Kevin Davis: The Surfer’s Guide to Smarter Sales Territory Planning

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Alright, I never thought I'd say this, but I don't take notes on my sales calls anymore.

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spk_0 RevOps should be able to put those sales reps in a position for success,

spk_0 but it all starts with being able to quantify and consistently define what a territory actually is.

spk_0 Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Up in Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal,

spk_0 wealth, mental health, and everything in between would guess who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

spk_0 Now today's conversation is with Kevin Davis. He is the co-founder and CEO of Boogie Board, a company rethinking sales territory planning with data and AI.

spk_0 Now before Boogie Board, Kevin's journey started in the small Wisconsin town where he learned grip the hard way from shovel and snow and driving plows to working his way through a marketing rig.

spk_0 We talked about how Kevin stumbled into sales, then into operations, and why he believes he shouldn't have ever been in sales in the first place, yet that path gave an edge on understanding both sides.

spk_0 He shares this surfer-not-hunter philosophy for modern sales and why the way we define and assign territories is deeply broken, which I couldn't agree with more.

spk_0 We also dug into why reps don't trust ops and how to fix that with transparency and how early career tactical mistakes shaped his approach to clarity and value for selling.

spk_0 This one's packed with sharp insights for anyone in sales, ops, or leadership trying to bridge the trust gap and build smarter, go-to-market engines here.

spk_0 So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it up.

spk_0 Kevin Davis, welcome to the Making Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing today?

spk_0 I'm good. Thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

spk_0 Looking forward to this conversation, especially when I went to Rev Fest or Rev Ops a couple of them and really watching how Rev Ops is rising quickly in this world of AI.

spk_0 So I'm really interested in getting your perspective on some of that.

spk_0 But as my audience always knows, love to dive into the origin story first about what made you you.

spk_0 So parents upbringing, all that fun stuff, the stuff that we can't find on LinkedIn, give us a little bit of a background there and then we'll dive into the details.

spk_0 Yeah, I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, little suburb of Milwaukee called Hartland, Wisconsin, which is a very cold place, but a beautiful place to drenched with lakes in the summertime.

spk_0 And I lived there my whole life when I was a kid all the way from the same house as a baby to when I was an adult.

spk_0 I had some odd jobs that you would expect for a young boy to get tasked with doing landscaping, shoveling snow.

spk_0 I even if you can believe it learned how to drive a snow plow in salt the roads at one point.

spk_0 And so did a whole bunch of that stuff growing up and then eventually went to the university of Wisconsin in Madison was sort of my genesis with the through line being the great state of Wisconsin.

spk_0 And I forget what degree did you go for?

spk_0 I got a marketing degree, which I grabbed because I initially got a was going to get a real estate and finance degree Madison has a really strong program.

spk_0 But it's actually hard to do that.

spk_0 And so I was not up for doing hard things at that point.

spk_0 And so I kind of delve into the marketing world, nothing intense marketing degrees, but I did not have the same thing happen to me.

spk_0 Yeah, I kind of I started my first major was art because my mom was an artist and I was the best artist in my tiny little town of you know whatever to 10,000 people or something like that.

spk_0 And then I was like, oh, I went to University of Maryland so huge school.

spk_0 And I remember sitting in my first art class looking at the talent around me going, okay, I guess I'm not an artist next right and then I went to like math and engineering because my dad's an engineer is like, okay, let me try this and then I hit calculus.

spk_0 I was like, never mind. Nope. And I ended up with marketing because I'm like, I mean, yes, it was easier, a lot easier than most of it.

spk_0 But it felt like it kind of combined a lot of my skills, if you will, like artistic plus communication plus all these different things.

spk_0 So it's only a little bit of a similar path.

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, it was it was more of a natural fit for me.

spk_0 And I did enjoy it and I kind of did I eventually help me get into the working world. So I can't shame it.

spk_0 Yeah, so walk me through the kind of the ops journey here, right? Cause you know, I mean, we'll talk about you, the company that you're that you built.

spk_0 But where did ops all of a sudden start to become a highlight for you of first of all interest and also importance.

spk_0 Yeah, it was mostly by accident. I started at a software company called NetSuite. I had your traditional like out of college BDR job is actually in Boston.

spk_0 So I went in Dyle and then I was a salesperson for a long time. I had various sales roles at NetSuite and Google.

spk_0 And during COVID, I was living in Europe and we were about to have a baby, my wife and I and we kind of needed to come home because it was unclear how long we were going to be locked down.

spk_0 And so we had some issues with like the way our time there was set up. And so I had to live for a job and we're going to Google and there's a lot of jobs at Google. Fortunately at that time.

spk_0 And there's one in operations and I always been obscurious. And I jumped into to the world. Then I had always been kind of a data driven and systems focused salesperson.

spk_0 But that's when I actually bought it too. It was coming back from COVID.

spk_0 Why? So that's unique. So my COL always tells me that I'm a super anomaly when it comes to sales because I have the ability to communicate and all that.

spk_0 But I am very detailed detail oriented as far as measuring and looking at things objectively in that time. And organized quite frankly. Right.

spk_0 And usually that's not the case. Usually like you're just really good and you're not very organized at all. Or you're really organized. You might not have the abilities to engage and connect with people.

spk_0 So was for you was it why did all of a sudden the analytic side become attractive or why did you know was there something about your upbringing or what you learned that kicked that analytical side in early from a sales standpoint or did you understand it as you evolved in sales.

spk_0 I think it's it's much more natural to my personality. I think I actually probably never should have been a salesperson. I'm lucky that I was.

spk_0 But I remember my dad if I asked him what are we thinking for vacation as a kid growing up. He would show me a spreadsheet with 30 tabs.

spk_0 I'm sort of math that lands us on you know a great vacation with optimal time spent in each location. And so I think it was just baked into my DNA.

spk_0 But this is kind of how I think about things. I remember my wife really on and dating telling me to stop texting her and bullet points like.

spk_0 It's not how I kind of work. And so somehow I ended up as a salesperson, but it was much more natural for me to move over to the other side of the aisle.

spk_0 Nice. So you were and I want to dive into this because I've looked through some of your previous interviews here.

spk_0 You hate the hunter whole label, right? You were a hunter quote unquote. You know we talk hunter farmer right prospects.

spk_0 SDRs BDRs are hunters and eight E or AMs or whatever farmers. So many ease are both.

spk_0 Talk to me a little bit about that right and also your analogy of being a surfer instead of a hunter. Could you expand on that a little bit?

spk_0 Yeah, my my thesis is that the hunter days are kind of over the ability to think of your customers prey is specifically what I don't like about about that.

spk_0 Seeking them out ultimately killing and eating them right that's what the matter for more brings us to and I just it was very clear to me early on that you just can't think of that.

spk_0 That way you are not in control of the situation you have to come to them with this deep respect this deep appreciation almost like an worship or an immersion and it felt a lot more like the way that a surfer takes on the ocean.

spk_0 They they come into the abyss they let the waves wash over them they try to ride the wave in his respectful away as possible through deep understanding but they know that at the end of the day that way could crush them at any time.

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spk_0 Now let's get back to the conversation.

spk_0 So with that though, you know, look, I talked to a lot of sales sales influencers and trainers, right?

spk_0 And I don't name any names, but they all get them to come to you and I don't prospect. I don't call call because I build my brand and I'm like, look, you're a sales guy selling sales training to sales guys, right?

spk_0 Like I'm a crackhead selling crack to crackheads and I'm a crackhead.

spk_0 Right? So it's really easy for me to just let the wave come in and figure it out because I built my brand. I have, you know, the inbound stuff like that.

spk_0 But, you know, and outside of the word hunter, right, finding new business, how does a surfer hunt, find new business?

spk_0 Forget about the killing of the metaphor, but like looking at that, how do you succumb to the waves when you have to go out there and find that business because the business isn't directly coming to you?

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you've ever spent time on the coast, like sometimes there's a lot of driving around for surfers, you know, there's there's waves that are momentous.

spk_0 It's certain periods of time that are seasonal.

spk_0 There's requires an extreme understanding of of the water of the weather of your market, if you will.

spk_0 I don't deny that that part of the hunter metaphor is correct, right? Like you have to be grinding out there trying to find things.

spk_0 I always just thought that the connection to the ocean was a little bit more of a beautiful one than the adversarial line of the hunter.

spk_0 So you're so this is more about like, you know, obviously quality over quantity to you, right? Like the mass blasts and I've been on that page for a while.

spk_0 I think the mass blast is just dumb. That's marketing. Like let marketing do mass like sales. We need to throw darts. We need to be super specific and personalized.

spk_0 So how do you scale that though?

spk_0 I think it's derivative of of your customer. Like when I worked at Google Cloud, we had a leader come in who was from a different background.

spk_0 And they wanted to set up a cold calling blitz, which was an ethos that we needed to an extent because we were a tech shop, a product shop.

spk_0 And so there wasn't that go out and get business mindset. The problem is Google Cloud is entirely consumed by software developers.

spk_0 And guess what they don't do? Answer the phone. It's useless to call them. And so there's this conflict then of, okay, we have to grind.

spk_0 We have to be out there. But the phone doesn't work. So you have to get much more creative. And so yeah, to scale that there's there's social channels.

spk_0 There's email channels. There is more sales led growth through the product in that specific example. But as an ethos, I think it needs to be really derivative with both the customer necessities.

spk_0 Yeah, I think that's a kind of had the same conversation with clients where, oh, build your brand. And it's like, yeah, but none of your clients are none of your customers are on LinkedIn.

spk_0 You know, it's so what are you doing? I mean, if you're if you're doing it for yourself and your own personal career and because you want to do advancement, that's one thing.

spk_0 But if you're trying to attract clients, like my wife sells the local governments. So she's a CEO of her own little company and she sells the local governments.

spk_0 Local governments are not on LinkedIn. You know, she has she doesn't some minor stuff on LinkedIn and whatever. But most of local governments, unfortunately, are on X or Twitter, right?

spk_0 So that's where she tends to engage in and that's everything. So it's almost going back to the ocean analogy right. Go with a fish are I think blue ocean when you when you're trying to differentiate yourself. But stay in the red ocean with a fish are if you're trying to fish.

spk_0 Yeah, absolutely. You need to know where they are. If you don't like that's sort of an extreme problem, it should be pretty obvious to you.

spk_0 So let's kind of evolve into territories now, right, which is kind of your sweet spot with what you do.

spk_0 Territories have always been interesting to me how they've been created developed. I thought a long time ago that I had heard it, but I didn't see it happening as much where people would actually be hired and put into territory based on the way you're doing it.

spk_0 So I think that's why they're on their pro based on their social profile, for instance, like you could use technology to look at my 400,000 followers, see where the heat spot, you know, the he's, oh, John, you are really influential in this region or with this persona.

spk_0 So based on that, we're going to give you this territory where we're going to give somebody else another territory.

spk_0 The other approach that had not come to fruition, hopefully it's starting to now, obviously.

spk_0 The other approach is just kind of like there's no adjustment at all. It's like, here's your territory, here's your numbers. It doesn't matter who, you know, what your skills are, that's yours.

spk_0 And you might have a good territory, you might have a shitty territory. So could you explain how and why you've developed what you've developed and what the challenges with territory alignment right now?

spk_0 Yeah, the reason why we develop what we develop was because I felt this sort of extreme pain at the various companies that I worked out like it was, I worked at great companies.

spk_0 But there was always the time in January, whereas like, okay, we're not going to have territories for another few weeks.

spk_0 When they do come, everyone's going to be angry, my friends, it's sales and other companies thought the same thing. It was just this weird thing.

spk_0 Everything I was like, yeah, with their hands up, they're terrible.

spk_0 So the ethos was, what if we could build a suggestion engine to make this algorithmic, make this go faster and make sure everybody knows what's going on behind the scenes.

spk_0 So that was the first thing that we built as a company.

spk_0 What's underlying all about is an explosion of data, account data, intent data that allows us to think about markets much more precisely.

spk_0 And the thing that I really had to learn was what a territory means to different types of companies.

spk_0 For some companies, it's mostly about your coverage, how you're covering the market.

spk_0 For others, it's about retaining reps to an extent. That's going to be a big factor.

spk_0 Others, there's massive geographical considerations.

spk_0 And again, we try to think of it as derivative of the customer and trying to solve multiple goals.

spk_0 But that explosion of data has allowed for a lot more interesting type of territory development.

spk_0 So one of the things you said that struck our courses, reps feel like they've been handed a bag of mystery meat.

spk_0 It's the ass food version of sales ops, quick, dirty and no one trusts what's inside.

spk_0 So that's the frustration, right? I got my territory.

spk_0 I don't know why I have this territory. I don't trust why you gave it to me.

spk_0 Like I might subjectively feel like you're putting me in a bad position because you want me fired or something like that and putting me.

spk_0 So how do you align once you once you understand the company's definition of territory and however that flows?

spk_0 How do you then look at an individual rep objectively to say that this is a territory you're going to be successful in versus this one isn't?

spk_0 And does that have to do with skill set, right?

spk_0 Because I've seen territories before where average reps will complain this is a shitty territory.

spk_0 And then a good rep comes in and turns it all the way around.

spk_0 My first job at Xerox for instance, I sold state local governments.

spk_0 And I apparently I interviewed well and I went through the onboarding well and so they gave me the hardest territory in the company.

spk_0 It had had like six reps in three years.

spk_0 There was no trust and they hadn't gotten any business out of them.

spk_0 They were like, yeah, I'm like, great, thanks. You know, there's a bag of shit.

spk_0 But then through my own approach, whatever I turned it around to be in one of the best ones.

spk_0 So how do you look at that from an objective standpoint to make sure that you're matching the right sales rep in the right territory?

spk_0 Yeah, I mean, territories are always going to be a hypothesis. You don't totally know how they're going to manifest.

spk_0 So I think as a baseline, you got to quantify what a territory is to you.

spk_0 What set of variables consist of a makeup a territory and then what is the expected health or kind of an opportunity in this territory so that now when I'm creating you, John, coming into my company,

spk_0 your achievement in that territory is rated higher because we thought it was going to be more difficult for whatever reason.

spk_0 Quotas can then reflect that in things of that nature, but it all starts with being able to quantify and consistently define what a territory actually is.

spk_0 Reps use the word fair a lot. It's not fair.

spk_0 Is it possible to create fairness when it comes to this?

spk_0 Yes, it is. You have to have good enough account data to know what the opportunity is in some accounts.

spk_0 But your approach to designing a territory can absolutely be fair.

spk_0 And if not fair, very equitable.

spk_0 If I know this territory is a one and this territory is a 1.3, at least by my math, I can give you a 30% higher quota, give this person a 30% less quota and go from there.

spk_0 So if you lift the veil and you don't allow them to say, well, this is fair for this reason or this is fair for that reason.

spk_0 It's like if we've anchored our territory with a definition of what fairness is and how we're thinking about equity, you can argue with our process.

spk_0 We can invite your feedback into that process so that we improve it over time, but you can't say that what we did wasn't fair.

spk_0 So a lot of it, and I think this is the falter of most leadership is to your point of the transparency of lifting up the covers and saying, look, this is why we've done this is why we did it this way.

spk_0 And here's the objective criteria that we are using.

spk_0 We can discuss your opinions of the viability of that objectivity, but let's show you.

spk_0 So I think another one you said was you say, good design makes feedback a discussion, not a war.

spk_0 And so are you really trying to create as much objectivity into this process as possible?

spk_0 And how does that lead to much constructive conversation?

spk_0 Yeah, I think it starts with the fact that this process is usually done in under duress.

spk_0 The sales leaders and the operators that are doing this are working in spreadsheets.

spk_0 And so by the time it's done, they actually don't totally know what happened.

spk_0 And when they then try to unveil it, they're just so busy that like it kind of gets washed away.

spk_0 So we try to take a complete opposite approach.

spk_0 We've got a very specific process by which we're inviting feedback in early through surveys so people feel like they're part of it.

spk_0 We're demonstrating what's happening throughout our algorithm is equitably designing the territories in the most most mathematically, kind of efficient way.

spk_0 And then when we announce that it sales kickoff, we're giving all of these people credit for all the TLC that like went into this massive process, because they really want to put sales reps in position for success.

spk_0 And so there's also listen, I think sales reps better than most understand that the world is imperfect.

spk_0 And that account data is going to be imperfect.

spk_0 But if you can show them that you really cared and tried, I think their response to that.

spk_0 Well, I think that's the challenge, right? So I mean, there's revops and there's enablement.

spk_0 And I've spent, you know, the majority of my career working with enablement.

spk_0 And the challenge that I always see with enablement is they're trying to, you know, lead a horse to water and make it drink.

spk_0 And the reps rarely drink because, you know, the feedback loop isn't there.

spk_0 The integration isn't there.

spk_0 The, you know, it's like, here's our program.

spk_0 We're going to, we're going to, so it's same thing in territories.

spk_0 I think there's a lot of distrust from sales reps because of what we've been through over the years.

spk_0 You know, I call it like, you know, the methodology book of the month club, right?

spk_0 Where, oh, we're doing challenge with this, this quarter.

spk_0 Oh, we're doing, you know, this, this quarter we're doing this is like, yeah, whatever.

spk_0 I'm just going to do the bare minimum so I don't get yelled at here.

spk_0 Because I know another one's going to be here in six months.

spk_0 So how do you, like, what does that structurally look like for you to align with sales and make sure that there's that connective tissue there, the feedback loop and everything?

spk_0 Like, I mean, tactically here, is it, you know, are you weekly meetings as there is their SWAT teams basically that you're using, like, how could a company create alignment between revops and sales?

spk_0 So that sales does listen and does appreciate the work that revops and enablement to a lesser degree, bring to the table.

spk_0 Yeah. So the inputs that go into territory designer are pretty regular.

spk_0 So there, there's accounts and then there's attributes about those accounts.

spk_0 So simple questions like, do you have a list of 10 accounts that you really, really want to keep?

spk_0 And you take that into consideration and maybe everybody gets to keep three or whatever it is.

spk_0 And you do that early on in the process, you kind of invite their eyes on what's happening and just demonstrate that you care.

spk_0 Then you might ask him, okay, what are five other companies in the market that you really want to sell to?

spk_0 And why? Really good data mining from people who are on the front lines or maybe have a personal interest in an area.

spk_0 And then as far as the project is concerned, extreme transparency, this is where really boring stuff like having beautiful project management documentation are really clean, like, SKO presentation.

spk_0 I always get so emotional about it because I can tell him in like, found a moment, I'm just like, we want these to be so good.

spk_0 We want these territories being credible.

spk_0 And I'm always worried that I'm like Chris Farley smothering his role.

spk_0 But I just, if you tell them that you really, you really cared about these, they tend to be receptive.

spk_0 Where have you seen it fail, right? Like rollout fail of territory planning.

spk_0 And you know, it's the same with training in a lot of ways.

spk_0 If there is an alignment top down in some way of making sure that we're tracking and integrating and all that stuff, it is what it is.

spk_0 You know, you'll get the typical, hey, everybody's excited and then they'll all go back to what they're doing.

spk_0 So where have you seen the pitfalls of or whether it's with your solution or not of rolling out territories and what are some things to avoid?

spk_0 There's two, two main failures that I see the versus lack of executive sponsorship.

spk_0 If the sales leader, if there's a perception that that person distrusts the operations crew or they see them as just analysts,

spk_0 or they're not involved strategically in what's going on, that culturally will permeate down to complaining and distrust.

spk_0 The second piece is account data.

spk_0 If you have not clearly sung from the hill tops, here is what we are trying to do with our account data.

spk_0 Here's why the world of account data is not perfect. It doesn't exist perfectly in the world here.

spk_0 All the things we're trying. We love your feedback.

spk_0 You'll just get people saying our data is bad. Sorry, you can go use book reports algorithm. All you want.

spk_0 It's doing it on bad data. And so it doesn't matter.

spk_0 Yeah, that's what I keep saying that I thought AI was going to solve the garbage in garbage out scenario.

spk_0 Right. It's like, oh, it's just for data, whatever, throw AI in there, it'll make sense of it. It's still the same.

spk_0 It's still garbage in garbage out. Like if you have shitty data, AI can just going to produce shitty results for you and shitty insights.

spk_0 So it still is about that. So do people and like, where does I guess question for you in general, like most people's data is super messy.

spk_0 Right. They don't track the right way. They go, so how do you start creating a culture of tracking in a way that is information that is valuable enough to be able to use to be able to be more precise with territory planning and everything else.

spk_0 Yeah. So we generally come when people are at least that like kind of a phase two of their account data journey.

spk_0 If they are in like dire straits, we will maybe come in and help them with that or recommend a partner who can help them with that.

spk_0 The steps in that journey tend to be shrinking, shrinking the problem down.

spk_0 I think companies sometimes feel that they have to have their whole time perfectly enriched with various account data attributes and intent data signals that it seems like everyone else has perfectly.

spk_0 And they don't. And so shrinking the problem down to what do I need to be able to make my serviceable address will market polished in Sierra and set up and design territories.

spk_0 And then we recommend things that we see from from other clients, you know, you can actually go and get this data. It's actually publicly available now.

spk_0 You can get it cheaply. The data supply chain has expanded, but it does require someone doing a lot of diligence network.

spk_0 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the revops the power of revops. Right. It's like you got a crawl before you can walk. And I think is having somebody in revops come in before they start implementing anything is get in there and get your hands around the data.

spk_0 And then why is, you know, what is it? What do we have? How accurate is it? And then being a look because you build on a house cards, you build on house cards.

spk_0 What's I'm curious with all the territory stuff you've seen right now.

spk_0 This is, you know, less about, you know, the tactical side and more just your thought process on what your what you think the model is moving forward here.

spk_0 Because I my contention is the predictable revenue model is dead. It's a joke. It always has been, but it was tolerated because we were grow at all costs. Money was free.

spk_0 Who cares, right? But it's never been a customer centric approach. And now with SDR is not even staying in their companies for a year and a half.

spk_0 The promise of the SDR becoming the AE and all that stuff is out the window. So, you know, you hear a lot of talk about pods, right, where a territory has one or two SDRs and, you know, five or six AE's and a marketing liaison or something like that.

spk_0 Where are we a what's your favorite and be what do you think in a I know there's a billion variables here SMB market enterprise blah blah blah. But in general, where do you think we need to evolve to from a territory standpoint with ABM and all these cool tools so that we can put ourselves in a position to be successful, move here or sales or just can put themselves in a better position moving forward.

spk_0 Yeah, so the word I use is focus. That's where you're trying to achieve. I pause at my least favorite because I've been in a pod and all the seven each person in that pod now has like four different managers.

spk_0 Because the most senior person in that pod has to tell the most junior junior people what to do. The junior people also have to care with that person's manager things and their manager thinks it's just very, very confusing.

spk_0 So I'm not a fan of pods and I think territories in the modern era are an efficiency angle.

spk_0 How many times have you been to a sales conference, someone puts on the slide, you won't believe how little time sellers actually spend selling, right, every sales conference ever.

spk_0 And so it turns out we maybe don't care about that or maybe we should. And the way that you do that is by stopping having them hunting around on the internet, googling which accounts are good ones.

spk_0 And so having a revops person in the seat who is understanding of the new data tools that are available, able to elevate accounts that are good or likely to buy so that when a seller is in that mode of approaching those accounts,

spk_0 it's done a lot more thoughtfully and done spending time on the right accounts more often.

spk_0 That takes a lot of business acumen, like an understanding. And so we're talking about analytics, we're talking about data, we're talking about insights.

spk_0 But then the variables is the sales flexibility to think critically with that information.

spk_0 I'm a little concerned right now that business acumen is gone and we've over operationalized, we've over-scienceed everything about sales and we've completely lost the art of sales.

spk_0 How do you balance that? How do you balance the objectivity and teaching younger sales professionals, the art of conversation, the art of the subjective pieces of this.

spk_0 Because I can science out everything, but there's always that human interaction. And if we aren't developing, I think the AI, my biggest challenge right now is I feel like the AI is stripping away all the learning actually.

spk_0 You think it's going to help with learning for the right people, but it's actually stripping it away because it can do all the preliminary stuff that junior reps used to do way better.

spk_0 So I'm curious like where that foundation comes from now, where the business acumen comes from in this model.

spk_0 So how do you results, alignment, fun, but keep the engagement from an education standpoint, a development standpoint, a business acumen standpoint, and an EQ standpoint in this world of analytics.

spk_0 Yeah, I think your point is, is, is, is, is, expecting a junior sales rep to now perfectly know why, you know, this is the right customer. And then now they have the message to say to them, they can also demo the product at an extremely deep degree is like, we're definitely like not there.

spk_0 My, my thinking specifically from a territory standpoint is if you, if you are elevating more of the right accounts to them, they're going to be spending time in an area that's more conducive to success.

spk_0 They're going to be having the right conversations and they should be having similar styles of conversations. I mentioned not gold calling in one of my previous examples, but I'm still a huge proponent of as much time as you can possibly spend customers in the market.

spk_0 I'm a huge proponent of in person events now. I think the boomerang has swung totally back on that. That's not a new host idea, but I'm a big fan of sales rep spending time in that market. So I think it's about that partnership.

spk_0 Revops should be able to put those sales reps in a position for success. So they're not spending their time saying actually this account is in the Philippines and just doing life manual data work.

spk_0 They're actually on the phones with these companies that could be a good fit. It's not going to be perfect, but they're getting more reps that way.

spk_0 Yeah, I mean, I think the people always, you know, I think again, we've over swung in various. We always, yeah, everybody does all this, not right.

spk_0 Sales isn't a numbers game purely, but it is a numbers game. The more at bats you get, the more understanding you have about the interactions about what works and what doesn't work.

spk_0 So at a certain point, yes, it is a numbers game, especially early in your career. To me, it's it's quantity early in quality later. Right. Because I always say as a manager when I was managing reps, I there was two levers I could pull to improve your results.

spk_0 One was quantity and quality, right. And the easier one for me to figure out was the quantity one. Can you do the job? Do you make the 50 dials? Do you make, you know, because of because I know the equation.

spk_0 And if it, you know, pumps out if you do these activities, it should do this, right. Then if you don't hit your numbers, my question always uses a well, did if you didn't hit your revenue targets as like, well, did you do the activities? Well, you know, I only did 250 versus four. Well, then go back into fucking 400 call, you know, like that.

spk_0 And because I can't, I can't figure out if it's a quality or quantity thing at that point. But if you hit 400 dials, for instance, which was my numbers early days a week.

spk_0 Now I know it's not an issue with your effort. Now I know it's quality. Now let's take a step back and now I can educate you. But I think so many people are trying to skip that step and jump right to the quality. It's almost like teaching a, this is why I hated Challenger sale.

spk_0 Teaching a 22 year old kid Challenger. See how you out of your mind. You know, like that's like giving a 10 year old a shotgun and saying, yeah, go ahead, shoot over there. Like what?

spk_0 So there's that learning curve that I'm nervous about here and I'm trying to figure out frameworks to address that to improve the business acumen and all that grit that is necessary to have the context to have the quality.

spk_0 Yeah, yeah, it's funny. I remember sitting in a Challenger training when I was like very young and I was going to be selling to CIOs and developers, which I just, I probably could not have honestly held a 15 minute conversation about Google Cloud at that time.

spk_0 We're software development generally. And so like,

spk_0 drowning them in a sea of rationale was probably not the right move for me at that point. So yeah, I resonate with that.

spk_0 I use that. I use that exact analogy. I'm like, yeah, go ahead and tell a 22 year see what happens when 22 years old, 23 years old, good challenges and IT professional.

spk_0 Because I was that too. Like I didn't know about Challenger sale when I was right, but I kind of tried because I had sat in certain I used to sell IT services. And so, you know, I'd always go with my engineer because I didn't know what the goes talking about, but I would sit in server rooms and I would ask questions.

spk_0 So I kind of picked up on the lingo a few times. And I was like, you're got a little cocky and I was like, I don't need an engineer. I remember like going about CIO and kind of, oh, let me tell you, right. And it's and looking back on it, it's hysterical.

spk_0 Because almost all of them are like this. Oh, look at this adorable little sales rep. Oh, he's cute. He's trying. Right. And they they give you almost just enough rope to hang yourself. And then after a while, they're like, okay, anyways, pop, pop, pop, pop. Right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean right. So it's Challenger sales always been a challenge for me.

spk_0 But let's let's talk about your evolution from a sales standpoint because you talked early in your career about being too tactical, right. And I'm wondering a what the shift was there. But then you with

spk_0 Bugi board's first customer. It was a very kind of value relationship oriented thing. So you went from super tactical to seemingly a lot more strategic.

spk_0 A, when did you make that switch and B, how do you scale that first customer interaction engagement that you had so that you can replicate that with the rest of the team.

spk_0 What I've been calling it internally internally here is clarity selling. This might be nuanced for, you know, an early stage company. But when I started Bugi board, I would go on these sales calls and I would try to pitch our product.

spk_0 And I actually didn't know what the product was at this point. And so that came very clearly to these people right there. And I would listen back to these calls. I just, my head, my head, my head of my hands, I go, my goodness, what did you just say.

spk_0 And so the first Bugi board customer that we got, I was just, I wanted to learn as much as I could about these revenue operations people that weren't from my world. And so I was just sitting forums and trying to answer questions, try to meet people.

spk_0 Someone posted that they wanted to, they they had to do a territory related question for interview they were about to do. They were like, here's the question. What do people think about this?

spk_0 And I said, hey, I, I just started this company. You want to just meet for an hour and talk about it. And I did all this prep work and I showed her what I thought because I just want to compare notes with somebody.

spk_0 And she was like, I feel like you just did my homework for me like, thank you so much. And she ended up taking another job later on in ironically had to design territory. And I just remembered that I just tried to be helpful to her and had been clear in my ideas.

spk_0 And so there was just this simplicity of it that she trusted me because I helped her was a relational side that I just, I had been too deep in it before to really understand.

spk_0 So let's talk about scale, right? Because and in the scaling that really stem from quite frankly, the quality of the territory that you're aligned with, right? Because if it's a spray and pray approach, it's almost damn near impossible to do that what you did there, right?

spk_0 Like learn about the business, be super targeted, be high value, right? So there's one part of yes, okay, if we got a right territory and it's aligned in my, you know, intent data finds the clients that are fit my tier one ICP, I can spend my time doing that, right?

spk_0 But it was still in kind of unfortunately in a world of VC back that I actually had to ask you like, you know, from a VC standpoint, but the pressure is there to grow.

spk_0 Yeah, and you know, let's go back to my zero ox analogy. I almost got fired because when I game into that territory, it was evident to me I tried to do what all the other sales reps were doing like all my private sector client reps, flipping copiers every day, you know, like almost immediately, right?

spk_0 And I'd go into the secretary state treasury and all these others, I'll be like, hey, I'm going to talk about your copiers and they'd be like, get the fuck out of here. Like, we don't want to talk to you. We've had six of you in the past three years, like, whatever, we'll see another one of you in six months. So I was like, holy shit, like I was forced into the design thinking version of sales.

spk_0 Because I couldn't just go top down and be like, hey, I got this great solution. You should buy it. I literally had to have one building. It was one Ashburton place in Boston, Massachusetts right next to the state house. And I would every day I would walk to the top of the building and I shake hands, kiss babies, shake hands, kiss babies, shake hands, kiss babies.

spk_0 And I would sit down with the users and I would learn about their workflows and I wouldn't sell a damn thing. Like I wouldn't even talk to the executives. And then about nine months in my boss was like, I had zero results like zero. I wanted to hear. And he was like, dude, I thought you were some king shit. You know, we hired you to fix this. And I'm like, just and thankfully I'm a little bit Boston, true and through. So I was like, dude, basically fuck off. Like you gave me a bag of shit. Let me do this because it's the only way I know how to fix this thing, right?

spk_0 And then what I did was about nine months in I would go to each one of the executives and I would say, hey, you mind if I get some time on your calendar just to show you what I've learned over the course of the past nine months working with your employees here.

spk_0 Well, you know, when I mapped out all of their terror like all of their workflows and their office floor, I had like a handwritten office floor map with a copier here and a printer here. And I was like, look, these are analog. If you flip these along to this and you do this and then you're going to save some money and they will actually be more efficient. And they were like, holy shit.

spk_0 But yes, right? And it was like million dollar contract, million dollar contract. And I remember dumping it on my, my boss's desk and being like, see, right?

spk_0 That is a rarity for reps and for founder for reps with management and founders with VCs. So how do you keep the VCs at bay, if you will, or the growth aggressive growth targets at bay to create an environment with that quality.

spk_0 And quality is, is, is enforced.

spk_0 Yeah. That's a great question. We're, we're, we're entirely bootstrapped. I've worked exclusively.

spk_0 Okay. Good for you. Nice. Thank you.

spk_0 I've worked at companies that are VC backed and publicly owned. And to me, it's, it's entirely a cultural leadership ethos. Right?

spk_0 If they're feeling that pressure and they think that to achieve success, what they need to do is to put that pressure down like then that's what's going to happen.

spk_0 If they culturally understand and they can quantify that the treating customers in a certain way will produce results over time.

spk_0 And they have enough confidence in that they can, they can set it up in a way that's not, you know, it's not relax. You still are out there running from every office to every office grinding.

spk_0 And that needs to be extremely measured. But to me, it's an ethos. And that's kind of like when I did back to the ocean, it's like these customers are absolute kings.

spk_0 If you think of them out in Kings and Queens, if you think of them out there in the wilderness and our goal is to break buck shot on them, it's just not going to work.

spk_0 Yeah, I think that's the, that's why I tell reps when they're looking for jobs, like new career paths or whatever it is.

spk_0 Like you got to kind of get that leadership vibe here because, and I love engineers don't get me wrong. Engineers are fantastic. They're great products.

spk_0 But if sales is seen in two ways. One is if sales is seen as an app like as a second class citizen, if you will, right, because the product is that good.

spk_0 So it's an engineering founder products insane. Yeah, okay, we tolerate sales. I personally would not join that company because I've rarely seen companies fail because the product doesn't work.

spk_0 Or not fit. I've seen them all fail because sales doesn't work. Right.

spk_0 But then on the flip side, if they are sales, but it's like the grant card own version of shitty sales, right, where you just go, go, go, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers.

spk_0 And it's like that's a massive red flag that I would run away with. So I guess if you're a rep or even a leader looking for your next, you know, position, next challenge, how do you uncover that in an interview, for instance, or is there something you can look out from the outside?

spk_0 That says this company, this company gives a shit like this one. They're growing fast, but they're doing it in a quality way.

spk_0 Because a lot of times we can't from the outside really uncover that to see is are there indicators that you look at that says, yeah, this is a company that gets it.

spk_0 That's a great question. I think there's, there's so much you can do now to figure out what it's like to work at a company before you step in it.

spk_0 Right, you have access to websites like rep view glass door, you can go and look at tons and tons of reviews. You couldn't hit up people on LinkedIn. So hey, think about working at this, this company, you might even be able to get them a referral bonus and they'll tell you exactly what it's like to work there.

spk_0 So that'll give you like that the soft facts. But when you're in a conversation and you're talking to the leaders and they're interviewing you, you have to turn the tables on them and see if they know what they're talking about.

spk_0 Okay, what is my territory? They can't answer the question. They they don't know what's going on, right?

spk_0 Or what is what are my expectations going to be around quota about being in person about how often I'm going to be meeting with customers.

spk_0 I always like to ask him, I was interviewing in a company one time and I asked what the guys favorite industry publications or books were.

spk_0 And he just looked at me like I was ghost like, oh, yeah, he doesn't know anything about the industry. It doesn't read anything about the industry.

spk_0 And so it's me. I was like a major reply. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the problem is that we as a potential employees don't interview the company nearly as much as we should as much as they're interviewing us.

spk_0 And I'll say that tell reps all the time like, hey, get core on your values first. Like just understand what your core values are.

spk_0 And because once you do that, you can start to look for companies, businesses, leadership that align with those. And once you do that, you can do some special stuff.

spk_0 But if you aren't allowed on court or aren't aligned on core values, you're going to it's never going to end well.

spk_0 So love it. Well, look in the interest of time here, we're coming up on anything I missed or anything else that the audience should be paying attention to that we didn't dive into doing the call.

spk_0 Oh, you know, I don't think any topic so we missed I just I'm feeling super hopeful right now. I know it's been sort of a weird time to be in sales. I've been specifically in the world of tech.

spk_0 But I sort of feel an undercurrent of positivity of some of these companies and products doing things that work. And so I just like to share that with the audience because for me, we're out we're out here growing in. We're trying to make a bootstrap company work.

spk_0 But I think there's some some good energy among us. So sending that out all listening.

spk_0 I'm glad because it's it's hard to come by like it's easy to be pessimistic these days with all the stuff that you're seeing out there and I have a I have a slight alteration to that because I am I am optimistic.

spk_0 But only for those of us that care and are willing to put in the work. Yeah, I'm saying insanely pessimistic for everybody else.

spk_0 The average players out there, the ones who are just going through the motions, you know what I mean and trying to make a buck and do their thing or whatever but don't give a shit and aren't willing to like open up their eyes and evolve and try things and you know that type of stuff like that.

spk_0 So for that and unfortunately, I think that's a much larger part of our population than than the ones who give a shit. So yeah, the wake up call is is coming. There's never stood out about that.

spk_0 It's not even I tell people you know if you don't think it's a problem going to chat GPT right now and pretend like your potential client.

spk_0 For your services in five minutes, you'll realize that you get more value out of that than some dipshit SDR that's going to ask them band questions and flip over to an AE is going to ask them the same questions don't through a demo and then bring an SE in two weeks later, right.

spk_0 So those are the ones that I'm saying you better wake up now or else your time is limited but everybody else but the people who care and are like, oh, this is a cool opportunity.

spk_0 Man, I think this guy's the limit quite frankly.

spk_0 I love that. I love that. I'm here for that.

spk_0 Awesome. Well, Kevin, it's been a pleasure talking to where can people find out more information about you and what you're doing with boogie board and all that other stuff.

spk_0 Yeah, check us out on LinkedIn. I'm going to our website boogieboard.ai. I'm on LinkedIn if you want to DM me. I'm happy to chat with any listeners.

spk_0 Very cool. Awesome. And well, thanks again for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you. Good. Well, absolutely and everybody hopefully enjoy the conversations much as I did.

spk_0 Like I always say at the end of all these podcasts God there make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your days going or how bad you think it went.

spk_0 If you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side.

spk_0 Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests were one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going.

spk_0 It would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

spk_0 Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you.

spk_0 Go to jbaros.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together.

Kevin Davis: The Surfer’s Guide to Smarter Sales Territory Planning

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