Episode 127: Jonathan Seidenwurm – The Power of Adaptability in Sales

memoryBlue isn’t just for college grads looking to kickstart their sales career, it’s a launch pad for anyone trying to break into tech sales at any point in their career. After all, tech sales is quite the melting pot of people with all different areas of expertise and interest, and our company seeks to serve as a reflection of that!

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Jonathan Seidenwurm, now a sales engineer at Crowdstrike discusses his unexpected journey transitioning from law enforcement and travel agency to tech sales, the potential friction between AEs and SEs that he has witnessed as a sales engineer himself, and the amazing potential sales careers hold to transform lives.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Jonathan Seidenwurm

💡What they do: Sales Engineer

💡Company: Crowdstrike

💡Noteworthy: Transitioned from law enforcement and travel agency to tech sales.

💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Leveraging Unique Backgrounds in Sales. Jonathan Seidenwurm’s transition from law enforcement and travel agency to tech sales underscores the value of diverse backgrounds in the sales industry. His unique experiences have equipped him with a distinctive perspective, allowing him to approach sales from an angle most others cannot. He highlights the importance of using one’s past experiences and existing skills to navigate new environments.

Building a Bridge Between AE and SE Roles. A recurring friction between Account Executives (AEs) and Sales Engineers (SEs) is a common issue in the sales industry. Jonathan speaks about leveraging his AE background in his new SE role to help bridge this gap. By understanding the perspective of both roles, he aims to foster better collaboration, thus enhancing team efficiency and client satisfaction.

The Accessibility of Sales as a Career. Jonathan emphasizes the accessibility of sales as a career choice, irrespective of one’s background or education. He lauds the sales industry for its low barrier to entry, offering opportunities for individuals to find success and impact at companies they might not have considered otherwise. This episode underscores the importance of hard work, adaptability, and seizing opportunities.

Episode Highlights

The Art of Selling without Overwhelming the Client 

In this segment, Jonathan emphasizes the need for salespeople to avoid overwhelming potential clients with excessive information about a product’s features. His approach suggests focusing on the core value proposition instead of trying to sell every aspect of a product.

“We don’t need to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Sometimes we can just end the call. We’re not going to close every deal, but we don’t need to bombard them with features.”

Navigating the Learning Curve in a New Role

Transitioning into a new role often comes with its own set of challenges. Jonathan shares his experience of the learning curve at his new job, shedding light on the patience and adaptability required to succeed.

“It’s a three-month ramp here. I’m very excited. I’m so excited to not be thrown into the fire. They’ve told me even after three months, you’ll still be thrown into the fire because it’s that broad of a product world.”

The Beauty of Sales as a Profession 

Jonathan passionately advocates for sales as a profession, highlighting its low barrier to entry and the opportunities it provides for individuals from diverse backgrounds.

“Sales is such a beautiful thing. The barrier to entry is low. And that’s a good thing. It gives people opportunity. People who might not have a crazy degree or a crazy hard skill can get into really cool companies and do really impactful work.”

Balancing Work and Personal Life 

Jonathan discusses the challenge of maintaining a work-life balance in a demanding field like sales. He emphasizes the need to carve out personal time while still staying committed to the job.

“You have to carve out your personal time, you have to do it. You’re never going to feel like you’ve done enough work. You’re always going to feel like you could do more. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I barely even understood and I think I had the classic SDR sort of grass is greener, where you don’t realize that being an account executive is really just being an SDR with more steps and more earning potential, right? And I think that’s a hard.

[00:00:14] Gap for a lot of people to cross when they finally get into the AE role. You think like, oh, my cold calling days are over. My cold days are over. They’ve just begun.

[00:00:21] Marc Gonyea: Corcoran. We’re in New York City. 

[00:00:46] Chris Corcoran: The big apple. The big apple 

[00:00:48] Marc Gonyea: was Jonathan. Side, side norm. 

[00:00:51] Chris Corcoran: Nice to see you, Jonathan. Nice to see you guys. It’s good to be here. Good, good seeing you again, Jonathan. Looking forward to catching up. Yeah.

[00:00:56] Got some exciting things to hear about. Yeah, 

[00:00:57] Jonathan Seidenwurm: this is great. It was, it really is great to see you guys because so much of where I am right now is actually a function of memoryBlue and of you two specifically. So, I’m really happy to be here. 

[00:01:06] Marc Gonyea: Very good. Novel. That’s very, those are kind words. Yeah. But I think it’s cool.

[00:01:10] We, we have two major metro areas where memoryBlue alums live, where we don’t have an office. They’re, San Diego and New York City. So Corcoran and I and Caroline decided to take the podcast on the road. That’s awesome. Are you the first person we’re doing in New York or outside of any of the markets where we have offices, a tour stop.

[00:01:26] That’s awesome. That’s 

[00:01:27] Jonathan Seidenwurm: right. The tour stop. That’s right. Yeah. How many are 

[00:01:29] Chris Corcoran: you doing today? I think we’re doing five today, four tomorrow. Oh my gosh. Wow. We got Stack ’em high. Sell ’em cheap. Jonathan. 

[00:01:36] Marc Gonyea: We gotta get ’em in when we can 

[00:01:38] Jonathan Seidenwurm: get ’em in, right? Yeah. Plus good thing. I’m first because you guys will be done by the end of it, so all right, well let’s get going.

[00:01:44] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, let’s talk about it, 

[00:01:45] Marc Gonyea: Jonathan. So for Chris and myself, but also for the people listening, just take them through. Tell us a little bit about yourself, like where, where you’re from, where you grew up, that sort of thing, and we’ll kind of go speed it up, slow it down, wherever it makes sense. 

[00:01:57] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Sure. Well, we actually are where I’m from, so I grew up in the Upper East side of Manhattan.

[00:02:02] I lived here for almost all my life. The only time that I actually really lived outside of New York City was when I moved down to the DC area for college. And then to spend a couple years working, or about a year working at memoryBlue. And, after that, 

[00:02:18] Marc Gonyea: what was 

[00:02:18] it like growing up in Manhattan? 

[00:02:20] proper? 

[00:02:21] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I grew up in Manhattan, then went to high school in Brooklyn. Okay. 

[00:02:23] So I kinda feel like I had a, a dual life there, even though my mom, who actually grew up in Brooklyn, back in like the eighties, she says, I’ve never been to Brooklyn, um, even though I live there right now.

[00:02:32] but, shout out to mom. it’s 

[00:02:34] one of those experiences where you feel very normal about it, but whenever you tell someone about it, they’re like, whoa, what was that like? And you say, well, it’s just how I grew up. So I love it. for me, it’s one of the best places in the world, but I know that, uh, like my girlfriend is from Colorado and she’s always like, it’s okay.

[00:02:50] You know what I mean? Tall mountains are 

[00:02:51] cool in the tall buildings, that kind of a thing. So I really loved growing up here. It. There’s a weird amount of freedom that you have ’cause you don’t need to drive everywhere. And we were able to, you know, take the subway and have a little of mobility, which was cool.

[00:03:03] That, that’s cool. Yeah. And you get exposed to a lot of different types of people, a lot of different types of food, a lot of different things. So that was also really cool. the hardest part is you don’t get as much of the, what’s the best way to say, it’s hard to leave the city. And I mean that both, like the figurative, like, oh, my heart is here, but also physically the traffic is crazy.

[00:03:21] So sometimes you can get a little locked in, but other than that, there’s enough going on here that it’s pretty cool. So we’re 

[00:03:26] Marc Gonyea: gonna get to cyber, what you doing now, but before that, when you were growing up, what did you think you wanted to do when you, so you’re growing up here, gonna high school in Brooklyn.

[00:03:33] What did you think you wanted to do when you grew up? 

[00:03:35] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I wanted to, at first I wanted to be, a paleontologist ’cause I love dinosaurs. And that’s why if you haven’t been to the Natural History Museum, I highly recommend checking it out. The dinosaurs are still the coolest thing there. I need to go. but after a certain period of time, learning a little bit, especially going through college, taking some coding classes, learning a little bit about technology, I wanted to get into tech.

[00:03:56] I didn’t know exactly what the best path into tech was. And I knew I had an aptitude for talking to people. I knew I had a little bit of personality, maybe too much sometimes, but, it was so, I found tech sales as the place to go. Okay. All 

[00:04:08] Marc Gonyea: right. But you went, but you went to school in DC Yep. I went. So when you, no.

[00:04:12] So you’re going American. Mm-hmm. What’d you think you’re gonna do? Because you’ve got a great story. A lot of people, yeah. They, okay. I’m moving to DC Maybe I wanna get a politic. I, you know, I don’t know. But what’d you think you wanted to 

[00:04:22] Jonathan Seidenwurm: do? I had the classic move down to DC, go to American University, wanna become a Supreme Court justice story?

[00:04:27] Okay. but after a little bit of time you kind of realized that that’s the path to get there is not, you graduate college and then you go to the Supreme Court. You have to do a lot of, we’ll keep it PC BS stuff in the. Yeah. in the middle of that. And then also, I didn’t wanna go to law school. I didn’t wanna do any of that.

[00:04:43] Yep. tell me that back in the day. Yeah. no, what I really wanted to do is I just discovered technology. Mm-hmm. I just discovered an interest in talking about it and in, you know, a passion for sort of getting into it with people. And, there was also a little bit of not being a hundred percent sure of what exactly I wanted to do.

[00:04:57] And textiles felt like a good way to not only get into the tech world, but also capitalize on some of those, you know, social skills that I felt that I had and, um, you know, just explore that world a little bit. So I’m smart. Yeah. Also, you get real numb to politics once you start to get a little older and you start to maybe decide you don’t want to be in there, you wanna maybe just read about it and that’s okay.

[00:05:19] Chris Corcoran: All right. So when you got exposed to coding, did you think about exploring kind of a developer role or any sort of coding or technical role right. Outta 

[00:05:28] Jonathan Seidenwurm: school? Yeah. So that was the other thing that was appealing about tech sales was the, I mean, obviously there’s a million different jobs in the tech world, but sitting in front of a computer typing away, pulled out enough hair in some of those coding classes mm-hmm.

[00:05:41] That, I would rather talk to people about the tech as opposed to try to make it, try to fix it, try to maintain it, that kind of a thing. I also, I didn’t build enough of that tech foundation to really go down the developer route. Mm-hmm. but I got enough of a taste that I knew I wanted to be in that world in some way.

[00:05:57] Fascinating. Yeah. Exposed to it so you could talk about it. Exactly. Yeah. And I think dangerous. Exactly. So how did 

[00:06:03] Marc Gonyea: you know working at memoryBlue? 

[00:06:05] Jonathan Seidenwurm: That’s a good question. I think it was, I. I was looking for, say I had a friend who had done like a business development internship at some point. And so he told me a little bit about what he did.

[00:06:16] I said, okay, that sounds cool. I’ll look for jobs in that area. And, it’s not a very inspiring story. I found memoryBlue on indeed.com, which is like the worst place to find jobs these days, which is pretty funny. did you think about returning to the New York 

[00:06:28] Chris Corcoran: City at school or no? 

[00:06:29] Jonathan Seidenwurm: no. And the, the reason was just ’cause my girlfriend, she’s two years younger than me, she had to finish up school, so I was definitely gonna stay in the DC area.

[00:06:36] but to be honest, I had no idea. I just knew that I was coming outta school. I wanted to stay in the area and as I understand it, if you don’t pay someone every month, you sleep on the street. So I really wanted to get a job. memoryBlue the, the introductory nature of it sounded really appealing to me and the high-tech nature of it also, of the clientele sounded really interesting as well.

[00:06:56] Excellent. Yeah. 

[00:06:57] Marc Gonyea: So you got in the US. Did you know what you were signing up for? 

[00:07:01] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I had no idea. No idea. I had no clue 

[00:07:03] Marc Gonyea: even compelled you besides just the fact that we were gonna pay you money? was it that we just trying to, we were winding and dining you and getting in tech sales?

[00:07:10] Or was it something else? 

[00:07:11] Jonathan Seidenwurm: you know, there’s definitely a little bit of, you know, wanting a job and whatnot. Mm-hmm. But there was also knowing that you all worked with high tech clients memoryBlue does a good job of presenting itself as sort of the, and being an introduction to the tech sales world.

[00:07:25] Mm-hmm. And that’s what I was really interested in. It sounded like there was a lot of good training for someone who didn’t have any experience. It sounded like there was a lot of good opportunity for growth, opportunity for learning, and that’s really what was interesting to me. Plus the, the hiring path sounded really interesting.

[00:07:40] Again, that growth is really what. What got me into it. 

[00:07:43] Marc Gonyea: You what? Jumped out us. And probably remember this is the pH athon. You theon look are my notes. Look what I started. Oh, nice. My bad, my bad, my bad. Hold a tone. No, 

[00:07:52] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I don’t. Hold a tone guys. 

[00:07:54] Marc Gonyea: This guy’s smart. Yeah. I don’t recall remembering you from Manhattan, but I remember with AU smart, you’re, 

[00:08:00] Jonathan Seidenwurm: you’re a really smart guy.

[00:08:01] You can’t tell people I was on phone. The, the people who, for, for people that are, that’s you’re at LinkedIn, that’s the people who call you after you graduate to ask you to donate to the already too expensive college. So, but we did what we had to, to have some money in college. That’s right. So. 

[00:08:16] That’s 

[00:08:16] Marc Gonyea: right.

[00:08:16] Yeah. This is not a cheap place to live. 

[00:08:18] Jonathan Seidenwurm: No, it’s not. And that was a, that’s a good point. There was some cold ca, cold calling experience as well. So when, I think it was Joey Plesce was my interviewer. He was, yeah, there you go. There you go. He was like, you know, you’re gonna have to make cold calls hundred a day.

[00:08:31] I was like, that sounds fine. Yes. That sounds okay. 

[00:08:36] Marc Gonyea: Alright, so you got into the job. Do you remember your first client or who you worked plush was your 

[00:08:40] Jonathan Seidenwurm: dm? Yeah, so Joey Plesce, all hail Joey Plesce. he continues to be someone I, uh, I will always admire, I’ll always respect, I will always, turn to for a recommendation if I ever need one.

[00:08:51] There you go. he’s a great guy. and I know he just started at it’s blackwood. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, which is a place I applied to as well in my recent, cybersecurity journey. So that was, uh, I’m glad he ended up there. It’s a cool company. Yeah, it’s a cool company. Good for him. But, Joey. So, Plesce was by DM and my first and only client, was Lytics 

[00:09:08] Marc Gonyea: Paralytics.

[00:09:09] Paralytics. Yeah, that’s right. What do they 

[00:09:11] Jonathan Seidenwurm: do? 

[00:09:11] remember? Yes. just make sure I won’t give away any secret sauce, but I’m just kidding. no, they do mobility data. So basically, they don’t exist in the United States in the same way anymore, unfortunately. which is a whole nother thing.

[00:09:23] But when I was working with them, they basically had an agreement with a, one of the major telecom providers here, and they were able to use that data 

[00:09:31] pretty creative ways where they could still anonymize people, which is really important, but they could have really deep insights into how they moved around.

[00:09:38] So, 

[00:09:38] a cool company, huge in Europe, huge in Asia, and they were trying to get into the US market, and it’s just 

[00:09:43] was a competitive market in, in the us So it was interesting to, uh, see a company with like, be a part of a company with like 10 people. You know, do? Do you remember? Yes. Very scrappy, so, 

[00:09:53] Marc Gonyea: Excellent.

[00:09:54] So you’re working with Plus, do you remember any of your colleagues? 

[00:09:57] Jonathan Seidenwurm: yeah. So, Sam 

[00:09:58] he’s a good friend. he’s someone who I, yeah, he’s someone who I wish I saw more. There’s a funny thing about when you have a lot of friends in New York, if you have to get on a train to see your friend, you’re gonna see him once every four to six months, which is just, we all get so neighborhood locked.

[00:10:12] It’s crazy. Especially 

[00:10:14] we brag to everybody else that we’re like, oh, you can go anywhere on the subway. We didn’t even take that long. It’s just, when you’re done with work, the last thing you wanna do is get on the subway. so Sam is 

[00:10:21] one of the people who I’m definitely still very close with. and there are a bunch, there’s a lot of, so I remember Culin as well.

[00:10:26] Oh, okay. Yeah. And I know he’s living his dream. He’s coaching for, yeah. What is it? Gonzaga? No, he went to 

[00:10:33] Chris Corcoran: Liberty and I don’t know Liberty. Cool. If he went to Auburn or not. I don’t know. 

[00:10:36] Marc Gonyea: He coaching for heat. He’s working his way up 

[00:10:38] Jonathan Seidenwurm: the ranks. Yeah. 

[00:10:39] But he, he’s a wild guy, but, I have a lot of respect for the fact that he, he always talks about wanting to get into coaching and just being unsure about it.

[00:10:47] And he literally went to go be a teacher at the, you know, a preschool teacher Yep. To go and coach for a, a team. So I, I have a lot of respect for that. I think That’s awesome. Wisconsin badger 

[00:10:57] Marc Gonyea: football. Nice. Wow. Doing this thing, man. That’s a big deal. That’s a deal, dude. Deal. You’re working at one of the most successful cyber companies in the past 15 years.

[00:11:04] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Well, yeah. We’ll talk about, we’ll, we’ll get to that. Well, I’m curious, so talk a little bit about the experience of, Lytics. Right. So you were working for a company mm-hmm. That was successful in EMEA and APAC and they were trying to crack into the US Yeah. So, I mean, man, talk about innovation and being on the tip of the spear and, and like talk a little bit about what that 

[00:11:25] Jonathan Seidenwurm: was like.

[00:11:25] Sure. Well, the biggest advantage I’d say we had was a, a cool factor for sure. Okay. And it was definitely, Not to use the same word again, but it was cool to, coming into memoryBlue, the first client you work with isn’t, a company 

[00:11:39] maybe doing a different mousetrap or a better mousetrap.

[00:11:41] It’s a company that’s doing something pretty different. Yep. 

[00:11:43] that was pretty cool. For better, for worse, by the way. But, so it was 

[00:11:46] cool to talk a company that’s maybe doing talk about something different. It was cool to learn about this mobility world that frankly we all interact with every single day.

[00:11:54] Mm-hmm. Right? We all drive on roads, we all use trains, we all use planes, et cetera. and learning about how people plan those roads, make those transportation decisions, that stuff was really cool. And then also learning about data privacy. This was, kind of my introduction to cybersecurity as well, because they had a lot of very strict data privacy rules that they had to follow.

[00:12:14] Okay. And when I actually came on board with them later, I mean, we had to like, All the computers in the office couldn’t be facing windows and doors. We had to have screens on our computers so you couldn’t have someone looking over your shoulder at them. So lots of data privacy. That sort of piqued my interest in that area as well.

[00:12:30] But it was cool, it was a good company. The product just wasn’t as competitive as it could have been at its present, in its present form. Mm-hmm. In the us And there were other problems, and the reason that it doesn’t exist in the US in the same way that it does today is just because of the relationship with the data provider.

[00:12:48] Nothing to do with anything that was wrong with the company. Mm-hmm. Or anything that was wrong with the business. The data provider was frankly, irresponsible with their data and so decided that they weren’t gonna give it to anybody else. So it was just, was an unfortunate reality, but, yeah.

[00:13:00] So, but a good lesson you learned that at the end of the day, business is business. So 

[00:13:05] Chris Corcoran: it sounds like you, uh, really, were attracted to kind of like the specific industry and the technology and kind of the business impact and that. You kind of learned it and absorbed it and studied it. Some people don’t, don’t do that all that much.

[00:13:16] All I wanna do is kind of get on the phone and book a meeting and move on. Yeah. But it sounds like you were interested in kind of developing some fluency around the industry and the technology. 

[00:13:24] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yeah. it’s a double-edged sword, frankly, because Let’s 

[00:13:28] Chris Corcoran: talk about that. Yeah. Tell 

[00:13:29] Marc Gonyea: us. 

[00:13:29] Sure. Cause 

[00:13:30] Jonathan Seidenwurm: people listening don’t know.

[00:13:31] Yeah. Well, and we were talking about this right before the podcast that I work in sales engineering now Yep. For threedays. But for, I do,, I do 72 hours for 72 hours. I have been a sales engineer. but, and I have, at my previous company, I was doing many of the responsibilities of a sales engineer. So I can talk to some degree about what that means.

[00:13:49] But, I think the, the double edge that I’m referring to is in sales, if you get too deep, and we talked about this in memoryBlue a lot, right? Spilling candy. Yep. Right. If you get, we’re spilling candy. I keep going. If you give too much, you can end up disqualifying yourself or you can. Why should the client get on a meet or prospect, excuse me, get on a meeting with you if you told them everything they need to know, right?

[00:14:08] Right. You wanna peak their curiosity, you wanna get them to the next stage, and then you wanna give ’em enough to get them to the next stage, and so on and so forth. Right. I think Jonathan 

[00:14:16] Chris Corcoran: talking 

[00:14:16] Marc Gonyea: about spilling candy in the lobby down in Manhattan. Yeah. Right. We’re this huge building in New York, the world’s biggest lobby.

[00:14:23] We’re talking about smelling candy 

[00:14:24] Jonathan Seidenwurm: in a building like this, if you spilled candy on the floor, it would probably open up and clean itself. There’s a robot or something in here that cleans it up. Sorry about that. Keep going. No, that’s okay. And I think that was one of the things that was constantly pushing me towards sales engineering, even though I didn’t even know it existed, frankly, was that I was always, I always wanted to learn more about the tech.

[00:14:43] there were times where I really loved getting into it with clients. I had, I had calls with people, where I can see that. I knew it wasn’t an opportunity. But I would talk to them for an hour, which for a lot of people would be a huge waste of time. And it was, frankly, but we would just get into it about, I would learn from them and I would be able to like flex my own knowledge.

[00:15:01] And that was, so it would just be a fun call, but obviously not the great, the best use of your time from a sales perspective. So, well, you’re learning 

[00:15:08] Chris Corcoran: more about the industry and the space you are, 

[00:15:10] Marc Gonyea: I think that helps you more than o other calls where that 

[00:15:12] Jonathan Seidenwurm: knowledge helps you. It does. but you know, look, I think the reality of sales is also every, every minute you’re not prospecting.

[00:15:21] You know, there’s, you just always have to be building that pipeline. Yeah. And I regardless of how much you know about the product, regardless of how much you know about the industry, like if you don’t have anybody, if you don’t have a pipeline, if you don’t have meetings, if you don’t have people to talk to you about it, it’s just, it’s not gonna go anywhere.

[00:15:35] So, and that’s why they have sales engineers, by the way, so that account executives, you know, and SDRs don’t need to be those technical experts. So, bridging that gap was, like I said, it’s a double-edged sword. one that I think I came out on the right side of. Mm-hmm. But, yeah, wanna 

[00:15:49] Marc Gonyea: get to that?

[00:15:49] Yeah, I wanna, sure. I’m wanna spend a lot of time on sales engineering. before we get there, so you got memoryBlue working on lytics. I know you were working the phones a little bit at au. What did you learn about working the, you know, being in sdr? Just, you know, what, what did what, cause you hit your quota a second month.

[00:16:04] Mm-hmm. Right? Do you remember that? Tell us about how you did that and what you learned in that role. Because it’s 

[00:16:08] Jonathan Seidenwurm: a hard job. It’s a really hard job. And I’ll bleed SDRs for the rest of my life, frankly. There you go. Um,bleed for them at least. And the most important thing I learned about being an sdr or just like general?

[00:16:18] Just in general, general SDR wisdom. Let’s go back to 

[00:16:21] Marc Gonyea: like general when you were new. Take us back to like your first day in the job. You know, in your first, maybe your first quarter, right? You hit your number a month too. But remember, you’ve got this background coming outta au. You think you like tech a little bit.

[00:16:33] You’re not sure more. Like, Hey, here we go. Nobody’s ever heard of Tely in the United States. Go make some calls. You know, we got some training, but you got Joey Pledge helping you. But you know, what did you get good at? How did you hit your number month too? 

[00:16:44] Jonathan Seidenwurm: first of all, just trust in the process. It, the two sides, I think there’s the skill side and there’s the number side, right?

[00:16:49] Mm-hmm. so first and foremost, like you tell me to make a hundred dials, like go make those a hundred dials, and then if you have time, when you’re not making those a hundred dials, Probably go send some emails, probably do some LinkedIn stuff. And I wish I had been more on the email and LinkedIn side earlier, ’cause maybe that would’ve been an even bigger, you know, there would’ve been even more meetings.

[00:17:07] I’m positive of it. But, so that’s the first thing, right? Just do the, just do the work, right? Mm-hmm. there was actually someone, I’m forgetting his name. He was a taller blonde dude who used to work at memoryBlue. and Max Burn? No, not Max Burn, no. Ah, he was really tall. it doesn’t matter.

[00:17:23] His name was Sam. And, uh, he one time told me, I, I, I, remember I was talking to him and I was like, sales is all locked. And he said, yeah, but you make your opportunities to get lucky through hard work. Yeah. So that’s the first side, right? Doing the numbers. And then there’s also the skill side.

[00:17:37] One, you’re on the phone. Having a calm demeanor. So having some cold calling experience definitely helped. Probably having a bar mitzvah and fucking chanting Hebrew in front of 300 people made a big difference. So you, I bet it did. Your nerves go down a lot when you have to do that. but, and then asking questions, right?

[00:17:52] That’s the big thing, is asking questions and knowing when to go for that close. Cause I think there are a lot of people get good at the questions, but don’t ever go for the clothes. And then I think there are a lot of people who go for the clothes without really asking any questions. and I think just knowing how to take an objection back to where you needed to go.

[00:18:06] Mm-hmm. So that was probably one of the things I was best at is taking, is someone would give me an objection and I would be good at getting it back on track. So, you know, they would say, oh, you know why should I use your data source if I’m already using physical data providers?

[00:18:21] Oh, well, you know, it can be dangerous to set those up on the road. They only capture where you put them, you know, blah, blah, blah. With that said, we do X, Y, and Z. That could be really helpful for you. You know, what do you think about. 15 minutes talking about it. Mm-hmm. So using objections as a bridge to close as opposed to an obstacle.

[00:18:36] I see. I think something that I got pretty good at. Sam Carner, an op Sam Carner. Yes. There you go. Right. Blackwood guy. There you go. Yeah. You you had a good little crew. People you’re working with. Yeah. Sam Carter. It was a cool time. Sam, new new, 

[00:18:49] Marc Gonyea: new man. Always say his name, last name, new name. Yeah. Yeah. I always say his last name wrong.

[00:18:52] And then you working for plush? 

[00:18:54] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yep. Okay. Which is awesome. Yeah. I 

[00:18:56] Chris Corcoran: like the objection, like objection. You, you use that as like an opportunity to close. Clarifying 

[00:19:00] Jonathan Seidenwurm: close. Yeah. Exactly. And that’s something that, uh, when I was managing an SDR team at my previous job, that’s what we preached heavily. worked really well for us, especially in the cyber world where you’re just getting hammered by objections.

[00:19:12] So, 

[00:19:13] Chris Corcoran: so it’s almost like a lot of SDRs probably they hope that they don’t run into an objection. Yeah, exactly. Versus you were coaching your team. Hope you get an objection. Yeah. Hope you get an objection. That’s cool. Yeah, 

[00:19:22] Jonathan Seidenwurm: we, we did things a little bit differently. We were very upfront.

[00:19:25] Um, and this was some things that we learned from some other sources. But my, co-manager and I, we, we sort of found that it was best to be just like upfront right away, Hey John, calling from authenticate, we do X, Y, and Z. Wanna see if you had time to talk? Expecting the objection.

[00:19:38] Right, right. To ultimately use that, as you said, for that bridge and sort of baiting the objection unless they said yes right away. If they say yes right away, great, we’ll take it. You know what I mean? We’ll do we, we gotta make, we gotta get meetings at the end of the day. But, ideally you wanna bait that objection ’cause that’s sometimes how you learn.

[00:19:52] Sure. Right. Sometimes. Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes people don’t like it when you ask them questions, right. But you can learn a lot from the questions they ask. Oh, why’d you ask that? Oh, ’cause we use this platform, whatever. Oh, okay, great. Well, blah, blah blah. Right? So student 

[00:20:05] Marc Gonyea: of the game over here. Yeah. Right. In, which I’m sure helps you in your current role.

[00:20:09] Okay. Something like that. So you’re at MB doing your thing. What did you think you’re wanting to do after that? Cause you’ve seen all sorts of things happen, right? Lytics is doing this, people are getting hired out people, some people are staying with the company. Where’d you think you wanted to go? 

[00:20:21] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I wanted to be an account executive, right?

[00:20:23] that was sort of the, I mean, that was the path that was put forth in front of us. Yeah. which, you know, for better or for worse. Right. that’s what you see and that’s, and you hear about this, especially ’cause we bring in all these great alumni who are talking about, oh, I, yeah.

[00:20:35] I remember we, the first alumni conversation that I set in on, the guy was talking about, oh, I moved to Seattle and now I sell to like Amazon, you know, and I Ben Carlson? Yeah. Or something like that. I don’t think it was Ben. Oh really? Maybe it was. Yeah, I moved to Seattle. Yeah. Yeah. It was bad. I just remember you, I remember one question asked him, you asked him would you rather sell a large volume of small deals or a couple of big deals throughout the year for the same result.

[00:21:01] And he was just like, big boys only. So that’s, I remember that. Definitely crossen,

[00:21:08] Marc Gonyea: but it’s funny what sticks out, right? Yeah. What you remember and how that impacts kind of your 

[00:21:12] Jonathan Seidenwurm: perception. No, totally. but yeah, the account executive class is the, is the way I want it to go. And you, I, you know, obviously the vice president of sales, but I didn’t even know at the time what a VP of sales mm-hmm.

[00:21:24] Did, you know, and now I have a better understanding of that. I barely even understood and I think I had the classic SDR sort of grass is greener, where you don’t realize that being an account executive is really just being an SDR with more steps and more earning potential, right? Yep. And I think that’s a hard.

[00:21:41] Gap for a lot of people to cross when they finally get into the AE role. You think like, oh, my cold calling days are over. My cold days are over. They’ve just begun. Yeah. I’m 

[00:21:49] Chris Corcoran: now, I’m hanging up the headset. Can we please like 

[00:21:53] Marc Gonyea: cap capture this? Because we try and talk to SDRs about it, but it’s hard, right?

[00:21:58] Because you’re so, what makes you so good is lack of patience. Want to get after it. But it’s a hard job to transition into. It’s, it’s really hard. Right. And the SDR work never goes away. No, it is, it’s not a main part of your day, but it’s part of your life. Mm-hmm. Your role, I guess maybe not your life. 

[00:22:16] Jonathan Seidenwurm: No, but the, the best AE at my previous job, whenever he was not doing his AE stuff, he was prospecting and he was always saying to, in the SDR Slack channel, oh, I just sent out this email template.

[00:22:30] Go ahead and use it. You know, oh, I just found these 30 companies. ’cause they were, he was always looking for ways to prospect. And that ultimately is what made him successful, I think. Yeah. So, yeah. So the AE was the best sdr, the ae. he might’ve even said that the SDR was the best AE is how he might’ve even looked at it.

[00:22:48] Okay. I think he sees himself as an SDR at heart, and he just happened to be closing deals, you know? Wow. Yeah. Fascinating. And he closed you? He was closing a million dollars a year. So it’s like not No, no small feat, right? Absolutely 

[00:22:58] Marc Gonyea: not. Not your space. No. All right. So you thought it would’ve be an ae?

[00:23:02] Yeah. leaving memoryBlue, you went the news watch, right? Yeah, yeah. But, but let’s talk about the journey, right? Cause people think the journeys supposed to be Yeah. And it’s not, it’s a little bit like this, but it should progress this way. 

[00:23:13] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yeah. 

[00:23:13] Chris Corcoran: for the listeners, mark is gesturing his hands up and down like a staircase.

[00:23:17] He’s doing a little 

[00:23:17] Marc Gonyea: worm. It’s not sequential. I’m sorry, I forgot. 

[00:23:20] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Without tv. yeah. News watch, woof. It’s part of the grass is always greener. Right. And it’s, I’m gotta try some things. Yeah. And it’s funny, you’ll, there’s something you’ll appreciate here that I’ll mention in a second. I’m Mark that you’ll appreciate here.

[00:23:35] Okay. Cause there’s something specifically you said to me while I was actually interviewing for News Watch, but, so News Watch was, it was a basically a marketing company and a dubious marketing company at that. But you know, they were offering me an account executive role and a little bit more money.

[00:23:50] Everything seemed, you know, hunky dory, all that stuff. The interview process, you know, was really great. Oh, I had a lot of common with these people. Oh, this is great. And then, know, I was in my maybe, uh, coming up on my year mark or something at memoryBlue or something like that. Yeah. I don’t remember exactly the timeline and I, you get to that point of being an SDR where you’re like, I want the next step.

[00:24:10] Mm-hmm. You’re hungry for the next step. You’re getting hit up by LinkedIn recruiters left and right. You’re dodging them. You know what I mean? Yes. They’re offering you everything, you know what I mean, to the sun. and you’re, look, you’re young. You don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. And there’s a lot of different forces that are influencing you in different directions.

[00:24:26] And look, obviously, memoryBlue is like stay, go through our process, do our thing. recruiters are like, no, come to us. We want you. You know what I mean? Yeah. You’re sitting there scratching your head like, I just got outta college two seconds ago. You know what I mean? I barely know how to boil water.

[00:24:42] Right. and I took the job mostly because, you know, most people are offering you SDR jobs. This is an account executive job. So I said, wow, what an opportunity. Let’s do it. And the thing you said to me, mark, is I walked by your office just randomly and you pulled me in. You said, Hey, Jonathan. And I was interviewing, so I was like, oh my gosh, he’s gonna, no, he’s gonna call me out or something like that.

[00:25:02] And you, You said, you know, there’s a lot of people who are gonna want you. This is a paraphrase, but you said there’s a lot of people who are gonna want you for another job or something like that. But the reality is, if they want you right now, you’re probably not ready for it. And I didn’t really close.

[00:25:17] Yeah. And I didn’t really know what you meant by that at the time, but now I do. Because getting into this job with Newswatch, I quickly realized that not only did I definitely wanna stay in the tech world, like wow, did I not want to talk about dubious marketing platform, not even platform, dubious television show that may or may not have been real.

[00:25:38] It was a very weird environment, for a lot of reasons, frankly. but I also realized that, having that slow build, that training, that experience coming into a company that’s gonna sort of help you grow, that’s really important. As opposed to a company that’s just gonna sort of throw you out there and say, Hey, just try to sell.

[00:25:56] And we don’t really care about the value we’re providing. That was another big thing. That’s another big thing that I like with working in the tech world. It’s not true of everything. Mm-hmm. But there’s a lot of value to be found and often measurable value, which I think is really important. So, big time.

[00:26:11] Big time. Yeah. 

[00:26:12] Marc Gonyea: These are things that you can only gain from doing things, this type of perspective. Mm-hmm. Cause remember talking about it outside, trying to get you not to do it. Yeah. But, but Right. Remember we had some talks about it, but we’re good now, but you have to figure these things out.

[00:26:24] Cause it, it helps. It’s all part of the process. Yeah. And we didn’t have at the time, in your defense, we’ve got a much more robust out placement program now mm-hmm. That we didn’t have when you were coming up. We were, it was kind of like in his infancy. So it’s easy to think you’re ready and you may or may not be ready.

[00:26:39] Mm-hmm. So, all right. So you did that in learning lesson in a great way, and then you went back to lytics. 

[00:26:43] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Right. Yeah, so actually Sam Newham boom, he reached out to me at one point and he told me, and he said, Hey, how’d you like to work together? And I was like, in the throes of this news watch job, I was miserable.

[00:26:57] And I said, please, you’re still in DC at this point? I, I’m still in dc Still in DC And were you working in an office or at, at your house or, uh, working, yeah, working in the office. Okay. it was in Pentagon City. Okay. So it was a good, it was a very good location. I was right by the gym I used to go to.

[00:27:09] That was nice. But, was, you’re looking trimmed by the rock. Rock climbing. Looking good. Rock climbing. Thank you. I appreciate it. You guys look great as well. Yeah. So we’re lying by the way. That’s why it’s a podcast not on video. Where 

[00:27:19] Marc Gonyea: are you at? Talking looks terrible, Chris. 

[00:27:22] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Old. no, I, I turned 28 last week and my back is killing me, so I don’t know.

[00:27:26] You good dude. So I don’t know what’s going on. Walking muscles, would you like? Thanks. I, um, rock climber. Yeah. But sorry, I I completely blanked on the question. 

[00:27:34] Marc Gonyea: No, we’re talking about how str going to 

[00:27:35] Chris Corcoran: Lytics, going 

[00:27:36] Jonathan Seidenwurm: back to Lytics. Sam, Sam called you up. Yeah. Sam reaches out. He says, Hey, do you wanna work together again?

[00:27:41] And I had always wanted to work for Tely and we had kind of probed them about it and they were just always a little, we wanna do it, but they just, it was, I, you never realized how scrappy a company is until you get into it. And I never realized fully how scrappy they were. And that’s why it took them so long to make the decision.

[00:27:57] And I learned when I ended up joining them, that when I actually left memoryBlue is how, is what galvanized them to ultimately hire Sam on. ’cause they, they realized like, we’re gonna lose these SDRs who know about us. Right. We’re gonna lose what we invested in here. Yeah. so yeah, so Sam reached out to me, he says, Hey, they’re looking to grow the team.

[00:28:17] They want to do some, they want to build a new SDR team. They really wanna focus on getting new logos, you know what I mean? And just outbound, outbound, outbound. And they wanna really just do a big aggressive push in the United States. And we went back and forth for, it was a, it was a long time.

[00:28:30] We were talking back and forth. It was like six or seven months. Oh, wow. Yeah. That we were talking back and forth. And in that time, I actually moved back to New York. Okay. Okay. So in that six or seven month timeframe, my girlfriend graduated from college. We decided that it was time to, you know, she had been integrated with my friends and my family here.

[00:28:48] And we just both decided that it would be a good decision for us to go, we’ll say home, right? Mm-hmm. Home for me at least. Yep. And, so I took the Newswatch job with me to New York and I was working from home. I was really unhappy. It just, I was, you know, you, you, you get used to working from home.

[00:29:04] So I had a little bit of a slump and then it came back up, which was good. but even when I was doing well, I wasn’t a hundred percent happy. And it was just the, it felt like I, I didn’t like what I was selling. I didn’t like what I was talking about. I didn’t care for the work at all.

[00:29:17] and the, and everything about it. And then I hit up Sam and I’m like, Hey, Sam, what’s going on? Like, is there any chance that this is still active? But he said, you’ve gotta go hit up Chris, who was our, the America’s boss. Okay. At memoryBlue, who was a guy who had joined Lytics, as I was leaving memoryBlue.

[00:29:36] So I had a little bit of a relationship with him. Nothing crazy, but I wrote him a LinkedIn message that I’m still kind of proud of to this day. You know, where. I was basically like, Hey Chris, I know you’ve been talking to Sam about me potentially coming on. I hope things are well, blah, blah blah. I feel like I’m uniquely positioned to be in this role ’cause I know about the product and I have sales experience, blah, blah.

[00:29:55] So I think I did a good job there. And then he said, oh yeah, sure, send me your resume. we’ll get on a call with you later this week. And then two or three weeks later, I was driving down to Virginia to quit my job and then driving back up to have a week off before starting the next one.

[00:30:12] So these companies back into Lytics? Yep. These companies, 

[00:30:16] Marc Gonyea: they don’t realize, I think they do after you’re gone. How valuable is good? SDR is a hundred 

[00:30:21] Chris Corcoran: percent. Yeah. 

[00:30:22] Marc Gonyea: Especially like hundred percent. Someone like this is your first job outta school and you did such a good job that they’re chasing you, 

[00:30:28] Year and a half later. Mm-hmm. Two year, almost two years later. Mm-hmm. Because it’s valuable. And I, I still remember talking to some of these clients when some of our people leave writing stars and they’re like, yeah, this person has four or five, six offers. Like, what do you mean? Yeah. For 1520 k higher bases and what you’re, uh, oh my gosh.

[00:30:44] Suggesting because the good ones are worth their weight in gold. It’s true. Which is that’s totally true. Which your legacy was working there with us, and then they said, yeah, get that guy back in the door, man. Interview him this 

[00:30:54] Jonathan Seidenwurm: week. it’s something that I think is also worth noting is that SDRs usually have a month or two, maybe three ramp, and you’re quoted pretty quickly.

[00:31:02] Mm-hmm. Yep. But the reality is you don’t get into your groove, and I think this is true of all sales. you’re not in your groove, maybe as an sdr six or seven months mm-hmm. As an ae certainly a year. Right? Yeah. But you’re, you’re on that quota right away. So it’s, I think that’s one of the things that makes sales in general so hard is that you really aren’t alwa, you never, you’re never a hun.

[00:31:22] You’re not really a hundred percent ready when you start. Right. You know? So it can be hard to get that good start, but, uh, I get that’s why, you know, memory or lytics sees their SDRs, who they invested money in. Right. They, not just time, but also money. They paid memoryBlue plenty money, I’m sure. And to have to start that process all over again Right.

[00:31:42] Would be just like, I, I think unthinkable for them. Yeah. I 

[00:31:45] Marc Gonyea: mean, how 

[00:31:45] Chris Corcoran: Jonathan, so your, your story and your track illustrates a point that I like to share with SDRs and who knows how many, believe me. But I always tell the SDRs it’s critically important that the most important person to, to impress is not Joey p Plusher manager or Mark or me, or even your client.

[00:32:05] It’s your teammates. Mm-hmm. The people who are working with you. Mm-hmm. Because they’re the ones mm-hmm. Who are gonna be out in the industry, who are gonna know about these opportunities. Mm-hmm. And who are they gonna call? Sam could have called anyone on that team. Mm-hmm. He called you. Mm-hmm. Right, because he knew who, he knew your body of work and he knew that it would be a positive reflection on top 

[00:32:22] Jonathan Seidenwurm: him.

[00:32:23] that’s a little mind bending to think about, but that’s really, that’s it’s true. That’s very true. That’s very true there. That’s one of the huge values of memory. People you meet a lot of people, a lot of them go on to be very successful and that’s, those are the people you want to know, you know?

[00:32:37] Totally. Totally. 

[00:32:38] Chris Corcoran: So, so what was it like making your triumphant return 

[00:32:41] Jonathan Seidenwurm: to lytics? Yeah. it was cool. It was cool coming from, ’cause Newswatch I thought was, such a great company. Because I had, you know, sort of the blinders on. Mm-hmm. and then I come into Lytics and it’s VC backed startup.

[00:32:54] You know what I mean? We’re in the, we’re in a WeWork. I mean, you think this building is cool? The WeWork had the nitro cold brew on tap. I mean, we were, we work in their prime. Oh yeah, we, exactly. Oh, this was before all the, the crazy stuff too. So, and this is pre covid. This is a whole nother world. Wow. Yeah.

[00:33:09] Yeah. In New York. Wow. yeah. So this is like, it was awesome. I mean, they’re, you know, you get all this fancy tech, you get all this fancy swag, nice laptop, you know what I mean? Good. All, you know, nice. All this stuff. And hybrid work schedule work from home when you want to come into the office when you don’t.

[00:33:26] and. but it was still, but, but that’s the thing. It was still was very scrappy. So it’s funny ’cause coming from memoryBlue, there’s some degree of organization Right. You go through the training process. Right. It’s a little self-guided by, I mean is that’s 

[00:33:40] Chris Corcoran: what I mean, 

[00:33:41] Marc Gonyea: laughing at I use some degree organization.

[00:33:43] Like, it’s funny. It’s true. Yeah. 

[00:33:46] Jonathan Seidenwurm: It’s just, there’s, there’s some parts of the training that are self-guided. There’s some parts that are mm-hmm. That are like, you have to do this. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And that’s what I mean. Yeah. I 

[00:33:52] Marc Gonyea: No, don’t wanna dress it up. This is Yeah. 

[00:33:54] And 

[00:33:54] Jonathan Seidenwurm: I don’t, and I, I mean that as like, there’s organization period.

[00:33:57] Right, right. Even if it’s some degree. Right. Right. Yep. At Lytics, they were clearly building the tracks as I was walking in front of them. Yep. You know, where I was, you know, as I right before I stepped on them and that’s totally fine. It was a company of 11 people in the United States. Wow. You know, that’s why we had a WeWork.

[00:34:13] Right, right. You don’t have a WeWork if you have enough people for an office and half the people lived in California, half the people lived here in New York. So our, our New York headquarters. Was two SDRs in the office manager. You know what I mean? That’s who manned the headquarters, which I think is hilarious.

[00:34:29] This is pretty cool. so coming there was pretty cool. It felt very exciting. but it was a little intense also because that lack of organization, right? That lack of direction. What I, you know, and this is something that you kind of start to realize with small companies, when you are brought on, You are expected to know what’s going on. You are to some degree, right. And I don’t mean to use that a bunch of times, right? You are expected to hit the ground running. You are expected to not require too much direction. And I think for a lot of people, especially when a lot of those people hitting you up on LinkedIn, when you’re in SDR at memoryBlue are coming from smaller companies who are just trying to build their sales base.

[00:35:04] you don’t fully realize how much they’re gonna expect from you right away. Mm-hmm. And so I remember coming into Lytics and I finish up the, like, week of product training that they gave me and like h HR onboarding it, onboarding and Exta y, Z. And then I, I remember coming in, I was like, I. What am I supposed to do?

[00:35:21] Like where’s the, you know, where’s the new hire training? Where’s you know, where are the, the, the weekly one-on-ones? You know what I mean? Where is all that stuff? And Sam was like, Nope. Just go see if you can find some meetings. You know? And he told me a little bit, and I, it was lucky to have Sam and he Yeah.

[00:35:35] Was like, oh, this is sort of how we do it. Still very similar to a lot of how we did things back in memoryBlue. And then all of that came back and it all worked out. but there was no, I mean, we were teaching them how to book meetings. Oh, wow. Cause a lot of these guys were like pure business people who had never really done sales.

[00:35:52] Yep. You know, and that was maybe one of the flaws that they had in the US too, right. In the us. Yeah. So they didn’t have, they were guys who, or people rather who didn’t have like a traditional SDR to AE experience, you know what I mean? They were people who came from like a more very business-centric world and were in a closing role.

[00:36:10] Mm-hmm. So it was interesting to see that. It was interesting to. You kind of have to figure it out. I mean, we didn’t even have like a sales force that was set up for Sam and I when we were booking meetings. Like it was a, there was no way for, we kept our everything in Google spreadsheets. And I remember the c e o who was this crazy British dude, he, he came into town one time and he was a nice guy, but he, wow.

[00:36:33] But he was scary. And our boss told us, Hey, the CEO’s coming into town. He wants to have a meeting with us. Just prep all the meetings you’ve booked and just be able to talk about them. And that was, you know, we had booked several dozen meetings by this point. But the CEO comes in and he basically puts on a chalkboard.

[00:36:48] He says, okay. So right now he draws a dollar sign on the chalkboard and he says, right now you are money out. I need you to tell me right now why, how you are going to be bringing money back in. And he draws an arrow back with a question mark and Nice to meet you all. Yeah. And all three of us, my boss, Sam, myself.

[00:37:09] We shot ourselves a little bit. We might have to cut that out, but we, yeah. Yeah. and then we had a lot that we had to figure out. So it was just a, a lot of growth and it was a ton of learning. It was awesome. It was just, also pretty intense. Sure. Because you don’t, you don’t know what you don’t know.

[00:37:22] And I think that was the, that was one of the problems is that we didn’t always have the direction that we needed, you know, so, so you were an AE 

[00:37:29] Chris Corcoran: at Newswatch? 

[00:37:31] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yes, I was an accounting, yeah. And what they called it a sales and content manager, but yeah, it was effectively just an account executive. 

[00:37:37] Chris Corcoran: And so you did that for a while and then you decided to come back to be an sdr.

[00:37:41] Yeah. So talk that, that takes a lot of self-reflection, maturity. Yeah. Talk about what led you to that and 

[00:37:47] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yeah. that should underscore what that job at NEWSWATCH was like, by the way. But, no, it, it goes back to what Mark was saying, actually what you had said to me, which was. I look back and I felt like, okay, I can do this job.

[00:37:59] I’ve closed some deals. but I don’t think I’m a hundred percent ready for this job, and I want to get back into the world that I want to be in. I see. And I think the reality is that sometimes you need to take what feels like a step back, even if it’s not. Cause I don’t think, I don’t think the SDR job is an entry level job at all, but sometimes it, you have to feel like you’re taking a step back mm-hmm.

[00:38:21] To just be where you need to be. And you know what? It’s worth it for your happiness. It’s worth it for your future trajectory. There was no growth opportunities at this news watch company, and tely was right off the bat saying, we wanna get you into an AE role. Mm-hmm. You know, we want you to get to that point.

[00:38:37] And they were, they were good on their word, right? Mm-hmm. There was nothing. There was no, you know, they were totally good. It wasn’t one of those companies just like, oh, we’ll get you there, you know, one more month, two more month. You know, they were totally like, they wanted people in closing roles. It was all part of the plan.

[00:38:49] the plan didn’t come to fruition for a variety of reasons, but, yeah. So it, for me, it wasn’t even a, it, it didn’t even feel bad. Okay. Or, or negative in any way ’cause what I, where I was, was negative. The status quo was negative. I see. So any step, even one back is positive if you’re stepping away from what’s making you unhappy.

[00:39:09] So, and that’s maybe a life lesson as well. Do we get Bells for Life lesson? 

[00:39:13] Chris Corcoran: Get as 

[00:39:14] Marc Gonyea: many bells as you want. Yeah. So authenticate, right? Sure. Got in the mix there, but now you’re like, I’m I’m a cyber person. Yeah. Right. For sure. You had definitely identified that for cyber person and I wanna make sure we spend enough time on the sales engineer piece.

[00:40:22] Yeah. I don’t wanna skip over anything, but let’s, and I don’t wanna breeze to authenticate, but you had a great run there. Yeah. So just talk to us about what you started off doing, but then how you progressed. And then when the little, you said in, in some of your most recent job there, when you were in the AE role, you were starting to do some of the sales engineer stuff.

[00:40:39] So, so yeah. 

[00:40:40] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Encapsulate that for us. Yeah. Well, Lytics had a sad end to the story. as I said, the data provider stopped providing the data. Mm-hmm. And when you’re a data company and you don’t have data, you are, you’re just a group of people, honestly. Money out. Uh, yeah. You’re just money out. Exactly. and so we were all, all of us were let go.

[00:40:58] That was pretty rough ’cause that was right at the beginning of the pandemic. oh man. Yeah. So that sucked to be honest. And it’s, I mean, hey, life lessons, we all get fired or something bad ha will happen to you at some point in your life, unfortunately. Completely out of your control.

[00:41:10] Completely out of your control. and like, even if it was in our control, it just, things happen. Yes. You know, you can be the, you can be the worst, you can be the best and layoffs happen. It’s just the reality of, business and whatnot. So it sucked. I look back on it. And I feel better about it, but it definitely sucked.

[00:41:26] especially ’cause the, the pandemic compounded everything, you know? So, and then I went on a little bit of a soul searching journey, you know, went back to maybe law school. Do I think that I want to do that? Read a book about it was like, nope, I don’t want to do that. Um, reminder for you, well I had a friend who was in law who went to law school, was a huge part of who she was for three years.

[00:41:42] She was like, I’m in law school, I’m gonna be a lawyer. And I called her and I said, do you, what do you think about law school? She was like, do you like reading? And I was like, yeah. She was like, do you like reading thousands of pages? I was like, no. And she said, don’t go to law school, you know, don’t do it.

[00:41:53] So got back into applying for sales jobs and actually one of the sales jobs I applied for, or that I was in the running for was actually on the memoryBlue sales team. So Joey Cohen, who is a very good friend of mine, was fortunate enough to meet at memoryBlue,he hit me up and he was like, Hey John, you’re looking for a sales job, right?

[00:42:11] And that. Joey Cohen, he was like, Hey John, you’re looking for a sales job. Right? It’s so funny. And it’s so true. It’s so funny. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, she needs snowy. Oh yeah, exactly. I was like, yeah, please, and if you have anything, that’d be great. And he’s like, oh, well, you know, what do you think about coming and working on my team?

[00:42:27] And he was, I guess he was the manager at the time. Yes. And he was working under Tommy. And I said, oh, Tommy Gasman. Yeah, there you go. and so he kind of set up an in, he told me a little bit about the role. It actually sounded, it sounded very appealing. It sounded like it would’ve been a grind, but it sounded like it was appealing.

[00:42:42] good potential money, you know what I mean? Good learning opportunity. I, you know, I love Joey and I knew Tommy Gasman is like a, just a great guy to work for. And you can learn a lot from him. He’s kinda like a sales big dog, I guess, for lack of a better term. and so I went through that interview process, and unfortunately the job went to someone internally, which is good.

[00:43:00] Yeah. Which is a good thing. But did learn a lot about interviewing from Tommy Gasman and I eventually was interviewing for a role later on, so, or, or like how to interview people. Excuse me. So I had a lot of great conversations with, with Tommy. We were able to reestablish a relationship. Yeah.

[00:43:14] Which I think was great. And ultimately because that happened. So I was bummed about it when it, when the job didn’t come through. And I’m happy for the person who got it of course. And internal people should get the priority, but when you’re unemployed, you want a job, whatever. Of course. but I’m going through a couple of other cold applies, you know what I mean?

[00:43:32] Going through that dance and all of a sudden I get a call and the caller ID says, memoryBlue. And I said, oh boy. Okay. So I pick it up. That’s so funny. And this is the worm we were talking, by the way. That’s right. and it’s Grant Grant, Grant Toomey, Toomey. And he says, Hey John. He basically cold calls me trying to recruit me for an SD R job.

[00:43:52] At Authenticate. Okay. And I said, oh, and he said they’re looking for an SDR in dc And I said, oh, I, I don’t live in dc. And he said, oh, well then I guess this isn’t your, your LinkedIn says DC but I guess that you just haven’t updated. And I said, oh yeah, I, I haven’t updated a little bit, or at least the location.

[00:44:09] And he said, and I said, it’s funny you called ’cause I was actually just interviewing for a job at memoryBlue with Tommy Gassman’s team. And he goes, we were about to end the call. And he goes, wait, Tommy Gassman wanted you for his team. And I said, yeah, we had a good conversation. It just went to someone internal, but I think it was a, yeah.

[00:44:27] And he said, wait a second, they mentioned openness to a remote are you open to a remote position? And I said, yeah, sure. I’m you’re unemployed, you gotta don’t say no. that’s right. and he was like, okay, let me go talk to them and lemme get back to you. And so because of that conversation and that process that I went through with Tommy and with memoryBlue, I think that gave him enough confidence.

[00:44:48] To then go back to authenticate and say, Hey, I’ve got this guy who maybe has x, y, Z qualifications. Would you be open to a remote situation? And this is for a public sector SDR position, so they wanted them in DC Sure. But ultimately he called me back and he said, yeah, John, they’re interested. They wanna talk to you.

[00:45:04] and I I, it’s funny too because I told him very, I told him pretty openly, I am open to a remote role, but I want to be in an office. Hmm. I had been remote with Teraytics, I had been remote with News Watch. you get lonely. And New York apartments, absolutely. They’re small.

[00:45:20] Tell you they’re small. So neighborhoods are big. Apartments are small. Neighborhoods are big, the costs are big, but the apartments are small, so you get a little lonely. I wanted to go back to an office. I missed, frankly, what we had at. Blue. I, I missed the ping pong, honestly. And, and the bagels.

[00:45:35] And I, I missed all that. it was great. Ended up meeting people, right. We talked about that. Yep. How else? Met meeting people. Yeah. That’s Joey Cohen. Exactly, exactly. And just that general culture. And obviously commuting sucks, but like there’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a blessing and a curse to everything and Sure.

[00:45:50] Just wanted to get back to that. Wanted to work in an office in New York and I was, there were a couple of jobs that, I was applying for one that, Sam Nuna that he had, he had got a job with a company called Bisou, and he said, Hey John, I got this job. They said I could refer you. So I’m going through their process.

[00:46:07] I’m going through the, yeah, I’m going through the, oh, don’t worry. I’m going through the authenticate process. I’m like, oh, this Bibo company’s great. It’s in New York. I really wanna work there. But authenticates start to creep up on me. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. It’s, they’re talking about how their technology is used to help find kids who are being trafficked and how they are being used to support high level, crazy global intelligence operations.

[00:46:31] And that’s about as much as I can say. You know what I mean? And like they are talking about how their technology is literally saving lives in some cases, you know what I mean? And used by in a law enforcement intel community, you know what I mean? Cool crazy companies and all this stuff.

[00:46:43] And Bibo was like, yeah, we have this really fun, you know, event platform. So I wasn’t interested in the technology at all, but I was like, God, I wanna be in an office so badly. Oh yeah. and it would be great to work with Sam again. and I knew he’d get a referral bonus, which I, I didn’t wanna scoop from him, but all of a sudden I get a call as I’m deciding between these two companies, they both make me an offer.

[00:47:03] Mm-hmm. And I’m deciding between these two companies, authentic can offer me more. So authenticate really got a lot of pull. The only thing that’s really. The wedge is that I wanted to be in an office. I didn’t want to be remote. And then who calls me says Margan. And he says, John, we’ve been here before.

[00:47:21] What are you doing? The worm. It’s all about the worm. he says the worm, or not the, excuse me, he says, why haven’t you taken this job with authenticate yet? I said, I’m, I’m just thinking about it, mark. I really wanna be in an office. And he was like, okay, fair enough. He said, okay, fair enough, fair enough.

[00:47:37] But I’m gonna tell you something. If you can do be successful in cyber sales, you write your own ticket. and he said, I’m biased ’cause they’re a client. I’ll tell you that right off the bat. But they’re a sick company. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I don’t like how often you’re right in this story, but you were right.

[00:47:55] and I, I remember the final straw was I was, I called my aunt who, she’s been in business, in the corporate world for decades and she’s very successful and is someone who I, is like a mentor of mine. And she and I, and she said, okay, tell me about the two opportunities. And I told her about Bisou.

[00:48:09] I told her about authenticate, and she said, okay, well, I don’t know which one you should pick, but I’ll tell you which one you talked about for the majority of the time. And that was authenticate. I said, ah, you’re right. So I texted the person that night and took the job with authenticate. So that’s kinda the, I just remember like, 

[00:48:23] Marc Gonyea: you’re so smart.

[00:48:24] You’re so hardworking. And Chris and I have a bias to this more classic B2B than we do. I know it’s b2, g kind of the role. Then there’s nothing wrong with the event stuff, but I was just like, John, you gotta get into cyber man. It’s always changing. Mm-hmm. There’s more money involved than it. That’s part of it.

[00:48:40] But you’re, you’re, you’re, it’s just, I think it was just better, especially for your talent and your skillset versus some of these. 

[00:48:48] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Less corporate 

[00:48:49] Marc Gonyea: technologies 

[00:48:49] Jonathan Seidenwurm: always scare me. Visible. Would’ve been cool. it just would’ve been different. And there were, you always want to feel operative word, feel like you’re doing something important.

[00:48:59] Mm-hmm. Authenticate felt more important. Sure. Felt more relevant, felt like it did more things. And frankly, I didn’t even know the half the quarter of what the technology did. Right. And then you get into it and you start to realize what you peel back that onion and all of a sudden a wide world.

[00:49:15] So 

[00:49:16] Chris Corcoran: that’s much, that’s much more technical solution Oh, yeah. Than the event. 

[00:49:20] Jonathan Seidenwurm: yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Especially ’cause in the event world, you’re not gonna be talking to tech people necessarily. Right. You’re gonna be talking to marketing people, event people, which, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.

[00:49:29] But in the cyber world, we were talking to CISOs, security analysts. Mm-hmm. Right. Financial crimes, investigators, you know what I mean? detectives like that kind of a thing. So people who had a. More technical mindset, which was also cool. Hard, very difficult. But yes, I very, very, very, yeah. 

[00:49:47] Marc Gonyea: So I mean, you, I mean, you did it there too.

[00:49:49] You did multiple roles. So let’s talk about those real quick, and let’s get into, this is gonna be the most, well, you’re dropping so much knowledge, but I think the perspective you’re gonna offer on getting the sales engineering, which Chris and I have a high amount of respect for, we’ll be very fascinating for people to hear, but talk about the journey real quick and authenticate.

[00:50:04] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Sure. So, came in as an sdr. and funny enough, again, the warm, coming come into, uh, uh,I authenticate in memoryBlue had a really good relationship. So I come into, authenticate as a function of memory, blue’s recruiting arm, right? So Grant gets me the job and, and all that stuff. and then who’s our training through memoryBlue?

[00:50:23] Of course. Yeah. So we had it with, um, oh, what was it, Kelly? who’s doing memoryBlue test? Kelly Corvo. Kelly Corvo, yes. Yeah. And it’s funny ’cause she started, it’s so funny to me ’cause she started when I was feeling like a big dog at memoryBlue and she was a newer sdr. And so it’s all of a sudden like, oh, she’s training me now.

[00:50:41] You know, look at the world. Right? It’s a crazy world. and there’s another guy, Austin. Austin. Oh yeah, yeah. Who He reminds me, Austin, by the way, a ton of Joey. Joey, uh, Cohen. Yeah. Yeah. They have a very similar energy, but they they did a great job. The, the training was good, talented. Yeah. The training was good.

[00:50:58] So it was, and it was good to have that, good to get people that exposure and, and do all that stuff. And, um, it, so we, we had that, so we did all that stuff and I come in to authenticate and, frankly, as an sdr, I really was just crushing it. It was my third SDR role at that point. So I run circles around everybody.

[00:51:15] I just, yeah. Just kind of came in and, and for, think I had a good. I had the benefit of working for a memoryBlue alum, actually. Uh, Heather Bodenhamer. Yes. Yep. so she kind of taught me a little bit. I was lucky to have her who showed me the ropes a little bit and gave me a foundation of a process that I could then build on.

[00:51:33] And yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m very proud to say I hit, I hit her exceeded quota every month that I, that I was at, authenticate. So it was a good time. And the pay structure was great there. So that was really fun. and we started to move up the ranks. I was on the public sector side of things, but I was doing public sector law enforcement specifically.

[00:51:51] Okay. And the problem was I was booking 10 to 15 meetings a month. Many of them qualified, obviously, look, you’re an sdr. Sometimes they’re not. But you do what you can. And the problem is we wanted the authenticated basically put, had one major deal with a huge law enforcement, or can’t say who, but they had a huge, and had some other law enforcement deals that had come through and they were like, okay, this is where we gotta focus.

[00:52:14] We’ve gotta, gotta do a big push here. So that was why they brought me on. And basically in like between me and a couple of other SDRs who booked hundreds of law enforcement meetings, they closed like single digits. Oh wow. Yeah. Just, and not because of anything wrong with anything, it just, the law enforcement world wasn’t there yet.

[00:52:33] It’s one of those things where everybody who saw every detective, every crime analyst, everybody who saw it was like, we should be using this, but we’re not there yet. And that’s just the reality. Right. so timing’s so important. Yeah, exactly. And it’s also some industries adopt quicker than others. Yeah.

[00:52:49] And. The law enforcement world is, look, they’re just trying to recruit people right now, like your politics aside. Mm-hmm. Like, that’s what their budgets are focused on right now. Mm-hmm. So that’s just the reality of it. 

[00:53:01] so eventually, there were some internal changes and they realized that the public sector side, which is where the company really was, like for 10 years of history, that’s where they had gotten a lot of their business from.

[00:53:13] They wanted to focus on the private sector side. Ah, okay. They realized that they had a strong core of public sector organizations, lots of different companies that are lots of different branch of the military, agencies, all sorts of crazy, you know, federal and state level agencies that were working for them, or that they were selling to, which is great, but the growth had to be private sector.

[00:53:34] Mm-hmm. Right. And so they basically pulled me and another guy, Josh Gainey, who’s not a memoryBlue alumni, but I think he still deserves a Belling ’cause there you go him up. Cause he, he’s a great guy. and he is a big memoryBlue fan for whatever it’s worth. It’s worth a lot. Yeah. and they basically pulled him and I aside, cause we were the two top SDRs, and they said, okay, we’re gonna grow this team.

[00:53:55] It’s five people right now, including the two of you. You two are gonna be promoted to managers and we want it to become a team of 20. Okay. So they, we want to, we just want, we want to just get new people on board. We want them all focused on the private sector and we just want net new logos. Net new logos, net new logos, you know what I mean?

[00:54:14] And eventually we want to have SDRs who help with the growing existing accounts, and we wanna have SDRs that are inbound, responsible solely. And it, it went from this like, team of scrappy SDRs, which was, you know, good for us ’cause it meant that the territories were wide open and it, it gave us the ability to really grow in our own way.

[00:54:31] but they basically were like, we need to, we’ve seen the success. So we basically validated the success for them. Mm-hmm. And me and this guy Josh, we, we both did really well. We showed them that SDRs can work ’cause the CEO e at the, the CEO of our company, the, the founder, he was not an SDR fan. He actually did, he believed because of his last company, he believed that SDRs were not necessary to the, to the business model.

[00:54:52] Right. And look, he sold his last company for $600 million. So I don’t know anything. I remember talking about all this. Yeah. Yep. But, I think it was just the reality of whatever world that authenticate exists in, that they needed outbound, that inbound just wasn’t enough. It’s very rare that you don’t need it.

[00:55:09] Yeah. And so that was it. So we became SDR managers and they basically just said, hire people. Get a training regimen in place, whatever you were doing, teach that to other people and get them going on it and get them new territory, split it up, do all of these things. And so we basically just took this sort of amorphous SDR team and tried to add some structure to it.

[00:55:30] And this is a process that is still going on today. Josh is now the director of the team. Wow. the AE route. They eventually tapped me to be an ae. That’s great. And they basically said, okay, Josh. You are now the director of the team. So he’s, he’s great and the SDR team and authenticate is fantastic.

[00:55:45] but yeah, so that was, that was really what we did is we found processes that work and we just hammered it into people as much as we can. So it was a lot of interviewing. It was a lot of training. People still doing some SD R work on the side. We still had like teeny tiny quotas. Yeah. That we had to just, whenever we had time we were there to book meetings.

[00:56:01] But managing people was, is a crazy experience. And you were doing this remotely. Yes. So managing people remotely is a crazy experience. and managing people in general. So that was an important lesson because you learn a lot about not only how companies work, ’cause you start to move up and you start to be privy to more information and you start to see, oh, just ’cause you it, it’s one of those weird experiences where I feel like sales managers, you expect just like the a world, you expect the grass to be greener.

[00:56:28] You expect to have more power, but in many ways you have less because all of a sudden less, yeah. I don’t control my quota. Yeah. Five other people control my quota. Yeah. And yeah, I teach you what to do and yeah. I tell you what to do, but that doesn’t mean anything. Right. Like you, you’re gonna, like, at the end of the day, the the best people are gonna do well.

[00:56:49] Right. Kind of regardless of the training sometimes. and you see that, right? That’s kind of like top performers are gonna figure it out either way. Yep. And the training is gonna be there to help them and give them their foundation. But that’s something I found is that when you’re hiring people, the best people, and I’m just sort of thinking randomly of things that I learned while managing, but the best people are always just gonna be fine.

[00:57:07] And you don’t need to spend much time with them. It’s the people who are struggling. Uh, there, you know, there was a guy who I really wanted to fire. He wasn’t doing very well. He was holding, you know, selfishly he was holding back my quota. He was a good guy, but it was just, he wasn’t, he just wasn’t clicking, but he was doing all the numbers.

[00:57:23] That was the hard part. Yeah. He was doing all the numbers. And my boss said if he’s doing all the numbers, then we failed him. Something about our process has failed him. So you’re gonna spend 15 minutes a day minimum with him every day. and he became a, he recently, was made, promoted to a renewals position.

[00:57:40] Okay. So he, uh, so he turned it around. And I think that’s one of the cool things about managing is that it can be stressful and frustrating because you’re dealing with people who. Salespeople who are insane and, you’re 

[00:57:53] Chris Corcoran: trying to, the se the ses coming out, I know 

[00:57:58] Jonathan Seidenwurm: you’re trying to teach ’em something new.

[00:57:59] Maybe they’re fresh outta college. Maybe they have prior, you know, maybe they come from a completely different world. Like, we hired a cop, we hired a, a flight attendant. You know what I mean? Like, we hired all these people, right? And you’re trying to figure out who’s gonna be good and who’s not gonna be good.

[00:58:12] You never know. That’s the other problem, right? Someone can have the best experience in the world and they will not perform that cop that flight attendant where the top performers, the day they started. Wow. And I think you, and it’s, and it’s you. ’cause the people who wanna succeed, they will figure out a way to succeed.

[00:58:28] that’s what I’ve learned. Just like managing people is if you want, if someone wants to be good, they will say, get outta my way. Manager. Yeah. Right. and I think that’s really important. So managing was great. It gave us the opportunity to. It just gave the opportunity to take all the things that we had learned and, and sort of apply it, which was a lot of fun.

[00:58:46] and, you know, there was some good money that was made. but eventually, I was tapped to move up into an account executive role because, one of our other AEs just randomly left. Okay. And they were like, who’s the person who we feel would be able to just like, step right into this role? And I guess they thought it was me.

[00:59:01] So I ended up as an account executive. I did each role for I think less than a year, which is kind of funny. Wow. Yeah. 

[00:59:08] Chris Corcoran: And so you were an ae and, and what, so what was different about being an ae?

[00:59:12] Jonathan Seidenwurm: well, right off the bat there was no training. So it was back to kind of the lytics world where nobody. Nobody really told me what to do. And it was kind of that assumption like, hey, we’re, we’re putting you in this role, which I slowly realized like, oh, this is kinda a big deal. Role didn’t realize.

[00:59:37] But they basically put me in this, I had no base, nothing to blow on, nothing, just zero, right? And just had to, just had to figure it all out, you know? I got a couple of, we got a day or two of like, Hey, this is how we general conduct that we want from people.

[00:59:57] But other than that, it’s really just figure it out. we have a question, like go to the other, ask one of the other AEs ’cause they’re the ones who know. was, you know, authenticate was a very developed, very established company, but there was still a scrappy element to it ‘ cause they were growing really rapidly.

[01:00:11] Sure. And when you’re in that growth mode, things are constantly changing. So, and to be honest, it was hard. and I really, I felt in some ways, but I struggled in others. and I realized fully that I didn’t want to be an account executive anymore. I didn’t wanna be in that pure sales world anymore.

[01:00:28] because, and I think this is something that’s important for a lot of people in their sales career, is that you have to, I’m getting very introspective right now. No, please. This is what people wanna hear. Yeah. Yeah. is that you have to realize the sales world is very broad. It’s not just SDR to account executive to VP of sales.

[01:00:46] You know what I.

[01:00:47] it’s a whole slew of different things from sales operations to sales engineering, to even marketing on some level to, to all these different things, right? The sales strategy, there’s so much that goes into it training, right? And you have to find what you like and what you are good at, and then you have to go that way, otherwise you’re gonna burn out and you’re not gonna be successful.

[01:01:05] Mm-hmm. And I was trying to pursue a path that I didn’t wanna do. I just hadn’t realized it yet and wasn’t, fully, and I didn’t have the full aptitude. Right. There is sort of like a, here is this almost like coldness that you have to have to be really good at stuff. And I don’t mean it in a negative way, I just mean at the end of the day, we talk about wanting to help people solve their problem, but at the end of the day, I wanna help you solve your problem as a salesperson, but you have to pay me for it.

[01:01:31] Money in. Put that money in. Exactly. And you have to bridge that gap of you be great at building rapport, you can be great at book and meeting. But if you can’t ask for money, at the end of the day, you can’t hold clients accountable. You can’t do that thing that feels uncomfortable where you’re trying to get someone to do that thing that they don’t wanna do, which is give you money.

[01:01:49] Right. Unless they’re like, unless they’re saying, oh, this is great. They give you money. Great. And they, they buy the product. That’s great. Right. Even clients who wanna buy the product, you have to stay on them. You have to keep them accountable. You have to keep them honest. You have to figure out early if they’re really interested or not.

[01:02:03] I prefer, prefer to say it is usually have a balanced mindset where you win, don’t get too high, you lose, don’t get too high, you have to just, okay, I close the deal. Great. And the best salespeople in the world that I’ve met, When they close a deal, they’re not even not excited.

[01:02:18] Cause they know that whatever dollar amount they just closed is now a dollar less in their pipeline. Yep. And they’ve gotta fill, cause tomorrow at the end of the week when we do the pipeline review, boss is gonna ask, how’s the pipeline loan? Great. You close that deal. What’d you fill it with? Right. It is a never-ending battle.

[01:02:36] And I think some people find a lot of control in that where they find, oh, if I need more pipeline, I can just go out and prospect. I can just go out and talk to people and get and and do some networking, send out some emails. You know what I mean? And I can build that pipeline. And some people look at that and I think this is what I started to find.

[01:02:52] And some people look at that and you start to feel this like someone, someone chasing me. You know what I mean? Some people are like, I’m running towards something. Other people feel they’re running away from something. And I started to feel like I was running away from something as opposed to towards something.

[01:03:04] But I. Doing demos and talking about the technology and learning about it and chatting with these ridiculously smart people in the world, even when they were making me feel incredibly stupid. And lemme tell you, for people in the cyber world, they know this. Security people love to make, they love doing that make you feel so stupid.

[01:03:21] They love to tell me how something they know nothing about doesn’t work or does work or whatever. And that’s probably the best part of the job is when you get to say actually. But, so I, I, and I start, and at this point I was doing demos and I was working with the sales engineers at company and I had discovered what the sales engineering looked like and a little bit.

[01:03:43] And right before I had started the account executive job, or actually just as I was starting it, I decided I wanted to get a, learn more about just security in general. Learn more about the cybersecurity world. Not like the industry necessarily, but the more technical side. Hey, I wanted to be able to like go punch for punch with some client, with prospects.

[01:04:01] I wanted to be able to lean less on the, on the ses, you know? and I thought it was so cool when they would get on and they would just be able to talk to these people. And I, I just thought that was so cool. And so Istarted going down this path to get professional certifications.

[01:04:16] It’s called compt Security Plus Compt is a great organization with tons of certifications that if you’re looking to get into the cyber world or technology world in general, tons of certifications. Um, great. it was really hard. it turns out when you don’t have that knowledge base, you and you’re trying to build, it me like eight months to get this certification.

[01:04:37] and, but, but passed actually as of February. February. Got it. Basically, as. I just started looking for sales engineers to, realized as I was going through this studying process that what I really wanted was to be a sales engineer. Mm-hmm. I realized that where I was happiest in my job is when I was doing demos, when I was talking about technology, when I was sort of going back and forth with people, and especially as that knowledge was growing was only becoming more interesting, only becoming more enjoyable, only becoming more, uh, rewarding.

[01:05:08] Right. Cocktail Kevin? Yeah. 

[01:05:11] Chris Corcoran: One of our, one of our very first clients. Oh, wow. he was a sales engineer and he just loved it. He, he’s like, my job is, I just go to cocktail. He’s like, it’s a virtual cocktail party, so we just talk technology and the impact on business. He’s like, I, I can talk about this stuff all day long.

[01:05:27] He, he, he literally loved it. Yeah. Yeah. We called him Cocktail Kevin. Cocktail Kevin. 

[01:05:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And then for you though, you have this appreciation with, that’s why you gonna be so good in roll. 

[01:05:36] Jonathan Seidenwurm: As an SDR working 

[01:05:38] Marc Gonyea: with the ae. So inside the mind of an ae. Right. Yeps are crazy. Yeah. They know they’re crazy. Pass over leads and then then, and then coach managing.

[01:05:47] Yeah. So when your manager, different perspective than a manager before. Yeah. Right. And then, and then you like you understand the whole process. Yeah. You gotta understand climate

[01:06:02] Chris Corcoran: I mean, so you pre engineers their goal, particularly if you have engineer. Um,appreciate sales. I’ve worked with some SEs in my career who they were just super technical. Mm-hmm. Just like ask questions, give an answer, but I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna understand the process of, of winning the business.

[01:06:22] Yeah. They just feel like Well, my job here is just to answer questions. Yeah. Versus I’ve worked with other presales engineers who were like, okay, let me know when it, when you want me to take the ball and I’m just gonna, I’ll throw it back to you. Sales engineer had for it. They would drive the process, but they would, and it’s like, I can’t go on video club too.

[01:06:45] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yeah. Yeah. Having the, having the good rapport and the good back and forth, because I think one of the big problem that. To your point, right? When SES and AEs work together, there’s friction sometimes. Sure. And it can be a, it’s very awkward. Oh, when do I pass the ball? Sure. When do I step in? Is the AE just bringing the, the SE on the call to be a resource SE, right?

[01:07:08] Is the, does the SE talk over the AE and kind of make them feel like they dunno anything? You know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it’s a balance. but you may point, especially in the technology world, when you are talking to clients who, prospects who want hear about your technology, they don’t wanna hear account executive cause they know correctly that, that AE doesn’t know what they’re talking Right.

[01:07:30] And, or, or knows enough to seem like they know what they’re talking about. And that’s, that’s part, that’s what job is for. Right. Job.

[01:07:41] That’s why you have an se. Right. And that’s the, that was the big decision for me was would I rather memorize port and protocol numbers for computers or would I rather make cold calls? They’re both hard to be honest with you. So you just have to decide which one you’d rather do. Would you rather study really hard to learn a bunch of stuff?

[01:08:00] Or would you rather just get out there and hustle? Right. It’s just a different mindset for different people,for sure, realize which way I wanted to go. The 

[01:08:07] Chris Corcoran: cool thing, I’ve seen pairs ae sales engineer pairs follow each other Oh, wow. To different companies. They’re like, they, they had a good 2 man going So they would just go and they would go from company to company.

[01:08:20] Company ’cause they knew each other. That’s awesome. It’s like a quarterback receiver type. It, it’s, it’s very real. Yeah. So that’s good. so you, this is new as of three days. Yeah. Talk to us about how you’re. 

[01:08:33] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Yeah. So just to, just to cap and authenticate, I was, this is very honest. I was struggling in the executive role.

[01:08:40] I, nobody thought badly of me, but I wasn’t producing the numbers. Realizing,

[01:08:50] I, that’s why I started to look for se you for three years. 

[01:08:54] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Get 

[01:08:55] Jonathan Seidenwurm: a cup copy there. No, it was, and it’s, and it’s, it’s sad because I did roles right? The warm, sometimes you get put in a different role and that’s okay, everybody, but people were very supportive. There was almost an se opportunity at Authenticate that I was gonna, that they really wanted to put me into.

[01:09:12] But they, the person they ended up hiring had 15 years pre-sales experience. It’s like he gets the job, that’s totally fine. so I started applying to places and I. Was just sending out applications and you know, the, you know, look, it’s I mean you guys have been in the top seat for a long time, but the cold application game is crazy, right?

[01:09:30] Because people are, the way job descriptions are is just, it’s this game that’s set up for everybody to fail, unfortunately. ’cause it’s like, oh, you need five years of experience. Oh, you need three years experience. Oh, you need two years experience and you need this tech skill and this tech skill and we would like it if you have this, this, this, and this and this.

[01:09:44] But it would be great if you, and you’re looking at these lists of things and you’re like, ah, you’re trying to figure out how you fit in and you’re trying to figure out can I stretch this thing that I know, I recognize that acronym. Is that good enough? You know? and so I was just sending out applications.

[01:09:58] Whoever would take me, I had authenticate who was a mentor of mine guy.

[01:10:06] Here’s, he’s feeding the company. Just go, go this route and do these things. Even if they don’t have a job, just send an application to them. Just send it to whatever email you can find, you know? and

[01:10:23] it was just numbers thing. And it was, it was, it was really sad. 

[01:10:27] but a week earlier I had gotten the call from CrowdStrike. They had, they, I couldn’t believe I was literally, I, I was reading the email. I was reading it over and over and over again.

[01:10:38] When they sent me this email. I was like, I was, that’s awesome. I was so, I couldn’t believe that they had sent me this email to the point where I was going into the, like the back end of the email to check the certificate mm-hmm, to make sure that this wasn’t a fake email or a scam or something. And I was like, looking up people, I was doing all the, I was like, this person legit, is this legit?

[01:10:57] I was like checking IP addresses to make sure everything was, everything was legit. You know what I mean? and yeah, and I started interviewing with them, had a couples, so it like this weird position where I’m also on the upswing for another situation. And then went through a couple more rounds, had to do a, a tech interview where I had to, you answer technology questions.

[01:11:22] I had never done anything like that, so that was very different. it’s interesting the difference between the se type of interview and the sales type of interview where I feel like in a sales type of interview, you’re trying to find like XFactor in a person that would make them successful in sales.

[01:11:36] Whereas in an SE interview you’re kind of figuring out does this person have enough of a fa, is this person likable enough that people will wanna talk to them? And then do they know enough about the technology that we can at least teach them the rest of it? Mm-hmm. and so I went through that and then I had to do a, a final tech challenge where I had to, learn how to hack from one virtual machine to another and then demonstrate it live.

[01:11:57] I had to show off like a live malware incident, basically. Mm-hmm. which is something I had never done before. And frankly, if I was still working on authenticate, I don’t know if I would’ve had the time to learn it. Mm-hmm. Because I, I had to learn basically how to become a penetration tester in a week.

[01:12:13] and that was pretty hard. But that’s a big part of sales in general. But being an SE, um, is learning. Right. That was the X factor that I think they’re always looking for in the se world. AP for learning. And something that I realized about salespeople in general, the salespeople I know who have been really successful.

[01:12:29] I mean, two of you former bosses that I’ve had, right. A lot of very successful salespeople that I know they’re always trying to learn. Mm-hmm. They’re always trying to learn something. Very few salespeople are not curious. And that expands to basically every, every of the sales. Yeah. After, it was interesting cause everybody on the team that Ike has a technical background.

[01:12:53] Oh, interesting. Yeah. Everybody has a security background, a networking background or some IT background. I am the only person with a poor sales background, at least on my specific team. There’s one or two other people and I know a couple of people, but it’s less of a traditional route that I realize they go from AE to se cause of that technical bridge.

[01:13:09] Mm-hmm. So it’s not quite as natural for a lot of people because a lot of people went into sales, they didn’t want learn those subject matter. They go out and hustle. Right? Yep. but yeah, went through the interview process. They said that they were really, they, they said that that less traditional but still very relevant background was one of the things that was attractive to them.

[01:13:27] And they don’t want people who are just gonna, to your point, I’m just technical, I just know stuff. They want someone who You know, can keep the conversation sales minded. Right. Who can if you’re the objection Exactly. And bring it back on. Exactly. Yeah. And I’ve, having worked with ses, it’s a dice roll.

[01:13:44] It’s a coin flip. Yep. You don’t know what you’re gonna get. And you can have an SE who’s awesome. Right. But if they are just trying to answer the question as much detail as possible, you can hear the client’s attention span going away. Yep. You know, and you as the AE are sitting there like, ah, you know, you could have said like two things to answer this question, but instead you decided to tell them about every feature that we had.

[01:14:05] You know what I mean? The candy spilling, candy spilling. Exactly. And sometimes it’s best to, or even, or like I think about like throwing spaghetti at the wall, sometimes you don’t need to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Sometimes we can just end the call. Yep. And that’s okay. We’re not gonna close every, but we don’t need to bombard them with features.

[01:14:21] So they didn’t like the first 80% of the product. The last 20% save. So, I do think having that joint background, I’m great. I’m very, uh, excited to see how that plays out at, across. That’s great. 

[01:14:34] Chris Corcoran: So you one or stable? Yeah, 

[01:14:39] Jonathan Seidenwurm: so I’m, it’s a three month ramp here. I’m doing, I’m very excited learning. Yeah. I’m, I’m so excited to not be thrown into the fire.

[01:14:48] And they’ve told me by the way, that even after three months, you’ll still be thrown into the fire because it’s that broad of product world. but it will be a, it’ll be three to four a actually that you’re paired 

[01:14:58] So all commercial smb, so all companies. I think the, I think it’s 300 or so. Okay. 

[01:15:05] Chris Corcoran: Northeast City or. 

[01:15:09] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Are you in the west? I’m working west coast hours. Oh, oh, cool. Yeah. So 12 to eight is what I’ll do it in the morning. Rock in the morning. Exactly.

[01:15:20] Kinda like bit less of a morning person 

[01:15:26] Marc Gonyea: background. Biggest day. I hope so. You know, as you’ve progressed into this role, cause you’re gonna be so different than everyone else. That’s the hope. There’s, there’s no, there’s always gonna be people. You’ve been doing the past five years mean you’re only five years outta school.

[01:15:41] You know, you look at memoryBlue, August of 2018. 

[01:15:44] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Been that long. No. Feels like it’s been a long time. What I’m, what I’m really hoping for is, there’s often a lot of friction between AEs and SEs. Yes. Mm-hmm. And I’m hoping that. And for nobody’s fault. It’s just the reality of it, you know, the, the competition or the priorities can be a little competing sometimes.

[01:16:03] Yep. I’m hoping that having a little bit of an AE background, but being in the se role, role will help bridge that gap. Have a good relationship, understand where the AEs are coming from, be able to work with them very well. Dude, love you, man. That’s, that’s what I’m hoping for. All right. Well, 

[01:16:18] Marc Gonyea: Jonathan, that’s great.

[01:16:20] Thank you. 

[01:16:20] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Thank you. This was fantastic. This 

[01:16:22] Marc Gonyea: was awesome. No, you so much fun. No, you dropped a lot, lots of perception of perceptions, perspective

[01:16:26] 

[01:16:26] Jonathan Seidenwurm: it’s hard because you do have to have that, you do need to know stuff. It’s not like a Yes. You get to have that aptitude 

[01:16:31] Chris Corcoran: and that interest in technology. There’s some salespeople that want nothing to do with it.

[01:16:34] Jonathan Seidenwurm: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s, that’s why sales is such a beautiful thing. The barrier to entry is low. And that’s a good thing. It gives people opportunity. That’s one thing Tommy Gassman you already told me, I asked him, Hey, you’ve been at memoryBlue for 10 years. Why? And he said, because memoryBlue, what for better or for worse is obsessed with giving people chances.

[01:16:51] They take chances on people. And I think that’s awesome. And the sales world is just the way that people who might not have a crazy degree or a crazy hard skill can get into really cool companies and do really impactful work and make better lives for themselves. 

[01:17:06] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Look at you. You hire a cop and a travel agent.

[01:17:08] Yeah. Nothing wrong with those professions. Exactly. Those people wanted to change. They 

[01:17:10] Jonathan Seidenwurm: wanted to do something different and they, and they worked hard and they found success and I think that’s amazing. So look, I think of sales as a funnel. it’s huge. Opening the people who are successful, it’s a lot less.

[01:17:20] Mm-hmm. ’cause it’s hard, easy to get into though. And I think that’s a good thing. Fewer more things should have a lower barrier to entry, you know, agree with that. Yeah, I agree with that 

[01:17:27] Chris Corcoran: for sure. Very good. Well 

[01:17:29] Jonathan Seidenwurm: good, great catching up with you, Jonathan. This was awesome. Thank you, guys, so much. Thank you.