Andela Flashcards
Tell Me A Little About Yourself
- I’m a pretty down-to-earth, Southern-bred guy from North Carolina driven by two great forces:
1) To live as passionate and purpose-driven a life as I can and
2) To accomplish as much as I can within the field of technology – which, I believe, is the defining industry of our time - What that’s translated to, though, from a purely professional lens is a track record over the past 6 1/2 years of helping companies grow by breaking critical ground
- I started as an appointment setter and quickly worked my way up to eventually leading an outbound sales team (in many ways sales found ME)
- And what prior bosses and colleagues will tell you, is that whether it’s a small SaaS platform or a large research organization, I’m a force at winning new revenue,
diversifying customer bases
and helping both my colleagues and our clients really root for our success
Why Looking to Leave?
- I joined Qualia because I knew from my previous role that the identity-resolution space was heating up as brands and agencies were increasingly seeing this technology as a must-have rather than an outsourcing expense
- Naturally, I realized that meant a lot of m&a action and consolidation within the space
- And, honestly, I wanted to be a part of that
- I was at a point in my career where I wanted to test myself and feel what it’s really like to have your work and efforts contribute to a company that’s successfully sold
- And over the last month, partly because of some of the initiatives I spearheaded, that’s exactly what’s happened as we were acquired by a seminal data-technology firm
- But I’m full of youthful energy and hungry for more success, so I’m hunting for my next big opportunity to build on what I’ve learned
Why Andela?
For 2 big reasons:
1) I’ve had a pretty rewarding career where I’ve watched my efforts and initiatives lead all the way up to helping a small company get bought for 2-3 times its original valuation.
But for me that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m full of energy and a fire to find the next business I can meaningfully contribute to, and help shape into a force to be reckoned with
2) It’s impossible for me to overlook how lucky I’ve been when so many others haven’t had that chance. I know the fights my immigrant parents had to put forward just to make it, and I know that now more than ever those very forces they fought are trying to become the norm. I see in Andela a way to combine both my talent for building market-beating businesses, and to connect with a core part of my identity.
Tell Me About Qualia
- Not sure how familiar you are with the space but Qualia is a data-technology service for user identity-resolution
- In a world where consumers spread their purchasing or research across different devices, browsing environments and screens throughout the day, we stitch those fragmented pieces together so you could recognize them in real-time and make better decisions about targeting or measuring them
- Our machine-learning intelligence plug into your digital audience data to connect a site visitor or user back to all additional devices he or she might use as part of their purchasing process.
Who do you typically work with?
- Because a huge part of my job is having conversations about something that is both highly technical and also very sensitive to a company: namely their audience identity
- I’m responsible for a lot of consensus-building
- This means that I touch the CTO, CMO, Head of Strategic Partnerships, Head of Data and Analytics, but also the Head of Digital Marketing, and Consumer Insights team
- I’m often talking to about 3 teams on average at a single company
Some clients?
- Banks: BNY Mellon, Capital One, SoFi
- E-commerce: Air BnB, StitchFix
- Fintech Companies: Prosper, LendingClub, Marlette Funding
- Several consulting companies: Axiom, BCG
WHAT DOES ANDELA DO?
*Help companies beat the escalating costs of the global developer shortage by tapping into a top-tier but underutilized talent pool: Africa’s brightest software engineers
How does your prospecting breakdown? PART 1
- I’ve seen the most concrete results from having a diversified toolbox, and not just relying on a single one
- The companies I’m most after – either b/c I know they are highly-qualified or have been well-vetted – I try to connect on a personal level with. I use Linkedin Sales Navigator, my Linkedin Network, and mutual connections to get decision-makers to talk to me
- For large companies I also often attend events where I know that company will be present, or is hosting a conference, and I try to connect in the most relevant and sociable way possible
- That tends to cover about 30% of my accounts
PART 2
*The next 70% I typically utilize cold outreach via email and some instances calls
*ZoomInfo, Apollo, SalesForce, D&B Optimizer
* I often comb through my accounts and group them by what they have in common – whether it’s a product or they are competitors or will be affected by something happening in that field –
and I run drip campaigns
So it can run along the lines of: use Apollo to locate who the decision-maker is, look to see if we have a connection on Linkedin, reach out or not, send a linkedin message if it’s a top target account, then follow-up with cold emails and maybe even leave a voicemail when possible
IF NOT TOP TARGET ACCOUNT then drip campaign and leaving voicemails.
How do you evaluate your pipeline?
- I’m extremely organized when it comes to this because being wrong or off about my numbers is something I take extremely seriously
- On average, I like to have 3X the ratio needed to hit quota (20 meetings per week)
- 65- 70% of all meetings I run each week are for brand new prospects or prospects still in early stage
- of the 30 - 35% left, I like a good 25% of them to be accounts that are in a verbal commit and could close at the latest a month from now
- 15% to be accounts that should be closing by end of month so within 2 weeks
What’s your time to close?
Where do you keep track of that number?
*I’m huge on salesforce
I also keep track of my own statistics through a GoogleDrive spreadsheet that I have on me all the time
*Average time to kick off a POC is 34 days
*Average time to full close is 77 days
How long is your pipeline meeting? How many opportunities are you typically managing?
- Meet twice a week: once to just run numbers, the second to discuss and share tips on strategy
- Can run from 30 mins to an hour
- Typically I like to have about 16 active opportunities
Recent Quota?
$1.2M for year:
$1,207,000 (discount brought it down from 215k)
started out as the newest and the underdog but ended up leading
How do you fit prospecting into your schedule? How do you measure it and make sure you do it. At the end of the week how do you know you’ve done the volume you need to do?
- I literally have the most color-coded calendar you’ve ever seen
- You’ll probably think it’s something out of a military manual or something like that
- I carve out prospecting time at the beginning and end of each day, with a little around lunch
- They are all labeled PT for Prospecting Time and are in blue
- I often use Boomerang to help schedule emails to be sent out at a different time
- I report on this at each pipeline meeting
SALES STYLE
*Well, I think first and foremost, there is a distinct philosophy at the core of me that defines what I do.
*And that is, I don’t see sales as just a transactional experience where I’m pushing a product
*I see it instead as an opportunity to develop a human connection where I’m genuinely trying to help you be more of an asset to your company
*And so whether it’s selling to the folks at Univision or a team at Time Inc, I actively choose to not be some buzzword-happy mouthpiece and lead instead with questions that I know these folks are responsible for answering every day:
Where is the value of our business migrating to?
What blind-spots are we not covering?
Where can we win against our competition?
*Genuinely connecting with them, I’ve found, allows them to articulate why they need to work with you
*And it also creates evangelists of your brand in the marketplace
