Daniel Klein

Enterprise Sales @ Databricks

Been selling software for 15 years. Missed quota once. I blame my kid.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@FidelCacheFlow Lol...dude... Ron is arguably the most successful CRO ever in tech... 10+ years at Databricks selling a highly, highly technical product.

generally the people who are the best at what they do can make extremely difficult tasks sound simple.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

Databricks is a founder led company.

Seven of them -- all computer science majors / phds.

What are their roles now? (after more than ten years...)

CEO
CTO
VP of Engineering
Chief Architect
SVP of Field Engineering
Founder of Perplexity
Executive Chairman

Every single one of them... still heavily involved with the company.

I'm a massive believer in working for founder led companies -- why?

- Honesty... these people have been working together for over a decade. They don't beat around the bush with each other or others. They operate from first principles and move fast. You can feel that from the top down. It's not political...
- Everything is cohesive... since every founder has been with the company from the beginning. They all know every single part of the product. Because there is deep expertise with every part of the product at the top, departments and products just work better together.
- Vision... they all have this shared and powerful vision for the company. These founders are not building the company to put a checkmark on their resume. They are building a company to generationally transform the way data and AI is used.

they care about the business differently than when you bring in outside execs.

Because their company IS THEM. From the very beginning it is a reflection of them -- the success of the company goes way beyond making money.

and you can feel it -- the product...the people...the energy. You genuinely feel how much the founders care.

founder led companies are special. Databricks is special.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

Leaked email from Dario to his investors.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@EvanHub it's the exclamation that does it for me

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

Hear me out... I love outbound right now as an enterprise tech seller.

but it needs to be done right.

Outbound sucks when you are praying and spraying. Outbound sucks when you make a cold call, and don't have any idea about how you're going to help the customer. Outbound sucks when you send another generic email that you know if your customers actually see, they are going to think you're an AI slop sales person... or just not good at what you do.

Outbound get's fun when you take the time to do proper research. Understand what the company is trying to accomplish. Come up with your own unique hypothesis on how you can help their business... and deeply believe in that hypothesis.

I promise you...

If you are doing outbound right now and hate it. Pick one account. Develop a GENUINE POV and how your company can uniquely help them. A POV that if your manager asked, you could tell them without reading off a screen.

Then make cold calls to the execs at that company. Send emails to the most important people at that company with the POV you deeply believe in.

Watch how much more interested in outbound you become.

It's very easy to get into bad patterns in sales. We just want to hit our call metrics. We want to FEEL like we are doing something, rather than actually doing something.

Sometimes taking the time to slow down and think... come up with a plan, have a unique idea... can make a huge difference.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@natolisnuggets i'm down

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

Who's who?

Unfair question because we know who won the initial home run race...

I still think Anthropic in the lead right now. But that OpenAI video is the equivalent of a 600 ft BOMBB...

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@BrianLaManna_ wow

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

If you landed in tech and make great money, it's your job to pay it forward.

We are all so lucky to be here... and it's not always because we are more talented, or smarter than people who are not in tech. It's because for some reason or another, our paths led us here. For some people it didn't.

I have a few people I remember helping break in who's lives changed.

1. I helped a buddy of mine I went door to door with selling security systems get a BDR job back in 2011. He was waiting tables. I told him he needed to get into software. Now he is an AVP at one of the best known AI Native companies on the planet after historic runs at some other incredibly well known companies. He also got his brother hired who has had multiple 7 figure years in sales.

2. One of my friends from my first company which was in DC was looking to move to NYC. Helped him get a job at the startup I was working at during that time. He ended up living me with a few weeks and had an excellent career run there before going to Gong. He has now been there a number of years. We became close friends. Our kids spent the weekend together a few weeks back.

3. This one isn't about a specific individual... it's more about just taking a little time to help people who reach you to you in the right way. I've helped associates I met at Best Buy interview at tech companies. Other folks in hospitality, and people from LinkedIn. I'm not always able to return every message I get... but I do my best to get back to the people who are thoughtful in the way they reach out to me.

I know we are all so busy. It feels like every person I talk to has optimized almost every second of their life.

But if you find an opportunity to help someone around you. Consider doing it. It means you're lucky enough to be in a position to do it.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@natolisnuggets athlete

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

This is the single most important piece of advice I can give to tech sellers right now. And it is cliche, but it is the future of selling.

If you are going to get good at one thing over the next few years. It needs to be storytelling.

I'll break down why:

The old way of selling was repetitive. You had your intro deck. You had your demo... and you had your generic set of references you used when you sold. Your POCs were also pretty generic. You were working off a set of requirements and trying to prove them out. You could generally say the same things over and over and win deals.

The new way of selling is completely different. I'm presenting a different deck to almost everyone I talk to. I'm presenting a new demo to almost every stakeholder I talk to. We are going above and beyond on POCs to show things that have never been done before.

but you want to know the problem with that?

So is everyone else...

You're no longer special. Everyone is doing demos. Everyone is building POV decks. Everyone is using generally the same tools to present very similar things to their customers.

So what does that leave...

Your ability to tell stories. Your ability to paint a picture of how other customers have done the things you believe your customer should do. You talking about your customers world in a way that makes it sound like you work there.

Everyone can build a beautiful deck in five minutes.
Being able to tell a great story while presenting that deck... that cannot be done by AI.

Over the next 10 years. People will buy from people they believe understand their world and can enable them to serve their customers in a new way.

They won't be buying an AI model.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@lady_valor_07 Bernard

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

In tech sales we have something called a BDR. They help AEs get meetings.

My BDR has been crushing recently. Setting up multiple meetings per week.

Want to know how we partner together?

We talk one time at the beginning of the week. I ask what he is working on. We strategize. And he gets to work. Nothing special.

But I think the reason he is crushing. Is because I’m also doing a lot of outbound. I’m coming up with new ideas. He is coming up with new ideas. We are sharing what works and doesn’t work.

I go high with execs and he goes a little lower with ICs and directors. I use the info he helps me gather in conversations with execs.

So much pressure is put on the bdr to do all the work. And when they don’t do well we think it’s because they aren’t good.

Show me an AE who is doing a ton of outbound and working hand in hand with their bdr…I’d bet those AEs are getting meetings from their bdr because they are in the trenches and learning from each other.

Easiest way to up level with your bdr is to do the job yourself.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@angushf https://t.co/REDH73cwKZ

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

Steal my intro call prep:

I needed to prepare for a intro call in under 30 minutes for a massive potato producer. Here is exactly how I did it:

(this is for someone on their manufacturing team btw)

1. Run prospecting skill which gathers all info on the company. You should know how to do this.
2. Plugged the LinkedIn profile of the person into my AI so it had context
3. Asked AI to provide me the top 10 KPIs that the person I'm talking to cares about most in their business.
4. Asked which of those KPIs their company is struggling with
5. Found customers who have solved those exact problems with Databricks.
6. Used AI to build a deck showing exactly how we have helped companies similar to them in the past with our POV on how.
7. Used AI to build an HTML5 app that shows the end to end process of potato production. I studied it for about 5 minutes to understand their world.
8. Googled them and read recent news (LLMs don't always have recent data)
9. Physically write down my hypothesis on how I believe we can help them. Without using AI.

The meeting is with an exec, so this is a bit more extensive than I might usually do.

AI is still not good at writing emails

but man... it is AMAZING at doing research and helping you understand how you can help your customers... FAST.

I absolutely love preparing for meetings now. I go into meetings talking about their BUSINESS CHALLENGES. KPIs that they understand and are actively working on.

It makes selling so much more fun.

and... when you demonstrate you understand their business. You are now selling something your competitor might not have... you...

such an awesome time to be selling.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

I'm 38 years old and in tech sales. I remember thinking when I was 27 that I had reached the top 1% of sellers.

By that age I had closed 100s of deals.
Was always at least 130% + of my annual number
Made really good money.

but... looking back knowing what I know now, I was only a decent sales rep.

why?

Because it was all inbound...

When you're taking inbound leads closing deals anywhere between $40k - $1M, you're learning a subset of what matters if you want to be a top tier seller.

yes... you learn great discovery... you can learn to do a killer demo... you learn how to beat the competition... run an efficient POC... negotiate fast. Etc... These are all very, very valuable skills and I'm grateful that I learned them.

But now I do outbound enterprise sales to some of the largest retail companies on the planet.

It is a whole different set of skills.

Amazing POV development
Grit on doing a ton of outbound
extremely creative and thoughtful messaging
Learning how to manage your time effectively (arguably one of the hardest)
Deep research on organizations
Business acumen.

The list goes on and on.

Sales is one of those games that is endless. Always something to get better at. Always someone to learn from.

and now at 38. I've never felt like I had more to learn.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@Jpmontoya_94 mostly databricks.

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@bestrevenueco eh... the best guy on my team is insanely strategic. he is a hunter. knows how to work so many angles (partners, gifts, linkedin...just everything)

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@morganjingram yessir... and always changing

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@mistamor especially as you go higher and higher up in enterprise

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@ChazBlack_AI yea... i'm far from perfect and don't mind sharing that

[Daniel Klein @_DanielKlein_]

@natolisnuggets so far for me (with a 13 month old). it has been seeing the world through his eyes. learning to feel what he is feeling.

definitely not making some of the mistakes my parents made... and like you said.. probably making some whole new ones

super fun and rewarding