Optimizing the Sales Process

Rajiv Parikh: I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh and today I have with me Alan Tarkowski. Alan is a Senior Director for global sales development at Fortinet. Welcome to the show.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Thanks, Rajiv, appreciate you having me.

 

Rajiv Parikh: So tell us a little bit about what Fortinet does. The company was founded in 2000, a Fortune 500 company, a multi-billion-dollar company. What do they do?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, it's a cyber security organization really well known for next-generation firewalls. But the interesting thing about the organization is the depth and breadth of technology solutions that the business brings to the market for everything related to networking, as well as cybersecurity. So it's a really diverse solution set and offering, which represents endless opportunity. When I think about the business in general with regards to not only just solutions, as I mentioned, but the TAM total addressable market, the combination of those two really yields an exceptional opportunity.

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Rajiv Parikh: Interesting. And we were talking before we got on camera in terms of your role as global sales development. And I want to dig right in. We were talking about intent. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about intent, intent-based marketing. What does that look like for you at Fortinet?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, that's a really good question. And my role is I currently manage about 50 business development representatives. And a majority of my background is in sales, whether it be SAS, technology, or otherwise. And the sales development representatives are working leads that come into the business from the countless marketing activities that we conduct, but they also outbound to people that we want to be doing business within companies that we want to be doing business with. And that is a real significant needle mover when it's when you are focused on growing the business into whitespace accounts, or whitespace accounts are otherwise known as accounts that you certainly don't have or currently don't have any business going on with. Now, one way of doing outbound is just saying, here's a bunch of accounts. Good luck. And you know, start hunting around LinkedIn,

 

Rajiv Parikh: Dial smile. Smile dial.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yes, something right. Face gatekeepers all day get shut down all day as the BDR SDR that's making that effort. And, and while that's all fine and good, and you'll probably uncover a few gems over the course of the weeks and months of that sort of opportunity, or effort to find opportunity. There are so many intent-based technologies out there, from companies like Bombora, for example, or Sixth Sense, Lattice Engines and others, were by your target audience, again, the people that you want to be doing business with, in those companies that you've identified, that maybe fit your ideal customer profile, or what have you, you've got a bunch of look-alike type customers that you could tell a good story about. There are people in organizations that are out there searching and researching the stuff that you do as a business. So the key is to work with some intent-based technology provider. And, to give them the accounts, literally the names of the companies that you want to be doing business with so that they can start then tracking activity on the web, that is related to the technology solutions, products, services, whatever it is that you provide. And so what I've seen is that you'll hand over a list of accounts or companies that you want to be tracking.

 

Rajiv Parikh: To the company, intent-based technology company.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yes, an intent-based technology company, then you'll hand over a list of keywords that are relevant to your product, your solution, your industry, what you have. And what they'll return back to you, whether it be as simple as something as an Excel spreadsheet, to and through integrations with perhaps a salesforce.com environment. What they'll get back to you is the list of accounts that are, in fact, have some score or ranking. Sure, based on those keywords that are being searched. And so the interesting thing now, it's cool in the sense that like, wow, we know that there are companies out there searching for our stuff, and I know the company name. Cool.

 

Rajiv Parikh: What's next?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, what are you gonna do with that? That's the key. And, and that's where I find a lot of marketing organizations, kind of grinding and what do we do? Now, with regards to my organization, as I mentioned, we work a lot of the all of the inbound leads that come into the various marketing activities that we conduct and we did you do, just about everything is the size organization that we are and.

 

Rajiv Parikh: MQLs.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, sure, marketing qualified leads. That's right. So we're working all those and then we should talk about this but alignment of a sales development Rep. To your sales organization. I think it's a critical topic. So we should earmark that here as we go along. But in Fortinet, a BDR is married up to a set of account managers. Basically, our salespeople, account executives, we call them account managers. And those account managers have a specific set of accounts that they are responsible for selling to and they have a quota against, of course, selling to those accounts. When I came into the business a little over two and a half years ago, that was one of the first changes I made was to align a business development rep, which is really no different than a sales rep. So I'll use that interchangeable.

 

Rajiv Parikh: SDR, BDR, interchangeable.

 

Alan Tarkowski: I'm gonna Yeah, the same thing in my world. But what I find is that BDRs, that's what they call them with, sit in marketing. If you're an SDR, then you're in sales, then you're in sales, right? It's just who you fall under and the business. But the engagement is the route to market with those individuals. Same thing. For the most part. So now you've got a company, or a bunch of companies that you know, are searching for what you offer as an organization. The critical part then is to figure out and to check that box of finding the people that you want to be doing business with. Because you already know the companies that you want to be doing business with are surging in some way, shape, or form on the keywords that are relevant to your business. So to do that, there is no shortage of database solutions out there. Many of us, of course, lean on LinkedIn, if you're lucky enough to be able to pay for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, that's all good stuff, otherwise, if you have access to many of the database solutions out there, you got discover or you got lead IQ, you got seamless thought AI, and there's plenty of those on the market. But the reality is, you can now leverage whatever contact database you have or poke around LinkedIn for those relevant titled individuals.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Decision-makers.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Sure, yeah. Whether you start at the manager and work up or you start at the top and work your way down, or go with a specific message to each one based on persona, however you pursue it. You now can I, you've identified the company, you now have identified individuals. At that point, I consider the hunt is on. And I mean that in the best of ways, r because you've identified that somebody in that organization may, in fact, be researching their options to solve a particular problem that they have in the business.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Alan, I love the way you're framing intent-based technology. Clearly, it's working for you guys. I'm curious. So now that you've sort of narrowed down these companies that have intended to buy based on keywords, you're identifying the right personas, the people, etc. Your SDRs are doing a much more effective job with outreach. I'm sure you see a lot of success for the company. Maybe you can talk about that in broad strokes, knowing that you're a public company. But let's also talk about sort of the old way of doing things, which is, hey, let's put up a form around gated content. Is that still working? Or what does that look like?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, that's a great question. To me, gated content is dead, or it's dying, and maybe a slow, painful death for some folks. The reality is, the more information out there, from my point of view, the more information out there that your target market can get stuck in with that they can research that they can consume and share amongst their colleagues, that are responsible for making decisions by committee. I mean, who makes a decision on their own these days.

 

Rajiv Parikh: In a silo.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Very few people, right, unless you're a sole proprietor. So if you're in a commercial, you're 150 million or $100 million, enough company, yeah it's the decision by committee, for sure. So the more information, I believe, the more information that you're able to put out there. Ungated, the better off everyone's going to be. But I believe that also scares the daylights out of marketers.

 

Rajiv Parikh: because I mean, that gated content is a form of getting leads in the doors.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Correct, exactly.

 

Rajiv Parikh: So how does that shift occur, then? Yes, I think you're absolutely right. Marketers are going, wait a minute, this is how I'm doing lead gen, So you take away the gate you're providing this content for free because they need that Intel. Because of this decision by the committee, so the more you can proliferate it without a gate. Going back to intent. Bringing that together and identifying the personas and the people in the companies are going to make that decision. Again, let's bring it back to marketers. What do they do?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, that's a good question. And like I said, I think it really requires the use of some intent-based technology provider, understanding who the accounts are, the companies you want to be doing business with, and then having some operational capability to even pursue the acquisition of contacts through the various contact databases that are out there at scale. It's one thing for a BDR, SDR to do it like in a onesie twosie manner, but it's insanely time-consuming and.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Not very efficient.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Not efficient. Nor is it effective if BDR, SDR is sitting there literally copying and pasting First Name, Last Name title, trying to figure out an email format that actually gets out their phone number into a lead record in Salesforce. I mean, that's terribly inefficient. You want to empower or enable your BDR, SDR even sales organization. They should be prospecting to be able to have the information that they need to say and hopefully within their CRM. At worst, that's an Excel that's fine. To be able to say, Alright, this company is surging on this particular keyword. So I have a story for that company based on their industry of vertical I certainly have a story for this persona. Are these multiple personas? Maybe it is the manager level director, VP C level, who knows, depends on the business. And I'm gonna marry those two up to then have my BDR, SDR or salesperson create and execute against intelligent email, and even phone scripting and, of course, a general pitch.

 

Rajiv Parikh: And also sales enablement collateral, the right story, you want to get out there based on again, their intent and where they're searching on those keywords, providing the right material that's going to resonate with them.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah. So when I think about it, there are a few different cuts that I think about, I think about the company. So what vertical or industry are they in, right? What keywords are they searching on? What topics of interest are people out there searching for? And then what is the title and the responsibilities of that individual with that particular title in the organization? And if you're using a sales engagement platform like Outreach.Io, or Salesloft, or insidesales.com, all of these tools allow you to create what are called either sequences or cadences.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Drip campaigns.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, it's a series of engagements via phone and email and even social touches over some period of time. And you define that as the sales rep BDR, or marketer, whoever's putting these things together. And the key is that, as you're sending these emails, that content is relevant to the industry and vertical, the keywords that they're searching on, maybe the product solution, pain, whatever they're trying to solve for, and that individual role and what they do, and what they care about. And then all of a sudden, one of the challenges that you face is you all of a sudden have, I mean, hundreds, perhaps, of combinations of industry and vertical and keywords, and solutions and personas and titles, that you're like, wow, I need to now create literally hundreds of sequences or cadences or email content, or email combinations there to be able to engage with these folks. So that becomes its own challenge. But if you got the right people to be able to write intelligent, thoughtful copy with a strong call to action, it's definitely doable.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Yeah. And I mean, that approach, again, is a really intelligent approach because what you're going to find is your conversion rates are going to be much higher.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Totally. And this is radically different than marketing air cover email. This is not information that's coming from Marketing@company.com. It's when it's what I like to always refer to it as street level. When it's from person to person, it's real. There's an element of sincerity in tone in the email content that you're using. And obviously, the relevance, as I talked about, should most certainly be there. Otherwise, then yeah, just fire off the spam cannon and blast out the same thing.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Spray and pray. It's gonna happen here.

 

Alan Tarkowski: That's right.

 

Rajiv Parikh: So let's bring it back to the SDR. And their relationship with the sales organization. Let's talk about that. What does that look like?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, like I said, the first thing that I did was align an SDR to an account manager. And while in the setup, account managers, in fact, the easiest part was to say, a BDR alliance to a sales manager. And then subsequently the account managers that sales managers responsible for managing pretty easy. Now in that alignment, again, is that group of accounts, which matters so much, because then you have a resource or, in some cases, even multiple PDRs or SDRs that are working on those accounts.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Supporting those accounts.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, and supporting those reps, so whether it's land and expand motion, whether it is a pure acquisition, initial engagement, whitespace type initiative, they are totally aligned, and their quota is aligned to getting into the accounts that that group cares about. And I really believe that has been one of the biggest needle movers at Fortinet because of the fact that you know, instead of doing around Robin type thing, or just having a group of some BDR, that is one of however many, and once in a while you get a lead from some random person, and you're, you know, if your field rep based in Ohio, and it's like, Yeah, I got some, some lead from somebody, I don't know, I think it came from corporate if it's a sort of like a faceless type handoff.

 

Rajiv Parikh: It doesn’t mean as much.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Doesn't mean as much. But when that person is side by side and has the same interest in penetrating these accounts as you do. All of a sudden, things, a lot more, get done. There's a rhythm there. That is, I believe, so much more real. And we're always looking for a purpose in work, right. Everyone's looking for that era of success, that air of accomplishment, at the end of every day, that element of satisfaction in what I do, and I've made a contribution, when it's just a group of BDR, just launching leads or meetings over two reps at random, I don't believe that is those good feelings necessarily come about in the same way as the alignment does. And now, most importantly, for the business, that regional sales manager and those AM's have the ability to point and shoot that BDR, SDR wherever they want. Which to them gives them control which is not to say we don't have as salespeople in general.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Is out of control.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, we don't have control. The only thing we control is how we spend our time in the day. We can't control if someone's going to reply to our email or actually sign the deal. Or get the decision-maker in the meeting. You have no control over that. We try and try and try. But when you have an element that you do have control over. That's a feel-good moment in my mind.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Very satisfying. I think it makes complete sense to have that title. I mean, in between BDR, SDR, the account rep account manager and even the field Rep. I think it makes all the sense in the world. Well, let's change gears to we were talking about this off-camera. We're talking about sort of international expansion and your experience with that, and you're you know, you are leading a team. That's global. So what goes into deciding where you want to open a new satellite office?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, that's a great question. And a fun one. Lots of long flights.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Right? You were just in Australia.

 

Alan Tarkowski: That's right.

 

Rajiv Parikh: You were telling me about that.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah. AT Gigya, where I ran sales for four years. We started off a couple of million-dollar ARR. Most of our business was in the US. But as we expanded over four years to 40 million in ARR. Plus, yeah, there was an international expansion that came about as a result of the inherent growth of the business. And I think it was somewhere between the one to $2 million of ARR that was coming from the EMEA region. Did we say as an organization, alright, we need to have people on the ground there? And I don't think it was necessarily so much as the sales part at the time, as it was the customer success part.

 

Rajiv Parikh: And why did that matter to have people on the ground there?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Great question. Well, I could tell you, anybody in England that has to get their day started at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when us in California or just rolling in the work and the projects that you're working on, creates a pretty frustrating day for them. So that pressure alone will drive the need to have customer success on the ground in the region. But that said, if you're growing, you know if you're able to do that region of business and region from the US, then imagine what you do when you get a strong leader on the ground and build a sales organization and customer success around that.

 

Rajiv Parikh: And let's talk about sort of that leader, because we also talked about this, why is it important, in your opinion, to bring somebody from headquarters to that new satellite office, be it in Europe and Asia, in Southeast Asia? Wherever the location, maybe?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, sure. Good question. It's not necessarily that the person from headquarters needs to be the leader. You can certainly have a great leader that is in the region and understands the dynamics of the market, the region, the perhaps the market segment you're in or whatever you do is a business. But what I found, especially in launching the Gigya business in the mayor, was that without having somebody that had the knowledge base of headquarters, that knew how to get things done, that knew some of the stories that sold deals, that we’re able to navigate through some of the nuances of the technology of the business of the pitch. And I'll go back to like, who to talk to about how to get that one thing done. That was a really big needle mover, but it took time to get to that point. And what I'm really saying is it took time in the group of folks that were on the ground. Thereit’s was kind of floundering. You know they were trying to find their way. And what I found is to bring that individual.

 

Rajiv Parikh: The locals that were there.

 

Alan Tarkowski: The locals that were there that we hired, you know, it extended the time to productivity. And real significant growth, productivity. Were now in doing that. If I were to do it again, I would certainly find somebody great. That's in headquarters that has the ability to spend a year year and a half, maybe two years in Region bring that mindshare, there.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Coaching, training, onboarding. All of that.

 

Alan Tarkowski: All of it. Yeah. All great stories. Those individuals tend to really understand what clients earned or develop what value out of the solution deployed. So yeah, knowing what I know now, having gone through that journey, I would definitely do that. And in fact, even domestically, at Gigya, we expanded outside of the Bay Area to Phoenix, Arizona and opened an office down there with about 40 people. And that was a difficult journey as well, in that you've got a big group of folks that are trying to find the path to success in the pitch and sell. And, again, taking that individual from headquarters and putting them in the office to help be that subject matter expert, be that individual that just knows how to get things done, how to tell the story, or stories to really help grow productivity.

 

Rajiv Parikh: So be a domestic or international playbook is the same.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Pretty similar, yeah, get that individual that has that ability to really understand how to do how to sell, of course, right? They've got a history of success, selling, but to get them there to be that knowledge base thinks needle mover.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Great, awesome. So, Alan, I want to ask you that question. So you know, there's a lot of talk about technology and trends and a lot of hype about AI and ML. In your opinion, again, as a sales leader at a Fortune 500 company, why is it important to sort of nurture the person to people that you're working with, as opposed to putting technology in for technology's sake?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Great question. And something that I think about all the time. In fact, I almost take a protectionist point of view towards my staff when it comes to new technology.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Okay, why is that?

 

Alan Tarkowski: And the reason is that it is so easy to simply add another tool. And before you know it, you've got reps that have 34567 tools, all SaaS-based applications, consuming every tab and in every browser and two screens in front of them. But what that does is it takes away from the engagement with the prospect and our customer. And what I also believe.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Their head is on the technology, trying to figure it out and make it useful.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, that's right. And instead of making those other calls or sending the additional emails, but what I also worry about most is the person and the investment in their own skills. So it's one thing to develop their skills and using a technology application, that's all fine and good, but if you have six or seven of them, and it's diverting all sorts of time and attention away from what actually matters is people engaging with other people telling intelligent, valuable stories and pitches, to convince that other person to take action, and that is where I believe as the world of sales, we as sales leaders continue to have a lot of work to do there. And it's always been a lot of work because these are people, and we all deserve the opportunity to be invested in. And if you're a leader, you deserve your people deserve the time and effort to learn and develop their own skillset, whether it's being more articulate in a phone call, whether it's developing a pitch, whether it's developing confidence, in handling objections, all of these things, I think, are oftentimes being overlooked nowadays. Because the reps are just inundated with tools, and so much time is being taken away from actually selling by these distractions.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Shiny objects.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Shiny objects, right. So, people, you know, lo and behold, we're still the most important thing.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Most important asset.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah. When it comes to any organization? And any leader worth their salt will say that's the number one group and element of any business is the people. So if I could leave any sales leader with anything, you know, if you've got five conversations going on with vendors, take it down to one and invest in your people. You know, there's a lot of great technologies out there to use technologies like Gong.io, with their text analysis technology to really understand how to have high-value conversations, what words to say, word choice is important. And they've made a science of it. So I have a really fond appreciation of those technologies. Now, I'm not a customer of theirs, but I appreciate taking the data and insights that they're able to develop through their technology because that applies to the person after the shiny object.

 

Rajiv Parikh: A better salesperson.

 

Alan Tarkowski: That's right. Yeah. Big fan.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Great stuff. I'm going to switch gears and ask you some different questions. So Alan, what is your superpower?

 

Alan Tarkowski: What is my superpower? I'm a shade tree mechanic. That means is I could fix cars.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Oh, there you go.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Which seems to be like, unless you know, you take your car to the dealer or whatever. Like who knows how to fix cars anymore? It's still a hobby of mine. So yeah, I'm overwhelmed with technology every day, every hour of every day, like the rest of us. I still try to keep it real with tools. So yeah, a superpower is the ability to actually dig into something mechanical. And I know I won't necessarily say I'll always fix it. But I'll do my best to get that.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Sure. Sure. Nice. I love it. That's a new one. Do you have any daily habits or rituals that keep you productive?

 

Alan Tarkowski: I wish I could say that there were rituals. But I'm just I'm on the go. The moment I get up, it’s just gone time for me. And it's sort of just the rhythm of how I carry myself through the day. But yeah, I get a lot of satisfaction out of work. And, yeah, that's the spirit of who I am.

 

Rajiv Parikh: So you're your man. It's always on the go from the moment you wake up till I guess you're down for the count. So, in the spirit of that, how do you? Is there a way that you're striving for work-life balance, or do you believe that's possible?

 

Alan Tarkowski: I think everybody has a lot of work to do on that front, from what I see. In certainly in the Bay Area. What I find is actually when I get outside the Bay Area, which I think everybody in Silicon Valley needs to spend more time doing that, frankly.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Right, Get out of the bubble.

 

Alan Tarkowski: Get out of the bubble, go to the Midwest, go to the East Coast, go to another country, that's right. I grew up in Chicago. So I go back there often to see family.

 

Rajiv Parikh: But do you think that's important?

 

Alan Tarkowski: Yeah, I mean, I observe how others live. They are outside of the bubble that is outside of this. This world of endless capital and the leading edge of everything technology. And don't get me wrong. It's one of the raddest places in the world, to be for sure. That's why I've been here for the last 20 years. But perspective is important. And when you get outside and you realize that, hey, it's a big world and people live their lives in different ways. They don't all operate at the same pace or and certainly not all on the leading edge of technology like we are. And I think that's an important perspective to bring back. And for me, what I find is when I travel outside of the valley, is I actually observe people exhibiting work-life balance. Much more so than here in the back.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Right. Yeah, I love it. That’s great advice.

 

Alan Tarkowski: So what that does is it sort of tempers my lifestyle and makes me realize that. Yeah, you know what? Going to the beach on Sunday morning and spending half the day there with the family and the pets. Yeah, there's a good time and check out and just enjoy what a wonderful place the Bay Area is, or frankly anywhere as long as you're, you know, with the ones that you love and that you want to be with and you're having a good time doing it.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Awesome. That's all the questions that I have. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with?

 

Alan Tarkowski: A great conversation. Appreciate you having me, Rajiv.

 

Rajiv Parikh: Yeah, great conversation.