Episode 08: Brendan Andrews – Skin in the Game

To have “skin in the game” is to have incurred personal risk (monetary or otherwise) in the pursuit of achieving a goal. Brendan Andrews defines having skin in the game. This former college athlete invested his own money on coaching, to the tune of thousands of dollars, in order to become a better salesperson. That rare perspective around the importance of personal sacrifice for future gain has led Brendan to his current success in his role as Account Executive at Thycotic.

In this episode, you’ll hear why Brendan decided to spend his hard-earned dollars on one-on-one sales coaching, why he values his well-planned morning routine, and how he maintains a continuous “just do it” attitude.

Full Episode Transcript

Name: Brendan Andrews
Title: Account Executive
Company: Thycotic
Exit Year from memoryBlue: 2016
Months at memoryBlue: 5
Alumni Path: Hired Out

***Introduction***

Brendan Andrews:
You’re not going to learn everything at once. There was definitely, the Ganesh tapes, you had all the Costigan stuff and you listen to it, but at the end of the day you can memorize that stuff all you want. It’s going in and picking up the phone and learning from your mistakes. I think it helped me a lot to just go in and just do it.

Marc Gonyea:
Brendan Andrews, Account Executive at Thycotic, is in the house today. Brendan is all about self-improvement, so much so he invested thousands of dollars to become a better sales professional. He walks us through his morning routine and his just do it attitude.

Marc Gonyea:
Hi, I’m Marc Gonyea.

Chris Corcoran:
And I’m Chris Corcoran and you’re listening to Tech Sales is for Hustlers. Tech Sales is for Hustlers is a podcast where we catch up with memoryBlue alums and reminisce about their start in high tech sales with us.

Marc Gonyea:
Let’s go get some Corcoran.

Chris Corcoran:
Gonyea. You know, I’m ready.

***Episode 08: Brendan Andrews***

Marc Gonyea:

Brendan Andrews live and direct in the house. Thanks for joining Chris and I today Brendan. Exciting stuff man. It’s good to see you.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, it’s good to be back. It’s a little bit of a different environment, but it’s great to see how you guys have really expanded. It’s awesome.

Marc Gonyea:
It’s been a little while. You left in April of 2016 coming up on four years. Let’s just kind of set the stage for the folks that are listening. Tell us a little about yourself. Where’d you grow up, high school, that sort of thing.

Brendan Andrews:
So I’m Brendan Andrews. I’m an Account Executive at Thycotic software. That’s a cybersecurity company in Washington D C. I’m originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Went to college in Maryland, studied political science and was looking for a job, and that first job was sales.

Marc Gonyea:
Were there any early signs of the whole sales professional in you in high school or did that wait till later to blossom?

Brendan Andrews:
Definitely later. I always tell people this, if somebody told me in college that I’ll go do sales, I’ll say there’s no way. I thought my path was, I did political science, international relations, that I was going to work for government or contractor or whatever. And I realized through experience and just learning how things work in the real world that I wanted to make money and was very much a “go-getter” so to speak. I wanted to come make my own way on things. And when I was looking in between jobs, I was looking at what I like, what I don’t like. And sales was one of the jobs.

Marc Gonyea:
So you got out of high school went to college.

Brendan Andrews:
I went to McDaniel College. It’s a small liberal arts college in Maryland. So it was smaller than my high school. So roughly like 2000 kids. So yeah, really small. But I loved it. I played lacrosse there. I think if I went to a bigger school I would’ve gotten lost. So it was perfect for me.

Marc Gonyea:
What was it like playing sports and majoring in political science?

Brendan Andrews:
Looking back on it, I don’t know how I did it, but you kind of just figured out a way and you just did it. Time management was a big thing. So I think luckily when I was in college, you had a study hour that coach mandated you to go to, kind of gave you the discipline that “Hey, like, alright, I got practice, shower, eat, go to the library and then figure out everything else in between.” And you just manage it from there. So I think that helped me with my time management skills and just balancing a lot of different things at once.

Marc Gonyea:
Terrific. Kind of like a sales professional.

Brendan Andrews:
There’s a lot more time management in being a sales professional, I think, then being a college athlete.

Chris Corcoran:
So what’s the biggest takeaway or lesson learned that you took from the lacrosse field into life?

Brendan Andrews:
I think that one, I was never the fastest kid on the field. I was never really the most talented, I think both in high school and college. And it’s that chip on your shoulder to always work hard and bust your butt and be everything that you can be and not taking excuses.

That was the biggest thing for me. Just putting your nose down and just grinding it out and, trying to better yourself every day. That’s the biggest thing I took away, because at the end of the day, sales is the same thing. Like closing the sale, but it’s all the little things that you do. And being able to handle adversity, whether it’s not starting or you’re hurt. So that was, I think, the biggest takeaway.

Chris Corcoran:
Did you run into adversity?

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. In college, my second practice in college, my, one of my buddies who was in my wedding, I went for a ground ball and I scooped it and then I was turning up field and as he turned up field he rocked me. Right in the jaw. So like a crosscheck right in the head and that broke my jaw. I had my jaw wired maybe about two months. So I was out for pretty much the whole entire year. And so one, when you think you go into college and are playing sport, you want to play that immediately. So watching all my buddies play, it was like, damn, like I want to be out there.

Chris Corcoran:
What year?

Brendan Andrews:
That was my freshman year. But then just coming back, my sophomore year, came back in great shape and I started getting some more PT and then just like going to junior year, senior year.

Chris Corcoran:
So with your jaw wired shut, did you do an all liquid diet?

Brendan Andrews:
Just strictly liquid diet. So now that’s a funny story because it wasn’t just like Ensure that I had to drink. They had the cafeteria grind up and puree food for me and put in a cup. So like, you can imagine going to breakfast, it’s like, okay, what do you want today? I was like, alright, I want eggs, I want gravy, I want biscuits. They put that s*** in a cup and just blended it all up. And that was my thing. And surprisingly enough, I only lost like two pounds.

Chris Corcoran:
So when you came back after that injury, were you gun shy or were you worried about getting hit again?

Brendan Andrews:
No, not really. I think that’s part of the game. You just get back up and do it again. I think it was just one of those incidents that like, s*** happens, you don’t make a sale, you get hurt. That’s life. And it’s just how you kind of deal with that. You’re going to be dealing with waves. It’s how you ride the waves is what matters.

Chris Corcoran:
Did you ever think about quitting lacrosse?

Brendan Andrews:
I think at one point, when I wasn’t getting playing time, there was definitely those frustrations there, but never really seriously considered it. And the reason is our senior class and even like the upperclassmen underclassmen, were very close. So it was a very tight knit community. So if I quit, I felt like I let them down. I enjoyed going to practice every day, enjoyed the coach I was busting my butt for and I felt like I was getting a shot every day, so that really never crossed my mind.

Marc Gonyea:
That’s great. And you were Phi Beta Kappa in college. What’d you do when you got out?

Brendan Andrews:
So, I took an internship. It was with a company out of Tysons. It was kind of like a customer service type of role where you’re truly like an account manager, you had an account, make sure the customer’s happy, trying to get revenue from it, et cetera. And that was my first exposure to sales.

I was dealing with, government procurement people. So I had to learn about how to get them talking and open up, and just start searching stuff on YouTube on how to ask better questions and sales advice, et cetera. And then the internship ended. So I was kind of at a crossroads of what do I want to do.

Marc Gonyea:
But when did the sales thing kind of hit you? Like, “Oh, sales, this is interesting.” Was it at FedBid?

Brendan Andrews:
I think the first book I ever read was “How to Master the Art of Sales” by Tom Hopkins. So I got the audio, I got everything and I started reading it and some of the stuff sounded interesting. Like how he came to sales and how he’s talking about, hey, I make my own wealth.

Marc Gonyea:

So you left FedBid. And I think that’s where we crossed paths.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, exactly. I just started applying to jobs out there, applied to Konica Minolta in Baltimore. So I was looking at there and a few other printer places. You could tell they were just churn and burn type of shops.

Chris Corcoran:
How could you tell?

Brendan Andrews:
I mean looking back on it, the fact that their desks weren’t really personalized, you just got the feeling of that “Glengarry, Glen Ross” type of atmosphere. It’s a lot different feel than selling software. Selling software is sexy. It’s a lot better environment.

I feel generally passionate about what I sell and I won’t say it gets me jacked up, but when I’m talking with a customer about cybersecurity stuff and trends, I love that, because that actually comes back to my background. I studied national security studies in college. So that was kind of cool. When I got my first client at memoryBlue, which was ThreatConnect, I won’t say fate, but it was kind of cool to take what you learned in college and what your passion was in college and then apply that.

Chris Corcoran:
That’s great. So, you’re at FedBid, you wrap up the internship and then you need to find something. And I guess how’d you find us or how did we find you?

Brendan Andrews:
I think I found you guys. I think I submitted an application maybe through Indeed or through one of theirs. And then I think I sent you a direct email, not you personally, but when I was on the website and hit them up like, “Hey, I’m interested, can somebody talk with me?” And then I think I didn’t hear anything back there. And also, I think I met Kristin at a job fair.

So, the way it worked at FedBid is they had X amount of interns. That would act as like account managers. It’s actually a really smart strategy, have them work as account managers have them work during the busy season of the government spend and then they can choose which ones that they want on or which ones that they bid. I think it was just a big enough class and I think that I did well there but just wasn’t for me.

So ultimately the internship ended, didn’t get taken on and then they had a career fair for people that weren’t taken or whatever. And then memoryBlue was one of the people there. I think at that time I was starting to read Sandler stuff.

Chris Corcoran:
I guess we started to get serious about your recruitment at the FedBid career fair.

Brendan Andrews:
Well I think it was more when I reached out afterwards. So I called Tiana and then I think I had an in person interview with Frank Taylor and Raegan Callahan and I had the phone call and all that stuff. And then I got the job.

Chris Corcoran:
And then, so walk us through, you were in Boone, our expansion office. For the listeners, please share exactly what the Boone office was like and the Boone experience.

Brendan Andrews:
I wish I had a GoPro that I had when I was down there and I could record all just the madness of eight, probably in the fridge you have yogurt that’s at least three months past due. But I mean you also had the couch with the video games. I thought that was really cool. So, mt was just a lot of comradery. It was almost like a, company within its own company.

Chris Corcoran:
And so who’s team were you on when you first started?

Brendan Andrews:
On Reagan’s.

Chris Corcoran:
What client?

Brendan Andrews:
ThreatConnect.

Marc Gonyea:
Who else is on that campaign with you?

Brendan Andrews:
Jean-Paul Francois. It was just us two and actually Jean-Paul’s now at Thycotic with me. So it’s actually kind of cool that we’re at another cyber security company.

Marc Gonyea:
So you roll into memoryBlue and you know, what we do is different than what you did in your internship at FedBid. What was it like? What’d you learn? What do you remember learning like those first couple of months on the job?

Brendan Andrews:
I think it was just like that you’re not going to learn everything at once. Just go in and do it and just learn on the job. You had the Ganesh tapes, you had all Costigan stuff and you listen to it. But at the end of the day, you can memorize that stuff all you want. It’s going in, picking up the phone and learning from your mistakes. So like that was, I won’t say biggest shock. But I think it helped me a lot to just like, just go in and just do it and just don’t worry about like not knowing everything. It’ll figure itself out.

Marc Gonyea:
You were successful. You were with us all that long and some people were with us for a long time. Some people work with us shorter. You started in December, you ended up bouncing like I said in April.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah. I think I had a really good client. I think it was something that people needed. And I had a great mentor too, Josh Crippen, so he helped me expand my skills, and overcome, for example, talk about objections that I thought would have. And I think also too, it was not just like him, like we had Marco Johnson, we had Tommy Oudinot. Had some really heavy hitters there that you could learn from and just learn, collectively from everybody. So it was cool because I loved it.

Marc Gonyea:
That was on the precipice of us opening the office in California. So we sent Mike Mishler over to the Boone office and Mike was cultivating the culture. And I definitely remember there being some really strong SDRs in that office. So it’s kind of fortunate for you, but I will say, I think they’re all good clients to varying degrees, but you made the most of the opportunity that you were given. Because you’re a self-taught dude in the sense of the word that you have this curious mindset that Chris and I have always admired, let’s talk about that. You learn a lot of things on your own and we taught you some things and you didn’t mention the call breakdowns, but I’m sure we did those with you too. But talk to me about how you learn.

Brendan Andrews:
This one book I’m listening to right now. I forget the guy’s name. Ultimately it talks about his mindset was he wants to understand how things work and that’s just generally how I learn. I like understanding how things work because I can then put it in my own words and then put my own spin on it and actually sound genuine when I’m talking. Having always that curious mindset I think was always driven by understanding I really want to understand how things work.

I want to understand from a customer standpoint, what are the pains that they go through on a day to day? Like what is a day in the life of Chris Corcoran, a cofounder of a company Marc. That constant curiosity drew me to not just look at one source of information or one source of material for example a training that you guys gave but also go out there and find other areas that could expand my knowledge. I think that’s one area that I’ve always just taken with me. It’s always kind of led to success of whether they’re just understanding my customer better than they do or understanding how technology works. I can talk the talk or becoming a better sales rep, et cetera.

Marc Gonyea:
What was like a favorite memory of when you worked at memoryBlue?

Brendan Andrews:
Definitely the March Madness Tournament. It was the Boone office versus the other office. And we had X amount of leads, like 140 or something crazy to that matter. And we had a bunch of post it notes all over the wall. And so like each time somebody booked it, you would take it off and add it to the collective thing. And our office won shout out to Boone. So that was one of the coolest memories of just grinding. Josh booked a lead. Dan Bour booked a lead. Matt Fantozzi, Steve Garner. Being in that type of atmosphere, where it’s almost a game, you know. So it was pretty cool when we won and the atmosphere and that we got free booze and food on you guys.

Chris Corcoran:
So when you reflect back on your time at memory blue, what advice would you give yourself the night before you started with us?

Brendan Andrews:
Not going to learn everything, just breathe and just dive on it. Just be willing to take risks. I think I did that, but I think it was more of, took me probably a few hours to just get my mindset to that point and just f****** do it.

Marc Gonyea:
There you go. You’re a real smart guy. Sometimes people who are smart, you’re used to figuring things out and piecing things together. And there’s a part of being in sales or making the call, that can’t piece it together. I mean, you can sometimes you can increase your hit rate, but you’re never going to bat a thousand.

Brendan Andrews:
It’s all random of who’s going to pick up or who’s not. You never know who’s going to pick up. So you might as well just do it at the very least. If you fail, you learn, like Hey, I shouldn’t do that again. Or Hey, maybe this is a better approach.

Marc Gonyea:
So before we move on to post memoryBlue, anything else from the memoryBlue experience you want to highlight?

Brendan Andrews:
I think it wasn’t just one experience, it was just a multitude of just going in there early. And then I’ll usually be one of the first people there, but then seeing everybody else, walk in and then genuinely caring about that individual. But also collaborating with that individual, both of us can get better. I remember we would sit on the couch and role play certain scenarios and how they handle certain objections. You rarely see that in a sales organization at all.

Marc Gonyea:
Why not? You think?

Brendan Andrews:
I think naturally salespeople want to feel like the best and that they’re the s***, right? Myself included. So you don’t want to put your ego out there of this is where I suck or this is a scenario that where I might suck and therefore my colleague might think less of me. So I think there’s that piece and I think the reality is of salespeople, you’re doing so many different things at once that you want to have time to coach yourself and get better. It’s just finding that time. That’s the hardest part. I think every salesperson for the most part, that I think is of my generation wants to get better, wants to find new ways to find new prospects. Just taking the time out of your day to do that or doing that. Like when you’re on the weekend.

Marc Gonyea:
We capture you guys earlier in your career and we want you to train to develop being good on the phones, but we also want you to practice and be okay with the mistakes, which is why we do the call breakdowns and we encourage it, which is good because that’s the best way to learn. To get ready for the, for the next step.

Brendan Andrews:
So it’s cool to kind of see a transcript and the breakdown of how much you talk for versus how much the prospect talks it’s cool to have tools like that now that it’s not me. Essentially getting a recording, uploading it to my laptop, listening to it, stopping and starting it, going back, stopping and starting it.

Marc Gonyea:
So, you got to the point where ThreatConnect wanted to bring it in house or at least bring a portion of it in house. What helped you make that decision to go work for the client?

Brendan Andrews:
That’s a good question. I think if I’m looking back up what I was going through my head during that time, part of me was for one I really loved the client, cybersecurity. This is great, it’s in Arlington. So, but also part of me is am I my ready for this now I’m only four months in and haven’t really learned everything. But it’s kind of one of those other things just go in and do it. It seemed like a great opportunity for potential advancement in my career. It was a field I liked a lot. I like the product. So it was kind of a no brainer at that point to just pull the trigger.

Marc Gonyea:
And so you pulled the trigger, you went there. What was something that you learned that you took into that job?

Brendan Andrews:
Definitely the phones, pounding the phones and just not being afraid to pick up and call somebody and feeling like have an excuse. I’m just going to call you just cause I’m gonna call you because I can. And I think there’s sometimes that call reluctance of, well I need a reason why to call. I think just having a kind of have like a f*** it, I don’t really care type of attitude. I like bringing that and to definitely a sales atmosphere helped me do things that normally, I probably wouldn’t do.

Marc Gonyea:
What was the most surprising to you or the biggest realization when you went to go work at ThreatConnect?

Brendan Andrews:
Well when I got promoted from SDR to the account manager position. When you’re a BDR, you’re always focused on getting the meeting right? You never really think long term and bigger picture of, okay, I get this meeting. What’s my next outcome that I want from here? What’s the goal? The goal is to ultimately get the sale, but how do I take somebody that’s kind of somewhat interested, right? And at least with ThreatConnect, the sales cycle is really long, right? It was probably like six to 12 months might have changed now I haven’t been there in maybe a year and a half or whatever. But how do I get somebody that’s like kinda lukewarm to I’m ready to pull the trigger. Let’s do this. And so it’s another one of those situations you should kind of just figure it out.

Chris Corcoran:
How’d you figure it out?

Brendan Andrews:
I think luckily by listening to the Ganesh stuff, listening to the tapes, and self-teaching myself. But I think more important, the biggest thing that I did this, probably what we’ll want to talk about a little bit more was like the fact of me going to Steve Craner and getting training from him. So, Steve Craner, he essentially did the whole entire, IT sales program for Sandler back in the day. He worked with Ganesh and then he now I think he still does the same thing, but at the time he was still, I think a Sandler franchisee or whatever.

Chris Corcoran:
How’d you find Steve? How did your two paths cross?

Brendan Andrews:
He did a training at ThreatConnect. And it was pretty cool to see all the concepts that you guys all taught us through Ganesh and all the different huddle ups that we would have. And so I approached him afterwards and, Hey, could you, I know you do these group things, do you do one on ones, he’s just like, nah, I typically don’t. I was like, what’s the price? And kind of came to an agreement and I don’t know if he liked me for some reason or he liked my enthusiasm but took me on. And that was I think the biggest thing was working with him.

That’s really where I took the call recordings to heart. And I still do it today. Where I’ll listen back on calls on what areas that can definitely improve upon what areas I could ask better and am I checking the boxes on the areas that I should be doing? And Steve’s systematic approach to things that really helped me have more of a process around sales and having a higher level goal of, Hey, all right, I have a qualification or I’m doing a scoping or discovery, whatever you want to call it, that I’m moving into a demo. Right? And then I’m moving it to a proof of concept. Or in Steve’s case, he would do like a mutual outcome plan, right? You kind of say, okay, if I do this then you do this and all that good stuff. It’s like having that all mapped out and having somebody to kind of coaching along the way was very helpful. I think that contributed greatly to my ability to now learn pretty quickly.

Marc Gonyea:
And let me just pause for a quick second there. I mean you approached him, and I’m saying this because you’re taking your own hard earned money and putting that into your own professional development, which is very, very rare. You pay your own way to learn to make yourself better at your profession, to make more money for yourself, but also be a better sales professional. So Corcoran and I have always admired that about you.

Chris Corcoran:
You invested in yourself. And if you ask Steve, or you asking any of these other trainers that the number of individuals that do it is extraordinarily rare. Extraordinarily. So it sounds like you thought that was a good use of your time and money.

Brendan Andrews:
Oh it was a great use.

Chris Corcoran:
So how often would you work with them and how much did it cost just for the listeners to know that?

Brendan Andrews:
It was expensive, man. It was, maybe around a thousand a month or something like that.

Chris Corcoran:
And how often would you work with him?

Brendan Andrews:
We’d have four sessions, maybe a month for one hour sessions. So we would meet up in this hotel in Reston in the lobby and I would the day before or week before, I’ll send him my call recording and it would upload it to Dropbox and do all that stuff. And he would dissect it, go against his little matrix that he had. And then we would break it down of, Hey, this is where I think you did well, this is where that you could do better. Here’s where he did an upfront contract. Here’s where you strip line. And you see how like you didn’t strip line here and how you were saying, how good your s*** was and how the prospect recoiled. So, stuff like that.

And then I’ll kind of get his feedback. Well what about these situations? What about these situations? Because at the end of the day, like Sandler’s great Challengers, great. You can’t take that box approach and if feel like it’s gonna apply to every situation, right? You have to have some flexibility. So a good example is Sandler teaches never do a demo unless you have essentially, Hey, we’re gonna buy. Which I think in IT, in today’s world is if you tell a CISO to do that, or CIO to do that, he’s going to say, get the f*** outta here. So I’ll go onto your competitor. So, having the ability to , realize that you’re working with enterprises and at the end of the day, you’re selling to them and you’re trying to find pain and strip line, but you gotta be flexible with their process and being able to adjust.

Chris Corcoran:
And so how long did you work with Steve?

Brendan Andrews:
Maybe like a half a year. Maybe even longer than that. Maybe even a year.

Chris Corcoran:
Okay. Six to 12 months. And what sort of impact did it have on you?

Brendan Andrews:
Oh tons. Another one of my bigger influences too that got me better was the way it worked at ThreatConnect wit was a team quota. So it was me and an outside rep. So my outside rep, his name was John McCreary shout out and me and him ran the central territory. So essentially the way it worked is at least the way it worked with me and him is he would get the really big deals.

And for example, we had a huge bank that we work with that was a pretty significant deal. Maybe like 500K right? And that’s clearly his. But for example, maybe I have like a 60K deal or 70K deal he would let me take that and run with it. And when I need to tell about a certain point, he might come on. But for the most part we kinda had a division of labor and divide and conquer. But early on, when I was starting, he would coach me on stuff. But his feedback was when I started using Steve, he could definitely tell the difference of one being able to handle situations where somebody gives an objection and then strip line and then walk them through of is this really an objection or not, et cetera. So it had a big impact.

Chris Corcoran:
So when you were working with Steve, were you, were you a BDR at that point or were you full cycle?

Brendan Andrews:
At ThreatConnect it was weird. It was a little bit like BDR but full cycle. So I guess you kind of consider me full cycle because at least when I was working with my director John McCreary, I was pretty much depending on that type of deal, running the full cycle. So when I was working with Steve, I was an AE or account manager but I also did some outbound prospecting to generate larger deals for John. So I also worked with Steve on my cold call as well.

Marc Gonyea:
How did you make the transition? What were the things that you were doing? Cause every SDR, Brendan that comes in here wants to get into a closing role and we always talk about it, the biggest sale they’re going to have when they leave memoryBlue is get into a position or putting themselves in an opportunity to get into that ability to close business. What were like one or two or three of the things that you were doing to kind of put the word out but also to display professionally that allows you to get into that closing role. Cause you did it for two years at ThreatConnect.

Brendan Andrews:
I think it’s one know like how to sell yourself. I think that’s a big thing. I think the unfortunate thing in the IT sales world and software sales world is that transition from BDR to take closing role. There’s not that much of a clear way to kind of get there. Right? So if you look at all the jobs, it’s like two or three years of the closing experience, two, three years of closing experience, four to five years of closing experience. Well, how do you expect the SDR, or BDR to get experience? Do you have to work selling printers, it’s almost ridiculous. So you kind of have to be creative and sell a narrative if you will. But be truthful at the same time.

Marc Gonyea:
What was your narrative?

Brendan Andrews:
I think for me ThreatConnect, I closed pretty significant deals with pretty big name companies. And I’ve used that to ultimately sell how I’ve kind of closed deals full cycle I’ve closed a 600K deal, with a very large company at ThreatConnect that I pretty much, and I did full cycle and John would help me here and there for example getting it through procurement and all that stuff. But that’s pretty much what every kind of director or higher up or VP should help the reps with. I think being able to kind of tell a story around that, I think is important or taking the little victories where if you look at the job description of a sales closer of how you’re able to close certain things. And I think luckily, at ThreatConnect that it was a very hybrid role where I was inside sales of driving pipeline but account executive inside sales where I’m closing deals.

Marc Gonyea:
But how’d you get there? Like what did you do? You put the word out gave your narrative, but in five words or less if I’m an SDR at memoryBlue now and I want to get into a closing role. When I get my next job. What do I need to do?

Brendan Andrews:
You just kind of put the time in. I think too often people get antsy and like I want to get to a closing role within six months and you really haven’t mastered the whole entire SDR thing like that. I think in my opinion, I think have a year under your belt with an SDR and really learning things that the format is like prospecting through email, prospecting through phone call, LinkedIn. I don’t really do LinkedIn but some people do. But just learning that and wondering how to manage your day is critical to taking that next step.

Marc Gonyea:
We screen people, you probably remember this but you took an assessment your personality state called DISC and one of the things we screen for are people with low levels of patience. But it can be a double edged sword too though because then you’re in that big hurry to get to that next role and you don’t know it until you see it that most people, you’re not ready for that role yet cause you’ve got to have more experience to be able to kind of take these things, think through these things and process them. But you did a great job of coming in here, tearing it up, getting converted by your client and then working at your client long enough to get them to promote you.

Brendan Andrews:
I think the big thing, I think how was able to get to that closing role at ThreatConnect was just doing what was expected of me and more every single day. So at ThreatConnect, I think the meeting goal over a three month time period was 75 meetings. I booked, I don’t know, 130, 140 or something. I don’t know the exact number but that I guess grabbed people’s attention. That one I’m hitting my number. But I was always the first one in last one out for the most par.

Chris Corcoran:
So walk us through your morning routine. What time does the buzzer go off?

Brendan Andrews:
Lately it’s been going off at 5:00, so I get up at 5:00 in the morning and depending on how I feel I work out or if I don’t work out, I, you know, get myself ready or shower get clothes on, I’m going to wear for the day. And then I will actually build a list. Like I’ll get all that administrative crap done. Early in the morning or when I’m at home, watching TV because in my opinion, if I do that during work, during prime calling hours, it’s a waste of my time because that’s literally time I could be calling.

Marc Gonyea:
So let’s talk about that. It’s pay time, not pay time. So time management is critical and you mentioned that or something that you did and you displayed at ThreatConnect to get you promoted, but even now you’re talking about how you chop up your day.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, chop up my day. I do the stuff for example, what I try to do in the morning too is follow up items that I have. I’m not going to do that in my opinion, I think it’s a waste of time to do it right after a call. I’m going to do it later in the day, when I begin my off hours or early next morning.

Chris Corcoran:
Give us an example? So what do you mean, like a follow up?

Brendan Andrews:
A prime example is when I did my POS, proof of concepts I will send a follow up of like, Hey, here’s the s*** we went over today. Here’s what we’ll go over next time, here’s what you guys should look over in the meantime, almost kind of homework if you will. Here’s some documentation for you to look over some of the concepts we went over today and reinforce it. So I’ll send that almost as a mutual outcome plan right after the POC call that I have that day. But doing that right after the call, when I’m going into back to back meetings, I can’t physically can’t do it. But also doing that during time when I have free time, during day, for example two to three, there’s potential people that could be picking up or that’s potentially where I can run a cadence or whatever. I try to leave that to when my prospects aren’t going to be at the office essentially.

Chris Corcoran:
So, you do your follow up in non-selling hours, correct?

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah. Or one new thing I’ve, that my manager slash director has told me is doing delay emails on outlook. I had no idea they could actually do that where you could draft up the email and delay it to be sent I don’t know, at nine o’clock in the morning. So you drafted up like four and put it for at the time or they get sent. So they’re doing stuff like that or just like little hacks.

Marc Gonyea:
I think the key thing is you want to be doing the activities that don’t get you on the phone or in front of prospects outside of when you should be on the phone or in front of prospects. So if the prospect is most likely to be available between two and three, that’s not the time to be doing the administrative work. You gotta do that later. It’s not a nine to five job. You gotta do that before nine or after five ideally, not every day.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, the balance. Right. There’s going to be times where it’s not scalable or good for your overall health to just be so regimented like that. So you need breaks, but being able to be disciplined and having that discipline and knowing when to turn it off and turn it on is the key.

Marc Gonyea:
So Brendan, as you’re continuing to develop in your career, there are all these little check marks that people need to keep track of before they go onto their next opportunity. One of my favorite questions to ask is what’s more important? Would you like ideally a great company and a not as great boss or do you want a great boss and not as great company?

Brendan Andrews:
That’s a really great question. I think somebody asked that same similar question to somebody, some famous entrepreneur or whatever. It’s like, do you prefer having great technology, or great people? What would you choose? And I’m a believer of people make great companies, great companies don’t make great people. I mean sometimes do, depends. So I would choose more the culture and the feel of the company rather than we’re the best, we’re the best in our industry, et cetera. Cause if I can go and say a company and I generally like, like that field, like comradery and I believe in what I’m doing and I believe in the mission. I’m going to make it the best company or at least I’m going to drive myself to make it the best.

So, to answer your question, a great manager, great manager makes a difference. Especially probably young in your career, this is not, it’s not like your father’s job or your grandfather’s job. Where are you going to at GE for 40 years, be on a pension and retire. You’re going to be at 10 plus jobs and probably in your lifetime. So if you’re early on you might as well have a kick a** manager that can teach you the ropes. Therefore when you go to a great company that doesn’t have great management, doesn’t really matter to you.

Marc Gonyea:
What about, what’s more important in a comp plan? The base salary or the upside?

Brendan Andrews:
Definitely upside, base is good don’t get me wrong, I like a good base. The potential to earn more and for example, if I close like a 20K deal and my commissions like 20%, it’s a lot better than 10% or 12% or whatever. So I think like the commission, right? And the return that you get, when you bust your ass and you closed a big deal, it means more to me.

Marc Gonyea:
Got it. What about you’ve mentioned a couple of books. If you had to recommend just one, what would it be?

Brendan Andrews:
I think one of the best ones, You Can’t Teach a Kid How to Ride a Bicycle. There’s different sales books that are out there like completely philosophical b*******, and there’s all fluff of just there’s no real value to it. But if you look at that, like the thing I like about Sandler is it’s not just philosophy is not just mindset. It’s also tactics as well. And then combine that all together and the book it kind of the clear examples of strip line or an example of a strip on and how I could take some of those examples and apply it tactically but also have the belief system to believe when I’m using that tactic.

Marc Gonyea:
Okay. So that would be the one. Would there be a two?

Brendan Andrews:
Challenger sales? I like the challenger sale. I think I like more of the concept of the challenger sale in the book. But it was a lot of theory and not a lot of okay I want to take that theory and apply it. How does the challenger apply? But I like the general philosophy of if you went off of just what the customer thought thing needed, you’re going to lose. You kind of have to create that idea of maybe it’s a latent need, but then they think it’s an actual more important need. So being able to kind of drive the narrative, drive the agenda, and be the leader on that standpoint.

Another cool book that I like, is Jobs to be Done. So the theory is that each person has a job that they, that they do right? To accomplish something from a business standpoint, from a personal standpoint, whatever. Then there’s the map from a feature’s capability standpoint, you have to map your features, capabilities to accomplish your job. So for example, if I’m driving home from work, my job is to now get in the car, turn on the car, go through the junk yard that is 66, and then try to get home each of those is a job that accomplish a bigger goal. So I thought that was cool, but it also gave me a perspective of the people that we’re ultimately selling to our people and they have a day to day that they go through. So just understanding what their world is and what jobs that they need to be accomplishing. So I thought it was a cool book that it’s not a typical sales book, but taking some of the concepts. So that was cool.

Marc Gonyea:
So do you think can teach someone to sell or is that something you’re born with?

Brendan Andrews:
I think you can teach people. I think the things you can’t teach are I think what makes everybody, not everybody’s successful. If you look at the most successful people, they have that intellectual curiosity. They just don’t want to take things at status quo or what people tell them they will challenge that and they want to think for themselves. So, I think if you just have these innate curiosity of learning empathy, empathy is a big thing and sales of empathizing with the customer’s world. And understanding s***, this does suck or look I get projects push that’s going to happen, right? How can I work with you to overcome that or get you to a position where this one doesn’t happen again or we can actually find a deal and get it done. So I think it’s those types of characteristics that you can’t really teach, but the sales process and all that stuff, that’s teachable.

Chris Corcoran:
So I want you to think back over your sales career and all the wins. What’s the biggest win or, or most favorite win?

Brendan Andrews:
I think one of the coolest ones was that 600K, one that closed that was about that there was a deal that came in through, through an inbound lead but you still have to qualify. You still have to map out the use cases. And I think the deal, the lead came in maybe in October or November. And ultimately I was able to close it in December, which is where I was at with our sales cycle was pretty crazy. There was other sales reps that did it, but you don’t see that that often and it wasn’t like they’re ready to buy. You have to sell them on, Hey, doing things this way is the best way as opposed to how our competitors do it or this is the best way to do it compared to what the status quo is right now. So there still some selling to be done. So going through that process or my engineer that ran the deal did a kick a** job. And then we’re at procurement and then we’re going to the T’s and C’s.

And it was one of those that I came down to the wire and I remember specifically like calling up the procurement person or I think it was actually the lawyer that we had to go through the T’s and C’s and getting him to get it done before Friday so we can get it turned over before Christmas essentially get signed. And like I remember those types of things like talking to my VP, Hey, this is where it’s at and here’s how we get it in. That was like a pretty cool experience and that was one of my, it was one of the biggest, the first big deal I really closed.

Chris Corcoran:
So what about the most painful or most memorable loss? Anything haunt you?

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah, there’s definitely one that that haunts me. I remember one deal, it was pretty much at the goal line, right? We’re at the one yard line, right. Punch it in. We have the PO from the reseller. Um but we need to get an agreement on the language. Right. And they ultimately didn’t agree to our language and they didn’t tell me that we essentially they went dark and I had to find out until six months later that there was a problem with the language and it was one of those like is there anything else I could have done? I think that one sucked the most because it was right there. Luckily it was a small deal, but it was right there and yet you had it and it was just like the biggest punch to the gut.

Chris Corcoran:
And if you had to do that one over again, what, if anything would you do differently?

Brendan Andrews:
Like looking back on it, like I think I did everything I could have done with the information I had probably maybe got their legal team on with our legal team and talk things through. But I think looking back on it, like there’s just going to be times where things slip and I think what I’ve learned when I said my job right now is things are gonna slip. It happens. So you better have pipeline to kind of back it up. So all of these feeding the funnel and making sure that you have legit deals that if this big ass deal slips to next quarter, that I got the revenue in my pipe to backfill it.

Marc Gonyea:
Cool. All right, final question. You may remember this from your interview with us. Who would you, one person who would you put on Mount Rushmore now? Anyone in your life past, someone you’ve met, someone you haven’t met past, present future.

Brendan Andrews:
Chris Farley.

Marc Gonyea:
Chris Farley why?

Brendan Andrews:
Cause he’s Chris Farley. He’s a legend. I think. I mean this is tough. I think one of the biggest influences in my life has been one my family. So it’s kind of a BS response I think my mom and dad I think taught me the importance of work ethic. And then I have an uncle who was prime of his career, played lacrosse at UNC and got paralyzed got hit by car, paralyzed from the waist down and his philosophy of just I’m going to make the best of my experience. Like, yeah, this s*** sucks, but I’m not gonna woah is me type of thing and just move on it and just live life I guess to the fullest. And don’t worry about the things that you don’t have and what you do have and just focus on what the task is at hand and just moving forward.

Marc Gonyea:
I think that’s a special way to wrap things up.

Brendan Andrews:
Yeah. I’m going to my Tony Robbins session after this.

Chris Corcoran:
Is that true?

Brendan Andrews:
No.

Marc Gonyea:
Well, Hey man, thanks for coming in.

Brendan Andrews:
This is cool, man.

Chris Corcoran:
Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. We appreciate you coming in.