Justin Barney edited
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[00:00:00] Richard: In a 2023 study conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership, the number one challenge facing leaders in both small and large organizations is competing priorities of people and tasks. The challenge of both leading people and managing the work. The study did find this challenge can be more pronounced when new to a role or when managing a new inexperienced or large team.
[00:00:26] Today, we're considering some goodness related to lessons learned and challenges of leading teams in both large enterprises and small companies.
[00:00:41] Back with us today is Justin Barney, CRO of Thousand Eyes. Justin has experience in startups, private equity, and large enterprises. I'm excited to bring him back today where we're going to dive into just some of his experience and learnings. Comparing and contrasting startups and large enterprise and see what we can learn from Justin.
[00:01:00] So Justin, welcome back.
[00:01:01] Justin: Richard, thank you for having me back. I am thrilled to be back. I had so much fun the first time that I begged you to come back and you granted that and I couldn't be
[00:01:10] Richard: more excited. Absolutely. You're just so fun and down to earth and love chatting with you all the time. So. Let's dig into your experience just a little bit.
[00:01:19] Don't, you don't need to go through your whole resume, but just share for the listeners, the variety of companies that you've worked in and then we'll dive in.
[00:01:28] Justin: Yeah, I actually started my career on wall street as an investment banker and a private equity investor. Then I went to grad school. Fell in love with technology.
[00:01:36] This was the late nineties when the internet was being born and decided that I really wanted to build a career in technology cause I fell in love with it. I really fell in love with the networking of technology. So I came out to Silicon Valley. I left New York and came out to Silicon Valley and started my career.
[00:01:50] I'm at Cisco now. I'm CRO of Thousand Eyes, which is a company that Cisco acquired. But previous to that, I had done four pure play startups in Silicon Valley. Two of them were acquired by large public tech companies, Citrix and Juniper. And I had a good run at both of those and really enjoyed them. And then I did a fifth startup, which was actually a private equity spin out from Juniper, uh, Pulse Secure, where they took really the guts of some technology and then built a company around it, and that was pretty interesting working at a PE backed startup and then a bit at Cisco for four and a half years.
[00:02:23] So I've definitely seen. Really small, and I've seen really big as well. A good swath of experience, you might say.
[00:02:30] Richard: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you and I are kind of process gurus, and we think alike in many ways. That's why I love chatting with you. And one of the things that we have talked about that we have in common is we like to structure things and thinking about people, process, and products, right?
[00:02:45] Or people, process, and technology. What if we just use that as a framework for our discussion today? And just cover each of those three and see what might be a similar or different or just some key insights, uh, within each of those categories.
[00:02:58] Justin: Yeah, I think it's great. There's so many variables that come to running a business and then being a CRO.
[00:03:03] I think if you bring it back to the people you're hiring, the process you're following and the products and technology that you're selling, I think you frame it in those three. And you can really get a lot done. So let's do it.
[00:03:15] Richard: People. We often say our most, most important assets in the business can't run the business, can't sell a product without our people.
[00:03:23] So what comes to mind when you think about getting that right with people, just based on small startup experience, large enterprise experience?
[00:03:31] Justin: Yeah, I think of three things. Hiring, retention, and then performance management. The artist formerly known as firing, but we call it performance management now. So to me, people is where it starts and ends.
[00:03:42] It is the most important thing, but there's also one other component to that is you want to have fun with the people that you work with and that you hire, because this is a stressful job. It's a 24 by seven job, especially with social media now and always being on. It's important for me to hire well, and I want to hire people that fit the culture that I have fun with every day.
[00:04:02] So that's a critical thing, but breaking down those three things. So hiring, I've actually learned a lot about hiring while being at Cisco. Over the last four and a half years, things that I didn't pick up from my startup journey before, but Cisco, there's a big push for diversity, which is great. And I've actually really come to understand and learn why, because having that diverse team allows for better thought process.
[00:04:27] There's so much goodness that comes out of it. But. There are some tips on how we accomplish hiring diversity that I like to pass along. And really, when you do this and you hire a diverse team, it will give you that strategic advantage. So first off, I start with an ICP, which you might say is ideal customer profile.
[00:04:45] I think about it as the ideal candidate profile. And you really have to work hard to get hiring right. Whenever new leaders are coming up who are now starting to hire people, I always tell them, Think about how much time you think it will take to hire for a position and then double it. It takes a lot of time to get it right because if you make mistakes in hiring, it is costly.
[00:05:06] It's probably more costly than I feel like it's ever been. Have that rigorous and documented hiring process. And then make sure that you have a diverse interview panel for the hiring. And then also make sure you strive to have a diverse candidate pool. And by doing that, you're going to inject that strategic diversity into the hiring panel to make sure that you're not just hiring to one particular profile that you happen to subconsciously like.
[00:05:35] And then having a diverse interview candidate pool will also help make sure that you're hiring the best folks. And what I've seen at Cisco is that naturally that helps drive more diversity in your hiring. And I have seen firsthand the strategic advantage it is. And by the way, it's also just a lot more fun to work with people who aren't all like you.
[00:05:55] So that's number one in terms of how you hire. We talked about operational rigor, make sure your hiring process is documented and make sure you stick to it, even if things get really, really busy. So one thing we do at Thousand Eyes is we go through and we have our candidates do a playback. So they go through, they do their interviews, and then we take the interview panel.
[00:06:14] We invite the person back. This is probably more for leaders, but we have individual contributors do the exact same as well, too. They come back and then they present back to the panel what they've learned. And we have them give the elevator pitch and we ask them about how they're going to, based on what they've understood now are the challenges for that position.
[00:06:33] How are they going to apply their skills to solve them? And at first, when I learned about this, I was like, yeah, but you know, an A player salesperson doesn't want to sit in front of a panel and do the pitch. Like there's a certain amount of ego that certain salespeople reach. And I started thinking about it and it's like, well, wait a minute.
[00:06:49] If someone has so much ego that they don't want to go do a playback to the panel and they don't really care that much about the technology that's being sold or the company they're joining or the culture that they're joining, then those probably aren't the people, even if they have just killed it, every single company and whatnot, like those aren't really the people that I want.
[00:07:08] We don't really want them on our team. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we stick with that playback method and it has helped us build a really, really strong culture with hundreds of salespeople, and I would definitely recommend that. And then probably last on hiring recruiters. I found them to be invaluable. You do have to invest in them.
[00:07:27] You have to invest time. To make sure that they understand the technology solution and the ideal candidate profile. But you get a return when you hire good recruiters. And last, always keep a bench. Right? So we are constantly talking to great people, even though we don't have recs. Making sure they understand about the high growth that we're experiencing.
[00:07:46] And we keep that bench warm recs, we're able to actually go out to those people we've been keeping warm and bring them in. And that's also been helpful. So that's hiring.
[00:07:55] Richard: Let me ask you just a couple of things on that. One is on your ICP. I love that idea of the ideal candidate profile in our work. We'll often do competency development, right?
[00:08:06] Skill and behavioral competency to define the role. And that feeds into the ICP, right? You're hiring profile, but then also your training and development strategies come off of that as well. One of the things that I've. is that larger companies, like I experienced this when I spent a number of years at SAP, you're referencing, learning some of these great disciplines and rigor from Cisco, some of these larger companies just do a great job of putting in place some of those disciplines and that level of rigor.
[00:08:39] I think. There's a lot to learn from that. Even if you're serving a smaller company, you mentioned last time we talked, you just having mentors and things like that. And so mentors that have been in larger companies that you can inject some of those good disciplines when your company is maybe not that disciplined or that large yet to have all of that wealth of experience.
[00:08:58] So when you think about hiring, it's a long winded way of saying, are you seeing just a lot of goodness from some of that discipline and structure from a larger company and things like competency profiling really come to be an advantage?
[00:09:12] Justin: Richard, I think you nailed it. I am a stronger CRO after having been at Cisco for four and a half years, because I've learned stuff that I just never picked up in the small company startup world.
[00:09:24] And there is a lot of goodness that comes even though there's pros and cons to everything. Like. Cisco is really big, but really great people. And you're absolutely right. I've picked up a lot in terms of how you hire and build teams.
[00:09:37] Richard: That's awesome. Al, you mentioned one of your mentors, one of mine as well.
[00:09:41] And he talks about having your own personal board of mentors, right? Or your personal board of advisors. And so that's one of the things that I look for tying back to your diversity and your candidate profile and your teaming. Do I have diversity in those mentors and those that I look up to in terms of giving me advice in my business, right?
[00:10:02] Justin: Yep. Yep. It is not a checkbox. It's a strategic advantage. That's the most important thing that I've learned and that I would want any CRO to take away.
[00:10:11] Richard: Well, I derailed us just a little bit. So what comes to mind in retaining those rock stars and then managing performance?
[00:10:18] Justin: Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned on the past podcast that you have to invest a lot of time in comp plans.
[00:10:23] You have to understand what the market is for comp plans. You must have strong comp plans. You got to be upfront about them, be upfront about the pay. You got to set expectations within the company that it's okay. If salespeople make a lot of money, I have worked for some leaders who weren't that comfortable on that, but that's an important thing to set.
[00:10:42] Tools like team space. So we use team space at Cisco. It is very helpful in communicating. Everyone does an online asynchronous check in once a week. They can vent if there's anything that is bugging them. It allows me to then read that in an asynchronous manner, see what they're working on, keep in touch with.
[00:10:59] What's going on in their world. It has been an awesome, awesome tool. And so things like team space, where you can communicate asynchronously, because you can't do one on ones all the time, especially when you're traveling the world, and then in a hybrid world, you aren't in the office every day to read the body language.
[00:11:17] Um, Zoom does a terrible job of this, WebEx is better, but you know, being on video is important as well. And so again, tools like TeamSpace, just to do check ins, being on video is important. Um, being in front of people, like there's just a strong desire for people to get together. Again, OpEx is tight, I know, but, and getting your team together when you can is so critical.
[00:11:40] We're human beings still at the end of the day. And then. Also making sure that their career paths documented that people understand how they can do that. Cause that's important for why people will stay, be upfront and transparent, and then make sure you celebrate when people do.
[00:11:54] Richard: Let me ask you just one question on that.
[00:11:57] It's a bit tangential, but a lot of my clients are asking me these days, Hey, How many clients are getting the sales team together in person outside of a formal beginning of the year kickoff? So I'm just curious, what's your kind of point of view for things like QBOs or QBRs or things mid year or across the year?
[00:12:19] Are you forcing in person gatherings either in small regional teams or large teams or do you have a point of view on that?
[00:12:27] Justin: I do. Oh, ha ha. It's critical to do at least a couple of times a year subject to your OPEX envelope and any OPEX constraints. So if I have any of my management chain from Cisco listening to this podcast, please know that any in person meeting meets the OPEX requirements that have been handed down.
[00:12:47] I'm sort of kidding, but I know that every CRO or sales leader is going to have to operate within an environment. In my mind, my SLT and I are together. Two to three times a year, physically, if possible. Yes. You want to do the sales kickoff, which for us is actually next weekend, beautiful Las Vegas, but getting together at the halfway point, how are we doing, making sure we're together, we're doing the bonding and stuff to me, that's kind of minimum.
[00:13:15] It'll be that sort of two times a year, bringing the whole SLT together. Ideally, I would love to do it more than that, but that's where as a CRO, you're a road warrior, you sign up to be a road warrior, making sure that you're pulling people together as you're out visiting customers and partners, taking them with you and just making sure you're in front of them as much as possible.
[00:13:34] And then again, Obviously for us, every meeting is video. If your company is able to invest in the desk pro, I would highly recommend it because then at least you're there, you're looking at the person's full face. You can read their body language and it's not as good as being together, but it certainly helps.
[00:13:51] But yeah, you got to do it. You have to, and hopefully you make sure CEO about that. Make sure they're on board with investing the money to do that as well too. Love it. Uh, and that's something you got to do your clubs. You got to have your sales champion clubs every year to me is so critical, critical that should never go away.
[00:14:12] Richard: Even more critical for the spouses of those top performers who spend nights and weekends and travel away from home. Right. It's a chance to just kind of reward the family.
[00:14:22] Justin: It's funny. I, this wasn't planned, but whenever I host a club and you get everyone together, I ask all the spouses, significant others to stand up and I say, we are here for you.
[00:14:33] Because that's allow your significant other to do what they need to do to help grow the business so that we can delight our customers and ultimately create more jobs and make sure that the jobs that we have are solid. That's great. Love it. Totally agree.
[00:14:47] Richard: Well, let's, uh, one or two bullet points on performance management.
[00:14:51] So we don't skip that topic. That's not the fun stuff.
[00:14:54] Justin: It's critical. Nobody likes to move people out, but you have to. It comes down to making sure expectations are set when people join about what performance means. Again, documentation, starting with documented coaching, moving to a PIP. But the thing that I have continuously found is that the A players in your org don't want a CRO that won't make hard decisions and tough decisions.
[00:15:18] And these decisions suck. And a lot of times there may be reasons why the performance isn't there. And it may not be because of capability. It may be because That person's in a period of their life where they're just not into it or their heart's not in it, but ultimately you have to have a team that wakes up every day and jumps out of bed to go represent and sell your technology in the field until they go to bed.
[00:15:42] And if someone's not doing that, they're not pulling their weight. You got to move them out and that's a continuous process and it sucks. It will never be great, but you have to do it because those A players want the business to thrive and they want everyone driving as hard as they do. It's generally never personal, really isn't, but it's just a fact of life that you got to do it and you have to invest the time to make sure you do it.
[00:16:06] So that's the thoughts on performance
[00:16:07] Richard: management. Agree. I've seen sales managers, you know, a level or two down from the CRO, allow for some mediocrity on their team just because they don't want to hurt feelings. It's a hard decision. And that just, it's a cancer across the team. It just drags everybody down and it's just not good.
[00:16:25] We have to make those tough calls.
[00:16:27] Justin: What I found over a couple decades is the people that you've pushed out more times than not, when you run back into them in the field. They're actually glad that it happened because they just weren't happy. And they went and found a different role where they were able to do what they need to do or want to do.
[00:16:45] And it's just better for everyone.
[00:16:47] Richard: Great. We spent some good time in the people bucket. Let's move on to process. So a large company, small company, you've been in both. You mentioned last time your operational 13 week cadence, which I love. What are a couple of other examples of just implementing the right processes for the business?
[00:17:07] Justin: Yeah, and you'd mentioned the 13 week cadence, I published that so even the individual contributors know what we're doing in terms of they do a QBO. How does it get rolled up? How do we feed it into our forecast? When are we meeting? Like everyone above the board, 13 week cadence. So that's published.
[00:17:24] Everyone knows. I think if you are in a SAS company or a subscription company, get familiar with the layer framework, LAER, land, adopt, expand, renew. Every business is a subscription business. Now, every time you go buy something, it's like, Oh, and then here's the subscription on top of it. And so think about that framework, make sure each of your functions, whether it's in.
[00:17:45] A E or sales rep and S C customer success. P S sales acceleration. Rev Ops know what role they play in each of those four letters. Land, adopt, expand, renew. One of the things that we're focusing on that I see is kind of an issue right now in sass in general is. What is adoption? I'm doing air quotes, by the way.
[00:18:05] I don't probably can't see it, but what is adoption? When is my SAS platform truly adopted so that I know renewal will happen with high confidence? A lot of work going into that because it's not always necessarily like one specific number, and that number can also change over time. So. Handoffs after a new land is something that we're very focusing on documenting what is adoption so that the entire team rallies around it, making sure that account plans are joint account plans that are accessible by all put into Salesforce, accessible by all, uh, making sure teams compensated on renewals, like just standard blocking and tackling.
[00:18:45] But. A lot of that to make sure that we're all marching in one single process towards driving growth in the business.
[00:18:55] Richard: I like that. And one, one of the things that just comes from that is really treating you are a CRO, right? But it's not just the upfront revenue. It's recognizing that, especially like you said, in a subscription business or recurring revenue business, that adoption is key.
[00:19:12] I'm working with a client right now, the customer success function specifically. Because there's not a smooth handoff from sales to customer success, right? And so you're not getting the information they need. And so we're leaning back into sales to say, what information do we need to capture? When should we get those success folks involved?
[00:19:31] And a lot of times the answer is even before the deal's closed, right? To start introducing, how are we going to onboard our customers, et cetera. But just creating that process to smooth out. And reduce friction so that adoption occurs so that the value gets delivered and the customer recognizes the value.
[00:19:50] So I like that you highlight that in the layer framework for sure. And it's
[00:19:55] Justin: something that evolves too when you're a couple hundred million of ARR and you're growing at 30 plus percent. And you're available to renew dollars are growing and growing and growing. If you don't have this process in place with firm guidelines, things will start to unravel and you got to put the time up front to do that and just know that things will evolve as you analyze more and more data that comes in.
[00:20:17] What is considered adoption may change. So yeah, good learnings.
[00:20:23] Richard: And one more related tip to the listeners out there is that I find that there is a big difference in delivering value versus your customer recognizing the value that is being delivered, right? A lot of times, hey, we got great usage stats across our platform.
[00:20:39] And so, of course, they're getting the value, but they're over here, not really recognizing the value you're getting. And so, uh, we need to make sure we're creating value evangelists within our client accounts that drives expansion that drives renewals and stickiness and all of that good stuff. Absolutely.
[00:20:54] Let's move on to the third one, product or technology. What comes to mind there as we kind of wrap up our three prongs approach here?
[00:21:03] Justin: Yeah, I think I said this in the last podcast. I'll say it again. The number one, most important thing for a successful CRO, at least to get started is product market fit.
[00:21:12] Does the market. Have a huge pain point that's unsolved. And does your product fit that need and is truly differentiated. That product market fit is everything. It's one of the reasons why I'm at a thousand eyes right now within within Cisco. And so therefore that relationship with product management is key.
[00:21:31] The head of product management needs to be your partner CMO. Those three are invaluable to a successful growth of a company. That head of product management is going to be in the trenches with you. It must be symbiotic. You need to hold your sales team accountable for taking what product management and engineering deliver and go out and accomplish the goals that you set jointly with the head of product.
[00:21:55] And then when you do that, you can also hold product management accountable as well. You're holding each other accountable, but not in a finger pointing. Manner that is not healthy. It's got to be in a partnership manner. You got to make sure your goals are documented as well. So like one of the examples I always think of is when we gear up to move into federal sales, US federal sales, which generally requires, you know, FedRAMP certification, that takes a lot of engineering.
[00:22:20] And that also takes a lot of trade offs. So the product team and the engineering team now can't work on these 10 enterprise features because they're going to work on FedRAMP certification, but there's a huge pot of gold behind it. But making sure you set expectations of when you get FedRAMP, this is the general sales cycle that will go.
[00:22:40] These are the types of bookings, not going to happen overnight, but there is a huge market there. Making sure that you're being transparent, communicating. So that there's not a, he said, she said scenario that occurs later down the line. Hey, we built this for you. How come it's not selling? And not only that, but your products, the products got to evolve as well, too.
[00:22:59] I mean, customers don't just buy products today or solutions. They invest in vendor partners who they know will be around for the long haul and who will continue to innovate. That is absolutely critical. That roadmap selling. Obviously make sure your sales team sells what's on the truck, but we all know that roadmap, that vision is critical, especially for the C level execs who are like going to authorize the economic buyer to punch go, you're going to make sure that works.
[00:23:26] And that all comes down to that relationship with the product team and the sales team.
[00:23:31] Richard: Right. Because especially with sales has the voice of the customer, right? And so they're going to be the ones out leading the way, identifying some feature gaps and some requests and, Hey, can you put this on your roadmap?
[00:23:43] Right. And so having that good relationship and collaboration to feed into the product roadmap with your product team is key. Man, these discussions with you just fly by because, uh, I really love geeking out on this stuff with you, but, uh, we are near the, near the end. So, uh, let me just ask you kind of an open ended question.
[00:24:01] That is, as we close out, any other just general tips or insights come from your wealth of experience in large and small companies.
[00:24:10] Justin: Yeah, I actually, I put some thought into to this as I was going up because I know you had interviewed before Al Monserrat is one of my mentors and something I learned from him and I'm sure he learned from his mentor as well to before him.
[00:24:23] I know you have the audience. There's a lot of new CROs or up and coming sales leaders. And as you grow a business, you need to be very clear on what markets you are going to enter. And so obviously we've talked Richard a lot about. Documenting, having operational rigor when, and then having a product manager as your partner, because let's say, for example, you want to go into Japan, which is a huge market, there is a lot that goes into launching into Japan that requires a lot of product enhancements and documentation and whatnot.
[00:24:55] So one of the frameworks that Al taught me was think of markets in four categories, A, B, C, and D. So if you determined that a market, which could be a country, it could be a region, it could be something like federal sales, if it's a, you want to invest like a venture capitalist, you have decided with the CEO and head of product and engineering that you are going to invest ahead of bookings and you are going to spend money now because you know there's a big payout.
[00:25:21] B is invest like your private equity firm. So invest carefully, watch the bottom line, watch costs, but you want to invest in this type of market. This is B. C. Okay, we're going to maintain what we have here, but we are not going to invest. We're going to get what we can out of the investment we put into this.
[00:25:38] Maybe you've got a sales team in some country that's not huge. You don't want to pull out, but you're just going to keep it. And then D is this market is not good for us. We need to pull out or not go into it. And this is critical. I see too many CROs for example, that will expand into Asia. And they're like, Oh, I'll put a team in Korea, a team in Japan, a team in Indonesia, team in India, and.
[00:26:01] What you should do is think about which of those markets best fit your ideal customer profile and then make sure you go in and you go in well and you actually understand what it takes to enter. It's there's cultural differences, language, documentation, exchange rates, buying habits, partner, criticality, and go to market 24 by seven support.
[00:26:22] All that's got to take it into account. So think about. Where are you going ABCD that will help you communicate, work with the exec staff and just make sure that you're going in and you're prepared.
[00:26:33] Richard: I really like that analogy to the VCs and the PEs. My gears are turning up here in my head because we'll do segmentation work for companies and then on the heels of segmentation, help create the coverage strategy, which is like, where are you investing your resources?
[00:26:48] And so I'm wondering, I might kind of. Lean into this to really create some aha moments into what does that really look like and mean, and maybe bring some clarity. That's really good. Thanks for sharing that. Absolutely. We are at the end of our time. Once again, thank you for coming back as we close today.
[00:27:06] I'd love to learn a little bit about you personally. So outside of business, what brings goodness to your day? Do you have a hobby? What's fun for you to do?
[00:27:15] Justin: I love to exercise. We also live near a lake and we go out and we go wake surfing and stuff. So I love being on the water, but I love exercising, just being.
[00:27:25] Mobile. And I, I love to travel and that's one of the reasons why I love being a CRO as well too. Cause I always get to see fun places and get to hang out with great people and just makes life a lot of fun.
[00:27:36] Richard: That sounds great. I'm dialing in from North Dallas, Texas, where it's getting above a hundred every day in the past, you know, Several weeks.
[00:27:44] And so if you're outside, you want to be in or near the water. That's for sure. So that's right.
[00:27:49] Justin: Well, I come up to the pack Northwest. We don't, we, we don't have the hundreds right now. It's nice. And, uh, it's a perfect temperature. So come on up.
[00:27:55] Richard: I would love to get, yeah, I would love to get some of that. Well, thanks once again for your time today.
[00:28:01] And we look forward to talking again. Absolutely. Anytime Richard. Thank you.
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