Tech Sales Insights

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Randy welcomes Frank Rauch, Global Channel Chief at Cato Networks, to discuss the future of the channel. Frank shares insights on leadership, go-to-market strategies, and his extensive experience in the technology industry.The episode is sponsored by trender.ai, a sales intelligence company that helps accelerate ABM initiatives through targeted social media monitoring. The Trusted Tester Program by trender.ai is introduced, offering a white-glove onboarding experience for a year. The episode also highlights salescommunity.com, a platform with valuable sales content for professionals.Frank's personal interests, including golf and owning a rock and roll bar, are mentioned, along with his passion for Philadelphia sports and recent milestone of becoming a grandfather. Quotes from industry leaders commend Frank's integrity, leadership, and strong relationships within the channel community.INSIGHTS OF THE DAYThe Importance of Personal Relationships and Support in Channel Success - Frank Rauch: “I think it's a lot more than building your LinkedIn. It really is. I mean, that's part of it, but, you know, I think when I look at Joe and when I look at Dave, I can literally cite the day, the year, the month, where those relationships were strengthened and oftentimes they're strengthened in bad times. Rather than in good times, oftentimes the sky's falling and basically if you're there and you're willing to stand with the partner, absolutely. That helps.”Find out more about Frank Rauch in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankrauch/This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Sandler: https://www.sandler.com/

On this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Steve Hershkowitz, the CRO of Virtana Corp., discuss various aspects of sales and operations. Steve reflects on his younger self and advises on the importance of patience and thorough research before closing deals. They also touch upon the value of one-call closes and the need to ask for the order. The conversation shifts to the evolution of sales ops and the growing significance of RevenueOps, using AI and predictive analytics for business insights. Steve mentions their recent investment in a RevOps platform and how it helps identify gaps in deals, enabling coaching and improving closing opportunities. The guest highlights the role of Gong, a tool relied upon by the sales operations team. They also talk about enabling sellers with the OpsCruise offering, which provides insights and alerts on complex data types. Steve explains their lead generation strategies, which include outbound cold calling, strategic partnerships, LinkedIn campaigns, business intelligence tools, and participation in industry events. They discuss the importance of expanding the company's footprint within existing accounts and their partnership with CloudGenera for analytics and workload placement recommendations. The conversation concludes with a focus on sales methodology, particularly MedPIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Paper Process, Implicate Pain, Competitors). Steve shares their adoption of MedPIC and its benefits in deal qualification, understanding customer decision-making, and creating a sense of urgency. INSIGHTS OF THE DAY Navigating Time Constraints Without Losing Business - Steve: "I've learned over the years that you got to sit back and while we all have to want to close business and operate under our company's time constraints, you can't do that at the expense of losing business that you might otherwise have won."Leveraging MedPIC to Drive Customer Action and Success - Steve: “I think the most important part about MedPIC that I like, in addition to understanding the competitors, is being able to implicate the pain. On a customer, right? So being able to help the customer understand that if they, if it's business as usual and they don't take action, there is a compelling event or a compelling pain that they're going to experience that won't go away unless they take action with us or someone else.” Find out more about Steve Hershkowitz in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hersh/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Sandler:  https://www.sandler.com/

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Steve Hershkowitz, the CRO of Virtana Corp., explores the key elements of a thriving company culture, including the importance of helping one another and building a sustainable business. Randy and Steve also delve into the significance of effective sales and business presentations, emphasizing the need for thorough research and understanding of the customer's business. Steve shares valuable insights on best practices, the role of presentations in establishing business fit, and the power of internal and external communication in preparing for successful presentations. INSIGHTS OF THE DAY Understanding the Customer's Business, Vendor Trap - Steve: “Customers are swarmed by salespeople who don't put in the time, energy or effort to really understand the business of the customer's business. And then when you don't understand the business of the customer's business, you get relegated to gatekeepers and to evaluators and to folks that want to sort of put you into a box or a position. One of the sales traders I worked with many years ago wrote a book called Beyond Selling Value, and he talks about the vendor trap. Okay. And the vendor trap is a place that's really hard to fight your way at. And so I think business presentations are important, not just for closing deals” Find out more about Steve Hershkowitz in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hersh/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Sandler: https://www.sandler.com/

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Randy Seidl interviews Steve Hershkowitz, the Chief Revenue Officer of Virtana Corp. Steve has over 30 years of experience in the tech industry, having worked for companies like HP, Pansando, and AMD. He is a customer-first, process-oriented, and results-driven sales executive who is passionate about sales and go-to-market strategy. Steve shares his insights on best practices for sales and business presentations. He talks about the importance of storytelling, preparation, and engagement in delivering effective presentations. He also highlights the role of technology in enhancing the presentation experience and the need for sales teams to adapt to virtual selling in the post-pandemic world. INSIGHTS OF THE DAY Navigating the Competitive Landscape: Achieving Gold Standard Status in Infrastructure Performance Monitoring - Steve: "We tend to see different types of competitors, Randy, depending upon which one of those platforms or products we're engaged in a sales effort with. So, for cloud cost management, it's the cloud health of the world, the Turbanomics of that world. There are a lot of companies in that space for infrastructure performance monitoring. We run it to Dynatrace, Flexera, those kind of guys. But we are the gold standard in that space, make no mistake about it." Find out more about Steve Hershkowitz in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hersh/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Sandler:  https://www.sandler.com/

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, host Randy is back with Steve Layne, the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of RedVector, a security company. Steve discusses various aspects of sales and demand generation. They emphasize the importance of keeping demand generation in-house to maintain a deep understanding of the market. Event-based marketing is highlighted as a critical strategy, as it allows for meaningful interactions with potential customers. LinkedIn is praised as an effective platform for engagement. The expert discusses their rev ops tech stack, including Salesforce as their system of record. Measuring and managing sales activities is crucial, and tools like ZoomInfo and HubSpot aid in this process. The challenges and rewards of scaling a company to $10 million AR are also explored. They conclude with insights on building relationships with influential figures and advice for personal growth and success. INSIGHT OF THE DAY STEVE: Navigating Adversity and Embracing Forward Progress.“We've had some adversarial situations pop up, but you deal with them, right? And you take it one day at a time. Probably took me a little bit longer than that. That I would've liked to, to learn. Just don't look back. You can't look back. It's all you just can't go back. The only direction you can go is forward, right? And figure out what you're gonna do. Tomorrow, next week, next month, don't worry about what you did last week." Don’t miss out on our previous episode and watch out for the next ones!E128 Part 2 - Innovative Approach to Addressing Insider Threats and Predictive Risk Analysis with Steve Layne Find out more about Steve Layne in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smlayne/Website: https://redvector.ai/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group: https://www.alexandergroup.com/

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, host Randy welcomes Steve Layne, the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of RedVector, a security company. The interview explores a company that offers an innovative solution for insider threats and risk analysis. Their approach involves being proactive and predictive rather than reactive, allowing organizations to mitigate problems before they escalate. Steve emphasizes the importance of partnerships and discusses the significance of their collaboration with Microsoft in the context of zero-trust architecture. INSIGHT OF THE DAY STEVE: Leveraging Predictive Analytics for Early Detection.“Just like the weather agencies build models, the North American model, the European model, what we do is bring in all of this data, allow analysts to build models like a sabotage model or a data exfiltration model, and then see the risk starting to increase over time. And as you see this, these indicators of risk are increasing.You try to get what they call the left of boom, or in the financial world, left of theft, right? You try to mitigate the problem. And so that's the real benefit of our approach and our solution. That is the new error, the new wave of this is to try to be predictive as opposed to reactive. So the competition is really these more reactive types of solutions which work.But look, by the time it goes off, it's too late. The house is already on fire, right?" Don’t miss out on our previous episode and watch out for the next ones!E128 Part 1 - Mastering Sales Strategies: Insider Tips from Tech Sales Expert Steve LayneFind out more about Steve Layne in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smlayne/Website: https://redvector.ai/This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group: https://www.alexandergroup.com/

INSIGHT OF THE DAY STEVE: THE JOURNEY FROM CAR SALESMAN TO MARKETING ANALYST, UNVEILING THE SECRETS OF SELLING AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR“I, in large measure, learned how to sell right and learned the ways it means what it took to To, to close a deal, if you will. And so after college I couldn't be a car salesman. I went to college.I had a degree in marketing and so I had to go get a marketing job somewhere. So I went to work for Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, in their mid-Atlantic region as a marketing analyst. And it was a fantastic experience because I worked with 70 dealerships in a five state region and I also got to work with the, their ad agency, Doyle Dan and Bernbach, famous New York Madison Avenue Ad Agency where I was very early on in my career, I was schooled in something called the psychographics of the automobile purchaser.Which has served me extremely well in my sales career in terms of understanding the psychology of why people buy and why they buy certain things." Don’t miss out on our previous episode and watch out for the next ones!E127 Part 3 - AUTOMATION AND EFFICIENCY: Centralizing Data for Rep ProductivityFind out more about Steve Layne in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smlayne/Website: https://redvector.ai/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community:  https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group:  https://www.alexandergroup.com/

INSIGHTS OF THE DAYBILL: HOW MUCH TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH?“I think there was a huge risk on too much technology. This thing needs to be set up in a way that has as few user interfaces as possible. Everything should have a common look and feel that should be a common place that people are entering into. And then as much as possible, leveraging the tech in a way that automates the experiment without them having to do it." Don’t miss out on our previous episode and watch out for the next ones!E127 Part 1 - RELATIONS & BUSINESS MODEL: Driving Sales Productivity at a High Level E127 Part 2 - DRIVING SALES PRODUCTIVITY: Value Selling From the Productivity View Find out more about Bill Walsh in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-walsh-94664aa/Website: https://www.dell.com/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group: https://www.alexandergroup.com/

INSIGHTS OF THE DAYBILL: BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING FOR MAXIMUM PRODUCTIVITY“And again, a lot of companies, you know, you people have built tools and processes in place to solve a particular problem. And then they never go back and say, do I still need that in place? So it's, we've done a lot of fundamental like streamlining, simplifying, you know, breaking down those processes to make sure that we're getting value." Don’t miss out on our previous episode and watch out for the next ones!E127 Part 1 - RELATIONS & BUSINESS MODEL: Driving Sales Productivity at a High Level Find out more about Bill Walsh in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-walsh-94664aa/Website: https://www.dell.com/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group: https://www.alexandergroup.com/

INSIGHTS OF THE DAYBILL: LOOK AT ATTRIBUTES ON HOW TO BRING A TERRITORY TOGETHER“We came to the conclusion a number of years back that not only does a rep with a well-formed territory perform better but with a well-formed territory, you get much better revenue lift. So we've looked at a lot of different attributes around how do you bring a category together in a way that makes sense analytically?"Find out more about Bill Walsh in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-walsh-94664aa/Website: https://www.dell.com/ This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Alexander Group: https://www.alexandergroup.com/