YouSaid · the spoken record

Larry Schurtz

lines on the record: 57
first: 2024-05-10
most recent: 2024-05-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“None. I'm not a sales strat, ironically, given the job that I have. I'm not a sales strategy like entrepreneur or wizard. So I probably don't see as many or enough in the cloud world. You have to be in a land and expand and retain sales strategy. And that's not just sales. That's customer lifecycle. If you're not in that business, I think you're going to lose.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Prioritization for me is the most common, then I would think generally speaking, it's waiting, even though you're fast scaling, what are the things that you're waiting for something to be different on before you go and try that could create a different outcome? I think waiting is just a really dangerous way to go.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, fab selling is pretty dead. FAB. Do you remember this one? Feature advantage benefit. This was a big deal. This was actually how I learned. And this was when I said Eli Lilly, that was the training. So you were trained feature advantage benefit. That was how we learned. So I think that one is dead and gone. It goes back to, you know, there's so many value selling frameworks now. I grew up it in my tech job at PTC, which was medic at the time or med pick. There's an unlimited choice. of them, but I think I'm pretty sure fab selling. Nobody's writing a book on fab selling these days.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's going to be automation gains from AI, so efficiency gains that were largely, by the way, things people didn't want to do anyway. They hated doing anyway. And then there's going to be augmentation benefits from AI. So helping people do their jobs better, the way I see this going, that's going to be like 30, 70. I think 70% of the benefit of AI is going to be for people to do their jobs better. So no, I don't think Outbound is better. I think Outbound is gone. I think AI will help enable the right outbound teams to do it better”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think a value creation, the ability pretty universally for teams to be able to convey value to customers. I think that pretty dramatically changes things. I think that changes the optics of selling completely. It's not a sales game then.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just listened, listened, empathy. I know I'm using that word a lot. He listened, he was prepared. He showed incredible empathy. He knew the details of what was going on. And he had a plan. You can tell when someone's genuinely listening or when someone is sitting there with a prepared answer hoping that you ask the right question. That was a great example for me as a leader. I was blessed to have the same boss for a period of time when I came into Oracle all the way into Salesforce, who had a remarkable ability to hear things that weren't going the way the teams anticipated. And you'd leave that meeting and you're like, we got this. No problem. It really comes with listening and empathy. Those are probably my two biggest career journeys, I think. Personally and professionally.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this goes back to our deal conversation probably. And it's very hard for me to do. I would say that I've tried to work my DNA to respond to things a little more masterfully than I used to. But generally when things would come to me as a problem, I would respond with finger pointing somebody's doing something wrong, very little accountability for myself in that equation. And it was really how I responded to things. I learned a lot. I talked about kind of my career journey. Godfrey Sullivan was the CEO at Hyperion. And I learned a ton from Godfrey, the empathy score with Godfrey and customers. I learned a lot from. I'll never forget it was a meeting. I'll leave the account name out of the picture, but it was a, we were not doing well with this account, super senior level C-suite meeting. The way he handled that situation, remarkable.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is always the issue. And I'm prioritizing the issues. And it comes down to your leader. And I early in my career was not a great, not that I'm great now. I'm on the journey, just like the rest of us that are in this role. I was pretty poor.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest lesson that I would say that I learned early in my career was I didn't even use the word then the word to me long time ago was like a soft word was empathy like I completely lacked empathy. It would be the be the narrative of an AE in the financial crisis who only called on B of A and Chase came to you and said, hey, like it's really tough sledding and these opportunities are going to push for a quarter. And if you just said, I don't care. Go figure it out. Like there was a point in my career where that was okay. There was a point in my learning as a leader where that was how I responded. And it was uneducated. It was very difficult to maintain loyalty. And I think you learned some very expensive lessons that normally show up through attrition. When quality people start leaving, this goes back to our first conversation. When quality people start leaving, is comp an issue? Sure. Yeah. I mean, comp is likely always an issue. I don't think comp.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To understand that, but I would really push back on a leader or an AE that barring force majeure, some macroeconomic pandemic or a financial crisis if you're selling.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The latter, there isn't a company out there today that doesn't have TAM data that maybe there are, but like in the companies that are really playing the game today that are winning. They know the TAM data. There's so much information about accounts. There's so much information on PTB or propensity to buy. That information is kind of the table stakes. When AEs start, they're kind of like given all of this information. Like, here's your territory. Here's the opportunity inside of your territory. Now, you could be in an industry that gets hurt macroeconomically. A perfect example. The travel and transportation industry during COVID. Tough spot. That's a tough put. You need to have a little humility with the narrative and a heavy dose of empathy that, listen, some of these are hard. If you give an patches of customers that are upset and you're working through a bunch of issues, I think you need to have some empathy with that situation.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of own the number myself and my peer in the CS, I'd own the number for the company, how we think about investment and strategic priorities kind of depends on us doing what we say we're going to do. My roll up is based upon my directs doing what they say they're going to do that's dependent upon their directs doing what they say they're going to do, which is dependent upon their directs and dependent on all the AEs. And managing that with agility and accuracy is very difficult. And I think it's incredibly important.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, you have to balance risk with commitment. Pipeline is everything. So the more at bats you have, the more likely you're going to get a hit. It's the same thing in sales. And forecasting accurately is in the job that we do a critical part of your brand. If you can't forecast accurately, for me, it's one of a couple things. Either you don't truly understand your business, you aren't truly doing the amount of diligence with customers and opportunities. You don't have enough opportunities to be able to balance out some of the riskier things with some of the things that look better. And we might not even be asking the right questions and we're likely not talking to the right people. Let me say all of that and it's really hard to do well. I've missed months. I've missed quarters. I've missed quarters back to back. It's a hard thing to do, but there is a real premium in the world that I've chosen to play in on forecasting accurately.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's plenty of places you can go do benchmarking. The difference for me when someone asks for a discount, if it's my team that's asking me for a discount, I want to see the value proposition. I want to see the business case. If we don't have a business case, if we have an articulated when they're going to get their money back, what those outcomes look like, if we haven't done a good job on value and we're just looking for a discount, that's the stuff where I'm not a fan of that. I'm just not. It means we haven't done our jobs.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's the thing if you're playing and you got to push yourself in the customer shoes on this too. Let's say you're a small company and you're going into chase, you're kind of an unproven company, they're taking a flyer on you. They love you. They trust you. You're on the hook for this thing to be successful. You're going to pay a pretty price at Chase to win that business. It's pretty risky, depending upon your value proposition to them, but you're an unproven quantity. I think the higher just general industry practice not being a victim here, but just the way things have been in enterprise technology, there's a linear correlation between volume for the size of the investment and the discount. And that varies by whatever you're selling or if you're in the experience orchestration business or if you're in the supply chain business or ERP company, companies are pretty adept at buying these days. Companies have gotten really good at buying stuff. So they're doing their compairs, Gardner advises on price.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on your business. If I thought about Genesis, you'd probably need to be close to a nine digit customer. It's tough to get on our top 10 list, which we're blessed and grateful for. If I was starting a business and that rotation made sense for customer success and you're going to place your bets there, it's always a tough trade-off. Like how do you think a scale across teams never perfect?”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a big operational cost implication to doing that. There's how many accounts is an AE going to be covering? What's the ratio of accounts for customer support and customer success? You should consider appropriate ratios for solution consultants and solution engineering. So you can work into this process. I think when you get down into the maybe your question of at what size customer do I have one AE covering it that I have one SE that that's all they do, that I have one customer success person, that's all they do. Man, it's got to be a pretty big customer”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you pick banks, which are super difficult as it is, but I would not make that step. I would not think that just because you got one, that you're going to get the rest. Because, by the way, you could have gotten it by accident. I didn't mean to be abrasive about it, but there's a lot of reasons you can win a customer. I would be more focused on what is the use case? What is the value statement? How pervasive do we think that value statement could be or that problem statement is for customers? I think you got to look at a lot of variables to, and that all rolls into how we should be thinking about TAM or, you know, our total available market, just to say that you got one. I don't know, like you kind of need to make a line.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and no. This is another cost implication. This is another like prioritization implication. This is like, how much risk do you want to take on? We started with financial services as Salesforce. And it became so successful. They actually developed a product for financial services. That became more impetus. And now the industry products team at Salesforce is just crushing it because they've actually went out and built products specific to the industry. If I was advising you and you're thinking of building out a vertical, I would pick where you think the biggest bang for your dollars and I'd try. I wouldn't go do three.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Subverticals. Financial services is a lot of things. The reason I think that it gets expensive, and again, you can be on this journey where you don't have to eat all this cost upfront and you can try things and fail quickly. If you're truly going to deliver the benefit, what I think is the benefit of a verticalized sales team, it's every person that touches the customer”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's a great question. When that AE goes to their SE or SC, the technical person on their team and says, I need to come in and show an airplane demo. And I'm sticking with the metaphor. And that SE's like, well, kind of don't like we've got a really generic one. Like, what do you want? Then there's a disconnect at the technical teams. Then you're bringing in an AE that is super smart, super knowledgeable. And the SC isn't. So clearly Disconnect. And then, by the way, for earlier conversation, you're going to bring in a customer support person, probably professional services, and you're going to bring them in early in the sales campaign. The customer's going to go, so tell me, like, how many aviation implementations have you done? Tell me what you know about the industry and that person's going to be light. So my point is to truly verticalize and to truly deliver value for customers, it can't just be the AE. It has to be every single person that touches the account. And then you end up in these.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I rewound to when we started doing this at Salesforce, it was really born out of customer requirements. We got feedback that we weren't showing up understanding the customer. And really, you said it, right? There's very few things worse than that. So when we started that business, we were just very focused on enablement. Enablement and organizational alignment. And there's depths that you can go when you think about verticals. Some companies start with industry. So building out industry teams that can come in and have that conversation, but your AEs are still aligned. You may have an AE that calls in healthcare in the morning, financial services in the afternoon, and is going to dinner with a three-letter agency at night. Content's created for them, they can kind of get a couple steps down the road.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, that's just segmentation strategy. That's the difference between how am I going up against competition based on the accounts that are in their patch? And do we carve out hunter farmer patches? You know, this could be a whole other five-hour podcast for you and I, but that's a segmentation question. Let's say we had AEs, reps, individual contributors that just had customers. of varying sizes, right? They're just customers. There's no new customers or new logos in their patch. Their job is quote unquote farming. I actually kind of don't think that farming is a thing in the cloud world. It's just not. I mean, you're responsible for finding new use cases across the entire bag that you have to sell. So you're always hunting and farming. You have to have interlock, stacked hands between CS and sales. I'll take my team that's organized that way up against anyone else's.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever you want, you can put them in finance for all I care, but someone is responsible for the correct architecture, aligned to the right use case, and then someone is responsible for growing and expanding that business.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I heard Sloopman say the same thing, and you should really go unpack the titles versus the roles because that matters. And by the way, they are in a pure consumption model business, which is very different than a booking. So it's a bookings versus revenue kind of business or hybrid businesses. Snowflake's success is 100% built on customers being successful in usage. Now, if you're hiring a bunch of salespeople and then you're going to ask your salespeople, hey, I just want you to go make sure they're successful. They're going to be like, hold on, and I'm in Snowflake land. I need to find more use cases. I need to find more applications to move onto Snowflake's platform. That's selling. Who is actually managing the technical architecture, the foundations of that customer being successful? You kind of need to go unpack titles versus roles. And some of the companies that say, we don't need customer success. Someone is playing that role.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“References. If you can be successful with the category killers and they didn't become category killers because they're easy to work with. And if you can do it with the best, and I have a huge caveat after I finish the sentence, if you can do it with the best, it's a heck of a place to start. A caveat is closing the deal. It's like the easy part. You have to be successful. Like for them to be referenceable, they have to be successful. You know, Coca-Cola is not going to go on record and say, we just closed an amazing deal with Harry and we have no idea whether it's going to be successful. It's not going to happen. There'll probably be a reference once they're successful. So for me, the entire orientation of an organization in the early, early stages, I'm talking like sub 100. I think needs to be figure out the industries and the verticals you can be successful in. Go get brand names, category killers, and rotate hard on customer success. Because if you can't get customer success.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Legitimately, that would be pretty much what I would say. There are so many talented people out there. The separation in the highest echelon, like there are more and more, in my opinion, wildly talented people out there.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do I ever hire people that I don't like where I'm like, oh my God, like I just don't like that person, they're offensive, they're abrasive. No, I just don't even hire them. If they're that way to me, they're going to be that way with our customers.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a lot. This goes back to I think there are things that there are flags that would be real issues, and this goes to interpersonal skills. That is something you should be sniffing at in the interview process. Preparation and diligence. Those are things that are kind of non-negotiables for the job that we've chosen to do. So I think you need to be candid with your communication. We have a responsibility as leaders to communicate and coach if that coaching is not working, then I think you need to move quickly. You're just delaying an outcome that you've already pretty much decided on. Here's what also happens. By the time the leader knows it, everyone else on the team knows it. They know it before you do.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Physical errors. I played sports growing up, so my coach has always said that you can make all the physical errors. You cannot make mental errors.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would say nature of the flag like what is the flag? What's the foul? And I think you really got to unpack it. This goes back to hiring mistakes cost a lot of money and a lot of time. I think you need to have pretty candid conversations with people. This goes into the whole post call recap and feedback and coaching. If you aren't doing that coaching, I think you're going to be in a different bucket. But let's assume for a minute you go in, we have a terrible sales call. I'm like, oh my God, Harry, like that was a mess, which I would never say. But I would normally start off with, Harry, how do you think that went? If it was terrible and you thought it went great, then I'd throw another flag. I'd really be curious what you thought was great. So I think you really need to unpack that. So it depends on the nature of the flag. If it's a coaching item and a skills related item and it's not improving, like I feel is an employer you have a responsibility to employees. You really do. It's hard to onboard. You mentioned it. It's hard to onboard. And I would break it into mental errors.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've made a lot of hiring mistakes. Normally, there is something that ends up showing up that when I was in the interview process, assuming I was perfectly diligent, which I never am, there's always something that's like, you know, like my gut was a little bit my gut. I hear that a lot with people and my advocacy is trust your gut. Normally those things will show up later. And without fault, the hiring mistakes that I have made end up showing up in our example right now that were things that I didn't feel 100% comfortable with and for whatever reason at that time I gave a pass on or I didn't do enough homework on or I didn't poke on enough. You got to be able to unpack it. You got to be able to embrace that mistake and you got to make sure that you're doing everything you can and not do it again. So bad is the sum of a lot of red flags and a lack of improvement with coaching.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, that's based on the number of interactions you have with them. There are some warning signs early. Well, let's use your example. We're going in to meet an important customer. I've given you all of the background data on the account. I've given you what they use of our products. I've given you their use cases. And if we're in prep for this meeting and you haven't been through that or you don't have a command of that information, red flag right off the bat. If you're in that meeting and you aren't accurately representing the story of Genesis and if you don't know about our company, it's kind of a red flag. And then by the way, just the customer interaction pieces, you can kind of draw conclusions on how people interact in those situations. So how soon do I know that they're bad? I would say it's the combination of several red flags. You really double click. And this goes back to our hiring conversation.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't send you a loan as a new AE. I would send you with either your boss or someone else. And the problem is the gift. Something has happened with it. You're talking about a good sized customer if it's a 500 grand is the metric. You clearly should know a lot when you walk into that customer. So you aren't blind to what's going on. Like I've been at Genesis for a year. I still sometimes will be with customers. I'm still learning. Like I'm still new. Like help me understand. I think it is a beautiful learning experience. Now, what's valuable for the customer in that you got to bring something to the table. You got to do your homework and your background. You got to know your meeting. I'm not parking any of the disciplined part of that meeting and the preparation part of that meeting. But if I could be new forever, I would do it.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a great tip. We like to pair up in teams. We do like the buddy system. We like the mentorship system. Your question on customers, like day one, how many chances do you get to be new? You don't give many.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Support ones. I haven't heard that. That's an interesting thought, I think you can get real perspective there. I'm going to consider that stolen.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's gotten harder too, right? I mean, insert COVID in the pandemic when everybody shut down what we all consider normal onboarding. It's gotten harder. And I will argue we will never rotate all the way back to the way it was. And I'm talking a little bit about like in person versus digital or remote. My first training, as I mentioned, I was exported. I'm an Arizona guy. I was exported to Indianapolis in the winter for six weeks. And that was the way you trained. And you did role-based training and there was curriculums and structure and everything else. I think that has shifted certainly from the remote aspect and the in-person aspect that has completely shifted today. Along that journey, you're getting bite-sized pieces of the prioritized, what do you need to know in order to be successful starts with basic things. And then you're on your enablement journey that lasts a year.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At what price, though? So, this is where I think it has changed. And I will say this from some of the early companies that I worked for, Supercoin operated. Give me my on-target earnings, Killer Be Killed Mentality. You know, let's see how long you can make it. And if you don't make it, then in six months, you're gone. And it doesn't matter if you like your boss or not. That has changed. The impetus on leadership these days and the impetus on what I think is like true servant leadership. I think that is driving more loyalty. I think those are for most people. I think that is a bigger driver than compensation. If that gets two out of whack, you're going to have a problem. You will get sideways if, hey, I'd love my boss. I love the company. I love our journey. I love our customers. And by the way, you're paying me 30% of what I could be making somewhere else. Clearly, you're going to have a problem. If we're into small gaps, I believe leaders make a difference.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I will say the most important for me, the reason she left is not comp, because she left, she didn't like her VP.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you got to do that early. I'll give you an example. We're in a hiring process right now for a super senior leader in our company. We have a certain comp structure that we think is aggressive. Some people are addicted to a different comp structure. And the intersection of how valuable those people would be for us and what we would need to pay them doesn't make sense for us. Like that equation doesn't pencil for us. It's really, really challenging when you discover that after two months of interviewing. That's a problem. I like to know that we can afford someone and get to a comp structure before like it's time to have a comp discussion. I think you need to do that sooner rather than later. I don't know. It's not the first conversation. It's not the last conversation. And this is the unpacking of the interview process for me. You got to understand what matters. And by the way, what matters most around comp. Does your on-target earnings matter more? Like are you a commission person? Does equity matter more? How do you think about the two?”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's a huge sign. And I would say that imperative grows the higher you go in your role and responsibility. So like take Frank, right? Frank went from running a team to running a country. That imperative in your network, your brand is critical. You have to have it. And again, there's so many talented people. If you aren't competing on that basis, and by the way, it doesn't matter if the people that you're going to bring with you are terrible. The double click on, yeah, I can bring a team of people. It's like, well, tell me about those people. Who are they? What have they done? Like, you got to go, you got to go unpack that. It doesn't help if you hire an average person that then brings people that aren't the best people for your company and your customers. Doesn't help at all.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't. I have folks on my team that do and like that. This is where I go to being open to different parts of processes. There is a lot of value sometimes out of the case study. But for me, the case study gets to what is your mindset and your thought process. It gets to the what and the how. I feel like I can get that out of talking to you for 45 minutes.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I just got from you was it's actually not about money, it's money so you can deliver outcomes for your wife and your family and getting a bigger house that probably is for your family. I will always double click on things to the point where people get super annoyed is maybe a terrible, it's a terrible habit. But I ask why a lot because I think the nuances and the why for people.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was really fun. We had Fridays off for three months. There was always food in the office. I've heard very culture related answers that had to do with amenities of the company. I've heard culture-related answers that if I took that to the other end of the spectrum, you know what, that was one of the hardest places that I've had to work. It was the most disciplined structures that I had to work. I didn't like quite a few of the conversations, but I grew and it was amazing. You'll hear stories about bosses. You'll hear stories about philanthropy. But I really, for me, the reason I'm asking the question, because values matter to me. They matter every place that I've worked. And I think value alignment is an important thing. I'm kind of getting a little bit of value statement out of the culture piece. And then the last thing that I typically get to is what drives people. Why are you still working?”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always get into track record and I do it a couple different ways. I want it a little by the numbers. Tell me the story. Like if I was going to tell you the salesforce story, which you told very quickly and probably better than I do, I would lead with results because we're in a results-driven business. And that's not just sales, it's customer success, it's everything. So I want to hear the track record. Where I then go, I typically get into cultures. So if you know that I've worked at PTC, Hyperion, Oracle, Salesforce, Confluent, now Genesis. If I was you and I was interviewing, I'd be like, what culture did you really prefer and why? I've had, you'd be shocked the range of answers that I've gotten to the culture question.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is where a lot of hiring mistakes are made because you do not do enough diligence. The challenge is compounded globally because in some markets you hire the wrong people. That could be a year to an eighteen month process to get a new person back in seat. And it's going to cost you a lot of money. If you're going to spend more time, my opinion, there's no more important thing than getting the right talent on board. It is a beautiful thing when you do. And it is really, really problematic when you don't. So I'd rather invest the time, get a little couple interviews. I don't like the hostage negotiation strategy of, hey, I got a bunch of offers. You know, you need to get me one in the next week, especially if it's that language. That person doesn't match our value statement anyway. Certainly not anyone I want working for me or for you, even though we just met.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen, I think if you've got a really hot candidate, and we hear this a lot, we've got offers like I'm a candidate. I've got three offers, you know, I'm kind of coming to you guys. You're early in your process. I'm late in three others. Kind of need to make a decision that amount of pressure. We get that a lot.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Curses dragging people through long processes. Oh, I want you to do one more interview. Like, speed is kind of the game. And I think when you can match speed with a defined process, you can get incredibly valuable people.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has to be armed with the value proposition of the company. So if I was going to interview, if I was you and you're working for me at Genesis and you're hiring an AE, I would want to make sure that you're armed with your Genesis pitch. What is your pitch about Genesis? Like what's compelling about Genesis, Harry? Like, why would I come and work there if I was the candidate? You got to be armed with the value proposition. I like to keep interview teams small. This is a whole separate thing that I'm sure will rile some people up that may watch this, but I'm not a fan of panel interviews. I like doing interviews one-on-one. I strongly advocate that for my leaders because the relationship between the people that you work with for and around really matters. And I think that's difficult to get out of a panel. I like to keep it five folks at the most, interviewing people, and then I think you got to move quickly. The beauty of having this wide availability of diverse talent at all levels today is just that.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first, I think you got to understand the role, right? What are you hiring for? What are the specifics of that role that matter the most? A lot of people put this in the job description, but I also think a lot of companies aren't super clear about what they're looking for. And I'll take you through how I think about the process. But I have a high confidence score that when you aren't clear about what you want, that's when you may end up missing and hiring the wrong person has very little to do with whether that person was talented or not. It has to do with have you done a good job with the matching process. I always like to start with what is the role required? And then I kind of work to say, okay, well, like, where are we going to go source those candidates? There's an incredibly availability of diverse, wildly talented people for any number of roles at any level today. It's really pretty beautiful as a hiring manager, the amount of access that we have now. You need a good recruiting team that recruiting.”
2024-05-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source