CGO: The Role Behind High-Performance Growth with AJ Gandhi

AJ Gandhi: If you are in sales or any of these functional heads, you need to work in a collaborative way with the other functions. If you're going to be successful. 

John Common: Welcome to Growth Driver, brought to you by Intelligent Demand, where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. Hey everybody, John Common, Chief Growth Officer.

That might be, seriously. My favorite title in all of B2B, but what does a CGO really do like seriously? And how is the CGO role different from the chief revenue officer, from the chief commercial officer, from the marketing officer, and what are the overlaps? And since I'm asking questions, how do CGOs drive measurable growth results today, right?

In light of all of the complexity of go to market and shifting priorities and you know, unstopping technology disruption. That is what we're going to unpack and dig into today on Growth Driver. So if you're an executive who is on the hook to drive smarter growth at your company, I think you're going to love this episode.

And I have the perfect guest with me today to explain the CGO role. If you've worked with A. J. Gandhi, you already know he's an impressive guy, but let me just confirm that for you for a second. Uh, Berkeley undergrad, uh, picked up a Harvard MBA, became a consultant at, you know, some small companies, uh, Bain, CEB, uh, CEB, McKinsey.

Then he decided to become the VP of global sales strategy at a small software company called Salesforce, then VP of strategy operations and inside sales at lattice engines. Did a tour of VP of global sales ops at ring central. And then for the past almost five years, he's been the chief. Growth officer at marlin equity partners a nine billion dollar software focused private equity firm with over 50 portfolio companies in europe and north america i'm almost done aj and in his spare time you have found time to a co found The go to market leader society.

And even though my invitation keeps getting lost in the mail, AJ, uh, I think it has something to do with PAEA and B2B growth. Welcome to Growth Driver, 

AJ Gandhi: AJ. Good to see you, Joe. Thanks for having me. 

John Common: Well, Hey, look, all right. So chief growth officer, um, I'm really glad to have you on. And I've been looking forward to this episode for a long time, because I think that we're seeing the rise of the CGO role just in the number of times you're seeing it.

But I think it's still very misunderstood, honestly. And so let's just start with, like, the basics. I'm gonna ask a simple question. AJ, define the role of the CGO. 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, so again, keep in mind the context, John. I'm in private equity as an operating partner. And so, uh, you know, my role is to be, uh, you know, for lack of a word, helper resource to management.

So the management teams run our companies in the, in our portfolio. Uh, but I'm here as a, you know, experienced set of hands to collaborate and help them be successful. Uh, and that's fundamentally the role of an operating partner, but it comes to chief growth officer, uh, which is, uh, uh, a kind, fancy title that people, people gave me when I joined.

Um, yeah, I think it's just sort of, uh, first of all, recognizing, um, You know, what is the objective when you're an investor? Um, how do you make a return? Because that's fundamentally what we're trying to do is, uh, we are seeking to drive growth, uh, and companies, um, you know, yes, companies need to be profitable.

Uh, but if you look at point for growth versus profitability, you know, Um, you have to get profitability to a certain threshold, uh, but then, uh, the return that you're really going to get, uh, is by driving growth. Um, so that is the imperative and, uh, growth is actually rewarded much more than profitability.

Um, so if you were to take a rule of 40 company where it's, you know, operating margin plus growth rate. Um, you know, above sort of 10, 15, 20 points of growth, excuse me, of, uh, you know, even dumb merchant, uh, really what, uh, people are looking for is growth. 

John Common: So, 

AJ Gandhi: um, so it's an incredibly strategic, uh, objective, uh, fundamentally for a company.

That's really what it's all about. Uh, an extra five points of growth will, you know, uh, have a significant multiple, uh, uh, impact on the valuation of the company. So when it comes to the chief growth officer, If you think about it from a functional scope standpoint, um, it's really try to be holistic about go to market.

And that is thinking about marketing sales, but increasingly in this world of some, some people like Jaco right around talking about bow ties, but really think about what happens, especially in technology and subscription economy. Uh, the right side of the bow tie. So very much the post sale side, and that is the implementation.

Uh, time to first value customer success as well support. Um, so it really is looking at the holistic equation of what is the customer life cycle? Uh, and how do they get value? And it's, um, you know, looking across all those functions. And here's the real trick these days. I think what everybody has learned is, uh, you can't have functions that operate independently in silos.

They all have to work together. Go to market is the ultimate team sport, but there's an incredible amount of friction and waste in that 

John Common: team sport. I'm going to unpack some of what you just talked about. So one is the most recent, I'm trying to think the most recent research I've seen To your first point about how once you've reached an acceptable level of EBITDA or profitability, you are rewarded more for growth than your next tranche of EBITDA or profitability.

And the research I've seen, and that's changed a lot, by the way, obviously since the end of growth at all costs. But the last thing I heard is, is it four or five times? Greater enterprise value increase for growth to one for profitability. Is that, am I remembering that right? 

AJ Gandhi: I heard two to three X. Okay.

I don't remember the exact number. Um, actually I think Salesforce Ventures actually published a bunch of good stuff on this. Um, uh, my takeaway was two to three. 

John Common: Okay. Yeah. But still that's to your point. Um, you, you can't, you can't be a, you know, a money burning volcano anymore, but once you hit acceptable profitability, it's really still about growth.

AJ Gandhi: That that that's exactly right. And, you know, in private equity, it's always been much more disciplined in terms of how companies operate, you know, in particular, if you have a control position, you know, we, uh, we, as a fund, uh, own the balance sheet. So if a company's burning cash, that means we're burning cash.

And, uh, we don't like to do that right to the investment committee, which, uh, no, uh, deal leaf wants to do. So, you know, it's, it's really running businesses in a. Fiscally sound way, but we're still very much seeking growth. We're just seeking to do it a much more disciplined way 

John Common: And that's why I love that you're on the show today because I mean our our audience, you know it very well our audience Um, they are so under the gun and so hungry for not not just growth effectiveness but growth efficiency and I know that you have It's literally your one of your areas of expertise, and we're going to unpack a framework that you developed later in this episode, but I want to stay on the C.

1. O. role. Just one beat longer. Um, sure. Obviously, you're the C. G. O. At the private equity level for providing that support and those resources to multiple management teams, multiple go to market efforts. But based on what you know about the role inside of companies, are you seeing a, uh, Yeah. More and more people take on the cgo role at the company level or is it what's your what's your forecast 

AJ Gandhi: for cgi?

I think it will You know, there will be more and more integration over time I think one of the challenges, uh, I think there are actually a lot of challenges when it comes to actually Really having a true cgo role. I mean the cgo role can be You know, it could be consultancy or as like an overlay, or it could be like a true role, which means you want all these functions, but I mean, just think about it for a moment.

Um, uh, let's actually start with marketing. Marketing is one of the most heterogeneous. Uh, functions out there. If you look at the role of the CMO, well, there's product marketing, uh, there's demand generation, both inbound and outbound, uh, which are totally different. Uh, there's corporate marketing, there's marketing operations, there's partner marketing.

So that's six distinct functions. Uh, and what CMOs are master of all those functions? Uh, the answer is virtually none. I mean, honestly, truly not. Yeah. Now let's consider sales leader. You know, a lot of sales leaders out there say, I want to be a chief revenue officer. And, uh, that means I should own everything.

Well, okay. Uh, great. Well, your sales leader and that's its own set of complex functions. Um, you know, insight sales, field sales, different segments, different, um, uh, different geographies, um, uh, you know, specialized verticals. That's a lot of complexity to manage there. And then you're gonna have knowledge on how to manage this marketing function and what are the right trade offs and how do things work together.

And what do you invest in versus not? How do you, uh, and again, if you're talking about the marketing function, how do you think about corporate brand, like how many sales leaders actually really have the experience and knowledge, um, uh, to actually have the judgment to, to, you know, to oversee that marketing function.

So that's actually pretty tricky. Uh, and the third, let's take customer success, you know, still an evolving role, and you know, it could say a bunch of things about customer success, and that's actually different than professional services and implementation, uh, which depending on what kind of solution I'm largely talking about software B to B software companies here, uh, and then let's take support.

So, well, should all five of those functions be under a chief growth officer? Um, yeah, potentially. Yes. Uh, yeah. And so those are five wildly different heterogeneous functions. And by the way, that's probably half the company. Um, what you're missing is product, uh, engineering, GNA, uh, you know, kind of finance.

Um, that's most of the company. Yeah. So in some ways you could actually say the chief growth officer is really the CEO. Um, and I would. Personally, my response is this, like, don't don't get so wrapped up in, uh, you know, uh, labels and titles and org charts. Um, look, if you are in sales or any of these functional heads, you need to work in a collaborative way with the other functions if you're going to be successful.

And that's why I actually the term I actually use more so is revenue leader. Um, so within the, uh, Marlon portfolio, um, I, uh, host a lot of, uh, um, kind of webinars, zoom sessions, roundtables. I'm actually doing a conference next week. And, uh, you know, what I call it is the revenue leaders conference. Right.

And the person that I want there most is the CEO. Because they're the ultimate revenue leader. Guess who else is a revenue leader? The CFO. Because they're the ones who sort of help guide and approve the investment decisions and evaluate the performance of the different functions. Uh, guess who's also, uh, a revenue leader that, uh, the people are HR later.

Because if you think about all these functions, which are half the cost of a company and more than typically half the headcount. Well, you care about people in HR. So, look, I think titles are kind of BS. It's nice that I was, you know, given a fancy title, you know, when I, I want to impress somebody somewhere.

I never meet my title internally ever. Um, because I work with really talented people. What I care about and focus on is, Hey, look, there's a responsibility to make all these functions work together to actually drive growth in a company. And because it's also the most expensive function. We're set of functions in a company.

Um, you know, you have an obligation to do it. Well, because I think about what go to market is, you know, in a public company, it's, you know, 42 percent of revenue is spent on sales and marketing. And that doesn't include customer success, professional services or support. You throw in those functions and you're typically well over 50 percent in a public software company.

Private software companies, actually PEs run often tighter. VC is actually, uh, run typically looser. Right. So it's, you know, it's huge. So anyway, hopefully we manage well. 

John Common: Yeah. Yeah. So the definition that I'm, I'm, I'm hearing from you, I'm sensing from you, uh, Around what is the CGO role? That sounds like it is one of, but not the only revenue leader or revenue executive who is personally responsible for driving effective, efficient growth and doing so in a holistic end to end team sport kind of way.

Am I, am I, am I getting the key pillars of the definition of the role? 

AJ Gandhi: I think so, John. And I guess the key thing that I would actually say at the end of the day is I think a lot of companies don't have or don't need a chief growth officer. Yeah. Um, I think you, you structure the roles based off of how integrated the functions need to be.

And to a degree based on the capability. of the, uh, you know, executive in the role. There are certain, uh, sales leaders are actually have wonderful business acumen and, uh, actually, uh, and actually, uh, have spent a lot of time and worked in a hands on way with marketing. They actually really can be the full cycle role.

Um, and I think those people are super, super successful. They typically end up being CEOs, but then there are plenty of other sales leaders who don't have the functional experience, the exposure or the intellectual curiosity. Or the business acumen to really do it. And those people, you know, uh, are not really going to be capable of doing the full role.

And then just the CEO has to play a bigger role accordingly, or sometimes a COO was put in if, uh, um, you, you know, the CEO has less of a background, perhaps they're more of a, you know, product engineering kind of leader. You 

John Common: know, the, the thing that fascinates me about your role, about this thing that we're talking about is, to me, the The elephant in the room, the elephant, the sleeping giant in the room of B2B growth is finally finding pragmatic, scalable, repeatable ways to unlock actual teamwork.

Not once a year at the sales kickoff teamwork, but real aligned integrated growth and go to market. And so it is, It has gone from strongly recommended to I think existentially important the the doing of that And so that's my first thing that I think second thing is the truth is that most companies are horrible at that Yeah, they really are.

And so therein lies the, I think the, the reason the need for the CGO role. So my, I guess my question is if you, if a company doesn't have a CGO, who should do that role in light of what I just said, which is that, that we have to find a way to actually execute aligned, go to market and integrated growth.

And the answer, what I hear from a lot of LinkedIn thought leaders is it's the CEO. And I'm like, you know, academically, sure. But most of the CEOs I know might be the furthest away from being available from a bandwidth. And frankly, I don't mean this in an unkind way, qualified to do the role. So if a company doesn't have a C G O, who should do that?

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, I think there's a lot of variance, John. And it depends a bit on the size of the company. If we're talking about, uh, you know, uh, you know, 20 to 50 to 75 company. I think oftentimes it is the CEO who's sort of playing that role. I look, I look with the companies that I work with. Um, there are some, uh, CROs who really are very experienced and have very strong business acumen and they actually do own marketing and they own customer success.

I have some other ones who, uh, Uh, are actually very good sales leaders, but they actually, um, you know, there's a limitation. They, they want to focus on, you know, building the team and managing the team to go win business. So they actually run, you know, uh, you know, the mid market and the enterprise sales team, but they don't even have revenue operations, uh, kind of, or sales operations reporting it to them.

Um, they're just focused on being sellers and, uh, actually, and one particular company, um, uh, the marketing leader. Uh, and revenue operations. Leadership role have been combined. So I think you have to look at what are the needs of the business as well as what are the capabilities of the team. So there are plenty of CEOs are extremely strong from a go to market standpoint.

I can think of another one where, you know, this guy was just is just Pure nails. Uh, when it comes to go to market, one of the strongest people I know. Um, and you know, he kind of came up to the ranks through the go to go to market side, but that's very different than others who came up to the product engineering rank.

So I think you have to be a bit adaptive. If you go to a larger company, you Uh, you know, let's take a, you know, something galactic like salesforce today or even rise to work great central or you know Any kind of multi segment multi country multi product Uh multi route to market business then actually the cgo role, uh, you know, I don't know if you call it this Because anytime you throw a C on something, it's, you know, it's just, you know, it's kind of loaded and that puts a lot of ego in, especially when people start poking around, Hey, why do you have C?

I just think it's kind of a yes, but, um, you know, people like their titles and, you know, I never asked for this title, but I was, Uh, you know, I certainly happy to accept it when it was offered to me. I'm like, sure. That sounds good. That's like my, my mom will be proud. She won't understand what I do. But, 

John Common: um, 

AJ Gandhi: here's what I would say.

And I think this is actually, it sort of bridges more to the revenue option strategy role of which I could comment about for a moment. Look, you need somebody who, for lack of better words, this is how I sort of kind of approached it, uh, is sort of the brains of the, of the go to market function that does look holistically and does look at all the components and it doesn't have, it actually has the benefit of not being in the day to day of, uh, sort of, you know, running large teams and running campaigns and, you know, uh, in, you know, being responsible for all the customers.

So for the high business acumen. Hi, uh, eq, uh, you know, but also still very analytical and, uh, kind of, uh, change oriented person and that read the operations role. I think there's an opportunity to grow that role substantially. 

John Common: Yeah, 

AJ Gandhi: I'll tell you the two by two dimensions. Oh, it's not. It's actually two dimensions to think about the role.

So we think we started off with sales ops, right? Uh, sales operations that existed. Uh, it's existed for quite a while, you know, territories, quotas, um, you know, exec decks, all kinds of fun stuff. Um, but think about broadening it now. So to me, ops is an acronym. Um, so the O is for operations, operations. That to me is the system, process and tools.

And there's a lot of that in, uh, the function Now. Uh, the P is productivity, and that's more the enablement, uh, function. Uh, so training, enable and enablement, which in a large team, uh, there's a lot there. And then the s is for strategy, and that would be the, you know, reporting, analytics, planning, coverage, design, et cetera.

So that's ops, that's, that's the acronym of ops. But then, uh, spread sales to revenue and you pick up marketing. You've got sales, you pick up customer success and then professional services, uh, and support. Um, and that was actually the interesting progression that I had at RingCentral. Um, so I was truly all five of those functions, uh, and all the elements of OPS.

And that was an enormous job. I mean, we had to own every problem. Um, And, uh, and, you know, by the way, you don't really get the glory for any of it, but here there is the problem solver in chief and sort of the strategist in chief. So I think the chief growth officer in a larger company, which is got the multi layers of complexity that I spoke about really is a kind of an evolution of this revenue ops job.

And if you're really good at the revenue ops job, and I would actually just say this for any kind of ops job. You'll keep getting more to do because people say, Hey, you can do this. So I, for a while, you know, I was the interim leader of, uh, sales engineering. I took over the sales development team. I took over channel marketing.

I took over all this post sales stuff. And then you have to be really careful that what you take on though, because that's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff. You got to figure out where do you focus? So that's where you build out a really strong team to say, I knew when I was at Hey, if I'm going to have all this post sales op stuff, I gotta hire a great leader for that.

Uh, because I, I only want to touch that if something's really strategically critical or really broken. Otherwise, I, I get why there's a synergy and having a center of excellence, but, uh, it could, you can get wildly diluted, um, if you're too big. And so that's, that's something to think about. Um, uh, when you take on a bigger revenue ops role, don't take it, be careful what you ask for and take it over gradually and make sure you have the right kind of team if you're going to take on more.

So that to me is sort of more of the derivative of the chief growth officer role in a company, because I don't see that title that much within companies, but I think you have the opportunity to extend to that. And if you're really good at that. And you also get some experience selling, which I think ops people need to do way more.

Um, then you actually have ethos to play a bigger role on the executive team. If you've never sold anything or you don't meet with customers, you don't persuade people on stuff. You don't have the ethos for the bigger role. 

John Common: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In these days of efficient growth, throwing siloed tactics at your growth goals is not going to get it done.

So what will work aligned, go to market strategy. That guides the right integrated growth motions. If you need a partner who understands how to build that strategy and then help you execute it, At a very, very high level, go to intelligent demand. com. Book a meeting with an expert growth consultant. They'd love to talk to you.

You've developed your own framework that you've named driver. And before we unpack that acronym driver, which by the way, I just got to point out you're on growth driver that it could, it could not be any more perfect. Before we unpack, I'm going to ask you to unpack it one letter at a time, but before we do.

Why did you create it? Why didn't you just, uh, you know, go take something off the shelf? 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, um, so it sort of evolved for me john in terms of where it came from Um, maybe i'll give you a little bit of an origin narrative then i'll distill it down to how I think about it today Sure. Um, so when I first stepped into the role of marlin, uh, I you know, I needed There were X number of initiatives that were value creation oriented for, um, you know, driving impact and go to market, um, things like segmentation and targeting, uh, things like pricing, things like, uh, you know, campaigns, marketing, et cetera.

Um, and so I kind of had Walked in the door with maybe 16 things on the menu. Um, eventually it became 24 things. Uh, we've started including a little bit more post sales. And then it, you know, the menu, uh, kind of exploded to theoretically as many as 40. I know. But we always had a certain 80 20 rule of here are the things that mattered the most, uh, that were most impactful.

And it was a menu that was kind of bespoke. Um, but not really. We could actually, the more companies I've sort of had under my belt to work with, the more quickly you can sort of get to the answer with hypothesis and quick validation. And so what I've tried to do is just distill it down. You know, 40 things is too many things for people to digest for sure.

It is still kind of, there are 40 discrete things that you could do, but I want to come up with something simpler. And here's what I would, here's what I have observed. Um, so I, I really would distinguish it between, uh, uh, go to market strategy and go to market execution. Um, so the strategy part is something that, you know, we do up front.

We say, Hey, uh, what's the problem that we're trying to solve for? Who's the customer? You know, what markets do we want to play in? What's the coverage strategy? Um, you know, things like compensation and et cetera. That's sort of the, um, uh, that's the, uh, Go to market strategy, if you will. Um, uh, what I have seen be the challenge is, uh, different elements of go to market execution.

And where this kind of came from was, um, last year, we did our first conference where we put brought together our quote revenue leaders, which included a lot of CEOs, but more kind of sales leaders, marketing leaders, uh, you know, customer success leaders, rev ops leaders, Transcribed by https: otter. ai And we did 30 roundtables, uh, on one day.

Um, there were 10 concurrent. The first one was organized by role. The second one was organized by go to market challenge. And then the third one was organized by go to market initiative. 30 roundtables had note takers walked away with 43 pages of notes and took a step back and read through it. Uh, and, uh, actually, uh, what we realized just kind of looking through it, you know, and all we're talking about here and actually one of our operating executives, uh, Mike Clayton called it out because he's the sage super experienced guy.

He is. He's like, Oh, we're really talking about. Here's the basics. Yes, he was dead, right? It's just execute the basics. Well, And you will be very successful as a company and we'll be very successful together. And that's where, uh, what, what I realized it was, um, you know, something that actually we've done a lot of work with, like most of our companies do segmentation and targeting work, uh, where we believe in, hey, let's define the ideal customer profile.

Let's do a bottom up account list, um, of who you should be going after. And we, we actually support our companies doing a lot of that work. 

John Common: Yeah. 

AJ Gandhi: Um, the the reality is many companies don't know how to fully operationalize it, and they don't fully operationalize it. And when I saw hands go up, uh, you know, uh, Sangram, uh, Roger from, uh, GTM partners was there, and he was the one who asked in the rooms.

He was talking about I. C. P. Hey, how many of you have fully operationalized your I. C. P. And all I have for all hands went up. I'm looking around. I'm like, we weren't done saying meditation and targeting with so many. Yeah. What happened? And this is where you realize it's the operationalization of it all.

Yes. And so that to me was I got total conviction from that moment. We need to double down, triple down. I'm making sure that we execute the fundamentals well and execute them better. And that's where driver came from. Um, you know, there were a bunch of things stirring around and, you know, actually. Driver literally came the night before our European conference in February, where I'm like, okay, I'm like presenting tomorrow.

How do I weave all this stuff together? Uh, cause I'm super busy. And I realized, Hey, it actually, these six things are what matter and they fall into a cube acronym. All 

John Common: right, let's unpack it. D. What does D stand for? 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, so the D is for differentiate, and that really speaks to positioning and messaging.

And, you know, the big thing that people are combating is a sea of sameness, um, that exists in the world. So, um, you need to stand out, not just in your category, but all the other people who are trying to sell into your target. Guess what? You were trying to sell the financial services, large financial services companies.

So are thousands of other companies. You're trying to sell marketing technology. So are thousands of other companies, 

John Common: right? 

AJ Gandhi: So, uh, you need to be, uh, what, what you really need to do is have compelling positioning and messaging. And that is, uh, you know, really helping, uh, a customer understand. Uh, and educate them about a key problem that they have and why that problem is relevant, uh, and important for them to solve.

It starts with that. And then it comes to, um, guiding them on how to think about it and having that sort of lead to, um, you know, why they should think of, uh, You in particular. 

John Common: Yeah. 

AJ Gandhi: And so that positioning and messaging, if you don't do that, you're just going to fall into the sea of sameness. And, uh, you know, I think there are two problems.

One is, first of all, oftentimes your problem does not actually even get raised to the attention. It gets stuck in a mid level buyer. We have a lot of, we have some compliance software companies, you know, the compliance, software Uh, chief compliance officer, maybe have that lovely C title, but they don't really have budget and they don't have that much authority for things, but they're, so they need help from other people to actually, you know, uh, you know, pursue initiatives.

And, uh, so. Position you have to help them elevate that problem right to be an executive level problem And if you're not doing that then you're gonna you're gonna struggle significantly 

John Common: What's one and it could be small doesn't have to be thunderously amazing But what's one practical tip or piece of advice or or it could be a warning?

To our audience as they go to think about differentiation, positioning and messaging. What's something from your experience you'd say, I would consider the following. 

AJ Gandhi: I think what you want to do is you want to reframe how your customer thinks about a problem. Yeah. And sort of say, Hey, you may have thought of it.

Here's the old way of handling this problem. Here's the new way of handling this problem. So if you can get them on that from to, So it ideally starts with some sort of like. Kind of key insightful framework of way to reframe the problem and then help them realize, Hey, I'm doing it the old way, but I need to do is go to the new way.

And here's why it's important. 

John Common: Excellent. Okay. Uh, differentiate are of driver. What is our stand for? 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, so the art is raised sales, talent and effectiveness. And while that's a clunky title, it's sort of on purpose because I think a big challenge that a lot of companies have is related to talent. Um, so we went through a period where it was very, very difficult to hire people.

And during that time, uh, you know, 2019 to 2020, yeah. Early 2022 in particular, uh, companies made, uh, compromises in who they hired. Um, so there's a lot of, uh, um, you know, mediocre people who are sitting in sales teams, uh, that are not really performing very well. Um, so what you, what you need to do when it comes to, um, uh, sales talent is thinking about it holistically.

So first of all, you need to improve hiring. Uh, and be rigorous about it. Hiring is a highly unstructured approach in terms of the way people interview the way that candidates are assessed. Uh, second is enablement. So both new hire and ongoing programs need to be much stronger, and there's lots of things to enable people on.

You got to enable people on the customer and the problem that they have, uh, and then take it deeper on, you know, industries and personas. Then, of course, your products and solutions. Um, you know, your sales methodology selling skills as well as, um, you know, things like competitors. So lots on enablement.

Yes. Then methodologies. So there's an opportunity management methodology, then territory planning, uh, account planning as well. Um, so that's, that's key. And then finally, um, sales manager effectiveness and, uh, coaching programs for reps. Um, so. There's a lot here. And I would say the typical organization is not doing a great job.

And as a result, what we're seeing more than ever, uh, is a, uh, is a bimodal performance distribution where you've got some tippy top sellers who are actually still doing pretty well. Uh, but then you're seeing a lot of others who are actually struggling and that's expensive on two dimensions. The, uh, people hitting their accelerators are expensive as they hit their accelerators.

So then you have a big pile of people. Way on the other left side of the, of the bell curve, whose base salary's high and their production is low. And uh, so that's, that's just a huge problem that we see. And I think there's a lot of basic skills that are missing. Um, uh, you know, uh, there's a company called Ebta and their CEO guy Ruben has put out some wonderful research that actually kind of dis distinguishes the, uh, top performers versus bottom performers.

He basically said five things really distinguish top performers. Um, they do their own prospecting. They're rigorous at qualification. Number three, they're multi threading, um, and hitting all the people in the buyer committee. Four, they follow process rigors. So they're following, you know, whether it's mid pick or something else, spiced mid pick, uh, you know, whatever methodology you want to pick.

They're really strong at that. And then five, they're really good at objection handling. And if you look at the difference between the top performers and the bottom performers, actually the biggest thing that I would say in all that is just discovery. I think a lot of reps are very poor at discovery.

John Common: Yeah. 

AJ Gandhi: And, uh, you know, I think we went through this buying cycle where people were buying software left and right, uh, uh, year three, 2022. And a lot of these core skills were lost. 

John Common: Yes. Yes, that's and that's a great that's a great tip is focus on discovery perhaps first. Um, wow, that's really good. Okay. So D is differentiate.

R is race, uh, sales talent. 

AJ Gandhi: I, yeah, it's, uh, it is ideal customer. Profile pipeline generation. So not just pipeline. A lot of companies focus on pipeline. And of course they do. Um, but it's ICP pipeline. Um, the one thing I see a lot of is people saying, Oh, I'm in this multi billion dollar market. I'm like, it's just a bunch of BS.

It's like, go figure out who your ideal customer profile is. And then once you do figure out every single account, That is in that I. C. P. You know, gather as much information as you can about them. Thermographic technographic, um, uh, you know, uh, different buying triggers, intense signals, et cetera, because you want to be focused.

I think narrowing is what wins, especially when you're a small to medium sized company. Because you don't have the capacity to cover that, quote, billions of dollars of opportunity. Anyway, the reality is, if you look at companies greater than 1000 employees and in the United States, there are like 13, 000 of them.

So these are all super noble. You can go down to 100. And there's like 100, 000 companies that have more than 100 employees. This is all noble and databases. So go get that. Go figure it out. Um, use all the data sources that are out there and really nailed out a very specific target list that comes from your spreadsheet analysis and then go work it with your sales team and your marketing team to actually figure out, okay, well, now we're fine.

I'm giving you a baseline. Not everything's going to make sense. So, you know, there might be a bunch of accounts in here that are, you know, Microsoft shops, for example, and maybe those are Great. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. You a disqualifier for what you sell. Uh, so it's being really rigorous on your ICP, uh, uh, and then turning it into a detailed segmentation and targeting, uh, as well as buyer group definition.

Yeah. So once, once you have the account level, then you have to go to the contact level. Uh, so who are the, who are all the different people, all the different personas that you hit and, uh, identify those folks, figure out who those individuals are and get their contact data. And that's really step one of ICP pipeline generation.

Now you know who to go after, right? And now you have to go after them through the multiple kind of, uh, you know, channels that you have. And if you're doing, you know, upper mid market or enterprise, it's going to be an orchestrated approach. So, uh, you're, you're going to have a role that marketing plays. Um, to nurture the buyer's journey, uh, you're going to have and that continues throughout the buyer's journey, not just top of funnel.

It's very much an opportunity for middle funnel on further, you're going to have the role of, you know, prospecting, whether it's SDRs, BDRs or AEs, uh, and yes, AEs should prospect, um, you have the potential for partners and you'll have some demand that comes inbound. You'll have some that goes outbound. The reality is if you're going after mid market enterprise, most of, okay.

Getting that I. C. P. Is going to come from outbound because inbound will be 90 percent S. N. D. Typically from your Google AdWords. Uh, so you just have to be thoughtful about what's the program mix come up with spark campaigns that are integrated. I think people get wrapped around the axle on things like attribution.

You know, it is a team sport and you need a smart approach to say, all right, if my ICP is X, well, how do I turn that into a set of campaigns and a set of tactics that feed off of those campaigns to actually go pursue it? 

John Common: Yeah. And I would add, I know you agree with this is that go back up to D when you're down in I doing ICP pipeline, don't forget to go back to differentiation, positioning and messaging and use that to imbue and bring to life the plays, the campaigns, the messaging, the content you create to create pipeline.

Yeah, don't, don't be samey, boring bullshit, go up, go back to D and tell that story. Bring that point of view, have the courage to say something creative and powerful. 

AJ Gandhi: Super important. And the reality is because everybody is chasing after the same set of people, you've really got to do something that stands out.

So the messaging is just not enough. You've got to do something with really smart tactics, um, that are woven into these campaigns. So you know, the Craig Rosenberg, formerly of Topo, kind of high value offer kind of thing. Um, um, you know, the hype, you know, I was in a conversation, uh, with, um, uh, you know, a particular executive and I was kind of talking about, okay, we're going for the tippy top ICP accounts.

And hey, maybe it's the, you know, this, uh, you know, strategic, uh, Fake tank or executive round table dinner. You do it a really nice place. So it's like a Michelin star restaurant. He's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, Michelin star restaurant. I don't think so. Um, like, well, I'm like, okay, well, how much does that cost?

Uh, he's like, that's probably like 500. I'm like, well, have we looked at your demand gen budget, uh, to see what's the cost per meeting? Uh, for, uh, uh, you know, with a, you know, medium ICP account, much less a high ICP account. What was it running? Uh, it was a multiple, of course. I mean, he didn't have the figures off hand, but I did back of the envelope.

I'm like, uh, well, here's your budget. Here's the number of meetings he had. So I think this is what you're, it looks like it's several thousand dollars. So this thing, 500 bucks, it kind of looks like a bargain. Um, and you know, again, you have to be really discerning who you invite to such things. And it may not be the thing to do at the top of the funnel, but it might actually.

It just depends on what the deal value is. Uh, and you can run math on that sort of stuff. But I think it's, it's just being creative of ways to stand out. Um, what I will tell you when you're doing pipeline generation, it's, Because look, nobody wants to be prospected. Nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody wants one thing and that is they want to learn how other people like them are solving their problems.

And if you can deliver that insight, whether through content or even better through experience and even better through experience of peers, um, that is something that people will engage in. And if you make it a nice experience, like, Oh, parties and, you know, Uh omakase dinners, uh, uh, which uh, i'm kind of known for um It that's that's when you get people interested.

That's how you cut through I think the concept of differentiation is also differentiation in tactics 

John Common: Yes, right, right. That's so good. Okay. I ideal client profile pipeline, the, 

AJ Gandhi: uh, value measurement and realization in this world of 2024 and beyond where customers have bought it all sub software, um, they are being super discerning about what incremental they would buy.

It's going to be for a very real problem. And they have to be able to explain that problem to other people. When you're not in the room because you're not in the room, uh, so this means the, uh, you know, so everyone said, oh, well, yeah, we do our white business cases. We do that for, you know, S. A. P. Style. We do it for the board room.

Uh, you know, went over the board. Well, how about applying that value selling methodology and start that our white business case? At the very beginning of this journey. So even on your website, even in your prospecting and then in your discovery and you're just adding to the case. And when you make it self discovery and you're doing it literally from top of funnel, the middle of funnel to yes, to help you close the deal.

But then continuing through the bow tie and say, Hey, let's then apply it. Um, at, um, you know, let's focus on what's time to first value. Uh when we're implementing so how quickly did they get that first value and how quickly did they get more? And then uh, how does that progress when you're having the qbr when you're having the renewal conversation?

And then how does that uh go to you know facilitating your ability to get expansion upsell cross sell? So it's taking that value selling methodology using the metrics that matter to the customer And putting that in there and applying it, uh, you know, throughout the customer lifecycle. And so it's measurement and realization.

I'll actually throw in one more. It's actually recognition. You have to make sure when you're doing Q. B. R. S. or E. V. R. S. or whatever you call them, that the person who matters actually is getting visibility to what that value case is. Because sometimes you get pushed down to someone who operationally is right.

With your solution, but your decision maker people are further away from that. Um, so you have to make sure that the value communication gets, uh, consumed by, um, you know, the, uh, you know, really the members of the buying committee. And you have to do that proactively, but you have to do it in such a way that they're actually interested to have the conversation.

A lot of QPRs are snooze. Oh, low value. So that's why people don't go. Right. But there's a way that you can do it. What is, again, every buyer wants, every customer wants, they want insight from their peers. So the best way to do value measurement and realization is, don't just share your metrics, their metrics with them, share their metrics calibrated versus others, uh, and that way they can see how they benchmark.

And then you can use that to have a conversation to say, okay, well, you're at X, well, what if you could get the X plus two, um, like, uh, this is what we see elsewhere. And. Well, the customer then may ask you, well, what do they do different? It's like, well, they do a BNC, like, but you're not doing a BNC. Um, you know, and then you can have a conversation off of that.

So value measurement, realization, and I throw in recognition across the customer life cycle. 

John Common: Yeah, excellent. That's so good. Uh, God, every one of these are so, I want, I'm, I'm resisting the urge JJ to, to, to, cause we got to get through it. So 

AJ Gandhi: there's a lot there, 

John Common: but it's really 

AJ Gandhi: more than six things, right? No, no, 

John Common: totally, totally 

AJ Gandhi: fundamentals.

John Common: It's six russian dolls is what it is. But um, all right, so e e of driver 

AJ Gandhi: E is expansion of existing customers. So renewal upsell cross sell and you could even throw in pricing Uh into that and you know, of course every company will say well, of course we sell to the base Um, that's what we've been living off of the last couple years and they have but the question is how methodical How, uh, you know, rigorous and structured is your approach to selling into the base.

And if you look at some of the sub components on this, you know, start with just customer health measurement. Um, do you do that with rigor? Um, what's your renewal strategy? Um, you know, another area that's super under leveraged is custom is marketing. Yes. Customer lifecycle. Yes. Marketing is utilized mostly for new customer acquisition, but marketing can be the one that actually helps the customer realize the value, become aware of other solutions, other use cases, et cetera.

Um, especially when you're trying to drive. Deeper account growth. Yes. I was chatting with the CEO earlier today. They're like, you know what? We went too much into the mid market What we realized is we should have just focused and stayed Hard on our icp and we can take those icp accounts because the value potential really is there We can take that 500k account and turn it into a multi million dollar account if we really are focused on it Uh, so in a you know mid sized company It's All about focus.

Uh, and then I'm still in cross out. Here's the thing. Um, uh, when you're selling a new product, let's focus on cross sell, which oftentimes in private equity, we default on acquisitions. Like the mistake people make is they were like, okay, got it. Let's roll it out to all the entire sales team. And then tell them about this new thing.

And then you're Got salespeople who are just learning about the new thing, who aren't confident how they communicate it, trying to sell to everybody, who, for which it's of course not a fit. So you need to be much more methodical about who are the top 10 percent of my customers for the best fit for the cross sell.

Let's start there. Let's focus reps there. Let's focus campaigns there. So just like you do an ICP for new logo, you could have an ICP within your customer base. Yes, cross sell. 

John Common: So let's go to the sixth one. We are in the R of driver, which is what? 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, they are. It started off as drive. And by the way, acute aside was, it was me kind of trolling, uh, Pablo Dominguez from insight, uh, uh, partners.

Um, that, that, which, that has an amazing team, by the way. Um, uh, but they had their conference, they called it Drive. I'm like, well, what's it stand for? And it's like, to be honest, it wasn't an acronym. I'm like, alright. So when it turned out that drive became the acronym, I was, I was pretty happy. I, I thought it was just sort of fun and playful to on a little bit.

That's good. Uh, no, he's great. He's a terrific collaborator with me. We've got some, uh, you know, past history. Um, but as I was really thinking about all these things, it was one really obvious thing that was like the most important and that's where the R came in and that is revenue team excellence. And so the key, what we led with in the beginning is these functions have been super disparate.

historically. Um, you know, the marketing, the sales, the customer success, the pro serve, the support, not to mention the H. R. The finance. But when you go through your 2025 planning, all those people will be at the table. Um, not to mention product. Uh, and we haven't even talked about them. Um, but I that is a little bit of a different animal.

So I kind of left it out. Um, and so all these things need to come together. Um, and this really is kind of like, it's a big system where it's a big process. And you think about it for a sec take a step back. What else is like a big system or process? It's like manufacturing is uh, but manufacturing's had deming and six sigma for like 70 years is right session We're like 0.

2 sigma and go market. There's so much variance. There's so much weight There's not rigidity. That's the other. That's the third component of six sigma. Uh, so thank God there's not rigidity, but the right to waste, you know, we spike. So it's how does the team work together as one go to market team? Um, and that means having the insight.

This is a big opportunity for revenue operations, um, to provide that insight. They can be sort of that brains looking across the business, looking pockets of strength, pockets of weakness and being a problem solving team to actually go strengthen. That's, that's, that's so how I kind of, yeah. Um, and, uh, just making sure that you function together as a, uh, uh, integrated unit with a common set of goals, not as a team that has their own pocket metrics, uh, and, uh, just focuses on their part of the game, um, you know, that would be, that wouldn't be a great way to run a team, uh, and professional sports, but that's what is happening in so many companies, a hundred percent.

Yes. Thanks So it's how do you integrate it together? And I threw in revenue team excellence and innovation because I think there are innovations that in some ways that's kind of a tuck in. But I think there's a lot of interesting stuff with tech stacks and new AI solutions. So that is something that we're looking at.

Seeking for our companies to look at, but you have to do it in a really disciplined way. There's to tremendous tech stack bloat out there and, and that just makes it super complicated to manage. Yeah. But it's even worse for the reps who just get overwhelmed by all these things. So you need to find a way to simplify.

So, you know, I think Complexifying is good to zoom out for a while, but then you have to zoom back in and you have to. Find a way to, you know, simplify it. So driver is, uh, kind of our maniacal focus, uh, with our portfolio companies. And, um, you know, it very well may be the evergreen focus. 

John Common: I love it. In summary, D for driver, differentiate.

R, raise your sales talent. I. ICP pipeline generation. V, value, measurement, realization, and recognition. E, expansion of existing customers. And R, revenue team excellence. And innovation driver. 

AJ Gandhi: I really like it. Align on something. I mean, I would say my evolution has gone from, uh, hey, we'll come up with a bespoke go to market plan based on the 40 things on the menu.

And, you know, we always apply the 80 20. So to be honest, it's not like we're doing different things. But now what we've done is just from a communication and alignment standpoint, we've just made it simple at the gates. Um, we're aligning on a north star. Yeah. Um, and, you know, having seen enough companies, we know what that north star should be, and we could just communicate with people from the get go and get everybody to be able to understand.

Everyone can understand driver, whether you're H. R. leaders, sales, uh, S. T. R. leader, whatever. Everyone can understand these elements. I 

John Common: love it. Um, well, you know, uh, this has been, uh, every bit the insight, uh, and value packed episode that I thought it was going to be, AJ. Um, but I'm not going to let you leave quite yet.

I want to ask you a couple more questions. Really quick. Um, kind of pivoting to kind of more you as a person, you as a professional, uh, can you share with me, uh, uh, An important or even pivotal, consequential moment in your career where something happened to you or you made a decision that looking back now you go that that really mattered maybe more than I even realized at the time, 

AJ Gandhi: you know, my, my role at Marlin is to, you know, analyze companies, be helpful, work with management teams to help them be successful and you just realize, first of all, nobody knows it all.

Um, like I came into the job very much through the sales ranks and really the rev ops to sales ranks. I picked up a lot of sales skills every time I've sold a lot of stuff. Uh, and, um, uh, yeah, I'll give you a second one in a moment too. Um, and it's a good question. Um, And but what I actually found working with our portfolio companies was marketing was actually the bigger area to drive improvement because it was often underdeveloped.

So I actually have become a huge advocate for Hey, put more focus on marketing, hire a little bit more experienced people, hire. Uh, you know, often think much harder about what's the trade off between sales spend and marketing spend. It tends to be over weighted to sales spend, uh, but you know, the buyer's journey is much more self driven.

So marketing is actually much more influential. Um, so that was kind of a big recognition. And part of the reason I go back to this pandemic thing was, so that's when the first paella party happened and it was kind of like my need to, you know, get out and meet people again and enjoy just talking with folks.

And what's happened, like, you know, almost Three years later, um, is this, uh, sales and marketing executive and customer success, whatever, go to market executive community has spawned from it. And it's something that continues to grow and grow and grow. But what just makes me realize is, look, we all need each other to learn from and to experience, share, and learn from.

To be better at our jobs. Uh, and it's also fun, uh, when you, uh, you know, uh, you know, get to, uh, you know, meet and kind of engage with others. And actually, I think that's actually a really good lesson just for quote selling, uh, or winning business and growing your company. At the end of the day, your prospective customers are trying to do exactly that.

They're eager to meet with other people who have their shared challenges to experience, share, and share ideas and learn from. And so if you take that concept that we all enjoy is go to market executives and apply it to your customers and facilitate those kinds of experiences, it's going to be successful for you.

And I've gained so much from doing these kinds of events that it's just been really fun. Enjoyable. I've learned so much. Many people have helped me in my business and my career, hired a bunch of people, um, so that's, that, that, that's sort of been a light bulb for me at the beginning of 2022 and in some ways, you know, it's a silver lining of the pandemic for me of, it sort of created this, I don't think it would have, I would have created it or it would have gained the kind of momentum that it has, if not for, um, Um, uh, you know, the pandemic because it was sort of an opportunity that I ended up seizing.

Um, that's, that's the big one. I'll give it a last quick one. Uh, and that is maybe the biggest learning experience I had in my professional career is when I, uh, Uh, finished my first startup. Uh, and I joined a company called the Alexander group. Uh, Alexander group is boutique, uh, management consulting room selling to, uh, sales effectiveness consulting reality is back then when I joined, they were mostly selling sales comp work.

Uh, and you know, uh, the role for me was broadening it to do much bigger sales work. And the key thing that, uh, I learned there was I learned how to sell. Because my job, and I didn't learn that at Bain, um, because, you know, Bain, Bain sells Bain. Um, not, not AJ, not even partners and partners selling packs. Uh, what I had to do in, uh, in that firm was, I, my job was to sell sales consulting to sales leaders.

Who don't buy consulting and think it's bullshit. Uh, that teaches you to sell And I was really successful Uh, and uh got promoted very very quickly to partner and loved it. Yeah So anyway, that was the other kind of big moment for me was actually as a person who has come up much more the strategy Analytics revenue operations route Actually learning how to sell.

I mean, forced to sell. Um, that was, that was really something. 

John Common: Thanks for sharing that. That's really great. And both resonate with me a lot, but the, the first story you told, uh, as you were talking about coming out of the pandemic and your idea to start, uh, the go to market leader society and why you started it, I think what you said really resonated with me, it's that, um, no one person.

Can know it all we need each other we and and not only do we need each other to learn together but I mean this can be a very lonely world and a lonely career if you make it that way and and That origin story for your group is exactly the same origin story for why we started growth driver Literally, and you're using in person events and paella.

We're using this podcast this show, but I Everything you just said about your experience, it just direct parallel to what we're doing in Growth Driver. FYI. I just think that's really fascinating. It's 

AJ Gandhi: a, and it's a hard gig right now, right? And it's like the easiest days of SaaS sales are long gone.

There's still lots of opportunity to help customers solve problems. Um, but, uh, it's, you gotta be a lot more methodical. 

John Common: AJ, thank you for being on growth driver. Thank you for being so generous with your experience and your insights and your frameworks. Thank you so much. 

AJ Gandhi: Yeah, you're very welcome, John.

Enjoyed it. Thanks so much. 

John Common: I also want to say to the audience, thank you for spending your time with us today. Uh, if you can't tell from this conversation with AJ, we are trying to build something really special here, uh, on Growth Driver, uh, specifically for B2B growth leaders exactly like you. So, if you like what you're up to, um, Follow us, like us, uh, share with your teams.

Most importantly, I, I mean, good Lord, listen to all the stuff AJ just walked through. Trust me, everybody on your go to market team would benefit from this episode today. And then the last thing I just want to say for, uh, for everybody is Growth Driver is brought to you today. By the talented and kind people at intelligent demand.

If you work at a company that is, uh, uh, burdened with the growth imperative, reach out to them, go say hi to intelligent demand. com. I know they would love to talk to you. See you soon on growth driver, everybody. And thanks again, AJ. Thank you, John. Take care.