@Pipeline_papi It is a fairly gnarly interview process lol
You keep doing your thing though man and it’ll land. It’s all learning & growth in this game called life.
Understand what you’re saying but have an additional thought to this:
Take the mindset you’re implying & then sell how your client wants to be sold to. Vital to remove our emotion tied to the outcome, but clients will tell you what they need from you to feel comfortable moving forward as well.
Learning DISC profiles and how to spot them had tremendous impact on me.
A D personality needs different things from you than an I or a C & they all communicate, evaluate and validate differently.
Current Large Ent AE at Gartner, have sold SaaS and managed teams at software orgs.
2 things:
1. If you can have success selling at Gartner you can sell anywhere IMO. Very difficult. There’s a ton of great talent that stay around for a long time & would crush it in software, but many don’t last.
2. Per your original post - Clients don’t work with Gartner for the research. It’s the 2,500 analyst that can hop on a call to help them solve problems - the pre made toolkits that would take them days to make on their own - benchmark assessments - new to role CXO’s that get aligned an executive partner to serve directly as an advisor to them, etc.
Many of us IC’s pay $10k+ for coaches out of our own pockets - similar business case for an exec and their teams.
It’s still super challenging - just some additional context FWIW.
People have to WANT to work with you. Period.
If there are other seemingly comparable options on the table that were perceived as being easier to work with, less arrogant, etc. people are going to hire them.
Unless you are a generational talent or no other compatible options are available you cannot afford to go into an interview and be perceived as anything other than a pleasure to work with.
Huge life lesson that anyone can take away. He’ll have a great career & this will likely be the fuel he needs to propel that, I have no doubt. But he did not have the leverage he thought he had going into this process.
Again, I believe in Shedeur and hope to see him succeed - what a story that would be.
But there are lessons to be learned here that anyone could benefit from.
This is just my opinion! How do you perceive this situation?
From a former football coach turned sales professional:
There are real life lessons to be learned from this Shedeur Sanders situation that can benefit anyone looking to navigate their way up through the working world.
Hoping some of my former athletes that are now working adults can take something from this.
🧵⬇️
Bottom line: you have to play the people game carefully.
I’m sure there’s a ton that went on behind the scenes that none of us are aware of but one thing that does seem pretty evident is that many teams spotted what they perceived as arrogant, entitled, someone who passes the buck and didn’t value their opinion of him. Not good if you want to get hired.
At the end of the day, teams clearly felt like they had comparable options that would be less of a headache to deal with.
Love it. Sometimes leveraging intel/info from the previous AE has diminishing returns for that reason.
I’ve always found when you focus on company’s overall objective they’re trying to achieve + the main initiatives your prospect is being tasked with to achieve that goal, as long as you truly have a solution to the problem budget seems to become available real quick. AND those priorities often shift so what was relevant yesterday may not be today.
Congrats on the win!