Getting Value-Based Selling Right

Rajiv Parikh: Today I'm honored to have Phil Aaronson with me. Phil is the sales productivity director at ServiceNow. Phil, welcome to the show. So Phil, tell us a little bit about what ServiceNow does for those that don't know.

Phil Aaronson: So the official tagline is making the world of work, work for you, right? That can go in a lot of different directions. A lot of people who are in the tech space know ServiceNow as an ITSM Company, right? It's really so much more than that. We definitely describe ourselves as the platform of platforms. This is about creating workflows that can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of functions across the organization. Whether it is in our traditional space of ITSM, whether that's in servicing human resource needs, whether that's, you know, servicing our security organizations, there is some real pent-up demand to bring this all together under a single CDMB, CDRMB. So, you know, we've we're positioned really well in the market. And the reception has been great. And certainly, since Bill McDermott has come on board, it seems like there's even renewed energy and vigor around what we do.

Rajiv Parikh: Absolutely, I'm glad you mentioned that. And so I'm just gonna say we're right into that before we talk about what you do at ServiceNow. So I read recently that you know, you guys had your Q1 earnings and your subscription growth was up 34%, your share your stocks at an all-time high and almost $400 a share. And I believe you signed 37 deals worth 1 million, this last course, and congratulations on that amazing success. Maybe you can just tell me like what's happened since Bill arrived? What I mean, it's an insurgence of new energy. But what have you seen from your perspective for this incredible success over a short period of his eight-month duration?

Phil Aaronson: So I love talking about Bill McDermott. He's actually tied very closely into a lot of the data-driven initiatives that we're focused on. But before we even get into the story of Bill, I just want to say I'm really proud of our outgoing CEO John Donahoe. I think he's taking a really brave stance this week. He was always a man of compassion and a man of conviction. So really glad to see what he's doing with Nike. We wish him all the best. I really liked him as a person as well. Bill was a rock star. He's a guy who's come in from SAP. He’s built the roadmap. And you know, from a personal perspective, from the day he's come in, he's talked about, you know, he wears his heart on his sleeve, he's super passionate about what he's doing. He didn't have any financial reason, really. When you get right down to it to join ServiceNow, this is all passion from him. It doesn't hurt that he grew up on Long Island, not too far from where I grew up. And his first stories were talking about, you know, the value of work and the value of being good to your customers and understanding your customers. And he started talking about, you know, the stories of when he was young, and his father owned a pizza place on Long Island, and you know, how he got to never be playing video games in the back room. And that's how he would serve as his customers and would tell them, if you want to steal anything, you know, you should go to 711 because, you know, we're all family here, and he just cracked me up. You know, he's, he's a very personable person. Now, as far as what we've done since he's come on board. I mean, I think the way the market has received him, you know, they looked at his track record, and he has one of unqualified success. I’m sort of amazed at how quickly he came up to speed and how he's leaving his prints on the organization. You know, he definitely follows that outside-in customer-centric model. And he challenges us to do the best that we possibly can do. ServiceNow is a company that has gone from being a mid-sized company to becoming a much larger company. And, you know, I've seen companies like this, you know, I was in VMware for a long time. I went through our painful, awkward, gangly, teenage phase, right? And something really well, and some things, you know, I think we would have liked to have got back. And Bill's really trying to help us avoid a lot of those, you know, productivity cycles and ending siloed thought, and, you know, reordering thoughtfully and focusing on the elements that can get us to 10 billion. So when you have belief, when you have conviction, when you've got the market, you know, and strong winds at your back, even in this, you know, very strange macroeconomic environment. He's really been amazing. He's been a beacon. And I'm, I couldn't be more proud of what ServiceNow is doing. I'm so glad that I'm part of this organization and part of this particular time in history.

Rajiv Parikh: That's great to hear, Phil. So yeah, so on that note, Tell us a little bit about your role as sales productivity director at ServiceNow.

Phil Aaronson: So sales productivity - I was the first hire that came on board. And that was really the vision of my senior director, Giles Giddings, who had been focused on this area. But you know, in enablement, there's always a million things that you need to do and fires that you need to put out and content that needs to be created and things that need to be published. His intent was to bring me on board to focus on our value selling program administered by Visualize. I've worked with a number of different sales methodologies. I think they do some really unique things. You know, at the end of the day, every methodology is diagnosed, understand how deep the rabbit hole goes, and then prescribe in a way that is meaningful to your customer, right? And value selling does a great job. And I'm going to give another shout-out to Scott, and she's the CEO of Visualize, who has been an amazing partner on that journey. Um, most of what we were doing was making sure that all the elements of value selling were part of the everyday DNA of our sales organization. You know, we wanted to go from one where people were, you know, asked to do something to, you know, focus on value prompters and focus on mutual plans. And it kind of felt forced in the organization. And we wanted a rethink of it. We wanted this to be about commitment because we understand how it works. So that to that end, data-driven analysis of where we've been successful, utilizing value selling was definitely an order. So I came on board. And I'm being very specific to ServiceNow, how we handle sales, productivity, the first thing we wanted was a correlation. If you have element X in place, then we see Y happened, right? It's binary. Simple things like every opportunity that has value prompter have an accelerated ACV, multiple value prompters, it's accelerating even further. One of the things that I wanted to do was to get away from correlation and get into causation. And this is where I'm going to bring Bill back into this conversation. So when he was at SAP, he was working with a firm called Employee. They had a brilliant chief learning officer, Jenny Dearborn. She's amazing. She's a great speaker. And she really had that idea that data should be driving our actions, you know, we should be taking in a series of insights, and then we should make them actionable in the organization and be able to check on them, right? So they wrote the book data-driven. So Jenny wrote it with the CEO of a place she has served. And it really changed the way I thought about enablement. You know, for me, enablement was, you know, we need to understand everything that a student is expected to know and everything that they're expected to do. And then make sure that we've got all the watermarks, so we know that they know it and that they do it. And, of course, utilizing the process, understand the performance discrepancies. I have a real passion for education. It's been, you know, a dominating part of my career. But when I started to question in my career, you know, how much impact is this happening, is this having? And what can we do to further refine our actions? I was met with a lot of interesting responses. I knew companies like SAP and Google were doing it. But at some of the companies that I was working at, you know, I think there was just a lot of doubt, there was it's not possible, you know, it's as good as our CRM system, it's garbage in, garbage out. And what working with Sanchin, an employee taught me is if you build the right data warehouse, if you've got the right analytics, if you're bringing in the right engine, if you're cross-referencing any number of factors, the data doesn't have to necessarily be clean every time you're in, you know, a CRM to be able to understand what are the biggest value drivers towards, you know, close ratios towards accelerated ACV towards a, you know, just the acceleration of deals. So, I was fascinated by this. So the fact that I'm at a company that is focused on some of my core passions, which is, you know, helping sellers succeed and building programs to be able to get them to that space. We also have, you know, data-driven enablement that focuses on the deal, that focuses on the rep, that focuses on the region. I can talk about it specifically, but I want to stop right there and see what direction you want to go in. Because with productivity, there are a million different roads.

Rajiv Parikh: That's great. So correlation causation. Yeah. So give me an example of what where you were able to apply that meaningfully, you know, just a quick example.

Phil Aaronson: Sure, I came on board in 2018, right? Lately, you're trying to get my sea legs. It’s big companies, big programs. It's got a big budget. You know, There was a lot of shaking hands and kissing babies and all the regions, right? You know, there's a political element, hey, I don't have a third eye, I've got some decent ideas we should work together, right? And it business intelligence study that we did internally, which actually my manager had commissioned. Giles was always interested in this, and we just wanted to prove out the efficacy of value selling. And so, we analyzed 5000 deals over the course of 2018. And what we really wanted to do was to understand how much value selling was accelerating our deals, right? And so, you know, to get people to use value prompters you have to put yourself, you know, in the shoes of any sales rep, you know, and follow the weapon principle, you know, what's in it for me, and we wanted to talk about, you know, you're gonna make a lot more money if you simply follow this process. So from a correlation standpoint, I'll give you one of the stats. We ended up having the head of sales given Haverty stand in front of the slide at sales kickoff in front of our entire organization, where we talked about accelerated ACV. I’ll give you one example. So we determined that there was a 47% higher ACV, you know, as the Annual Contract Value if you had simply used a value prop. But it was binary, right? We didn't know if it was one value prompter. We didn't know if it was many value prompter. we also had no way to assess value prompt or quality and what that was doing for those averages. It also didn't speak to the win or loss ratio. Right? So there's a whole bunch of data that, you know, we really needed to bring together and cross-reference to make that happen. So the hypothesis that we came up with is that you know, we should be able to rate value prompters right for the quality. And we started a manual process with the Chief of Staff for all three geos. It's a painstaking process, you know, you start looking at your deals, and we're looking at all these underlying elements around the value prompt or, you know, is there a ball by business issue? Are we speeding the power person? You know, are we quantifying business value back to the organization? You know, it's a heavy lift. We would do 30 of those a month. And it was hard to find the time to do it. I said, you know, there's got to be a better way. So I came up with the hypothesis that high-quality value prompters are going to yield, you know, a greater result in win-loss ratio than low-quality value prompters. But there's got to be a better way to do this. And we don't even know what our True North Stars are. So in working with the play, I posed the question back to them, we went back and forth. And we came up with a way to analyze all the value prompters attached to opportunities and understand the value drivers. Which elements of those value prompters are most equated to win-loss, right? What is going to guarantee? What's going to bring those closest to win? What do you all the deals that have happened in a particular period of time haven't come? So the new study that we commissioned within the play was on Q2 and Q3 of last year. We looked at almost 8000 deals this time. And we did everything from you know, word ingests, you know, every single word on every one of these documents looking for pattern matching, or trying to understand, you know, the role of, you know, power person versus champion, you know, the seniority of the people involved in the deal and how many value prompters and which one of those fields was more important. And we actually came away with five main value drivers that change depending on the deal signs. And so now we've got an automated engine, where every month, we can look at all of our opportunities globally and assign opportunity scorecards to let us know the health of that particular deal. And we do it based upon those five drivers. They change for each of those commit levels. You know, obviously, any deal that's in excess of a million dollars is going to have to have a lot more behind it and a higher score than a deal that is 40k to 100k, right? So we've instituted this opportunity scoring program. I was invited to speak at the Americas management meeting. Back in there was the management QBR, back in February, and I started talking to the chief of staff about the safety and he said, You know, this could be interesting. Let me see what the managers think. I just wanted to put together a pilot. So I'm like, well, let me just sell this. Instead of getting into a long-winded explanation. We did 10 crisp minutes, where we talked about correlation versus causation.

To get from descriptive analytics, what's happened diagnostic to why it happened to repeating that so that we can be predictive in the future. I thought we would maybe get a grip or two. I got a call from the Chief of Staff at the end of the meeting and said, We want to run for the entire Americas right now, which was great. But oh my god, trying to get that setup and to get it out the door, you know, and we're already into the second month of the quarter was a heavy lift. And I think the employee did a great job. And, you know, they're using it. We’re taking a look at our stack ranks. You know, when we're already seeing like, the managers who are in the top half of stack rank, they're closing their deals at a much, much higher rate. It doesn't even say that they're performing best practices, right? That's been there. Before, when we talked about correlation versus causation, it's binary versus what is the predictive analytics that we can follow as our True North Stars. I apologize that that was a bit long-winded. But you know, getting from point A to point B to point C, it's been a process here. And I'm super, super excited that people are embracing this more and more. We’re doing a lot of programs around predictive analytics for deal reps. I’m sorry for overall deals, which are external factors, we're doing it on the actual reps themselves and how they operate with partners, we're looking at all of these factors. And we're, and we've now got a series of North Stars, and we'll report on them to managers. And so that was my late night, last night, my early morning and watching this in APJ. We couldn't be more excited.

Rajiv Parikh: That's great. I mean, that's fascinating. And a great explanation. When you were explaining this, to me, in my mind was going this is like a forensic analysis that you've done a lengthy forensic analysis to come up with the causation and correlation that is now being deployed across APAC, and NL Tams and the other regions, the UCL Tam?

Phil Aaronson: Um, so we actually did launch it in, in Latin America, in the Americas selected pilots in the media, and I have a select pilot in APJ as well. And just so you know, we're updating our analytics every month. So it's not like we can game the system. You know, we are following live data as our True North. And this is what brought SAP from 39 billion to 160 billion. I mean, granted, it wasn't the only factor. But you know, that's, that's why I'm so excited that Bill's here. You know, in fact, he endorsed the book on the back and talked about how important it was to their growth.

Rajiv Parikh: That's awesome. I mean, just for those people that are listening, you know, what, value-based selling? Tell me, what exactly is that? Yeah, at a high level, when you see value-based selling, what does that mean?

Phil Aaronson: We're selling outcomes.

Rajiv Parikh: Okay.

Phil Aaronson: That's what it really comes down to. One of the nice things about Visualize and the value selling program is that it forces sellers to think through a particular lens, right? We talked to a series of personas, and they could have any particular business problem. We can, you know, qualify and quantify what that business problem is, a solution that exactly fits their needs. And we can talk about, you know, what it's going to do for them. But, you know, a lot of selling organizations are focused on features, they're focused on benefits, they'll give it to ROI discussions, I mean, that'll be there. But what we really try to do is elevate because if you're going to be the platform of platforms, it means you have to think big. And to do that, we've got to take our business problems small B, and relate them up to business issues, largely. So the way a business issue is felt throughout an organization is going to be different based upon persona and the specific business problem that you're trying to solve for, you know, for somebody that's trying to do IT services for, you know, a customer care group, you know, they're going to be worried about, you know, missing their SLA is they're going to be concerned with, you know, the level of care that they're giving, what's been our response time, you know, how the employee has been satisfied with it, what is the experience like, but you know, you go up a level to the SVP or CIO level, you know, they've got that problem across the organization, and they're trying to figure out how they can digitally transform what those outcomes would mean to them. So, you know, while you've got to solve the business problem, the persona, you're trying to solve the outcome for the organization. And you want to express it in a clear business case. So, in addition to value selling, we have a value management team that focuses on business value assessments, and it forces once again, our reps like garbage in garbage out, you don't have the right inputs, we're not going to be able to sell the true value of this to the customer. I mean, we even have a value realization team that goes back and says: we said you were going to get this outcome, you got this outcome, it's either greater, which is hey, awesome but to use your to get that second sale or into as good of a job. And that's super important to us, and it's a concern. And so we're going to bring you up to the level that we said we were going to, right? So when you have that level of commitment to your customers. And that much skin in the game really opens a lot of doors. We had a saying back in the day at VMware that was people who buy VMware buy more VMware. And that was true to a certain point. It is absolutely true with ServiceNow. The more you buy from us, the more an organization, you know, realizes the potential of the platform and gains even greater ROI. So when you are seeing all these multiple, multi-million dollar deals, you know, it's really a tribute to the organization and their sales approach our commitment to our customers, that they realize the outcomes that we're selling to them, I'm not gonna say that we're perfect across the board, you know, like anyone else would be better on for the data to prove it?

Rajiv Parikh: Absolutely, that was great. And there are two things you mentioned there that I want to just double click on: One is the platform. So tell me very briefly, what is the Now platform?

Phil Aaronson: Okay, so the Now platform is a way for our customers to unify under, you know, a single set of IDs, and a single database, right? All cloud-driven, where all of our workflows across an organization, as I was trying to mentioned before, you know, we keep expanding out into a number of different areas where anything that runs in a company, can be fully documented, can be updated, can be acknowledged, right? We deal with organizations today that have done a lot of, you know, piecemeal buying of systems, right? And, you know, there are always companies that say, you know, hey, go with us, we are the single platform, right? I mean, I've got a tremendous amount of respect for what Salesforce has done, you know, in the last 20 years. Tremendous platform, you know, and for a long time, when I was, you know, working in sales, SFDC, you know, seems to be at the factor of choice of, of CRM systems, will say, we are not using Salesforce, that's another interview for another day. But you know, nothing against them. And there, they're just really fantastic at what they do, because what they have set up is a dynamic where anything that happens in the sales process, the sales cycle, sales operations, you know, is all connected on a single platform, it all happens on a single pane of glass, and it and it just makes it incredibly intuitive and easy for end-users to be able to run their book of business of that, that's super powerful. Um, you know, so I look at, you know, a competitor like a workday, they have attempted to create sort of, you know, the same dynamic. We are growing more and more into that space. And today, the reason that we're experiencing this growth is it's been that perfect storm of a market is ready for us, and the platform is ready for the market. So it doesn't matter if you've got HR functions, security functions, customer success functions, ITSM functions. Once you invest in us and implement us, it becomes easy to implement across an entire organization. And that's what has made ServiceNow so sticky.

Rajiv Parikh: Got it makes a lot of sense. So, Phil, you've had quite a career. You've been at Cloudera, you've been an Oracle, you've been at Juniper, you've been to Palo Alto Networks, some very well-known companies. Now you're at ServiceNow. How has your journey been? And maybe tell us some of the key learnings and takeaways you can share?

Phil Aaronson: Sure, would love to. First off, I feel very lucky to have been part of some world-class organizations. I've learned something different and every one of these stops. I think if you could, you know, draw a single thread through all of these. I was somebody that was always very interested in technology, and how do you translate between the technical outcomes to the business outcomes? You know, I had a career in sales selling for Microsoft partners. One of the things that I realized is when you're in a smaller firm. You’re not always going to get, you know, the technical resources you need on every deal. So you have to be able to, you know, you get to uplevel your technical game. I thought the technology was so cool at VMware. Palo Alto networks were doing some amazing things. I mean, they really changed the way people looked at security firewalls and the technology behind them. So outside of the technology, VMware was an amazing experience in the fact that I joined when there were 1700 employees. They’ve just gone public. And when I left, they were 10,000 employees and had become, you know, almost a completely different company. And, you know, what I learned from them was how a modern software business operates. You know, I think when you're selling for Microsoft partners, you know, you kind of have your blinders on, you're focused on your immediate customer, but at VMware, it was about your customers, your partner, the channel, understanding the ecosystem, understanding the part that marketing is going to play in this, how you connect with sales leadership, um, you know, very proud of the work that we have done there. You know, working at Palo Alto, I then went from a company that was 10,000 people, I was 480 0r 485 at Palo Alto Networks. I know, I should be retired at this point, you know, I was it was a little bit earlier in my career. But they were doing amazing things from a technology perspective. And they were all about, you know, the ethos to startup, you know, just break shit and make it happen, right? It was like going to get it out. But, you know, they really had that startup ethos of just, you know, push it hard, put it out, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the very good. And so, there were a ton of programs that we pushed out very quickly. I also saw a lot of healthy tension at Palo Alto Networks between what the technical group was trying to accomplish and how marketing was positioning it, and how the sales cell was going to market. And I think they made a series of fantastic moves. But I certainly got, you know, my startup fix there. And then, you know, I went to a couple of technology stalwarts. I really hadn't had that experience of working at a company that was as established as Juniper and Oracle, two completely different companies. You know, I learned a lot of lessons, things that you should do, things that, you know, can hold the company back. I think Juniper made some interesting technology bets but really suffered from an execution standpoint. And that happens to companies that are very engineering-focused as is and still have their original founders, you know, the Chief Technology Officer Oracle's a totally different animal. People ask me my experience, and I tell them, there's a right way, there's a wrong way. There's Oracle's way. Guess which way you're going to do it. Right. Um, and, you know, I don't want to say that necessarily is a bad thing because this has worked for Larry for a long time. And so, you know, I really learned the importance of, you know, making sure you were flying in formation, making sure that people understood where the swim lanes were.

We were lucky in that we were doing we were I was a director as part of their marketing cloud, which was an interesting space that Oracle hadn't been in. So they gave us a lot of leeways. You know, I learned a tremendous amount. And all along the way, you know, I had been making that transition from being an individual contributor to managing small teams to managing larger teams, you know, and realizing, you know, what is most important, the things that you needed in your career earlier on aren't necessarily the things that you know, you need later on. I think finding a mentor is really, really important. And I'm happy to say that in each organization I've been in, I still have friends and mentors in the industry. As I said, I'm incredibly thankful and grateful for the time that they've spent with me in bringing me to this space. Clutter is another great company, deep technology. Love those guys. I'm a big believer. I’m a big supporter of the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). My son is a type one diabetic. The former CEO of Cloudera is a type one diabetic. We did a tremendous amount of work in that space. And we were also able to use the technology, you know, with a number of companies that are in the space. So you're in ServiceNow, you know, where what does that progression meant to me? In my career, I've learned that my default way to communicate with folks who are really based in, you know, the ADDIE process and how we do instructional design, which is, hey, I need to give you some baseline information. We need to build on that so that we have a complete, concise, mutual understanding of topics. Now that we are doing things that are impacting the sales organization, at the highest level, I've actually learned something new, which is, you know, when you're communicating at the executive level, they're going to assume that you're competent. You don't have to get into all the details. It's really about can you produce crisp communication? Just a series of bullet points? You know, there are two ways to describe it. Whenever I'm putting a presentation together at the executive level, I always keep in my mind, you know, don't bore us get to the course right, get to the main point. And I also use this as an analogy, right? You know, let's say your house was on fire, right? Firemen come to your front door. Do you want your fireman to explain to you how the hose is going to work and how the pressure is going to work throughout the house? It's like, no, please put out the fire. So when you get to a certain point in your career, and you develop trust, you know, just through what you've accomplished and your own experience level, you really have to uplevel it. And as an educator, we want to explain everything to everyone. It's been a great journey. And I'm thankful to ServiceNow that not only do I get to focus on enablement, but you know, the data-driven productivity teams that we've put together and the progress that we're making. I mean, that's what gets me excited to get up every morning.

Rajiv Parikh: Got it? Okay. Phil, let me ask you, you've been in sales enablement for many, many years, what? What is your interpretation of sales enablement?

Phil Aaronson: Sales enablement is the right tool at the right time, in the right hands to advance a deal. It's a very simple explanation. It's actually there's a lot of complex processes that support that sales productivity is a bit of a different animal.

Rajiv Parikh: Yeah, tell me about that.

Phil Aaronson: Sales productivity. There isn't any one group in an organization that owns sales, productivity. If there was anybody that I would put in the bull's eye right in the center, we'd have to be the head of sales, right? They're the person that's ultimately going to live and die by the number. But, you know, when you talk about the elements of sales, productivity, it's impacted by so many different groups, you know, you've got sales operations, that's focused on your customer base, you know, look-alike analysis, where we've been, who are parent companies, you know, it's, it's all about the addressable marketplace. And then you have marketing, which is creating a lot of the what, right? They are coming up with the messaging. But it's usually focused on an external audience, right? Where is sales enablement? Will it then interpret what's happening in marketing? And give the how, you know, how do you position all of this? How do you advance deals, and then you've got sales, leadership, and sales management? They’re all about coaching and mentoring and making sure that they're sticking close to the numbers. They are the heart and soul of every organization, and they're going to either enforce good sales, hygiene, or they're not. And then the last piece is, you know, HR and the overall corporate functions so that you've got a model of what is successful rep looks like based on a series of metrics, and you're able to recruit the best and the brightest in the industry. Now, here's where it gets a little bit funky. When you have a sales productivity issue, a defined problem, you know, the head of sales traditionally will say that their trusted lieutenants, hey, here's this issue, I need you to solve it, everybody goes back to their little groups and says, I've got an answer for that. And we start to try and answer that of operations. We're out of marketing, you know, I've seen, you know, sales plays that were disconnected from methodology, and for a way to, you know, make them scale across an organization utilizing the operations organizations and sales leadership isn't bought in. That's because you have all these disparate groups that are responding to a series of different KPIs. Good sales, productivity function recognizes that you've got an initiative. It’s the flag that you fly. You’ve got to get executive leaders to salute it, get everybody in line and respond to a series of shared KPIs. And that is how you can get all of those groups marching in lockstep. So, you know, enablement needs to happen in every organization. But the mark of a truly mature organization is understanding how to use enablement within the context of greater sales productivity initiatives.

Rajiv Parikh: Got it. And you might you may have touched on this already, but just, I just want to touch on it because you mentioned that KPIs matter most to you.

Phil Aaronson: You know, honestly, because I'm doing so much data-driven productivity. You know, for me, it's about what does the data tell us that we can use in a predictive fashion that allows us to, you know, coach to those North Stars, right? So from a, you know, just a pure deal perspective, it can be any number of factors, you want the data to drive, you know, what you're going to focus on, when it becomes, you know, about the rep. You know, there's a lot of things that you can teach. You can't teach the will, right? The will show up. It shows up in the data. It's, it's unavoidable, right? So when I started looking at a rep, I didn't give a very tight answer around particular deals. And that's because that is a moving target, you know when we get into predictive analytics, but for reps, it's a little bit more concrete, you know, how are we working with our partners? How are we working with the business value team? How are we bringing our product line experts? At what level? Are we engaging our customers? How well are we executing on, you know, our executive briefings? Are we, you know, do we have a series of reps that focus on technical validation? Do they understand the importance of that? You know, and then for me, personally, it's, it's not about the number of courses that I produce, or, you know, the number, you know, tech talks that I've done, or you know, how many classes I'm writing, you know, for me, it shows up in performance. And that's, that's the journey that I was talking about before when I first started talking about data-driven productivity. I had leaders in enablement tell me that you could not draw a line between, you know, the outcomes of sales reps and what you were doing. There wasn't like garbage in garbage out. So you know, if reps are doing well, it's because they're just super amazing, awesome Rockstar salespeople. And if they do poorly, it's because enablement sucks, right? And I don't want to live in that world. I knew that there was correlation causation. So those are some of the KPIs that are really important to me, but it's at the end of the day, it's about how well we are executing as an organization.

Rajiv Parikh: Got it. I’m gonna switch gears here and ask you some other questions. So let's start with work-life balance? What's your philosophy on that? And how do you manage that?

Phil Aaronson: It's different than when I answered this question a couple of years ago. I didn't have a crazy six-year-old son who I love dearly. He’s just so in love with the world. I got to make time for him every day, you know, that's no matter how excited I am about anything that I do in sales, productivity, you know, he's kind of my North Star and keeps, you know, keeps me rolling. You know, trying to make sure that you're attentive to the needs of your significant other, I'm not ignoring yourself in the process, I will say, this year has been a challenge between our macro between COVID-19 between our switch to you know, all online virtual curriculum, it's been tough, there's been a lot of really long days, what I would say to anyone, I'm not going to give them you know, Rockstar advice of this is how you can only work 20 hours a week, I will say, you know, take time for yourself, and be able to say no because if you're good at what you do, people will want to work with you. And you will be you have to draw the line, right? have to, and you got to be able to do it from a perspective of, you know, the work will go on the next day, make the time for yourself. And hopefully, at some point, this URL will do a better job of following. I see things starting to slow down. So I would say before everything got so crazy. There was a little bit better at it. And I always enjoyed my hobbies as well. And I'm trying to indulge that again.

Rajiv Parikh: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. What are the top three sales books you would recommend others to read?

Phil Aaronson: The first one is, is data-driven? Because it's the power of analytics at your fingertips? You know, let's stop selling like it's 1999. I know, bad prints, quote, right? But it's true. You know, a lot of organizations still work by gut feel. And I think it's time to elevate, you know, the science and art of sales and to understand how those predictive measures can give us coaching points in how we operate deals. The coaching conversation, which has been a New York Times bestseller for a long time. What I love about that book is that, you know, it's great advice for sales managers, don't try and solve your sales folks problems for them for their issues, you know, make sure that you're asking the right? Kinds of questions, so they can think through what it's all about their developments, you know, resist the temptation to say, well, I've been there, I've done that it's the quickest way to point A to point B, right? Because as much as we're judged on the numbers, you know, our people are the most valuable resource and, and we've got to take time to develop them. You know, I think the last one is a little bit more old school, and I really, really like it. It's the original solution selling book by SPI Keith Eades. He's sort of The Godfather of, you know, modern sales methodologies and the new solution sales. In that book, I was lucky enough to meet some of the authors, people who were involved in development. And it was really about getting into that diagnose before you prescribe as opposed to trying to push sales, something, you know, the days of, of trying to close big deals on the golf course. And you know what your Rolodex looks like? I mean, look, all those things, you know, play into it, people want to work with people they want to work with, right? And you want to be seen as somebody that's easy to work with. But at the same time, you've got to take a much more disciplined approach to understand the problems of your customers, you know, the depth and breadth of those problems, and how you can solve for them and provide business value. I think those three would be a great place to start.

Rajiv Parikh: That will, and we'll provide those in the show notes as well. Phil, that's all the questions I had. I know we've run out of time, and there's so much more I want to talk to you. Maybe we could do part two. But is there anything? Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we sign off?

Phil Aaronson: Sure. If anybody is considering a career in sales, productivity and sales enablement, the biggest thing I would say is, you know, adhere to the strength of your convictions. I had a lot of people tell me over the course of my career that I was flat wrong, they didn't know what I was talking about, that what I was suggesting is just something that cannot be achieved. If you can believe in it, you know, no one else is going to believe in it unless you believe in it. And also, you know, over the course of your career, find good mentors. That has been huge in the course of my career, you know, for all the places that I've been and the number of people I've worked with, you know, I can count those mentors on the one hand, but, you know, I wouldn't trade them for the world.

Rajiv Parikh: Great advice. Thanks so much, Phil. I really appreciate our conversation. Stay safe and COVID-19 and keep rocking at ServiceNow.