you ask a rep what stage a customer's in, it should loosely match what the customer would say.

Like, listen, we're going to use different terminology. No customer's ever going to say, I'm in discovery. Um, like that's just not going to happen. Um, great point.

All right, we we we are at that time, which means it is rapid fire time. Although I feel like there is a whole lot more that we could dive into. Hopefully that is a child coming into the office that's making you smile like that, or it's a closed-won email on the other screen, one or the other, but I hope it's a kid. Um, All right.

It's not a kid. They're at school, but it was a closed-won that came through. All right, there we go. just the second best thing to the to to the kids that are young.

What's uh I when my kids were two and four when my kid was two and four, I even got him excited about closed-won deals. Um, Keith, what's one sales ritual that you'll never give up? Meditation. Um, before like big, big calls, I will like carve out 15 minutes to actually go in like meditate and calm my mind.

It allows me to walk into that conversation uh very focused. That's one thing that I've always done. I actually have like literally like a meditation mat right here next to my desk. Um, and it's for that exact reason is if I know that there's a big call, I'm like, even if it's five minutes, something to just slow me down.

Um, the second one that I'll actually give to people too is the Superman pose. I I still do that before I go in and present. I still do that before I go and talk to customers. Even in a remote environment, like, still just doing that before I go on a call, like it actually does have a psychological impact.

I love that. I wish I I I wish I could meditate. I I can't figure out how to do it. Whole separate conversation.

We can't keep your mind quiet. That's the problem. It's That is the problem. Okay, there's so many things going on in his head right now.

He can't even fathom it. Notice I I always have something in my hand, like, yeah, it's it's hard for me. Um, let's see. What's the most overrated sales metric?

Call volume. Hell yeah. Call volume all day. Um, I have been so against uh I I would say activity metrics and it's always I say activity because it's always call volume.

It is the biggest false negative that you can ever have in a sales organization. Here's why. One, multi-threading is becoming even more critical even in the SMB and mid-market space today, right? And so for me is if I'm tracking you on phone calls, who actually had a better day?

Dale, who called 50 different customers and just tried to call one person, or Adam, who actually made 50 phone calls, but actually only talked to maybe like 10 customers because he was multi-threading it. I'm going to play the long game. I think Adam's going to beat you, Dale, right? But on paper, y'all both made 50 phone calls.

And so we're like, good job, like you hit your call metric for the day. Um, what I actually look at is I look at unique accounts engaged. Um, that is like the metric that I I align with my team because the data shows us of like, hey, based off how many unique accounts that you engage, here's how many opportunities you can book. And so it allows me to actually give reps a bottoms-up model for them to take ownership in their targets.

Totally. Totally. What um, what's the best advice you've ever received about leadership? Man, there's a lot.

Don't listen to Adam Jay. Um, I think like what immediately comes to my mind, I don't know if like I've learned this, I would say a lot of these things like that I've come up with has been like a culmination of a lot of lessons that I've learned. Um, one that I'm a big believer in is help people become better people, right? When we actually help people become better people, productivity is a byproduct.

Too often we just take withdrawals and we don't make deposits in our people, where I do the complete opposite where I'm like, the withdrawals are already understood. Contractually, they know what the withdrawals are that we're expecting. And so my job is to now actually deposit into you and it's not just about how can you perform for our company. It's about how can I help you grow into what you want to become?

That's personal, that's professional, and that's also at this company. I have had reps like, I always make sure that I understand what are their motivations. It could be paying off college debt. It could be they want to get married so they're saving for an engagement ring.

Whatever that is, like when I actually understand what motivates that person, I can actually build a very strong coaching environment around that person now. I love it. I I know what you're going to ask is the last one. Last question.

Let's wrap this baby up. You see? Adam knew. Dream vacation destination, considering you have a map in the back of your in the backdrop.

Man, uh, so I was lucky. I grew up in Europe my entire life. I was born in Texas. We moved to Germany when I was five.

So I've been blessed to like, go to a lot of places. Dream destination, it's cliche, but it's just because I've never been over on the side like, on the APAC region. I've gone to China a bunch. Um, but there's a lot of like Thailand that I want to go visit.

There's a lot more in the APAC region that I want to go see. Um, go backpack and in the APAC region or Uber you can Uber around. We could. You can drive for Uber around.

Um, Monaco was my I I I I I did Thailand. Thailand was great. I did three weeks in Thailand. That was amazing.

It looks I mean, if if there's anywhere I love to go, it is like the French Riviera um or like Tuscany area of Italy. Um, I I could go there and be like, Ari Gold and entourage and just chill in my villa for as long as like life would allow me to if I could. I love that. I love it, man.

I love that. Keith, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for all the knowledge that you shared. Y'all, go check out Mixmax.

Don't go check out that other stuff. Like, go check out Mixmax. Reach out to Keith. I'm sure he'll put you in touch with someone amazing on his team.

Thanks for joining the show, man. I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me.