Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:14
How did the book come about? The Success Cadence.
Bart Fanelli: 17:20
So, you know, I’m not a I’m an entrepreneur. And everybody that I’ve worked with for years has said, oh man, you come at this at a different in a different way. I was I was a journeyman. I was a sales an inside sales rep all the way to CRO and everything in operations in between. The first company, BMC Software was a big legacy company, real big on training and coaching.
Second company Splunk. I had the keys to create a repeatable operating model with a CRO that I got to join, Tom Schodorf, and that operating model was the foundational skill will approach for role based skills within a growing organization. Tom was the ultimate coach. He loves to develop people. I learned at BMC Software and in specifically the last two years, a very beautiful approach to operational discipline.
So when you combine operational discipline and coaching, you get the success cadence. And we did that. We had seven years at Splunk. I had seven years. Tom was from 10 to 15.
And we grew the company from right about 50 million in revenue to north of close to a billion, five in total revenue over seven years. We got to experience 40% year over year. It was unheard of and we wrote the book afterwards. You know, when I left, I took a year off and said, I’m not sure what I want to do, but I think we have something here because we had run the coaching framework extensively at, at Splunk for, from onboarding day one of every employee all the way through to quarterly coaching conversations based on a four box skill and will. And we did it for seven years.
We had over 50,000 coaching frameworks delivered. And while we don’t like that is not the definitive only reason the company scaled. There’s something to do. It had something to do with the alignment between leaders and their teams on what they were supposed to be doing on cadence, and that created a hockey stick effect in their growth.
So that was that was the book, and we wrote it with Sandler Training. Dave Mattson, Chairman at Sandler.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:40
Now I’m wondering what made Tom such a good coach.
Bart Fanelli: 19:47
You know, that’s a great question. He’s probably the purest leader that I’ve ever met. We call it. There’s a concept called “Process Pure”. He’s he’s the most objective person I’ve ever met, where he has a unique capability of separating emotion from the outcome.
And and he does it without wavering in the way he delivers. So that I find I found grounding for me personally because I, I’m, I’m ADHD and dyslexic. So my way my emotions are have a range. He was extremely stoic. So I had known him from 2000 at BMC Software.
And I learned, I learned from him how to be very disciplined and structured in delivering bad news or coaching and developing. And mean, that was the the whole premise of, hey, we should write a book together. I learned much of this with you from you. I’ve got this operational discipline that I can weave into it, and I think we’ve got something. And we we wrote the book.
So I picked up the. The funny thing is, I, I called Dave Mattson. He had helped us a little bit at, at Splunk. He had helped us at BMC Software. And I said, Dave, I want to write a book based on our success.
We had done an article with the Harvard Business Review on how we drove scale through culture, the coaching framework, and that was the start of the concept of we should write a full fledged book about it. And he agreed. So we wrote the book, and I had never written a book, never thought I’d be an author, a co-author. So that was a wonderful learning experience. And I’m all about I want to do really hard things that help me grow and learn constantly keeps me out of trouble, and then I can help others do the same thing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:37
I’ve heard you, Bart, say that at one point you wish you were coachable sooner. Oh, and so I’d love to know. What? What was that change, you know? Yeah.
I mean, when I. When I meet you, you don’t seem like someone who’s not coachable. But what was, I guess, the Bart before and then after. What was that change?
Bart Fanelli: 22:05
You know, that’s a great question. All of your questions are great, by the way. I was extremely I don’t know what the what the, the, the correct definition of it is, but I was I would never accept someone else’s idea. I would literally. What’s that?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:25
Why do you think that was at the time?
Bart Fanelli: 22:28
Probably because of my upbringing. I didn’t have a voice growing up like I was in a traditional old school Italian family. You did what you were told, so I hated it. I literally could not handle someone trying to coach me like and tell me something. I thought I was a bad person, I did something wrong.
So it took me a really long time to unpack that and learn therapy. You know, great leaders and mentors. And I had to then I had to learn. So back to Tom being a wonderful example for me to separate the emotion from the outcome. Like someone, like just because someone is coaching me doesn’t mean I’m, I’m completely wrong or I’m I’m viewing something in the wrong perspective.
It’s their perspective. So I had to learn how to do that. And that happened. There’s a great story. One of my leaders who actually was working for Tom Schodorf at the time came into my office, and he’s like, I’m going to fire you.
I’m like, what are you talking about? Like, I’m on the I’m doing the job like I’m he goes, you’re doing the job the way you want to do the job. And it’s it is creating a ripple effect within the organization that is creating bad behavior. And if you keep doing that, you’re out. So I’m boxing your ears.
And if I don’t see a change, I’m removing you from the business. Literally. That’s a literal. He was sitting on the desk. I can I remember the office.
He’ll remain nameless. Well, he doesn’t have to. Steve Rowland, he’s still a great friend of mine. He’s a highly successful executive. And that was it.
I was like, he’s serious, and I completely. I woke up and I changed my paradigm immediately because I knew he would fire me if I didn’t. And then I became a sponge and I was probably in my mid 30s.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:21
It took a hard conversation. Took a.
Bart Fanelli: 24:24
Hard.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:24
Conversation.
Bart Fanelli: 24:25
Yeah. There was no, you know, back to upbringing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:27
That’s not an easy conversation. I think even for a leader to have, it’s not like someone wants to go in and confront someone with something like that. So, you know, I think from his perspective, it just I don’t know, I think it takes some amount of courage or something like that.
Bart Fanelli: 24:43
Yeah, there’s a lot of management courage in that. As part of one of the themes in the book, by the way, in the success cadence, he did me a favor. I went on to produce more in one account and had better performance than I had ever had after his talking to me. And then I just I sat down with him constantly and took, took, took his guidance on a regular basis. So that’s how it worked.
But hard conversation mattered. And now it’s like hard conversations are the best way to scale companies. As long as you do it with passion or with adult like tone, it’s never an implication on the person. It’s more about how we’re trying to achieve the outcome in a certain way, and maybe how we can improve or do it differently for better results. That was the genesis of the entire “Skill Will Framework”.
And there’s I always like to say the skills can be anything but your ability and your willingness to learn the skills are what matters most. And that’s why the framework is exceptional for scaling high performance teams, because you you focus on first principles, skills that are shared and collaborated on. And if you’re not willing to learn those, then we’re going to have a hard conversation. And if that happens on a recurring basis, you probably have someone that’s not willing to run within the revenue operating model that you’ve defined. And if you’ve built it a certain way, the respectful thing to do is to is to maintain the integrity of it because it serves a higher purpose.
The company being profitable, the company growing, the company being efficient, and having team members that appreciate that. So the four box gives us a non-personal, objective, conversational framework based on the skills we’ve defined on how we want to scale this business so that we can bring people on that journey.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:46
What kind of company is a good fit? Is there a certain size and type of company that should be checking out Skillibrium? Because it seems like it’s maybe for a bit larger organizations.
Bart Fanelli: 26:57
Well, great. The, the the interesting part of that is when we started, our belief was we’ll, we’ll go SB, SMB, mid-market first out of the box, end to end learning curricula, workflows and coaching. And we immediately got pulled into the big enterprise. And now so so we had to go get all of our compliances in order to be able to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:23
I saw that. Yeah.
Bart Fanelli: 27:25
And so in six. Yeah. In the first two quarters of our existence. We got pulled into to to being required to get all of our compliances so that we could sell through security, you know, the security teams at large enterprises. And and we did it in a very short period of time where SOC two, type two, GDPR, GDPR, ISO 27001 and.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:52
Yeah, someone on your site and I’m like, they have a lot of acronyms and initials here.
Bart Fanelli: 27:57
So that’s brutal. But that just tells you we’re a serious business. And we maintain compliance.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:04
So you also could have been you know Bart screwed it. Let’s just not go there and let’s just go to the other one. But you chose I guess they were pulling you in. It made sense. It was more of a fit for the enterprise.
Bart Fanelli: 28:16
It was more of a fit. My network primarily. And then my experience in in Splunk and then in OutSystems, you know, you built when you’re, when you serve the right way, when you give and you help and you coach and you develop, then people want more and it comes back full circle, right? So it’s it’s reciprocal. So you you started with that in in the in our conversation.
And I’m a firm believer. Give give give. And it will come back full circle. So so that’s that’s what we’ve been doing. And people picked up the phone and called us and said we want that.
And we said, well, we’ve got some work to do. We’re going to have to go get our certifications to get through your, your IT and security organization. And we went and did it and it worked. So here we are. Now we can go down.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:09
The Master Continuous Sales Discovery. Can we talk about that?
Bart Fanelli: 29:14
Oh yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:15
Some of the best practices.
Bart Fanelli: 29:16
You don’t even need to put that picture up there. I’ll give you the magnificent. I think it’s the “Magnificent Nine”. Okay. So everybody thinks that sales discovery is a list of questions, or any type of discovery is a list of questions.
And it’s not. It’s it has more to do with earning the right to be in front of whom you’re selling to and doing it in a different way. Meaning, you know, most organizations show up and want to pitch their products, and then they want to ask scripted questions. And if I’m a.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:50
I do the show up and throw up person.
Bart Fanelli: 29:53
Yeah, if I’m a buyer, I’m not I’m not gonna. Yeah. There we go. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to let you do that.
You have to earn that. Right. So so we have a method that we teach. You earn that right. You use our system to do it and you show up.
And the only thing you have to master is understanding 5 or 7, 5 to 7 categories about their business and them as a person. Kind of like you did. Jeremy. You, you you did research before we got on the, on the podcast. Like how great is that?
Now my guard is down. You’ve earned my trust and my respect immediately. And I’m going to talk about. I’m going to talk about things openly. If you started this podcast and just started hitting me up with questions, what would I do?
Shut down. So you lowered the bar. You made it organic. Well, the “Magnificent Nine” are who? What?
When? Where? Why? How? Tell me.
Describe to me. Explain to me. That’s your. You do all of your pre-call research, and then you master the the nine. And you can have a conversation for hours, and they will never feel like you’re selling them anything.
And you will learn and learn and learn. And before you know it, you’re solving their problems rather than pitching them products. And that’s the ultimate gift. So there you go.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:12
Yeah, totally. Yeah. I feel like sometimes I’m I’m on, you know, as you know, my background as a chiropractor, I’m solving problems that have nothing to do with our business. Right. It’s like, oh, you, you know, talking about supplements or something like that, right?
Health related stuff. So I totally get that. But I do want to encourage people to check out Skillibrium and there is a you can see here sales discovery best practices. What are some of the, I don’t know, the fan favorites on this 12 Best Practices for success.
Maybe we could touch on 1 or 2 of them.
Bart Fanelli: 31:44
Social. Social proof is usually for me, like, you know, when you’re when you start, people call it the sandwich. When you start with the customer all about the customer, right? And you’re facing them first and then you’re aligning your offering, whether it’s a technical offering or some service offering to them, they start to think about how that offering aligns to what you’ve shared about their company or their initiatives, their strategies, and what is challenging to run their business. Well, the last part is, hey, where have you solved similar problems in the past?
So you always have to have some type of social proof. It’s not selling per se. Meaning here’s my feature, here’s my speed and feed. It’s hey, we’ve actually done this before many places. Here’s how we solve similar problems for other customers, and then we leave it up to them.
Do we want to? If you want to continue talking, that’s great. We’ll we’ll help prescribe how to solve your problem. And your pitch or your narrative has to always be tailored to them. It has nothing to do with you first, and it’s just such a fundamental flaw in industry.
But it’s give, give, give show some examples of where you’ve done it before. Help them connect your capabilities to their challenges, and then repeat that about a hundred times and you’ll be successful.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:10
So where do you see? If we look at this list, people trip up the most. And if you know you’re not watching the video, we do have Mastering Sales Discovery 12 best practices. We have conduct through pre-call research. Build rapport and trust. Ask open ended questions, listen actively, and so on. Identify pain points. Where do people get tripped up the most or forget. So in there.
Bart Fanelli: 33:34
It’s usually as simple as they show up on a call without doing any research based on the person, based on the company and based on what their industry is experiencing. And, you know, in order in order to have any rapport, you have to give first. So that’s the give. You do your research, you show up in context and you have a conversation. And inevitably you don’t have to be 100% right.
You just have to be directional. And they will correct you if you’re incorrect, if it’s incorrect. And that’s okay, because now you have the endowment effect. They’ve started to touch the narrative and they’re giving you their information. And you’re starting to build a relationship.
The flaw that follows, by the way, after you do that call, there’s a couple flaws that follow. So in the beginning, no pre-call plan. They come in and they pitch, and then the customer or prospect leaves. If you’re really doing a pre-call plan and you’re doing your research, you open that call up and you share that research with them. They help validate, and they’ll usually get into an open conversation where you’re using the “Magnificent Nine”, those those questions that keep the conversation organic.
You you never get to the product. You’re telling stories. You’re asking open ended questions. They’re sharing information. And with ten minutes left, you get to pause and you say, I would love to recap all of this for you in an email so you can reuse it within your your company.
And if we’re a fit, then wonderful. Let’s schedule the next meeting now, as soon as we can. Because you know, there’s no reason to there’s no reason for us to to to leave and leave the call without doing that. And most of the time you’ll get the next meeting immediately.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:25
You know that research, right? The pre-call research, I feel like, bleeds into every other one of these points. Right? Because it’s like if you don’t do that, that bleeds into building rapport, that build rapport, that bleeds into identifying pain points, that bleeds into qualifying the lead, handling all these things. If that pre-call research is done, it helps with the next steps in general here.
Bart Fanelli: 35:51
Oh yeah. And so so there’s the concept of relegation. You get relegated to whomever you sound most like, right? So if you’re calling an executive and you’re not speaking in executive terms about them and their company and their needed outcomes, you’ll immediately get shut down. If you have to talk with someone that’s technical and you’re speaking in business terms, you’ll get relegated up.
So you always want to default to the latter. And because you’re what you’re doing. When you are speaking in executive terms or outcomes, you’re helping the person on the other side understand that their job is actually important and it provides an outcome using your technology or your capabilities. It’s not just a tool or a speed and feed. It is more about the business that they serve, and that is ultimately how you build trust and relationships and business is helping other people.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:46
So how did you cope? What skills did you have to use? Because you mentioned, obviously you’re highly successful in your career and business, but you mentioned you’d ADHD and you were dyslexic, it seems really I mean, people have enough difficulty without those things. So what things did you have to do? How did you cope with those? Or what skills did you develop to work around those things for you?
Bart Fanelli: 37:13
So I had to, very early in my life, become a self learner. You know, I had to teach myself. And I had to teach myself first principles. I had to learn by doing, essentially. And I could only do what I understood.
So I never became a technologist. I understand technology, I’ve always been in SaaS tech and sold into tech, but I was always a steward of the business first, and that served me well enough to pull just enough knowledge technically. And having partners in selling like a sales engineer that you keep by your side, you do business alignment. They do technical alignment that helps you achieve business alignment. You get partnerships out of it.
So I relied on asking a lot of questions. I relied on being self-taught. And it was I would say it’s extremely stressful and anxiety ridden for the first ten years of my career, because I felt I never felt like I was doing enough or I was doing it right because you, you know, you’re you’re your own worst critic when you’re ADHD and dyslexic, or when you don’t have someone that’s coaching you in a professional way. So I had I would say all of that comes to the point of I don’t think I would have would be where I was if I didn’t have a few key people that taught me and helped me understand the right perspective. So Tom Schodorf, Steve Rowland, those are.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:42
Yeah. Thank you. I’m curious, some of your favorite resources. This could be apps that you use on your phone or computer. It could be personal or professional.
It could be, you know, any software. It could be resources, could be books or. What are some of your favorite resources that have helped you now or in the past for business?
Bart Fanelli: 39:07
Yeah, boy, that’s a great question. So as a builder like this this is interesting. Like buildings the company, building Skillibrium it was based on what I had self taught myself.
Meaning what I knew worked for, for scale. As as I’ve been doing that and learning and improving my business skills, I’ve been through the internet and the the crash, the pandemic and then now AI changing the world completely, right? So right now, clearly AI is any AI that you can learn to interact with to, not to shortcut, but to make you more efficient and help you apply what you learned human to human. That is the biggest and best hack. So I don’t care what the AI tool is If it could be, it could be using a Skillibrium playbook for that matter where it helps you align your answers based on your conversational MP4 or zoom call or whatever it may be. Align answers are how you’d go write a recap for a prospect or customer that that step being automated by AI is a beautiful thing. But there’s a flaw in it and this is what I try to advocate on a regular basis.
AI is amazing and can and can do amazing things. And it’s been coming along for years, years and years from the mid 2000. Whether it’s deep learning, machine learning, all of AI has never it didn’t just arrive.
It’s unstructured data and supercomputing. Making suggestions that are the most likely next best thing to put together. Well, what does it not teach us, Jeremy? It’s. How can Jeremy and Bart have a professional conversation and come across credibly if we don’t, if we’re not intimate with the subject matter at hand? And the shortcut that or the flaw in AI is it makes some, in some cases, sellers and leaders worse because they think they’re invincible based on AI creating a narrative or a presentation or a script.
But ask them one question and ask them to unpack some point deep in the writing that AI did for them, and they will crumble near immediately. And that’s the flaw. You you can’t use it as a shortcut. You use it as an aid to validate and reassure your narrative that you’ve personally perfected for the prospect or customer on the other side. And I’ve watched.
I could give you examples of when you miss a step in a process and you don’t know the content that you’ve created, it shows up with other customers names in it, or it shows up with incorrect assumptions. And and then usually you get caught by that. So so any AI but you have to you have to learn. You have to learn how to deliver and understand what it’s created.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:43
Outside of of your book, The Success Cadence, what other any other leadership or business books that you point to that have been influential for you?
Bart Fanelli: 42:54
There’s about there’s yes. So there’s about 20 of them over on the other side of my office. You might know this. The the author Rom Brafman, Succeeding When You’re Supposed to Fail. And I read this book.
This is a decade ago. And there’s a and I pulled a concept from it. And, you know, when we were talking about how I learned and the difficulties of learning because of the inability to learn or for whatever reason, there’s a concept in the book called “Tunneling” people that are faced with hardship or difficulties in life, whether whatever it may be, learning, family, abuse, whatever it is, doesn’t matter. The, yeah. That’s it.
The ability to tunnel through is a unique characteristic that people that have been through hardships learn. So that book and the concept of tunneling has been with me through my entire career, where I learned the concept. It’s you’re faced with adversity, you go heads down and you work yourself through the adversity and there is no excuse. You’ll come out better, more resilient and a better person by pushing yourself through it. And that repeats itself constantly because we’re all going to face.
We can’t look around the corner. We might think we can, but we can’t. And we’re going to be faced with surprises and difficult situations. And you have to be able to tunnel so that that one sticks with me a lot.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:37
Bart, I want you to be the first one to thank you. I want to encourage everyone to check out skillibrium.com and more episodes of the podcast. And Bart, thanks so much.
Bart Fanelli: 44:47
Well, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Super happy to be here.
