Masters of MEDDICC - High-Performance Sales Leadership with Marina Ayton - Episode #16

In this episode of Masters of MEDDICC, we have the first ever returning guest as friend of MEDDICC and CRO of Team Cymru, Richard Dufty, joins Andy in the studio. In the modern landscape of our industry, one of MEDDICC’s guiding principles has never been more true: prudent, not parsimonious. When running a business, being smart and using common sense when it comes to business spend is how you ensure longevity.Richard believes that right now, GTM isn’t working as it should, and people need to acknowledge the problems that can create. That’s why it’s more important now than ever to beware the danger of siloes and focus on playing for the team, not the individual. When the whole team has a common language and pulls in the same direction, that’s where success comes from.Check out this episode to hear about how MEDDPICC helps teams work together and keep the focus on value. More about Richard:Richard moved with Symantec from Sydney Australia to Silicon Valley in 2007 after closing the biggest deal of the year globally. Rising through the ranks Richard helped grow various business units including Managed Security Services to $200M+.Richard then joined AppDirect as their first VP and helped lead them from $1m to $100m in 4 years to unicorn status. He then became CRO of Australian founded, now San Francisco HQ cybersecurity company Arkose Labs and helped them grow 3X in 2 years.He recently joined Team Cymru as CRO, and is excited about the opportunity ahead.When not in SF or traveling around the globe, Richard spends his weekends at home in Southern California with his wife Aya, and kids Chloé, Riley and Noah.

In the latest episode of Masters of MEDDICC, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte is joined by Luke Rodgers, VP of EMEA at ComplyAdvantage. Together they cover a wide range of topics on the intersection of MEDDPICC and leadership, including what it takes to be a truly successful leader, and the top mistakes people make when they THINK they’re using MEDDPICC.One thing that stands out: We need to re-analyze the way we think about success. Andy and Luke talk about the bad habits that can arise when leaders focus too much on revenue and not on the ‘how’ of winning. Is it about quantity, or is it about quality?The vast majority of the time, if you ask your customer why they went with your solution, they will say it’s because of your team. Luckily, this episode is bursting with actionable tips to take you (and your team) to the next level. Luke is VP of EMEA at ComplyAdvantage. Having originally started his career working for Jeremy Duggan (a McMahon prodigy) as the 1st UK AE at AppDynamics in 2013, he claims the Playbook changed his life. While at AppDynamics, he has held numerous international senior leadership positions in AMER and EMEA, pre and post-the $3.7B Cisco acquisition. In 2020 he joined and founded worldwide sales at Instabase, growing ARR by 10x in 3 years. Now he is using the Playbook to help beat financial crime, a $3.5T per year problem for which ~$280B per year is spent fighting it. Unfortunately <1% of criminal proceeds are ever seized, the system is broken and they intend to fix it. Luke is a father of 2 girls and is passionate about using the ICCEE criteria together with a culture of coaching to solve the diversity crisis in SaaS sales. Luke supports multiple children's charities and is an avid mountain biker and lover of all things tech.

In this episode of Masters of MEDDIC, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte sits down with Marina Ayton, VP of Strategic Accounts for the UK&I at ZScaler.From an early age, Marina has been inspired to work hard. She tells Andy about what she believes is essential, in any role, to get where you want to be. Succeeding in sales isn’t easy – she and Andy share some best practices for building rapport with customers, especially in this new, predominantly remote environment.Leadership is a large focus of this episode; Andy and Marina dive into the things people don’t know about sales leadership, discussing certain paths people can take to become truly great sales leaders. Full of useful insights and stories you can learn from, this episode is a must-listen!Marina Ayton is the Vice President of Strategic Accounts for the UK at ZScaler. She is also the founder / co-founder of a number of companies including London Velvet, Enchanted Trees, and more recently founded Pink Diesel. She has an active interest in investing in early stage companies (SEIS and EIS) and was also the Education Chair for Young Presidents Organisation. She is currently a member of the Board @The Prince's Trust RISE program.

SHOWNOTESGet ready for the latest episode of Masters of MEDDICC! Host Andy Whyte chats with experienced revenue leader, Jeff Miller, current CRO of StarTree. Listen and have a chuckle as the two talk about their shared history of selling door-to-door - and what they learned from it.The way you communicate with your customer can make or break a deal or engagement. There are a lot of opinions out there about the best way to do it - product-led or open-source? Either way, Andy and Jeff look at how MEDDIC can underpin it all, and help you explain the value of your solution to your customers.Andy and Jeff discuss how their ADHD acts as a superpower in sales. Jeff, as always, ties it back to the customer, comparing how he explained how his ADHD makes his brain work differently to understanding that every customer will think differently to you. ABOUT JEFF:Jeff Miller is the Chief Revenue Officer at StarTree, leading the company’s go-to-market strategy across its Sales, Revenue Operations, Solutions Engineering, Customer Success and Product-Led Growth teams. Jeff brings more than two decades of experience leading, managing and growing successful sales teams and exponentially increasing revenue for high-growth tech companies. Prior to joining StarTree, Jeff served as the CRO of Cockroach Labs, where he helped lead the company to its Series F stage and a $5billion valuation with over 250 customers. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Sales at Hortonworks, leading the organization to become the fastest-growing software company ever to get $100million in ARR and a successful IPO. 

In this episode of Masters of MEDDIC, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte is joined by Adam Quartermaine to dive into numerous ways MEDDPICC acts as a compass to success, both in your career and in your deals. Being too wary of the word ‘no’ can be a salesperson’s downfall. Adam talks to Andy about how getting an early ‘no’ can be the key to a final ‘yes’. Development is crucial for sales people, and part of that development comes with failure. As Adam says, “You’ll learn a lot more when it’s hard than you’ll learn when it’s easy.”Adaptability is an essential quality of a salesperson. More and more often, the Economic Buyer is the CFO, so you need to earn their time. Together, Andy and Adam discuss the importance of explaining not what you do and how, but why the Economic Buyer should care. Tune into this episode to hear Adam’s quick tips for selling to the C-suite (and what not to wear). Adam is GVP Europe at Sprinklr. Prior to Sprinklr, Adam held leadership and AE roles at BMC, BladeLogic, Salesforce and EMC. Adam is passionate about scaling, sales excellence, the recruitment and development of top talent, continuous improvement, diversity & inclusion. Adam is a father of 4, loves sport and is an avid supporter of the Childrens Hospice, Shooting Star.

In this Masters of MEDDIC episode, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte sat down with David Weiss to uncover how MEDDPICC utterly transformed the way he sells and why he teaches it to as many people as possible (including people knocking on his door to sell pest control services!).David Weiss has 20 years of experience as a sales leader, and is currently CRO at Sales Collective, a company dedicated to sales transformation. There, he pursues his passion for finding challenges people face and working with them to solve it. Andy Whyte The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC’ book, it’s no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years. Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.  Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales. Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

In this Masters of MEDDICC, hosted by Andy Whyte, Richard breaks down how both sales reps and sales leaders can break through emotional and mental barriers to become the best they can be. That can be anything from embracing a stoic approach to the sales rollercoaster to building a strong network to fall back on when times are tough.Richard has taken brave step after brave step, quite literal huge jumps (from Australia to the States!) to pursue that next challenge and embody the mindset of becoming the best he could be instead of embracing comfort.This podcast tells the story of this incredible sales career and explains his learnings along the way. He also talks about some of his favorite deals and the best MEDDIC learnings from them, as well as having to create success in so many different organizations and industries.This is a must-listen for anyone in sales, regardless of whether you are trying to build more mental resiliency, learn how to build a sales super team, or even gain wisdom from deal reviews from a sales legend, who cut his teeth with the very best of them.More about Richard Dufty:Richard moved with Symantec from Sydney Australia to Silicon Valley in 2007 after closing the biggest deal of the year globally. Rising through the ranks Richard helped grow various business units including Managed Security Services to $200M+.Richard then joined AppDirect as their first VP and helped lead them from $1m to $100m in 4 years to unicorn status. Richard is currently CRO with Australian founded, now San Francisco HQ cybersecurity company Arkose Labs and helped them grow 3X in the last 2 years.When not in SF or traveling around the globe, Richard spends his weekends at home in Southern California with his wife Aya, and Kids Chloé (12), Riley (2) and Noah (6 months).More about Andy Whyte:The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC’ book, it’s no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years.Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™.Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organizations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales.Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Today on Masters of MEDDICC, we welcome Jason Creane to the show.   Jason Creane has never been one to rest on his laurels and that’s proven by his impressive sales career spanning over 12 years. First starting out in recruitment after back-packing across Nepal to working his way up the ranks to Regional Vice President at Zscaler, all-the-while achieving extraordinary results and even making President’s Club. In this jam-packed episode, Jason shares so many incredible insights. We’ll take a dive into his career to date, why he chose to leave a well-known business as a top performing individual contributor and how leadership teams can identify team skills. Be warned - if you like analogies, then you’re in for a treat. “…I have an uncomfortable desire to achieve my full potential”[00:13] Introduction to Jason Creane and how he started his career in Sales[06:00] Learning curves within first sales role[12:25] Identifying team skills across the leadership team[16:52] How coach-ability can affect attitude[26:30] Why would a top performing IC leave a well-known company[36:30] What came next in Jason’s career [47:55] Building relationships and champions [51:08] Jason’s very own MEDDICC Analogy - (Andy approved)[59:12] What is the most important part of MEDDPICC?

Today on Masters of MEDDICC, we welcome Caroline Franczia to the show.   Caroline Franczia has had a succesful career spanning over 15 years in the sales industry, working at brands such as Sprinklr, Datadog and Confluent. Caroline is known for shaking the ground of the tech scaleup world with a revenue architecture approach. A regular columnist for Maddyness, she’s a board advisor, Speaker, startup/scaleup CEO whisperer, and the founder of Uppercut First and we're extremely excited to have her on our podcast! In this episode, Caroline shares her experience around moving from Individual Contributor to Leadership, how best to manage a team full of your ex-peers and how businesses should take a leap of faith and increase ACV instead of increasing opportunities. “…My first advice, you're not ready”[00:00] Introduction to Caroline[01:47] Stepping into Management[07:59] Going from IC to Leadership, and managing your ex-peers[10:52] Managing a team and understanding their triggers[14:55] Starting a leadership role with experience[18:49] Pipeline generation and MEDDICC[26:57] Implementing MEDDICC - Strengths and weaknesses

We are extremely excited to get our latest episode of Masters of MEDDICC live, with the EMEA hyper-growth specialist Andy Sadler, GM of EMEA at the mega Imply! 🙌In this episode, we dig into Andy's epic career in B2B sales that spans over 20 years and includes 16 quarters at PTC and being part of John McMahon's legendary Bladelogic team.Andy's association with the GOAT's of our industry doesn't stop with John, as he has also worked with revenue leadership titan Mark CranneyA two-time CRO, who has been a part of 4x successful exits that have amassed more than $10bn it is no wonder Andy is the person on Andreessen Horowitz's speed dial when they need a leader to launch EMEA operations for one of their portfolio companies. Andy is a believer in "value-based social selling" and his mantra to success is crystal clear: "focus on the development of staff" and then the results will follow for all, not the other way around! Andy's go-to-market processes have helped boost revenue for his clients and he's left no stone unturned to show up as a great leader driving growth at every company he's built or worked at. In this episode, Andy shares how he believes MEDDIC is a personal phenomenon rather than a company ethos, how over time competition has become more complex so effective strategies are key to surviving and how he hires in order to create successful teams. “…Pick a leader, not a role. If you're going to go into battle you need to pick the right team to be with” Timestamps: [00:06] Introduction to Andy Sadler [00:35] Background on Andy Sadler [04:00] Software startups, distributed teams, and changing locations represent the second C in MEDDIC[05:36] The art of War and evolving strategies [10:11] Human behavior aligns to personal wins [12:38] Understanding Fear and Intelligence in Sales [15:50] The psychology, science, and stigma in Sales [27:30] Why just hire the Sevens & the Nines? [35:20] Frameworks over time and the dynamics of The EB & Influence Line [43:58] Developing and building Champions [45:28] Enabling teams to go to market [47:37] Recruitment and legacy Key Points: - Transparency is key. Establishing yourself as a salesperson earns you the right to continue a conversation openly. - Be confident in yourself, your proposition, and the value that you bring to the table. - While selling, strategy building, and having your facts in place is imperative. You need to have the mentality of stop, learn and then go forward. If you're looking to learn more about the MEDDIC framework and how you can implement it to drive more growth, check out our other videos on the channel.