Episode 123: Colby Cambra – Outbound is Key

Starting at the bottom is both inevitable and essential and this is especially true in sales. The SDR role is a crucial starting point and learning how to master it is critical for a fruitful sales career.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Colby Cambra discusses the foundation of his success and explains how he’s been able to climb the ranks to senior Corporate Account Executive at CrowdStrike. From the in-person work environments he’s experienced to learning how to focus on the value of each conversation with a prospect, Colby largely attributes his career trajectory to the lessons and skills he began learning as an SDR.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Colby Cambra

💡 What he does: Colby is a senior corporate account executive at CrowdStrike.

💡 Company: CrowdStrike

💡 Noteworthy: Colby is an experienced account executive with a background in SaaS. He went to San Jose State University and majored in health science. After college, Colby was a valet for a while, managed the facilities for various buildings at Stanford, and after that, he went into behavioral therapy, working with autistic children. Finally, Colby joined memoryBlue and began a sales career.  

💡 Where to find Colby: LinkedIn l Website

Key Insights

⚡ Working in an office is very beneficial for the SDR role. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many things in people’s lives, including work habits. For many, remote working is the ideal way of working; some are used to working that way and don’t want to return to the office. But, according to Colby, if you are getting into sales — especially in the SDR role — it is necessary to work in the office. “I used to like going into the office. It was always a fun time. It was almost like going to school again, a little bit like you’re seeing all your peers. When it was time to work, it was time to work; but, when it was downtime, lunchtime, a small break to play ping pong, and stuff like that, that was the best. So I think that gave me a really good outlook on sales in general because I saw the people that were doing sales. They were just like me. I could see what they’re doing to be successful, and that gave me a path forward to understand what I have to do as well.”

⚡ It’s important to give value to the conversation with the client. Being a good SDR is the first and necessary step to building a successful sales career. Colby points out that in the SDR role, you learn many skills that will benefit you in your career. “I got good at a lot of things. I got good at learning how to conversate with people in a way that was not only convincing but giving value to that conversation, and also learning how to understand what clients need and how our solution can match up with that. It’s not just a conversation like, ‘Hey, you want to learn about us? We do this.’ It’s more a conversation in regard to you, like, ‘Hey, what are you experiencing when you do this part of your job? Because I know that your title does that, and I know that some companies do it like X, Y, Z. So how would you do that?'”

⚡ How to become a successful AE? Colby started at Malwarebytes as an SDR, then moved up the ranks to become an enterprise account executive. Colby explains how the roles of an SDR and an AE differ and how to become a successful AE. “There’s a big hump that you have to get over when coming from an SDR to an AE role, and that stuff is like understanding MEDDIC, understanding situation pain impacts, understanding negotiation tactics, understanding an entire deal cycle that you don’t learn about as an SDR. So, they throw you in, and you learn how to do that stuff. You go through demos, through negotiation, but you don’t really have a strategy, and you don’t necessarily really have a structure to it. You just are going through steps. So that was the biggest thing that I learned how to do, and the way I learned how to do that was just deliberating with other reps that were good.” 

Episode Highlights

From an SDR for large companies to SMB sales at Malwarebytes

“It’s like 50 employees or below, so it was a lot smaller than what I had been calling into. I was calling into enterprise accounts, so I’m talking to people that are like 3000 employees, large companies; I’m cold calling them, getting them to come to meetings. So, when I started 15 below, I was like, ‘This is interesting. This is not what I’m used to actually,’ because the higher-up people actually knew more, and they had so much more down about their company in regard to process; whereas, a lot of smaller companies, they’re more confused. The IT people there are very junior, don’t understand the cybersecurity solutions at all, never really dealt with cybersecurity. Even the role in IT had some really small organizations, like 50 employees and below; they’re just downloading Windows, not doing much. So they were like a lot more hand-holding, and it was a lot more conversations. I was drained in the beginning. I filled the calendar up, just meetings back-to-back to back-to-back-to-back. And all of them are asking a thousand questions because none of them know what security is.” 

Mid-Market Account Executive Role

“Deals started getting bigger, and they started getting a little bit more complex. You’re facing a lot of guys in the IT industry and the cybersecurity industry that know a lot, and you have to challenge them a lot in regard to what they know, and you have to offer them solutions that they might not be thinking about or that they have an understanding of that isn’t exactly correct. Like, ‘How [do] you remediate the time it takes to remediate?’ All this stuff that they think they’re safe on; you have to give them a reason why they wouldn’t be, and make yourself like a trusted advisor. Like, ‘You have to trust this person because he knows what he’s talking about,’ and just challenging them more.”

The Importance of Self-Improvement

“I want to be a director of sales one day; I want to be a VP of sales, one day, at a company. I would like to use what I learned and use all my experience that I’ve gained and keep growing it to a higher position one day. I’m already on that path.

I’ve done a great job thus far; I’ve done a good job, but it hasn’t been, in my opinion, completely fantastic. There are always areas of improvement that I can have, and I try to look for those all the time because you need to constantly improve to get better. If you’re not improving, you’re not getting better. If you’re staying stagnant, you’re getting worse; there’s no middle ground. So I try to pour myself into my competitive nature from sports and whatnot into sales and make it like a career for me.”

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Colby Cambra: I would say that a lot of SDRs, in the beginning, don’t make over that hump, it’s hard, it’s hard, they have a bad client, whatever, right? It’s so tough, but if you can dedicate yourself to that time and actually take it, like, I think you’ll find success, and you need to make it over that first hump in order to do that. ​

[00:00:34] Marc Gonyea: Colby Cambra paying memoryBlue a visit. 

[00:00:39] Colby Cambra: Yes. 

[00:00:39] Marc Gonyea: CC in the house. How are you doing, Colby?

[00:00:44] Colby Cambra: Good, man, I’m good, Marc, how have you been? 

[00:00:46] Marc Gonyea: I’m doing well, I’m, I’m thrilled to have you here, I mean, you’ve got, you know, I just remember you and Omar and that crew, that San Jose State crew, we finally tapped into San Jose State, we got some ballers in the company back then, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna walk through that. We want to hear a little bit about you and what you’ve been up to, and your journey. That sounds good?

[00:01:10] Colby Cambra: Yeah, sounds good, sounds good. 

[00:01:12] Marc Gonyea: Before we get to that though, just, and this is good for Chris and I, just edify us, tell us a little bit on what, where’d you grow up, tell us a little bit about being a kid, like that sort of thing.

[00:01:22] Colby Cambra: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it’s just, starting from the very beginning, then. So, I was actually born on Maui, um, my pop’s from, is from Maui, and he grew up there his whole life. So, I was born there, only really lived there until I was four, so don’t really remember much, but I have a lot of family over there.

[00:01:36] Moved to San Diego, I lived out my, my whole life in San Diego, I went to college in San Jose State, and then I stayed after job prospects…

[00:01:44] Marc Gonyea: What were you like as a kid? Let’s talk about that, I, I want to know.

[00:01:47] Colby Cambra: As a kid? 

[00:01:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. What did you think you wanted to be growing up, what were you, did you play sports, did you have a job, were you, like, what were you into? 

[00:01:54] Colby Cambra: Yeah. So, as a kid, I played a lot of sports, I had to, my dad made me play sports, that’s, like, where the competitive nature comes from all the time. Played soccer, lacrosse, baseball, I did jiujitsu in high school. I was always a kid that was really more goofy, actually.

[00:02:09] I was always funny, I wanted to have fun, I was talkative, I wanted to be like class clown. That actually changed as I got older, I got a little more nervous throughout, like, my, my, like, high school and middle school years, but as a kid, kid, yeah, a goofy kid, funny, laughing. 

[00:02:22] Marc Gonyea: Okay. What’d you think you wanted to be when you grew up?

[00:02:25] Colby Cambra: Originally, I remember when I was, like, a very small kid I wanted to be a police officer for a long time, yeah, yeah, I wanted to be a police officer. 

[00:02:32] Marc Gonyea: Why was that? 

[00:02:32] Colby Cambra: I have no idea.

[00:02:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s all right. 

[00:02:35] Colby Cambra: It was just one of those things, you know, you’re, you’re a little kid, you’re a boy, and you’re like, man, I want to be, I dunno, yeah, I wanna be cop, and that didn’t happen.

[00:02:42] All right. And so, then you moved to San Jose State, how’d you end up there? I did a bunch of tours for college, at first, I didn’t know, know if I wanted to go, right, I was like, I’m just gonna do community college, let’s call it a day. And then I saw everyone else, like, getting prepared to go to college and doing SATs and stuff, and I was like, “Uh-oh, now I want to go.” everyone else is doing it, it’s like the cool thing to do.

[00:03:05] So, I ended up doing not bad on the SAT, I, I toured a bunch of colleges like Humboldt and SF State and San Jose, and San Jose just, you know, when you feel it, you go around the campus and you’re like, “Wow, this is it.” I got that feeling, and I didn’t think I would either. 

[00:03:18] Marc Gonyea: All right, okay, okay. 

[00:03:20] Chris Corcoran: Sparty in the house.

[00:03:22] Marc Gonyea: That, those, those Spartans, okay, all right. 

[00:03:25] Colby Cambra: Yeah, Spartan Spartans. 

[00:03:26] Marc Gonyea: Okay, all right. Love it. All right. So, talk about San Jose State, what you major in, that sort of thing?

[00:03:32] Colby Cambra: Yeah, San Jose State, my major was health science. 

[00:03:35] Marc Gonyea: Health science. Why? 

[00:03:36] Colby Cambra: I liked it. Well, first of all, my dad was like, “Hey, do something that’s gonna be, like, job security, right, you can do something that’s gonna last and makes money and whatnot.” And, you know, I said like, “What about health?” And he was like, “Yeah, do it.”

[00:03:47] And I’m Filipino, too, so it’s, you know, Filipinos and health, it probably made sense, right? And I liked the classes, it was fun, right, like, we’re learning about the body, we’re learning about all this stuff, and I was like, wow, this is really cool. So, I ended up doing that throughout my, my entire years there, didn’t change it.

[00:03:59] Marc Gonyea: But what’d you think you were gonna do when you got out of school?

[00:04:02] Colby Cambra: I had no idea, and that scared the hell outta of me, like, every single day, I remember just getting massive anxiety every day, like, what am I gonna do, right? What job is there in health science? 

[00:04:11] I had no idea, I wanted to be, like, a PA at one point, and then one of my buddies did, too, and he was like, “Oh, what, what classes are you taking for PA?” And I was like, “There’s classes you have to take? What do you mean? Like, there’s classes you have to take?” And he is like, “Yeah, you have to be, like, all these classes.” And I was so far in a college already, I was like, “Oh, I can’t do it now, like, that’s dream’s gone.” So, I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, like, I had no idea.

[00:04:36] Marc Gonyea: But you did pretty good, at least according to your LinkedIn profile, you’re in a fraternity, right? So, so, you got through college. What happened then? 

[00:04:44] Colby Cambra: Yeah, so after college, my first job, well, first, first job I was actually a valet for a little bit, which was tough because I’m like, why do I have this degree? I could have just did that anyways. And then, after that, I actually

[00:04:55] Marc Gonyea: Where were you a valet? Back home or up here?

[00:04:57] Colby Cambra: Up here, yeah, it was like the, any downtown hotel, one of them in particular, I forgot the what the name is. 

[00:05:02] Marc Gonyea: I think I remember you telling me that back in the day. 

[00:05:03] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but, man, that was not cool, not a great job to have, I mean, not right outta college. And then, after that, I did, I worked at Stanford, I was a facilities guy, and I did, um, just facilities for the political science building,

[00:05:16] which was cool, right, I think you guys have some notes here in, in regard to that, but like, I met Condoleezza Rice, I met, like, all these people, they don’t remember me probably, so she listens to this, she’s gonna be like, “You’re a liar.” 

[00:05:26] Chris Corcoran: Connie. 

[00:05:27] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but I worked there, and I still, you know, it’s, it’s one of those tough jobs, right? Like, you’re doing, if anything anyone needed in the building, you just do that, like, whatever it was. So, like, I remember one funny one was, this guy, this professor, like, needed help ’cause he needed to figure out his, his shades in the building, and this guy’s, like, near the top, right? So, like, he can see obviously the whole campus, like, big cheese kind of person.

[00:05:49] I go up there, and I’m like, oh, it probably needs, like, to get screwed in or something, right? We go up there, he just didn’t know there’s two collies, like, each one pulls an opposite side, that’s what he needed help with. And I, that was unbelievable to me, I’m like, this guy is like, big cheese, couldn’t open up a window. That’s insane. 

[00:06:06] Marc Gonyea: Right, right, did that give you any perspective?

[00:06:08] Colby Cambra: It did, I was like, well, if he can,, like, get up there and not open a window, I, I could do something.

[00:06:12] Marc Gonyea: Right, right, right, yeah, I probably would’ve felt the same way. All right. So, how long did you do that? 

[00:06:18] Colby Cambra: For just a year, about a year.

[00:06:20] Marc Gonyea: All right, and then what happened next? 

[00:06:22] Colby Cambra: After that, I went into behavioral therapy. So, I was working with autistic children, ranging from, like, two to nine about, they just had, like, adverse behaviors that were wrong to do, right, you know, lashing out, things like that. So, I was running programs with these kids to help them not do these behaviors that are adverse. So, parents needed help.

[00:06:42] Marc Gonyea: Okay, yeah, that’s gotta be a very difficult.

[00:06:45] Colby Cambra: Another difficult one. 

[00:06:46] Marc Gonyea: Challenge job. 

[00:06:47] Colby Cambra: Yeah. I thought it was, you know, going on the right path with health, and I thought, you know, this is actually utilizing my major, and I thought this was a good path for me, but again, it was, it’s actually I think a little harder than Stanford, like I actually missed Stanford, I never thought I would.

[00:07:00] Marc Gonyea: Oh, right, right. And then, your next thing was memoryBlue?

[00:07:03] Colby Cambra: Correct, yeah. 

[00:07:03] Marc Gonyea: How did, how did that happen? 

[00:07:05] Colby Cambra: memoryBlue, yeah. So, I actually was just searching for jobs, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My dad’s a VP of Marketing for a small company, and I was thinking to myself, like, he does sales, he’s done sales his whole life, you know, home loans and things like that, like, I want to get into sales, but I didn’t know how. 

[00:07:21] Marc Gonyea: So, you knew you wanted to get, when did the sales thing kind of, okay, I wanna do the sales thing?

[00:07:25] Colby Cambra: Partway through the behavioral therapy, when I realized, like, I just can’t stay like this, and I need something, like else, I need to figure out, like, what I’m good at. That’s when it kind of clicked for me, like, I need to start networking and figuring out, like, 

[00:07:36] who’s in this that I know, and like, how can I get in? And that’s when I met Omar, well, I didn’t meet Omar, I knew Omar already, but that’s when I started talking to Omar. 

[00:07:43] Marc Gonyea: You did it earlier, my bad, yeah. Yeah, okay. So, you knew Omar from school? 

[00:07:47] Colby Cambra: Correct, yes.

[00:07:48] Chris Corcoran: Did you know him from San Diego?

[00:07:49] Colby Cambra: No, but actually, we were, like, close high schools, like, we’re, like, our high schools played each other in football, and there was, like, a cohort of people down there that we all went to similar high schools.

[00:07:59] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Do you, so you met Omar

[00:08:02] Colby Cambra: In college. 

[00:08:03] Marc Gonyea: in college, and then, did you stay in touch with him? Like, how did the, how did the memoryBlue, because he was working at memoryBlue, you’re thinking about sales, yeah, walk us through that. 

[00:08:10] Colby Cambra: Yeah, so I was thinking about sales, I was actually, a funny story, just, you know, asking around, like, I didn’t really have, like, a spot I was trying to ask, all of us were pretty new, so I didn’t really, not a lot of people were in sales yet, right?

[00:08:21] Like, we were the first people that graduated out of a lot of our friends, and, uh, I asked my roommate about, you know, we were just talking to him and he was like, “Hey, I know Omar actually just got this new sales job and it’s at some place called, like, memoryBlue or something like that, but, you know, if you want a sales job, just talk to him, I think they hire.” 

[00:08:38] And so, I talked to Omar, and he replied and said, “Yeah, man, we are hiring, like, this is what you need to do, like, go apply and put my name on it.” 

[00:08:45] Chris Corcoran: Think so, Marc? 

[00:08:46] Colby Cambra: Yeah, man, I had, I really wish he had helped me more with everything because he literally just said that, and then I asked him, I think a million questions in regard to like, “What do I need to know,

[00:08:55] like, who am I gonna talk to? What are they gonna say?” And he was like, “Yeah, you got it, listen to the prompt, you’ll be fine.” I was like, “Dude, come on, give me something, give me a little more than that, please.”

[00:09:06] Marc Gonyea: So, keep going. But you got into the process, right? 

[00:09:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. So, I got into the process and

[00:09:12] Marc Gonyea: What, what do you remember from that?

[00:09:13] Colby Cambra: Uh, man, I, I remember I had to take time off work during my behavioral therapy to go interview, and I interviewed with Nimit, Joe, and Dan, yeah, those were the guys there, and, uh, it was tough man, like, they were asked, they had the whole prompt, they had everything that you needed to know,

[00:09:29] it was, like, ClearBridge, right, and what was the other one? 

[00:09:33] Marc Gonyea: Oh, shoot. It was vi, vision chain, but what were they?

[00:09:36] Colby Cambra: Orche, Orchestra? 

[00:09:37] Marc Gonyea: Orchestra, oh, my god, Orchestra. 

[00:09:39] Colby Cambra: Orchestra, yeah, yeah. Man, I remember the questions, I think that’s five years ago. 

[00:09:43] Chris Corcoran: Sean Dolly. 

[00:09:44] Colby Cambra: Yeah, that’s a long time ago, that was a long time ago. I remember, I think I figured out, like, I could be good at this when they were just drilling me with questions in regards to everything that was on the sheet and everything about, like, why I think I could, like, do this job, and

[00:09:59] under the pressure, like, I actually had really good answers, like, I could, like, speak to this even though I was nervous. And then, I kind of liked it actually, I was like, oh, like, I’m really kind of nailing these answers here, like I’m really liking this, and that’s, that’s when they, they did the phone call 

[00:10:14] with Nimit in the other room, and that was terrifying, I mean, I remember they were like, “Hey, yeah, we’re gonna be in the other room, just let us know when you’re ready, and we’re gonna ring ya, or I’m, you’re gonna ring me and just probably time this number in and we’re gonna get it going, right?” And so, and he’s like, “Dick, Anton, you need, you know, review your notes.” so, I’m sitting there, they leave, and I’m staring at this phone, and my heart 

[00:10:33] Marc Gonyea: Waiting for the ring, right? 

[00:10:34] Colby Cambra: Yeah, my heart is, like, coming outta my chest, and I’m just sitting there, like, sweating, holding my hands together, like, you need to nail this right now, like, you need to nail this right now, like, just so nervous, like, this is your chance to get into sales, you wanted to get into sales, like, be about it. 

[00:10:49] And so, I ended up, you know, just dialing in, and I did it with Nimit, and I did a pretty good job, I think, I mean, good enough for Nimit to say, “Hey, you know, we wanna offer you the job, like, on the spot, and like, we’ll give you, like, four days to think about it.”

[00:11:00] So, I mean, I took it, but man, I, I’ll never forget how, how nerve-wracking that was, nerve-wracking, but it’s one of those moments where you’re like, you know that if you challenge yourself, like, it’s gonna benefit you, right, it’s like, that anxious feeling. 

[00:11:12] Marc Gonyea: It sound like you were nervous ’cause you wanted to do it.

[00:11:14] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it’s like, it’s not, like, nervous, like I’m scared, it’s more like, this is your time, like, you need to, you know, sell yourself here. 

[00:11:20] Chris Corcoran: What’d your old man say? 

[00:11:21] Colby Cambra: My dad? 

[00:11:22] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. My dad was proud, I mean, he didn’t want to really help me out too much.

[00:11:26] Marc Gonyea: And Omar. 

[00:11:27] Chris Corcoran: Even knows Marc. 

[00:11:28] Colby Cambra: Yeah, yeah, my dad’s, like, one of those people where he was like, “Look, like, I never got help, like, I’m not the type of person, like, you need to figure it out, if you, whatever you want to do, like, it’s kind of your thing.” And like, it’s kind of a good thing that happened, right? I mean, look where I’m at now. So, I think that everything happens for a reason, so.

[00:11:43] Marc Gonyea: It does. We’re gonna get to where you’re now. So, what do you remember about memoryBlue as you started, did you kind of know what you were gonna be doing? 

[00:11:49] Colby Cambra: I did, yeah. So, I, I did a, get the opportunity, I, like, Omar at least told him, like, what they do on a day-to-day basis, right, just list building, there’s calling, there’s hand jam, and you’re picking up the phone, you’re dialing, right, you’re, you’re using techniques that you 

[00:12:00] learn here to, like, get people on the phone and get meetings for certain companies. I think when I first started in tech sales, it was, like, the best thing that could have ever happened because they had just won that office, had just won a spiff.

[00:12:13] And they did a party bus up to SF and did bottle service. So, like, one of my first, like, week there, they were like, “Ah, you can, like, come in on that since you’re, like, part of the crew now.” 

[00:12:22] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[00:12:23] Colby Cambra: Yeah. And so, like, my first, like, introduction to tech sales was, like, this big party, and I was like, this is amazing, different than anything I’ve ever done.

[00:12:33] Marc Gonyea: What was it like in the office?

[00:12:35] Colby Cambra: Yeah, probably a better question. In the office, it was cool, it was a lot different, I think that this was, like, my first time getting into, like, a corporate setting. 

[00:12:44] So, it’s like coffee maker, you know, like, everyone’s like, waking up, getting in, logging into the computers, like, it felt like a movie, honestly, like Office Space, you know the movie Office Space? I was like, man, this is, like, almost the same, it’s almost the same.

[00:12:59] But the vibe was, like, amazing, like, the people who were there, and like, the friends that I made, like, along the way and everything, everyone was young and hungry, and like, wanting to, to do, and you hear people on the phone, like, trying to get these meetings and it kind of felt like, what’s that one movie where they’re, like, selling shorting on the the stocks, and

[00:13:15] Marc Gonyea: No, no, Wolf of Wall Street. 

[00:13:16] Colby Cambra: Wolf of Wall Street, yeah, but like, way less obviously, like 

[00:13:18] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, not slimy. 

[00:13:19] Colby Cambra: Yeah, not slimy, yeah. 

[00:13:20] Marc Gonyea: Who, who was with you back then?

[00:13:22] There was Manny, Jennie Atkins, can I, can 

[00:13:26] Marc Gonyea: Jacob, Jacob Atkins? 

[00:13:27] Colby Cambra: Yeah, and then, there was, uh, oh, geez, I’m forgetting their names now.

[00:13:32] Marc Gonyea: That’s okay. 

[00:13:32] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but there’s a lot of ’em. 

[00:13:34] Marc Gonyea: And then you are, who’s your DM? 

[00:13:36] Colby Cambra: DM was Nimit. 

[00:13:37] Marc Gonyea: Nimit was your DM? That and, and you were on what client?

[00:13:41] Colby Cambra: I was on, uh, Malwarebytes, that was my first client. 

[00:13:44] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, did you, did you have another client before?

[00:13:46] Colby Cambra: I did, it was one of those PPMs, yeah, PPMs, that was difficult, but I got my first meeting off the PPM, though. 

[00:13:52] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I remember that. So, tell us about the, what, so you’re coming in, you’re doing this job, you got your corporate, you got your office space job, and what about the role?

[00:14:02] Colby Cambra: The role itself? 

[00:14:03] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:14:03] Colby Cambra: Yeah. So, the role itself was interesting, right? I, I think that, you know, I came in, I don’t know what to, I didn’t know what to expect, but initially a lot of it, and this is true to sales to this day, it’s like, a lot of list building, you’re finding the right contacts, you’re throwing

[00:14:18] ’em into a list, you’re making sure that the right people to talk to, number emails is, like, perfect, higher up is perfect, and you’re really just going down that list. I didn’t really get a lot of time to, like, deliberate what I was doing, right, they were like, “Hey, list-building time.”

[00:14:31] You, I had limited time to even do that, and then they were like, “Okay, you’re gonna call down this list, like, soon, like, in, like a day, you’re gonna call down this list, like, you’re gonna start calling people, the best way to learn is just to jump in.” And I was like, it was another one of those nervous moments, right? But I was like, this is what it is, like, I have to start doing this, like, this is what sales is. 

[00:14:50] Marc Gonyea: If you think about it too much, you’re gonna avoid doing it.

[00:14:52] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it’s like, you just have to do it. 

[00:14:54] Marc Gonyea: You just have to do it, and the more you think about it, the more overwhelming it becomes. 

[00:14:57] Colby Cambra: Yeah, and I’ve seen people go through that process where they’re, start to get overwhelmed with sales, especially as an SDR, it’s a hard role, right, a lot of people, and that’s why I had such already turnover rate. A lot of people will jump into it and go, oh my God, I’m calling people every single day, I’m getting yelled at, like, how do I even do this? 

[00:15:11] Marc Gonyea: So, you were in the office with a crew of people who were wanting to get after it, like, how you were getting it.

[00:15:16] Colby Cambra: Oh, they were killing it, they were killing it, man. I remember Jake had his feet kicked up, and he is just like, “Watch this,” hand jammed a, a number, and he is like, “Hey, yeah, it’s Jake over at, uh, just killing this call.” And he, he even got a meeting, and I was like, I wanna be like that.

[00:15:31] Marc Gonyea: Right, yeah, smooth. So, we talk about this, but it’s just worth re-mentioning, how much value is, is, did that bring, you thought, do you believe in terms of you getting going with your career, like, being in an office with a bunch of people who are all kind of doing the same thing versus now a lot of people are like, “I wanna do this from home.”

[00:15:49] Colby Cambra: I think initially when you’re first starting off in the role, especially in the, an SDR role, like it’s a hundred percent necessary, like, if I were to do an SDR role and you’re starting off like I did without any help, and then without, like, the help of our, like, the friendship, right, 

[00:16:02] that comes along the way, like, people going out to lunch, and like, the, the entire, like, culture of it, I think that it would be difficult and it also probably wouldn’t be a fun job, like, half of the fun, I used to like going in the office, it was a 

[00:16:13] Chris Corcoran: Fun happens. 

[00:16:14] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it was always a fun time, right? Like, it was like almost, like, going to school again a little bit, right? Like, you’re seeing all your peers, you know, when it was time to work, it was time to work, but when it was, like, downtime, lunchtime, you know, small break to play ping pong and stuff like that, it was the best. 

[00:16:28] So, I think that that gave me a really good outlook on sales in general because I saw the kind of people that were doing sales, they were just like me, I could see what they’re doing to be successful and that gave me, like, a path forward to understand what I have to do as well. Yeah. 

[00:16:41] Marc Gonyea: This guy was working in behavioral therapy before, and we got you to get into the tech sales game, right, it’s amazing, it’s amazing. What, what, uh, what did you get good at in the role?

[00:16:54] So, then you transitioned from your PPM, approved yourself on the PPM. You were probably waiting to kick off your client, and your client was your former employer, right? Yeah, you went to, we put you Malwarebytes, which is a high-profile account for us, very important account. And was Omar already on it? 

[00:17:11] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but he, so, no, we started together, actually.

[00:17:13] Marc Gonyea: You started together, okay, good, okay, got it. What was, what do you remember from that?

[00:17:16] Colby Cambra: I remember, Omar was just doing really well already, he was on some kind of, like, endoscopy thing, he was calling for endoscopy, like, doctors, right, for software. 

[00:17:27] Marc Gonyea: Some sort of software that, that,

[00:17:29] Colby Cambra: Maps out.

[00:17:30] Marc Gonyea: it administrated the, uh,

[00:17:31] Colby Cambra: Cleaning, like, yeah, and it like, mapped out everything that you would have to do on paper, like, like, automatically. 

[00:17:37] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, he was booking names right now. All right. 

[00:17:40] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I remember, uh, he did well and, and he actually fought a little bit for me to be on this client, like they were looking for someone good. I think a lot of people wanted it, and that put a big target on my back, I remember when I first started ’cause they were like, “Why does this new guy get Malwarebytes, I’ve been working here for however long.” Right? But Omar put his neck out for me and he said, 

[00:17:56] “He’s gonna kill it, he’s gonna kill it, I know he is gonna kill it, let him get on the client.” And he was right. So, shout out Omar, but yeah, that was, that was the beginning, man, I, I think that I, I, when we first initially started as well, I remember the, one of the first things we had to do was a kickoff call. So, we had to go into their office, and we were all, like, suited up,

[00:18:13] and they were a casual office, too, so everyone’s wearing, like, shorts, and like, T-shirts, and we were all, like, wearing suits. So, it looked very interesting walking down, I remember that was another nerve-wracking moment for me ’cause I was like, this is not the memoryBlue office, this is, like, a different kind of office, there’s like

[00:18:26] Marc Gonyea: It’s like, a real office. 

[00:18:27] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it’s bigger, it’s like, tech tech. That was my first introduction to tech. And people were looking at us, I remember, like, they were like, “Who are these guys?” 

[00:18:34] Chris Corcoran: We, we two, made them dress up. 

[00:18:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:18:35] Colby Cambra: Yeah, and it was a good idea, too, ’cause it’s like, we looked important, but we, me and Omar look young, too, so we’re like, who are these, like, children in suits, right? Like, why are they suited up? Like, whose, whose kids are these? And we walked in

[00:18:46] Marc Gonyea: Go to the West Coast, keep going, you walk in

[00:18:50] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but we walk in the office, and we had to do an entire kickoff with them, just going over, like, what the game plan is, how many meetings we’re gonna get, how we’re gonna deliberate these meetings, you know, what’s, like, the breakdown of each meeting.

[00:18:59] And I remember we had to fill out sheets for each one, we had to fill out a sheet of, like, all this information every time we got a meeting with the company and a person. That’s where we were going over during that call. 

[00:19:09] Marc Gonyea: How’d that go?

[00:19:10] Colby Cambra: It went pretty well, I think Dan did a good job, Dan was, like, on the money.

[00:19:15] Marc Gonyea: Dan Yorkey?

[00:19:15] Colby Cambra: Yeah, Yorkey came in and was like, and I remember he was looking a little nervous too, but he was, he had more of, like, the mindset, like, we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna, like, kick-ass, like, we’re gonna kick their ass, like, he’s like, “Just watch, like, just follow me.” 

[00:19:28] And I was telling Dan, I remember in, initially, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. So, like, if they call me to say something, like, I don’t know what to say, right? I’m supposed to be a tenure person, and like, know all this stuff, but I don’t know them, you know what I mean? I just started. And he is like, he’s like, “They won’t, don’t worry.” And they did, actually.

[00:19:44] Marc Gonyea: They did?

[00:19:45] Colby Cambra: Yeah, they did, they actually had me do, like, a cold call, like, exercise with them, like, on the spot. And they had me and Omar do it in the room. 

[00:19:52] Marc Gonyea: Ah, I remember hearing about this 

[00:19:54] Colby Cambra: Man, that was another, I, now that I’m thinking about it, I was nervous a lot, how many times was I nervous throughout this entire process? Like, a million times,that’s probably why I, I do better now is ’cause I was put, thrown in these 

[00:20:04] situations where I’m so nervous now that, like, if I’m doing a big call, it doesn’t matter, I’m not nervous at all, right, it’s over Zoom. But, um,yeah, we walk in there, and this guy’s, like, sitting there and one of that, like, head SDRs, whatever, and we do, like an entire cold car run with them, and honestly, I don’t think I did that well, I was nervous. 

[00:20:20] Marc Gonyea: You were new.

[00:20:21] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I was new, and he was also, like, calling me, like, “Okay, you work at Malwarebytes, like, how would you handle this call?” And I’m like, yeah, and I was like, “I don’t know anything about Malwarebytes yet, right, like we just got hired, like, how am I supposed to know about the technology? I haven’t gone in through any training.” But, you know, Omar did relatively well, I remember they liked his, and that’s when I knew Omar was gonna be prom at his job, but yeah, I didn’t do very well, I remember my ears were like bright red, I think, I, you know when you feel it in your ears and your face, oh, terrible feeling.

[00:20:49] Marc Gonyea: But, you know, can you get the amount of sales talent in that room from memoryBlue, Yorkey, Omar, and Colby, was anybody else? We added people to the campaign. Was that just you two to start?

[00:21:01] Colby Cambra: Just us to start, yeah. 

[00:21:02] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, that is, dude

[00:21:04] Colby Cambra: What a squad. 

[00:21:05] Marc Gonyea: That’s a lot of firepower. 

[00:21:07] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, that’s a lot of squad, that’s a good squad. Well, that’s why they added people.

[00:21:11] Marc Gonyea: I know. 

[00:21:11] Colby Cambra: Yeah. 

[00:21:12] Marc Gonyea: That’s, I, I’ll take anyone’s best three, again, to those three, any day of the week. Wanna talk about memoryBlue? Anybody? I’m serious. 

[00:21:21] Colby Cambra: Yeah. No, we were, and I, like, as an SDR, I remember I was booking meetings, like left and right. 

[00:21:26] Marc Gonyea: Tell, what about your first week?

[00:21:27] Colby Cambra: First week? Oh, I think I booked, like, three meetings, yeah, I think I booked, like, three or four meetings or something like that.

[00:21:32] Marc Gonyea: It did it, how much did you get in one of the months? 

[00:21:34] Colby Cambra: My top? 22.

[00:21:36] Marc Gonyea: 22. Going outbound?

[00:21:37] Colby Cambra: All outbound. 

[00:21:38] Marc Gonyea: We did all outbound. 

[00:21:39] Colby Cambra: Yeah, all, all outbound. And at that time, too, the inbound quota for Malwarebytes was 8.

[00:21:45] Marc Gonyea: 8? For the inbound? 

[00:21:47] Colby Cambra: Yeah, for the inbound it was eight, yeah. They ended up upping at the 12. I don’t think we helped any, like, did any favors for the guys that were already there because we came in and shook things up, and they were like, okay.

[00:21:58] Marc Gonyea: That’s why they hired us. That’s why we put you and Omar on it. We gave it to Yorkey. I remember Nimit and I move all the chess pieces around the board because what, so when you were doing the job, like, I, I, I don’t know how to do this, this is brand new, what did you learn? Like, what did you get good at? 

[00:22:16] Colby Cambra: Yeah. So, I mean, there was a ton, man, I think Joe really helped me with a ton of that stuff in regard, 

[00:22:21] Marc Gonyea: Joe?

[00:22:21] Colby Cambra: Joe Reeves. 

[00:22:22] Marc Gonyea: Joe Reeves, yeah, Joe.

[00:22:23] Colby Cambra: In regard to, like, actual SDR process, and like, how to like, like talk to people, right, but how to talk to people and also get them to, like, talk to you, too. That was a lot of Joe and Dan, too. A lot of like, uh, reflection, right, like, if someone has a certain tone, like you’ll reflect that tone.

[00:22:41] If someone’s, like, saying certain things or picking at things, but not, like, asking questions, like, just ask them why, right? Learning all that stuff was a lot of them helping me, and then a lot of, like, the technical aspect, we had to go through, like, the formalized training of, of what Malwarebytes had to offer.

[00:22:56] Colby Cambra: And I have notes and notes and notes, handwritten notes, like, thick bulk of them, and just learning everything about cybersecurity I can in, like, a week. 

[00:23:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. What did you get good at? 

[00:23:06] Colby Cambra: Got good at a lot of things, I think I got good at learning how to conversate with people in a way that was, like, convincing, right? Not only convincing, but giving value to that conversation, and also learning how to understand what clients need and how our our solution can match up with that, right? It’s not just, like, a conversation like, “Hey, you wanna learn about us? We do this.” Right? It’s more a conversation regard to you like, “Hey, what are you experiencing when you do this part of your job

[00:23:33] because I know that your title does that and I know that some companies do it, like, X, Y, Z. So, like, how would you do that?” Right? Like, there’s a whole deliberation that is on top of like, just asking for a meeting, right? And I think that’s where I got really good, especially at Malwarebytes and cybersecurity, was understanding like, hey, like, these guys have problems, and like, how do I get them to say it without asking like, “What are your problems?”

[00:23:55] Marc Gonyea: It’s too heavy of a question. 

[00:23:57] Colby Cambra: Yeah, they were gonna hate that, they’re like, “Who are you?”

[00:23:59] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:23:59] Colby Cambra: “Who are you?”

[00:24:00] Marc Gonyea: What are your problems? I mean, I don’t have problems 

[00:24:01] Chris Corcoran: What keeps you up at night? 

[00:24:03] Colby Cambra: Yeah. 

[00:24:03] Chris Corcoran: This conversation’s over.

[00:24:04] Colby Cambra: Yeah.

[00:24:05] Marc Gonyea: That’s, uh, so, when, when you’re doing this, you’re not that far in work at memoryBlue. Did you go on any TOPS Trips for us? 

[00:24:17] Colby Cambra: We didn’t have that. 

[00:24:18] Marc Gonyea: Didn’t have that then, man, you missed it. 

[00:24:20] Colby Cambra: We didn’t have that, but what we did have, like, the spiffs, like, if you were, like, one of the top, that’s how we ended up going on that trip to, like, the SF, right, when you bottle service, like that was, like, what you guys had, we were, so if you guys were, like, top office or whatever, right, like, you guys would, you would, like, throw some cash to do, like, a team thing. 

[00:24:37] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. Did you, so when you were on this campaign working with memoryBlue, working at Malwarebytes, what’d you think you wanted to do? Did you have any idea ’cause this happened pretty fast, right? But did you have any ideas of where you wanted to go with this? 

[00:24:52] Colby Cambra: I did have an idea, I mean, I liked it, right? I, I started off strong, and it never stopped. So, I, I, like, never missed quota on time, right, and I don’t think a lot of people can do that. So, I was like, I’m good at this, I wanna keep seeing where this rabbit hole takes me. So, I knew I wanted to be an account executive, I knew I wanted to one day be, like, a director, I still want that, right? 

[00:25:11] But I think that initially, all I cared about is k quota, kill quota, right, like, do what you need to do to be successful in this role now, and the rest will just follow, right, you have probably, like, five year tenure or whatever, you know, that doesn’t matter unless you do well right now. So, that was my only thought, was like, keep dialing, keep calling, get noticed and it’ll, your work will get noticed.

[00:25:32] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And this is, like, the bittersweet part of the model, like, you left us eight, nine months in, taking you with the Malwarebytes, which is how it’s supposed to work, but it’s tough losing that sort of talent, too, you gotta reload. 

[00:25:43] Colby Cambra: Yeah, that was fast, too, now that I think about it, I remember at the time I didn’t think it was fast, like, I was like, I’ve been here forever, but now I’m looking back at it, I’m like, it was only like, not even a year. 

[00:25:52] Marc Gonyea: Not even a year. So, when you were working with, uh, on Malwarebytes as a client, were you doing all the work from our San Jose office, or were you going onsite their office? Or how did that all work?

[00:26:02] Colby Cambra: It was four days at memoryBlue at first and then one day at Malwarebytes. And as we started ramping up and getting a little bit better, I think, like, halfway through it flipped, they had asked us to be in their office four days a week. And then I was at memoryBlue one day a week instead.

[00:26:17] So, that’s, like, when I started transitioning from, like, an office culture of, like, I’m at memoryBlue all the time and these are my people. So, like, now I’m actually starting to get integrated with that whole company. 

[00:26:26] Marc Gonyea: What was the difference between the two environments? 

[00:26:28] There was a lot more higher-up people around the office at Ma, Malwarebytes, right, like, you can see the CEO walking around, there’s directors walking around, there’s account executives walking around, they had a different air to them, right? They, they had this confidence, they knew what they were doing, some of them were doing extremely well, and you can just, like, feel that, right?

[00:26:46] Colby Cambra: Like, this guy is clearly a big shot around, and he’s like, higher up. When I was at memoryBlue office, we’re all the same, right, it’s like peer-to-peer. 

[00:26:53] Chris Corcoran: Although Yor, Yorkey would walk around with that. 

[00:26:55] Colby Cambra: Yeah, little bit, but Dan it, Dan is like the guy, you know, like, I did, I did so well for him that he was like, I don’t, like, you’re doing, like, do whatever you want,

[00:27:06] right, If you keep putting up numbers like that dude, like, do whatever, like, do you want a beer man? Like, like, he didn’t really care, like, as long as he’s like, dude, if you stop, obviously if you stop getting meetings, like, we’re gonna have to have, like, a different setup, but like, like, we’re, you’re doing good, like, keep doing whatever. 

[00:27:23] Marc Gonyea: How did the Malwarebytes initially receive you? Do they kind of think you were, like, part of the team, you liked the competition? Who were these guys from memoryBlue coming in, our quota’s 8 on the inbound, this guy’s busting out 22 on going to outbound. Were you shaking it up a little bit? 

[00:27:39] Colby Cambra: Yeah, we did, and it was, we weren’t, I don’t think we were the most well-met in the beginning, you know, obviously, like, when, when there’s new competition coming in, you experienced this anywhere you go in sales, right, you get a new job in sales, people are gonna be looking at you.

[00:27:50] And they’re saying, “Here, here’s the guy that they hired thinking that, you know, he’s gonna do better than us.” So, there definitely was, like, that animosity in the air, right?

[00:27:58] Marc Gonyea: A little bit, yeah, it’s a little bit 

[00:27:59] Colby Cambra: But as time went on, that obviously lessened as we got to know people. 

[00:28:02] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, of course. But it’s just interesting to see the two cultures, you know, one is just purely SDR-focused, purely. It’s easy, the SDRs get kind of lost in the shuffle a little bit around the product and the new versions of the product and SKOs and closing the big deals, and like, we’ve gotta keep our thumb on this, on the SDRs.

[00:28:24] Not saying they’re not good people or anything, but like, Yorkey was in y’all’s business if you weren’t doing well, you know, and like, we are into breaking down calls, I mean, it’s crazy things. 

[00:28:33] Colby Cambra: Yeah, yeah, and he was really good at that actually, like, we would do, like, call breakdowns, I think, every week, right, was on Fridays, I believe. We’d go, oh, everybody would be one. 

[00:28:42] That was another really interesting thing we did, like, you’ll literally hear someone, like, sometimes they’d be struggling on the call we’re all listening in, in an office room, just listening to this guy struggle.

[00:28:52] Marc Gonyea: It’s the most uncomfortable feeling if you’re the person whose call it is.

[00:28:55] Colby Cambra: Yeah, definitely.

[00:28:56] Marc Gonyea: Like, that’s how you learn.

[00:28:59] Yeah, you learn a lot, I mean, yeah, those moments, like I said, like, when you’re, when you get it all out there like that, I mean, it doesn’t stop, right? Like, when you’re a representative, when you’re an AE, like, you have to listen to your calls all the time. Did you do that now?

[00:29:10] Colby Cambra: Not at CrowdStrike, yeah, not, not where I’m at right now. But we did do it at, at previous companies where calls recorded. 

[00:29:16] Marc Gonyea: So, then you were, you got converted, Malwarebytes are hired out. And then, walk us through what you were doing there and kind of the path you, you went on.

[00:30:19] Colby Cambra: Yeah. So, I think one of the big things about getting hired out at Malwarebytes was I said, and this was their initial plan, we’re like, “Hey, you’re gonna be a hired SDR, right? And you’re gonna be an SDR through Malwarebytes now, and like, you’ll kind of start over, right? So, you’re gonna be, like, an SDR again for, like, another year or something like that, or.” 

[00:30:35] They didn’t really expect us to move up too quick, and I let ’em know, like, hey, if I do move up because I haven’t decided yet, to you guys, all the time I put in as an SDR for you was time that will transfer over, like, I’ve been an SDR for you for nine months, that doesn’t change when I get hired out, I’ve been in SDR for nine months still. 

[00:30:54] Chris Corcoran: You wanted, you wanted credit for time served. 

[00:30:56] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:30:57] Marc Gonyea: For your production?

[00:30:58] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly, I was like, that’s not going away and I’m not starting fresh again, like, that’s gonna be, it’s something I’m, I’m gonna be considered for, and I also want to move up to account executive when this is fly open.

[00:31:09] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and, but, but, but let’s, let’s be clear for, for the folks listening, you are implemented, you granted, you built that platform yourself by coming in, you and Omar, and just annihilating it. 

[00:31:21] Colby Cambra: Yeah, a hundred percent.

[00:31:22] Marc Gonyea: If you’re coming in, booking to two meetings a month.

[00:31:25] Colby Cambra: Oh, no, no, we wouldn’t even get the opportunity.

[00:31:27] Marc Gonyea: Right, yeah. But the fact that you came in and were crushing it, you’re allowed to, you have a little more leeway, right? 

[00:31:33] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I mean, that’s what Dan told, dan was like, “Hey, you have power here, like, you have bargaining power, you can, you can probably fight for something a little better, you can say, like, what do you wanna say? And I’ll help you, like, kind of, like, work through it.” 

[00:31:45] Marc Gonyea: That’s part of the value, too, having a delivery manager or manager, Joe and Dan in your corner. 

[00:31:50] Colby Cambra: Yeah, definitely, I mean, they helped us throughout the entire process, I could tell Dan wanted to keep us in, like, a little bit, he was kind of saying like, you know, he would say, like, “I’ll help you,” but then he would also say like, “Or, man, you can stay here, you know, we have, like, you know, if Malwarebytes kind of comes off, like, there’s another client that could be even better, I’ll let you know.”

[00:32:06] Marc Gonyea: Right. Which is true, he’s got, he’s got, you know what

[00:32:09] Colby Cambra: He played both angles, 

[00:32:10] Marc Gonyea: You have to play both angles, but you need to be thinking that when you’re negotiating with someone, right?

[00:32:14] Colby Cambra: Yeah, a hundred percent, hundred percent. 

[00:32:15] Marc Gonyea: When they, when they try and roll out the, I know, sounds like you had to gravitas to say, “I want credit for time, sir,” but part of that was also ’cause you got Yorkey and Dan in your corner trying to, trying to help you,

[00:32:25] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I understand that.

[00:32:25] Marc Gonyea: but also, you know, they’re alternatives.

[00:32:27] Colby Cambra: Yeah, hundred percent. 

[00:32:28] Marc Gonyea: All right. So, what, so you got, you got converted, and you were doing that role for a little while longer, and then how, how’d you get into the next role? And talk, let’s talk about that transition. 

[00:32:37] Colby Cambra: Yeah. So, that, the conversation I had actually worked with the director over there, he, he, like, respected that actually. He was like, “Yeah, absolutely, like I, we really like your, what you guys have done, and we’ll, we’ll definitely keep that in mind.” And it wasn’t, I was only in SDR for, like, two more months, yeah, I was only SDR for, like, one or two more months. 

[00:32:53] And then, a spot opened up and I threw my name in the hat and I actually ended up losing it the first time around, there was another guy who got it over me, and he was more, this was like when I got introduced to, like, company politics a little bit because he didn’t do better than me,

[00:33:08] I had better numbers across the board, but he was friends with, like, one of the managers from, like, childhood or something like that. So, he moved up ahead of me and Omar moved up with him. So, I got, like, saw Omar leave me behind and I was still, you know, cold calling all, he’s like closing deals, that was

[00:33:24] Marc Gonyea: How did that make you feel? 

[00:33:25] Colby Cambra: Man, that was tough, I hated that, I hated that so much because he was, like, my main competition, right, like the leaderboard was teetering. Just one, one meeting at a time over each other. 

[00:33:36] Marc Gonyea: Was your leaderboard? 

[00:33:37] Colby Cambra: Yeah. 

[00:33:37] Marc Gonyea: There was

[00:33:38] Colby Cambra: Leaderboard, yeah.

[00:33:38] Marc Gonyea: How many people were on it?

[00:33:40] We had a good amount of SDRs back then.

[00:33:41] Marc Gonyea: They had pretty 15.

[00:33:43] Colby Cambra: I think so, like, 15 or something like that, maybe even more, and ended up growing quite a, quite the amount over period of time. 

[00:33:48] Marc Gonyea: And it was a Colby, Omar one, two, back and forth. 

[00:33:52] Colby Cambra: Oh, yeah. I had a whole presentation built out for when I applied, and it was, like, a bar graph of all of our meetings and all of our revenue that we’ve closed, like, through our meetings, and like, our bar graphs were just through the roof and then everyone else was like

[00:34:05] Marc Gonyea: So, so, let’s just end this right here now, who was better, who’s a better Malwarebytes member SDR, you or Omar? 

[00:34:12] Colby Cambra: I think Omar was a little better. 

[00:34:14] Marc Gonyea: Oh, wow. Okay. 

[00:34:15] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:34:16] Colby Cambra: As an SDR, I think as a rep, I, that was another debate to have. He started off stronger, but then 

[00:34:22] Marc Gonyea: Pivots right to the AE role. 

[00:34:23] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I, I got stronger, like, later. 

[00:34:26] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, in the fourth quarter, right, when it 

[00:34:27] Colby Cambra: Yeah, fourth quarter, I was stronger, but he started off strong as an AE, but as an SDR, he had a little leg, for sure. That’s why they chose him over me.

[00:34:35] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Okay. So, talk about the transition to the role. What, what kind of sales role did you get? 

[00:34:40] Colby Cambra: Uh, SMB at first, yeah. So, I did, uh, it’s, like, 50 employees and below. So, it was a lot smaller than what I had been calling into, I was calling into enterprise accounts, so, like, I’m talking to people that are, like, 3,000 employees, like large companies, I’m talking to, like, BPY, like cold calling them, like getting to come to meetings. 

[00:34:57] So, when I started 15 below, I was like, this is, uh, interesting, I’m like, this is not what I’m used to actually, ’cause so, the higher up people actually knew more, right? And they, they had so much more down about their company in regard to, like, process,

[00:35:14] whereas a lot of smaller companies, they’re, like, more confused, right, like, the IT people there are kind of, like, very, very junior, don’t understand the cybersecurity solutions at all, never really dealt with cybersecurity, I mean, even the role in IT had some really small organizations, like, 50 employees and below, like, they were really just downloading windows and not doing much, right?

[00:35:31] Marc Gonyea: Food machines. 

[00:35:32] Colby Cambra: So, they were like, well, a lot more handholding, and it was a lot more conversations, I was drained in the beginning, like, I was filled the calendar up, just meetings back to back to back to back to back. And all of them are asking, like, a thousand questions because none of them know what security is, and it was also a time where security is a little bit not as big as it is today. 

[00:35:51] Marc Gonyea: And what did you do to transform yourself into a good closer in that role?

[00:35:55] Colby Cambra: That was 

[00:35:56] Marc Gonyea: You did that job for two, two years, and a month? According to LinkedIn, two years? 

[00:35:59] Colby Cambra: Yeah, well, as I did SMB, actually, I didn’t put it on my LinkedIn, but I did SMB for only, like, two months, and I, like, blew it outta the water. So, then they were like, put this guy up in mid-market,

[00:36:08] like, you shouldn’t have been in SMB. So, I mean, that was a good boost to my quota though ’cause they let me keep all that revenue I, I actually closed, but I did mid-market, and it was good at first, but there’s this transition

[00:36:21] Marc Gonyea: What’s mid-market definition?

[00:36:22] Colby Cambra: Over there?

[00:36:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:36:23] Colby Cambra: So, it’s like 250, I think, to like, 750 employees, something like that. That’s a lot of organizations SMBs, actually. So, they’re like a little differently structured, but I remember there’s a big hump that you have to get over when coming from an SDR to an AE role, and that kind of stuff is, like, understanding medic, understanding, like, situation pain impacts, understanding, like, negotiation tactics, understanding, like, an entire deal cycle that you don’t learn about as an SDR. So, like, they kind of throw you in, and you kind 

[00:36:55] of learn how to do that stuff, right, you go through demos, and you go through negotiation, but you don’t really have, like, a strategy, and you don’t necessarily really have, like, a structure to it, you just, like, are going through steps. So, the, that was the biggest thing that I learned how to do, and the way I learned how to do that was just deliberating with other reps that were good. There was one rep, Brandon A., that I, I looked to for help, and I was like, “What do you do?”

[00:37:19] Because he was killing it at the time, and I was like, “What are you doing? Like, how are you doing this? I don’t understand, like.” 

[00:37:23] Marc Gonyea: Are you guys doing…?

[00:37:25] Colby Cambra: He was an enterprise 

[00:37:25] Marc Gonyea: Enterprise guy, okay. 

[00:37:26] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I was, and then he ended up moving up the field, too. So, he actually moved and was flying around and meeting with people, like, in offices and whatnot, but yeah, I just asked him like, “What are you doing? How are you doing it?” And he was like, “I’m gonna give you, like, my entire repertoire of my entire process and everything that I do at each step, and like, just do that, and like, listen to what I tell you, and like, you’ll, you’ll do good.” 

[00:37:48] Marc Gonyea: He gave it to you by, how? Just 

[00:37:50] Colby Cambra: One-on-one, yeah, we talked for, like, an hour or an hour and a half in a room. And he, I think he was running stuff on a whiteboard, and like, just beginning-to-end sales process, like, how do you do it, right? And then, throughout that, too, uh, Malwarebytes ended up standardizing it, too.

[00:38:04] Marc Gonyea: Standardized, got medic or his process?

[00:38:06] Colby Cambra: All of it, all of it, yeah. So, it’s like I, and throughout my entire career, I’ve gotten, like, a million different, right, standardizations of, like, how you run deal cycles, I take it all in, you know? Like, what Brandon said, I still keep, what Malwarebytes taught me, I still keep, right now we do, like, Sandler and stuff, I, I keep that, right, there’s, there’s good things about all of ’em. 

[00:38:25] But initially, that’s the first interaction I had with sales process, and then after we did a thing called Winning by Design, that helped standardize me as well, and before you know it, you really just, like, have this chain of deals in certain stages across where you know exactly what each needs, you know exactly what their pain points are, you know exactly what the solution they need is, you know who else they’re looking at, and like, everything’s just laid out. 

[00:38:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Impressive. It’s a well-oiled machine over there, right? 

[00:38:51] Chris Corcoran: Taking the best stuff.

[00:38:52] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, for sure. So, how did you do in, in that, in that those, that role, that mid-market role? 

[00:38:58] Colby Cambra: Initially, I did good, but not like, not the best, yeah.

[00:39:02] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, well, it took some, what was kind of holding you back then?

[00:39:05] Colby Cambra: It was, I had a, a bit of a tougher territory in the beginning, that’s, that’s something I discussed with management at the time, I said, “Hey, look, like, if you take historical data in regards to how many leads and revenues coming in for this territory versus the best guy, like, he’s getting, like, triple what I get,

[00:39:19] and like, if you look across the board, like, the best reps are getting bad, like, three times as much as the reps that aren’t doing as well.” So, they actually ended up changing that to where geographically it was all even, um, and that’s when I started doing a lot better. 

[00:39:32] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, well, that, that, that, that’s helpful. What about your game, like, what about, what else about your game did you’ve developed? So, it sounds like the process, you, you learned medic, you learned a bunch of other things. 

[00:39:45] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I think that challenging, like, the, the customer more, these deals started, started getting bigger, and they started getting a little bit more complex, and you’re facing a lot of guys in the, the IT industry and the cybersecurity industry that know a lot. You have to challenge them a lot in regards to what they know, and you have to offer them solutions that they might not be thinking about, or that they have maybe like a, an understanding of that isn’t exactly correct, right?

[00:40:10] Like, how you remediate the time it takes to remediate, like all this stuff, right, that they think they’re safe on, you kind of have to give them a reason why they wouldn’t be, and give yourself, make yourself like a trusted advisor, right, like, you have to trust this person ’cause he knows what he’s talking about, and, and just challenging them more, right?

[00:40:26] Colby Cambra: Because a lot of guys, if you go into calls, especially with higher IT people, they can walk all over you, and it’s happened to me like a bunch of times on a, on a lot of deals, right? But you start becoming like a, a go-getter, right, he’ll be like, “I need this, this, and this,” you know, I’m not gonna, like, say anything else, and you’re not challenging him to say more about what’s going on with the organization and what they’re actually trying to do. 

[00:40:46] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And so, like, that’s the challenger sale mindset? Is that what 

[00:40:50] Colby Cambra: Yeah, challenger sale, yeah. 

[00:40:51] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm, and then that’s kind of getting them to rethink what they believe, like their beliefs?

[00:40:56] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:40:57] Marc Gonyea: Security and not necessarily taking orders. 

[00:40:59] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, like, they might have an idea that they’re safe because they have certain solutions or they have certain procedures in place, right? But a lot of those procedures, especially nowadays, they’ve all been wiped out, right?

[00:41:10] Like, like, putting in an IT ticket ’cause someone thinks they have ransomware and getting to it in, like, an hour or two, like, that’s ancient history. But at that time that was like, this is our process and it works and we’ve never gotten hit before, so what’s wrong, what’s wrong with it? There’s nothing wrong with it, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t really know. 

[00:41:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, ’cause it hasn’t happened yet. 

[00:41:25] Colby Cambra: Yeah, and that, that’s the kind of thing that you had to talk to ’em about, it was like, well, you know, there is a problem with that actually.

[00:41:30] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:31] Marc Gonyea: Do you have a favorite deal? Like, a deal story? 

[00:41:35] Colby Cambra: Favorite deal. So, no, not necessarily. I did win deal of the year award back in the day. 

[00:41:42] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Tell us about that. 

[00:41:42] Chris Corcoran: How did Omar take that?

[00:41:45] Colby Cambra: Omar won quarter, he had one of the, like, top quarters, I did, too, a couple times, I think he had one of the top years though, that kind of takes the cake I think, but I 

[00:41:54] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about your deal.

[00:41:55] Colby Cambra: The deal of the year, yeah. So, that was a deal.

[00:41:57] Marc Gonyea: This is what happens with SDRs, every SDR at memoryBlue wants to, not everyone, but a great many of them when get to where you found yourself, not found yourself where you earned your way in, into that role. 

[00:42:08] Colby Cambra: Right. So, like, they’re like, man, 

[00:42:10] Marc Gonyea: This is a guy, he was an SDR who lit it up and now’s he’s got deal of the year at Malwarebytes. Tell us about it.

[00:42:16] Colby Cambra: So, that was a deal in which it was an outbound deal, I think that that helped. 

[00:42:20] Marc Gonyea: Outbound, outbound doesn’t work, Chris.

[00:42:23] Colby Cambra: Dude, outbound is, like, if you can’t, if you learn how to outbound in the very beginning of your sales career, you’re gonna kill it for the rest of your life. If you’re an inbound person and you only really learn how to do that, I, it’s, it’s tough, it’s tough. 

[00:42:35] Marc Gonyea: Why is that? 

[00:42:36] Colby Cambra: Man, it’s, you don’t know how to, the deal cycle for inbound, when they already have interest in you, they’ve already completed, like, 50 steps before they even get at your door, right? You’re probably like one of the top four that they looked at, at a 50 and now they’re coming inbound.

[00:42:48] Outbound, they have no idea who you are, they don’t know, they don’t even know if they have a project, they have, they have zero idea, maybe if you convince ’em enough, right? That’s a whole different ballpark, whole different conversation. 

[00:42:59] Marc Gonyea: So, you, you got an outbound? You keep going, sorry. 

[00:43:01] Yeah, no worries. I had just had a safer that outbound deal. 

[00:43:04] Colby Cambra: Yeah. Got deal of the year, it was an outbound deal and I had caught this person when there was, like, something wrong with their environment, I think malware-wise, but it wasn’t too serious yet and ended up being a big problem later.

[00:43:21] Like, they, they ended up having a real issue, but, you know, I, I called them and, and kind of deliberated with them a little bit in regards to, like, what could be happening, and I said, “Hey, you know, we’re, you know, Malwarebytes,” already they knew us, they ran a couple scans, maybe found a couple things, and, you know, I said, “Hey, look, I want to take you, like, on this process in which you can do a trial and we could actually see what, if there’s something wrong

[00:43:41] ’cause if we’re catching things on a, on a small level, probably high chance there’s something else, right?” We end up going through this entire sales process where I’m, everything I learned, I just talked about, we, we applied. Ended up having an issue. 

[00:43:53] Marc Gonyea: You mean the steps? 

[00:43:54] Colby Cambra: Yeah, all the steps, all the medic, all of the introductions, all the demos, finding the right people, all of that was executed extremely well, they did end up getting an event, but they were supported and we actually ended up, I made extra money on that because we ended up selling some services on top of that that would take care of it for them.

[00:44:11] So, there’s, like, a white glove service on top of it. Um, and I think, one of the, the proudest moments of that deal was, as, as we’re going through this entire process, I was talking to a champion who was a good champion, but he wasn’t the correct person to talk to, I needed, like, the CFO. So, I challenged him 

[00:44:28] to let me talk to the CFO, like, on multiple calls, and I finally did it, like, I finally got the CFO to come on, and this was at the time a large

[00:44:35] Marc Gonyea: Did he not want CFO to come on or? 

[00:44:37] Colby Cambra: Initially the champion didn’t want that to happen. 

[00:44:39] Marc Gonyea: Didn’t. Okay. 

[00:44:39] Colby Cambra: He wanted, like, everything to be perfect beforehand, right? Like, before I get the CFO involved, like, everything that we’re talking about, everything that the solution’s gonna be, everything needs to be, like, laid out first. So, we ended up doing all of that, and then I was like, it’s time now, you know, like, let’s talk to him, right?

[00:44:55] Because we gotta get this thing, like, we’re never gonna move this forward unless, you know, and I’m talking to this guy, the champion, like, that, because, like, he wanted it too, right? Like, we’re on the same side here. 

[00:45:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah, he’s put on this work energy, too.

[00:45:07] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly. So, I ended up talking to this CFO, and we did a negotiation, and that’s when I used telephone negotiation training, right? So, it’s like, get, get, right? It ended up working, but it, it was more so, like, in regard, like, the price point and talking about it and having this guy on who, at the time, I was a little bit afraid of, right,

[00:45:24] I was like, this is a kind of a larger C-level for me, I don’t know, you know, I know my training, but like, how can I execute this? It ended up working out, I mean, we ended up agreeing on a contract for a certain discount, but they would sign in exchange for that discount in, like, 15 days. So, I, I was like, “15 days is the end of the month, end of the month is end of my quarter, it’s that whole sales process, right? If you can sign for this, right?

[00:45:47] I can guarantee you that 30%. And typically, 30% are for a three-year, I can do a one-year for you. So, if you can guarantee me that, I can guarantee you the price of the point that you want, that works for your budget.” ‘Course, there was a whole conversation regard to budget and everything like that, 

[00:46:00] but he agreed after like, after, like, 45 minutes of talking, he agreed, he was like, he was like, “Okay, yeah, I can promise you that as long as you guys deliver, like, send me the quote, send me everything you have, and if it looks good, like, we’re gonna sign 50 days.” And that was the, just awesome, like, I got it done, and everything went smooth, and that was, like, a larger deal for me at the time, and I was like, “Wow, this is great.”

[00:46:22] Marc Gonyea: Come a long way since the Stanford, right? 

[00:46:25] Chris Corcoran: Facilities. 

[00:46:25] Marc Gonyea: Facilities. 

[00:46:26] Colby Cambra: Facilities, yeah, helping people open windows. That was the beginning.

[00:46:29] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. Wow. 

[00:46:30] Chris Corcoran: So, how’d it feel when you won Deal of the Quarter, or Deal of the Year, pardon? 

[00:46:33] Colby Cambra: Deal of the year, yeah,it felt great, I had actually, it was actually an nerve-wracking again because I had to present that to our entire sales org in a presentation. So, it was, like, everyone would present, like, whoever got, like, best quarter or whatever, whoever got best of the year and Deal of the Year award, they, they presented to you. 

[00:46:52] And I remember my, I think Cila, I think it was the CFO, at the time. First, my manager wanted me to do it, right? And he is like, “It’s gonna be good for you, you should do it.” And I was like, “I don’t wanna do it, man, you know, like, I just close deals, whatever, right? Like, we’ll just, like, stay, I’ll stay on my side and just do whatever I do, and that’s it.” 

[00:47:08] And he was like, “You should do it, it’s gonna be good opportunity for you.” And so, I said, “Okay.” CRO wanted to, like, see my presentation, so he wanted me to, like, pitch it to him first before I get on this call, tell the whole org, which is, like, 200-something people. And I was like, oh man, I did not practice it like that ’cause I didn’t know he was gonna do that. 

[00:47:27] So, I kind of went, did it with him, and like, winged it a little bit, right? And he just, like, picked it apart, and I was like, “This sucks.” But he picked it apart and he was like, totally like, “Yeah, this is, you gotta, like, what’s this, like, why does that connect here in the next slide?”

[00:47:43] I’m like, I don’t know, man, that’s already close one, like, isn’t that what you wanted? I, funny thing is when I did do that, and I finally did present it, I was like, great, I saw other people’s, and these are like field guys, and theirs was terrible, his PowerPoint broke, and he is like, “I’m just, uh, like, I’m just going to do it like this then,”

[00:48:05] and it’s like when you can see all, like, the widgets and stuff on the side, and like, all the rest of the slides, he’s like, “I don’t know how to put in the presenter mode, it’s not working, so we’ll just do it like this.”

[00:48:13] Marc Gonyea: Everybody’s doing slides. 

[00:48:14] Colby Cambra: Yeah, like, all the other slides, it’s all sloppy, he, like, acted like he didn’t, like he just didn’t care about it, and I was like, “Did the CRO talk to him, too? Or was it just me?” 

[00:48:22] Marc Gonyea: Maybe not, maybe it’s just you. 

[00:48:24] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but, uh, I did mine, and I got, like, a million Slack messages and everyone’s like, “Great job, that was so good.”

[00:48:30] Marc Gonyea: That’s great.

[00:48:31] Colby Cambra: And it was another one of those moments, right, where I was like, wow, made me nervous, but I’m really glad I did it.

[00:48:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, what’s this common fit with you? You get nervous about these things, but they’re all things that you learn from, or like, you end up excelling at, it’s just, like, kind of how you mentally prepare, you know, some athletes, there’s a kid, some athletes before every game they go in, they might throw up a little bit ’cause they’re so, but they’re ready to go, but it’s just, like

[00:48:54] Colby Cambra: Man, I mean, I do, I get nervous in terms of certain moments, right? 

[00:48:58] Marc Gonyea: It helps.

[00:48:59] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it like, makes me get, have, have this push, right? It’s like, make or break, you know? You could run from it, or you can, like, excel, and I actually like that feeling, it makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing when I’m nervous to do something ’cause I know that it’s important to me, it makes me feel like I’m excelling in some way.

[00:49:18] Marc Gonyea: You know what they say, Colby, right? You, you learn more from the defeats than you do from the victories. What’s the deal that got away that you think you learned something from?

[00:49:28] Colby Cambra: Oh, man. 

[00:49:28] Marc Gonyea: Do you have one? Do you have a memorable one? 

[00:49:30] Colby Cambra: A memorable deal that I lost.

[00:49:32] Marc Gonyea: That haunts you.

[00:49:33] Colby Cambra: That haunts me? I don’t know that I, I really have one in specific, I feel like a lot of the deals that I lost, I think, I don’t have a specific one, but one that, like, one thing that I do that is just bad overall is when you’re just getting fed really good information from the champion and the company overall that you’re getting the green light to go ahead and they’re gonna make a move on this thing.

[00:49:56] And it’s like, I a hundred percent guarantee, and you actually make them say that, too, it’s like, scale to one, zero to a hundred, you know, where are we at that this is gonna happen and we can start this process, let’s say a hundred. So, you start to let loose a little bit, and you don’t meet with the CFO, and you don’t do a lot of stuff ’cause this guy’s like, yeah, no, you’re good, don’t worry about it.

[00:50:12] Marc Gonyea: Let loose just a little bit. 

[00:50:14] Colby Cambra: Yeah, let loose on the deal, and you’re not as tight, your process is not as tight anymore, this guy’s, like, feeding ya. 

[00:50:18] Marc Gonyea: Process is not as tight, Corcoran, happy years.

[00:50:20] Chris Corcoran: Happy years. 

[00:50:21] Colby Cambra: Yeah, it’s definitely 

[00:50:22] Marc Gonyea: Most recently here that almost

[00:50:23] Colby Cambra: I’m not in line, this almost happened to me. 

[00:50:26] Chris Corcoran: Almost? You’re supposed to tell me it happened. 

[00:50:27] Colby Cambra: Well, this happened, almost happened to me, like, a week ago. 

[00:50:29] Marc Gonyea: Oh, week ago, recently. Okay, recently.

[00:50:31] Colby Cambra: I had to, we had to get, like, a lot of people involved to get this thing across the finish line. But I’ve had multiple deals like that, that have not closed, and it just, it just sucks because you just know everything that you did wrong, and you just didn’t listen, like, you have to have a, a sense of paranoia a little bit on, on every conversation that you have, and you just let that paranoia just subside because

[00:50:52] Marc Gonyea: Would you call it getting a little complacent, or something else or?

[00:50:55] Colby Cambra: Yeah, just getting complacent in the deal, like, you’re just listening to this guy and, and didn’t really know his full agenda and, you know, it’s not his, it’s not any client’s fault, right? A lot of clients don’t like confrontation, a lot of people don’t like confrontation.

[00:51:06] Marc Gonyea: People are really good at avoiding having that conversation, whole lifetime sidestepping things. 

[00:51:12] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I mean, some people are gear, geared like that, that’s their personality.

[00:51:16] Marc Gonyea: Yes, that’s their personality.

[00:51:17] Colby Cambra: Like, their personalities to do that. So, not being tight and understanding where the weak points are, and like, where I could have improved the deal that kills me, man, because I know for certain ones, a hundred percent, if I had, like, gone over the champions head and spoken directly to, like, a C-level and gotten him to buy in on this, it doesn’t matter what he thinks anymore, right, like, or, or CFOs bought it

[00:51:37] Marc Gonyea: Or maybe we would’ve walked from the deal, save everybody the time and energy. 

[00:51:40] Colby Cambra: Yeah, or, or you know, I, I won’t forecast it, right, I won’t promise my upper management that this deal’s a hundred percent coming in, like, I, I’d probably tell my manager like, “Look, this guy’s telling me good things, here’s everything wrong with it.”

[00:51:52] And this is why I don’t think it looks good, it’s gonna come in even though he’s saying, you know, I was like, “Oh, this is coming in, don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it, we’re getting this one in, it’s fine, just put it under the quota.”

[00:52:02] Marc Gonyea: There you go, right, I’m, I’m gonna close it, remember me, deal of the year guy, last year? Remember me, 22 meetings, back the record? So, you’re in the Valley, doing your thing, right, entrenched now, you’re like, you’re, you’re, you’re a textile professional, closing work.

[00:52:17] There are all sorts of things running around, people getting funding, people used to work with calling you, recruiters hitting you up on LinkedIn. What drives someone to maybe try a new opportunity, or maybe someone like yourself?

[00:52:30] Colby Cambra: To try a new opportunity?

[00:52:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, to leave. 

[00:52:33] Colby Cambra: So, I guess for me, the factor that would make me leave is, like, company

[00:52:38] Marc Gonyea: When you, when you did leave.

[00:52:38] Colby Cambra: Yeah, yeah, I think that something has to be, like, wrong with something within the organization itself, and it could be a lot of things, right? Technology could be dying down, hard times are hitting and, and sales are slowing down, or, you know, there could be, like, management that is, you know, oppressive or things of that nature.

[00:52:57] But those are the things, like, internally that happen at companies that then make me wanna look the other way. And it’s, it’s like vice versa, right? Like, things that make me wanna stay, like, management’s good, I feel supported, the technology’s in the great place. The team’s doing really well, everyone’s collaborating well. All of those things make me wanna stay, essentially, those are, those are the big things for me. 

[00:53:16] Marc Gonyea: Tell me about cyber ’cause we’ve got SDRs all the time to say, “Oh, man, not a cyber, not another day.” Right? Like, “Nobody picks up, like, it’s the worst.” Like, “I need to get into something else, like, this sucks.” And they do, they get, they quit. 

[00:53:37] Colby Cambra: Really? 

[00:53:39] Marc Gonyea: Well, yeah.

[00:53:40] Colby Cambra: Well, what, what kind of cyber clients are we, like, talking about here? 

[00:53:43] Marc Gonyea: Any cyber. 

[00:53:44] Colby Cambra: Really? 

[00:53:44] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:53:45] Colby Cambra: Like, security, right? Okay, yeah, I would, I would say in regard to that, it’s definitely tougher, it’s tougher, but once you get an understanding, it’s actually easier because of how much of a need it is for companies, right? If you can get over that initial hump of the, 

[00:54:00] of the learning curve, of learning everything about cybersecurity and understanding how to talk to someone on, on, on that level ’cause if you’re calling people and they’re in cybersecurity, and you’re talking to someone that knows a lot about cybersecurity, and you’re just, like, half-assing this conversation, they’re gonna pick up on that, they’re gonna know that you are.

[00:54:19] So, if you can get over that initial hump, you’re, you’ll kill it, I mean, it doesn’t matter what, what company you’re at, really, I mean, there’s really small cybersecurity companies that end up taking over and getting to the space, or at least having a good subset of accounts that they break into just because they probably do something that’s niche or different than the other guys.

[00:54:35] That’s a pain point for a lot of people, right? That’s how companies, like, become companies, right? They’re solving a problem. 

[00:54:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah. So, you were, if you were to advise a younger version of yourself to go into cyber or stay in cyber, you would say stay in cyber?

[00:54:48] Colby Cambra: Heck yeah, yeah, I would stay in cyber, I mean, I love it, personally. Advice for those people though, like, if they’re, you know, think about it, and it’s really hard, you know, I would challenge them to say, like, how much you’re actually, like, doing for the job, right? Like, are you really getting into everything?

[00:55:01] Are you learning everything, right, and are you planning on in every single call? Because if you’re not, you’re not gonna find success, I mean, who would, that’s, that’s really difficult. You have to immerse yourself in it first, and then maybe it’s not for you after that, like, if it doesn’t work out after that,that’s tough, that’s tough. 

[00:55:15] Marc Gonyea: But that a, that a, process of an immersion is just tough for people to do.

[00:55:19] Colby Cambra: I, it’s, yeah, I mean, sales, in general, is tough for people to do. 

[00:55:23] Marc Gonyea: It is.

[00:55:23] Colby Cambra: It’s a hard, it’s a hard job to go by.

[00:55:25] Marc Gonyea: But it’s not that hard. 

[00:55:26] Colby Cambra: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. 

[00:55:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s interesting. So, you’re at CrowdStrike now?

[00:55:32] Colby Cambra: Yeah. 

[00:55:33] Marc Gonyea: What attracted you to them? Like, what, when, you are looking for an opportunity, so we talked about why you would leave, but like, what, what attracts you to a firm? 

[00:55:40] Well,

[00:55:41] Marc Gonyea: The market?

[00:55:42] Colby Cambra: when I was selling at Malwarebytes, CrowdStrike was the absolute number one competitor that when I would run into them, I couldn’t displace ’em, they’re that good, yeah. And even now that I’m working right now, like, the technology-wise, it’s fantastic, really. 

[00:55:55] Everything that they do as a company from a, intelligence platform, from a technological platform, and then from just process overall for salespeople and, and everyone, really, really great company to work at. Also, Omar worked there, and he gave me a reference. 

[00:56:08] Marc Gonyea: There you go. Okay, and where are you trying to go with this?

[00:56:13] Colby Cambra: One day, well, so, I just got promoted to a senior role. So, I was at crosscheck for nine, ten months route, and then I, I got promoted to a senior role. So, working on a lot less accounts, a lot higher quota. So, I’m, I’m sort of getting there right now, right, I’m someone who likes to learn.

[00:56:27] Marc Gonyea: What size companies do you sell to now? 

[00:56:30] Colby Cambra: All over the board. So, I mean, like, I think less than 3,000 is, like, the technical aspect. 

[00:56:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, you’ve gone from under 50, the, what did you say?

[00:56:39] Colby Cambra: 250 to 750. 

[00:56:40] Marc Gonyea: 250 to 750, and it’s kind of moving up the food chain. 

[00:56:43] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly, yeah. 

[00:56:44] Marc Gonyea: You haven’t been working that long. 

[00:56:46] Colby Cambra: Yeah, not really.

[00:56:47] Chris Corcoran: Hey, Colby, you talk about immersion, immersing yourself in technology. How technical are you compared to other sales reps? Sounds like you really know what you’re talking about, do you need AE support, or how technical are you compared to other AEs?

[00:56:59] Colby Cambra: Good question. I’m like, middle of the pack actually, I, maybe a little bit better, a little bit better than middle of the pack. I know some really technical reps, some of these guys can really speak the language where sometimes, like, if I’m really talking about things, uh, or someone has real, real good specific questions,

[00:57:15] they’re saying things that, like, they’re saying acronyms and things that are a little bit over my head. But in terms, like, an overall arching conversation about security organizations, active directory, right, endpoints, how things work on that level, I can hold my own, I can hold my own, that’s really important in the cybersecurity industry.

[00:57:30] Marc Gonyea: Sure. 

[00:57:31] Colby Cambra: Because they’re gonna want to know that the person they’re talking to, that they’re gonna spend potentially hundreds of thousand dollars with, is not someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, right, like, you need to be a trusted advisor in that sense. So, I’m, I’m more of middle of the pack, I think my sales style is both technical and also very personable,

[00:57:50] like, I like to build relationships with the clients that I have, where when we’re hopping on calls, it’s not just all business, right? Like, we’ll talk about the weekend or what they did on vacation or, you know, I’ll text like a lot of ’em, we’ll end up, like, exchanging actual cell phone numbers,

[00:58:03] and I’ll text ’em like, “Hey, you needed this for, like, this trial, and we got that figured out. So, just send me what you have in email of, like, an other request for legal,” or something like that, and he’ll be like, “Okay, yeah, good.” Like, over text, so, it’s like middle of the pack. 

[00:58:17] Chris Corcoran: Okay. And then, how do you leverage your technical resources, your SEs, et cetera?

[00:58:21] Colby Cambra: Yeah, so, during calls, I’ll take notes, obviously. So, this is where, like, being an SDR never, never ends, right? Discovery calls are

[00:58:27] Marc Gonyea: Wait, what’d you just say? 

[00:58:29] Colby Cambra: Being an SDR really never ends, I mean, I’m still cold calling, man, I’m still cold calling, cold emailing, I’ve never stopped.

[00:58:36] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, you’re a quote, quota hitter.

[00:58:37] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I mean

[00:58:38] Marc Gonyea: President’s Club winner, Deal of the Year winner, never stops, doesn’t mean you do it all the time. 

[00:58:42] Colby Cambra: No, it’s way less now, it’s way more, I mean, it’s a whole different dynamic now, right? It’s a lot more, I think, manageable. Your time as an SDR, in the beginning, it’s like grind time, right?

[00:58:52] This is the time you prove yourself and give yourself the skillset for later. That skillset never ends, any company you go to forever will need you to outbound and will need you to find your own deals, it’s just, it’s just how it is, it’s not gonna be as much, you’ll have an STO to support you, you have an SE to support you, but they’re not gonna close deals for you, right?

[00:59:10] That’s, that’s kind of your responsibility at that point. But in terms of, like, technical aspects and, and using my SE during that, that initial call discovery calls, you’re figuring out everything, like, you’re getting these guys to talk about everything in their environment, what they have, what they want, maybe things that they didn’t know that they need, and you’re taking that to your sales engineer, and that sales engineer and you are gonna sort of create a pitch, or at least you’ll create a bit of a pitch in regards to everything that they could possibly want or, or to talk about.

[00:59:38] Marc Gonyea: So, you run those calls without the SE, find out as much as you can, and then, and then get the SE involved?

[00:59:43] Colby Cambra: Yeah, exactly. At Malwarebytes, the technology wasn’t as like, I guess, robust, so I would, I would run a lot of my own demos, yeah. I could go through the entire solution, I would pick on exactly what they wanted me to talk about and show them.

[00:59:53] It was very user-friendly, it was so user-friendly that I could do it. Um, CrowdStrike’s a little bit different, especially there’s a lot of differing, you know, solutions and packages and whatnot, and the use case for a lot of CrowdStrike users is just a lot more than just endpoint typically. 

[01:00:06] Marc Gonyea: Sounds like you’re having fun.

[01:00:08] Colby Cambra: Yeah, no, it’s great, honestly, I like sales a lot, as you can tell, I’ve been talking about it for how long now, but I’m a big believer, I, you know, I drink the Kool-Aid, man.

[01:00:16] Marc Gonyea: It’s just so funny to think that, like, what you were doing before, you got into memoryBlue, I’m not saying this is memory, memoryBlue thing, it’s just before you got into tech you kind of worked, sure, but, but it seems to be like a perfect fit, and you’re, really sound like you’re a student of the game.

[01:00:31] The sales process, it helps if you do that, it does, it does, but some people aren’t, like, you know, you’re actively talking about these methodologies and these processes, and keeping things tight, I mean, a lot of people, when you say that on a sales calls, a lot of people won’t even know what that, they might, but they may not really internalize it, like, you’re pretty serious.

[01:00:55] Colby Cambra: Yeah, a hundred percent, I mean, one of my, like, later-on goals, right? I’m talking, like, 10 years from now or so, like, I want to be a director of sales one day, I want to be like a VP of sales one day at a company, right? I would like to be, I would like to use this what I learned and use all my experience that I’ve gained and, and keep growing it to, to a higher position one day. 

[01:01:13] Marc Gonyea: Why not? 

[01:01:14] Colby Cambra: Right, I mean, I’m, I’m already on that path now, and you were saying student of the game, I always believe, I’ve done a great job thus far, I think I’ve done good, but it hasn’t been, in my opinion, like, completely fantastic, right? Like, there’s always areas of improvement that I can have, and I look, I try to look for those all the time because you need to constantly improve to get, if you’re not improving, you’re not getting better, right? 

[01:01:36] Like, if you’re staying stagnant, you’re, you’re getting worse, there’s no, like, middle ground. So, try to just pour myself in my competitive nature from sports and whatnot into sales and, and make it, like, a career for me. 

[01:01:47] Marc Gonyea: Love it man. So, so, let’s say, after this we drive over to San Jose State, Greek Row, and we run into some member of the Greek community. What advice would you give to that person in terms of tech sales and being an SDR, and where it can take you? What would you share with that person?

[01:02:04] Colby Cambra: I would tell them that, and a lot of SDRs, I think are a lot of people who’s just starting off.

[01:02:09] Marc Gonyea: I wanna get you to do this, by the way, this is your practice. 

[01:02:11] Colby Cambra: Yeah, all right, we’re gonna hop in the car now. 

[01:02:15] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, we’re gonna take you right now, we’re going over there, there’s a job fair tonight. 

[01:02:18] Colby Cambra: We’ll take the mic, too, might record it for the podcast, no, um,I would say that, you know, a lot of SDRs, in the beginning, don’t make over that hump, it’s hard, it’s hard, they have a bad client, whatever, right? It’s so tough. But if you can dedicate yourself to that time and actually take it serious, like, this is gonna be it for everything for you, it’s not just gonna be, like, a job stint that most young people are, are kind of used to, right? You kind of pick up a job, you leave it, you’re trying to figure out what you want,

[01:02:41] if you believe that this is gonna be what you do and you, you work out that every day, I think you’ll find success, and you need to make it over that first hump in order to do that. 

[01:02:50] Chris Corcoran: Why do you think most people don’t, or not most, but many people don’t? 

[01:02:53] Colby Cambra: I think that it’s tough, man, I think that there’s a lot of reasons, right? Some people don’t have the personality, but I think everyone can do it.

[01:03:01] Marc Gonyea: Everyone can have the personality to do it.

[01:03:02] Colby Cambra: Yeah, everyone can do it, and everyone can be successful at it, it just depends on if you want to be successful.

[01:03:08] Marc Gonyea: Is the mindset

[01:03:08] Colby Cambra: It’s a mindset.

[01:03:10] Marc Gonyea: personality, ’cause we get introverts, extroverts.

[01:03:13] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I’ve had introverted people be great, they just kind of have their own style about it, right? It’s like way more technical, way less personable, but they, like, just have this command in their voice because they know what they’re talking about so well, right? But they’re not, like, laughing on the, on the calls with the guys or anything like that, or, you know, it’s more different, everyone has different styles. 

[01:03:32] Marc Gonyea: There’s something about it, and you said it, you kind of threw it away as a kind of throwaway statement. Did people say you have a bad client or whatever, like, you’re gonna opt out of an entire career because you had a bad client, what? Like, like, right?

[01:03:50] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I mean, man, like…

[01:03:52] Marc Gonyea: Like, what does that even mean? You’re gonna be working 30 years, let’s say you work 30 years, you start working here at 23, 33, 43, you’re 53 years old, you’re gonna be an SDR for a couple years, maybe, maybe. 

[01:04:06] Chris Corcoran: Wall Street Journal just said the 60-year career’s coming.

[01:04:08] Marc Gonyea: This 70th, that was 70

[01:04:10] Chris Corcoran: 60-year career.

[01:04:11] Marc Gonyea: 60-year-career’s coming. So, so, let’s pretend it’s 40, let’s, let’s, whatever, let’s just go with 30, you guys here for a couple years, “Oh, I had the bad client.” Like, I’m not saying it’s easy, like you said, it’s a difficult job. 

[01:04:26] Colby Cambra: Very difficult.

[01:04:26] Marc Gonyea: But you just kind of, kind of work your way through it.

[01:04:28] Colby Cambra: You do, a hundred percent, and like, you, like you’re, what you’re saying right now, right? Like, like, that portion of your life is just a drop in the bucket compared to, to the rest, like, it feels, like, it’s very long and hard.

[01:04:38] Marc Gonyea: It is hard. 

[01:04:40] Colby Cambra: Yeah, but like, as you’re gonna be, like, you’re saying, you’re gonna be 50 and looking back at it, and you’re gonna be like, I mean, even for me, it’s been six years, right? I’m like, that was like, an eternity ago, I barely remember it. 

[01:04:50] Marc Gonyea: It’s been five years, no, but you remember some stuff you told us about Orchestra and Clarabridge, like, you were, you remember that first kickoff me with Malwarebytes, 

[01:04:58] Colby Cambra: Oh, yeah,

[01:04:58] Marc Gonyea: like, like,

[01:04:59] Colby Cambra: definitely.

[01:04:59] Marc Gonyea: yesterday, right? 

[01:04:59] Colby Cambra: Yeah, definitely, definitely, yeah. 

[01:05:01] Marc Gonyea: But like, it, it wasn’t that long, but you made a decision to kind of get into it. 

[01:05:07] Colby Cambra: Yeah, I mean

[01:05:08] Marc Gonyea: So, you’re like, “I’m not going back to Stanford.” 

[01:05:09] Colby Cambra: No, no.

[01:05:11] Marc Gonyea: Nobody’s finding most people to use Stanford that way. 

[01:05:13] Chris Corcoran: “I’m never going back to Stanford.”

[01:05:15] Colby Cambra: I know it sounds like, like a great thing to have, right, but I wasn’t

[01:05:17] Chris Corcoran: Facilities.

[01:05:18] Colby Cambra: Yeah.

[01:05:19] Marc Gonyea: But I like Stanf, Stanford ’cause that’s kinda cool, it’s a good 

[01:05:21] Colby Cambra: They had good people there, too, by the way, I really enjoyed my time there with like, working with everyone, but that was not the job for me. 

[01:05:26] Chris Corcoran: Of course. You’re where you’re supposed to be right now, for sure. 

[01:05:29] Colby Cambra: That’s how I feel.

[01:05:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, I, I went on a little bit of tangent, that’s my bad, I just, like, I think it’s a, it is really great to see what you’ve done since you left, Colby. 

[01:05:38] Colby Cambra: Thank you.

[01:05:39] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[01:05:39] Colby Cambra: Good question. I remember…

[01:05:40] Marc Gonyea: It’s inspiring, yeah. It’s inspiring. 

[01:05:42] Chris Corcoran: Deal of the Year? That was a, that was closely guarded secret, I wish I would’ve known about that.

[01:05:47] Colby Cambra: Yeah, yeah. 

[01:05:49] Chris Corcoran: That’s very impressive.

[01:05:50] Marc Gonyea: Beautiful. 

[01:05:50] Colby Cambra: Thank you. I really appreciate it. 

[01:05:51] Marc Gonyea: No, see. Oh no. I haven’t asked you on here. 

[01:05:53] Colby Cambra: Yeah, oh, yeah. I have all the accolades and things on LinkedIn, right? 

[01:05:57] Marc Gonyea: All right, Colby, well, do good. Thanks for coming to see us. 

[01:06:00] Colby Cambra: Yeah, no problem. 

[01:06:00] Chris Corcoran: We appreciate the wisdom.

[01:06:01] Colby Cambra: Of course, anytime. 

[01:06:03] Chris Corcoran: Very good, thank you.