Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 39: Patrick Stillmun – Trust the Process

Patrick Stillmun didn’t go into sales because it was trendy or cool, he went into it with a curious mind and a humble approach. He took a leap of faith more than anything else.

That approach, along with his experience as a college athlete, kept him coachable and willing to learn from successful people. In short, he focused on the process over the end results. Today, he is a stand-out Regional Account Manager at cybersecurity firm Sonatype…and the process is paying off.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Patrick explains why discipline and competitiveness are crucial for sales success, why understanding the world of cybersecurity is worth the challenge, and how he learned to play the long-game despite the easy allure of shortsighted career choices.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Patrick Stillmun

What He Does: Patrick Stillmun is a Regional Account Manager at Sonatype.

Company: Sonatype

Noteworthy: Persistence, devotion, discipline, and open-mindedness are fundamental components of Patrick Stillmun’s success.

Exit Year from memoryBlue: 2017

Months at memoryBlue: 17

Alumni Path: Hired Out

Where to Find Pat: Linkedin

Key Insights

⚡Cybersecurity is not complicated, but it is challenging. SDRs in memoryBlue are divided into two groups: Those who want nothing to do with cyber security and those ready to give it a shot. As a member of the second group, Patrick was willing to embrace the process of understanding it. ‘‘I went into it having no idea about it, I just went in with a completely open mind, and my first client was a security client. And so I said, you know what? This is cool. I don’t know anything about it, but I always found it interesting. So, once you get in and do understand it, there’s a group of people willing to listen to you.’

 

⚡ Playing the long game pays off.  A couple of rejections marked Patrick’s path from memoryBlue to Sonatype. He came a long way from being an SDR to becoming an ISR. It was all worth it, Patrick states. ”Holding out for this position rather than taking the short-term jump has paid off huge.”

 

⚡Our memory of a call is so much different than what actually happened. Patrick keeps his skills sharp by listening to his call recordings. ”I am very comfortable listening to myself on the phone. And it’s so funny listening to people say I hate listening to my calls or I get uncomfortable when I listen to my own calls, and I’m like, well, how do you get better? How do you know what you did right? How do you know what is actually working?”

Episode Highlights

In sales, as in sports, competitiveness and discipline drive you to success.

”Sometimes you do have to take it personally and fight for yourself. You do have help and assistance, but it really comes down to you to get the job done. Another aspect is the discipline to do things every single day, follow instructions, and be coachable if someone tells you this is the way to do things.

Learning from other people is a huge part of the job.

”So, going back to the coachability thing. You get there, and you’ve got to go in with an open mindset of saying, okay, I don’t know. I barely know what software sales is. I don’t know how to make a sale. So, I listen to a call recording, and I heard someone ask a question. I go, no way they’re going to answer that. And they come back and say exactly what you want them to. And it’s like, all right, I guess this stuff works.

It was the learning process of just getting through those and understanding the questions I get the best answers from, and picking and choosing questions that other people say and the way they deliver. Learning from other people is a huge part of the job. There’s no copy and paste answer to everything, but you can pick and choose little things from this person, from that person and implement it into your day.”

The importance of understanding the technology.

”I was very question heavy sometimes. I ask a lot of yes or no questions. And then my favorite one, I lead someone down a path, and then I’d ask, what do you want that process to look like going forward? If I could get someone to that point, that was my favorite thing. I think I had a pretty good understanding of the technology, and by no means would I call myself an expert, but I would spend a lot of time reading about, learning about the space. I didn’t have a technical background, but I could understand the technology and potential pains within the technology to talk about it.”

Don’t discredit yourself with an irrelevant talk.

”If you’re saying something irrelevant to somebody, you’re wasting both of your time, and you’re discrediting yourself immediately. I think asking questions helps hide the fact that I don’t understand something in the vast world of cyber security, if someone’s talking about something you don’t get, just asking a question before saying something could make you save yourself from sounding stupid on the phone.”

Transitioning from a sales development role into a full cycle closing role.

”The sales development role sets you up so nice, so great. I mean, it’s so many of the same principles. You still do have to be an SDR for yourself and set your own meetings and find good companies, build your own lists and take them, and just instead of passing them off, you keep going with it. One of the biggest differences, though, is being a bit more knowledgeable of the sales cycle and why people make the decisions they do, why they pick one tool over another, where budget gets set, and legal things. It’s not like rocket science or anything like that. You just have to learn it and get through it as much as you can.”

What’s more important, a better company or a better manager?

”It depends on your goal. It depends on what you’re looking to get out of it. If you’re looking to play the long game, if you want to be somewhere for awhile, it’s gotta be the company. If you’re looking to grow with the company, if the company offers you a stock option or something along those lines, you got to say, maybe my manager is not the best right now, but I’m going to be here for awhile.  But, if you’re comfortable enough with the company and the way it’s going, and you know it’s not going to crash or anything like that, then yeah, I would say that the manager makes a much bigger difference.”

Sales should not be taken for granted.

”People don’t have a real process. They don’t take the time to understand what they’re doing. They just get into sales because they think it’s cool and fun. It’s so far from that, it’s so far from just being able to talk to people, and people give the answer. And knowing what I went through and knowing how hard I’ve worked to get to the job that I have now, it’s a little bit insulting hearing someone just feel like they can waltz into the position and they’re gonna kick ass right away just because they’re the man or something like that.”

Transcript:

Pat Stillmun: [00:00:00] If you’re saying something irrelevant to somebody, you’re wasting both of your times and you’re discrediting yourself immediately. So I think maybe  asking questions, really helped in this role specifically, understanding the broad scope of an organization from why people are doing things, the way that they’re doing, who else is involved, who else should be involved in the conversation? Patrick Stillmun in the house. Pat, how you doing, man?

[00:01:12] Doing great. How about you Marc?

[00:01:13] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:13] I’m doing great. It’s wonderful to have you.

[00:01:15] Chris Corcoran: [00:01:15] Pat. Thanks for joining us. Great seeing you again.

[00:01:17] Pat Stillmun: [00:01:17] Yeah, thanks Chris. Happy to be here.

[00:01:18] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:18] Alright, well, let’s hop into it. So Pat, it’ll be four years in June, since you departed the confines of memoryBlue.

[00:01:26] Pat Stillmun: [00:01:26] I guess so when you put it that way. It doesn’t feel like it, but.. 

[00:01:29] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:29] “It doesn’t feel like it.”

[00:01:30] Pat Stillmun: [00:01:30] Does not.

[00:01:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:31] But before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about you. So, currently you’re a Regional Account Manager at Sonatype.

[00:01:38] Pat Stillmun: [00:01:38] I am. Yes.

[00:01:39] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:39] And you started with us, Strata Catholic University, but we’re going to go back a little farther. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself, where you grew up  and then we’ll work our way to the present day.

[00:01:49] Pat Stillmun: [00:01:49] Yeah. So I am from the Philadelphia area, just North, a tiny little town called Jenkintown. Graduated from my town’s public school with 48 people in my class. One being my twin sister and one being my cousin. So that’s 5% of my class right there that I was related to. Very interesting little place.

[00:02:05] it’s just two miles north of Philadelphia, so it’s not like I grew up in the middle of nowhere. It’s just a weird little half a square mile cutout. 

[00:02:11] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:11] Pat, how do you go to a public high school that’s two miles north of Philly with only 48 people in your class.  That doesn’t make any sense to me.

[00:02:19] Pat Stillmun: [00:02:19] Just a weird little town. The whole thing is half a square mile, it’s just a weird cutout in between two huge school. Like within a couple miles of me where two school districts that were, a couple of thousand people bake or just a weird, little outline in the middle of the border there. So I don’t know the full history of it, but that’s it.

[00:02:35]Marc Gonyea: [00:02:35] That sounds about as efficient as Ben Simmons, a free point stroke.

[00:02:40]Pat Stillmun: [00:02:40] It’s weird. You graduate high school with the same people you went to elementary school and kindergarten with, and it doesn’t really feel like you ever, it’s a very small and you meet all the same people. And so I never really got the branch out until I left, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to  get out of the area and end up at that Catholic University down in, DC.

[00:02:57] So from there I obviously went to Catholic and played sports all through high school and everything and wanted to continue doing that. So I had the chance to play football at Catholic, and that was a great experience. All my closest friends from college and everything, all my roommates throughout college,  we’re all on the football team there. So it was a lot of fun. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

[00:03:13] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:13] So what, position did you play?

[00:03:15] Pat Stillmun: [00:03:15] I played corner. I was fast back in the day.

[00:03:18] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:18] Stillman Island.

[00:03:20] Pat Stillmun: [00:03:20] I wouldn’t say that. I’m not in any kind of position of brag about my playing career in college. It was not very prolific, but it was fun. I had a great time.

[00:03:28] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:28] Were you a lockdown corner?

[00:03:30] Pat Stillmun: [00:03:30] I was a coverage guy, for sure. Not much of a tackler. More kind of off zone and break down rather than pressman and trail and get in people’s faces and things like that.

[00:03:40] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:40] I like the X’s and O’s. Breaking it down for us.

[00:03:43] Pat Stillmun: [00:03:43] Oh, yeah. Oh yeah,

[00:03:44] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:44] So did you play all four years?

[00:03:46] Pat Stillmun: [00:03:46] I did. Yeah. I started as a quarterback and then me being 5’9 couldn’t really see over 6’3 offensive lineman. So I had to find a different spot to go.

[00:03:54] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:54] There you go. Very good.

[00:03:56] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:56] Don’t be so modest, man. You played sports for four years in college. That’s a tremendous undertaking. No matter what level you play.

[00:04:02] Pat Stillmun: [00:04:02] Thank you. Yeah. I’ve always, like the routine of it. I like the competitiveness of it, and I think it helped me keep a structure to my day and structure in my,  academics and everything like that. I coming out of high school with all the freedom and not really ever being far outside of the tiny little half square mile, I grew up in having just huge chunks of time in college and being away for the first time was going to be what’s a little daunting to me. I didn’t think I would get much done. So having at least the structure of practice at this time workouts at this time gives sort of natural couple hour breaks in the day where I say, all right, this is my window to get my work done.

[00:04:34] And that helped me  do that naturally rather than leaving 18, 19 year old me to be disciplined enough to block those times off for myself. So it helped,

[00:04:42] Chris Corcoran: [00:04:42] what parallels can you draw with sports in sales?

[00:04:47] Pat Stillmun: [00:04:47] I think the natural ones, the competitiveness acts. They’re being competitive. being in sales, you have to sometimes take things personally. if someone is leaning somewhere, sort of tool outside of you, if you just say, that makes sense. If that tool is a better fit for you anyway, sometimes you do have to  take it personally and fight for yourself.

[00:05:03] And you do have help and assistance, but  it really comes down to you to get the job done. and another aspect of it is just the discipline to do things every single day, follow instructions and be coachable if someone tells you this is the way to do things. and it’s right, trust me, I’ve done it longer than you have.

[00:05:17] I’ve seen the success and this is how it works. And just being open to that and saying, yeah, I trust you. I trust the way, what you’re saying is correct. And I’m going to do it exactly the way that you say  is I think is another huge, important thing about it. And I think that comes into play big time with my time at memoryBlue.

[00:05:32] if you want to do the sports comparison, didn’t play a ton of defensive back before I got  to Catholic. So  I came in there pretty much fresh out of play. it’s very different playing DB in high school than it is to college. So there’s a lot more footwork, a lot of technique, a lot of coverages and things that you need to learn.

[00:05:47] and once you start kind of getting the hang of it you think, okay, I got this, I know what I’m doing. And then, if you start to kind of just make stuff up and do your own sort of technique, you have your own ideas about how things are supposed to be done. You learn very quickly that,  you don’t know as much as you think you do, even though, you might have a little bit of success at first.  it’s not going to be a good repeatable process. And that’s something that I continue to learn now. 

[00:06:05] I think during my time at memoryBlue, at first I was just ready. All right. I have no idea what I’m doing. This is great. I’ve got all these teachers, this is awesome. Let’s learn.  Let’s keep going and tell me what to do. And then once you start to get the hang of it, then you start thinking,  I was definitely guilty of this, that thinking like, okay I know what I’m doing. I know how to get meetings.  I’ve been doing this for four months. I’ve got this. I know what I need to know. And start  making up your own stuff or like, I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to learn anything. And then, You get smacked in the face with, a month or two of  bad numbers. 

[00:06:32] And you’re like how did that happen? What happened there? And then you look back and then you realize, well, I just deviated from what is right. And then, you continue to learn and just talk to your managers and everybody to talk to you  about what’s working, what’s not. And then you need to get back on the right track.

[00:06:45] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:45] We wanna come back to memoryBlue.  but  before we do that. tell us a little bit about Catholic. So you’re playing ball and then what’d you major in?

[00:06:52] Pat Stillmun: [00:06:52] I majored in economics. I was always a good student. I was never a incredible student or anything like that, but I always got my work done. And I had no idea what I wanted to major in, but I’d taken an economics class in high school and really liked it. And so I took  first semester, freshman year at college thinking, maybe I’ll give this a shot.

[00:07:07] And it was the first thing that I really enjoyed academically. Like I didn’t dread doing the work. Like I actually found it interesting, like reading about it, like writing about it, things like that. So thought, What better major to pick than the first thing that really is interesting really makes sense to you. So pick that and it was a really great major, I think.

[00:07:22] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:22] What do they call it the dismal science?

[00:07:25] Is it just a me thing? I hear that from time to time, the business broadcast news journalist and they called economics, the dismal science Pat.

[00:07:31] Pat Stillmun: [00:07:31] it’s morbid.

[00:07:33] that’s interesting.  as you learn about it in school and  wouldn’t call myself an expert or anything like that, but like the read about it and it’s interesting. There’s never a right answer. It’s not a science,  they call it an art and a science.

[00:07:43] So you havepeople that have been studying it for century or for decades and decades, and they’re  completely different takes on the same exact question. And they use similar data sets to backup their stance and come to completely different conclusions. So I guess the key, the farther you go, there’s no answer. I guess that can be pretty maddening. that makes sense.

[00:08:01]Marc Gonyea: [00:08:01] I like it. That’s a good explanation. All right. So when you got done, what’d you think you’re going to do? You graduated.

[00:08:05] Pat Stillmun: [00:08:05] I had no idea and that is one of the reasons that led me to memoryBlue. But I came out and a lot of the econ jobs that people tell you about and that you start looking toward are  all over the map.  You go to a foreign country for two, three years, and you’re either collecting data or studying something or working with all different groups in different areas.

[00:08:24] If you want to do like macro economics and,  I thought I wanted to go into things like integral development of like communities and third world countries and things like that was interesting to me at the time. And then you learn that, okay, well, you got to live in those countries for four or five years.

[00:08:36] And then on top of that, you have to be going to school. And then on top of that, you have three, four, five, six years of school, and that’s sometimes six years of Tet as well. On top of that before you even start working. a lot more money to pay and a lot more schooling to do.

[00:08:51] like I said I liked school, but I was never a great student or anything like that and was just ready to get into a working routine. So as I started looking into econ jobs, I was faced with more questions than I was answered.

[00:09:01] So from there, I  had no idea. So I was just,  applying all over the place. I had done an internship, with enterprise when I was in college enterprise rent a car and it was fine. but it was tough. It was long days and it was tiring. it was good, hard work  but it kinda got me to thinking about sales and there some sales aspects of it and I enjoyed it and I did well with that. So I thought, you know what, maybe I’ll start applying to a couple sales jobs. And then from there, I went back to check to make sure that the story is right.

[00:09:26] this is a couple of weeks or a couple of months before graduation. I still didn’t know what I was going to be doing. I was stressed out. And then I got a LinkedIn message from Libby Gladys and had no idea.  there’s the first bell. this here I am no idea what I’m going to do, maybe sales, but I don’t even know how to get into sales.

[00:09:42] I don’t know. I have no idea. so I got a LinkedIn message from Libby saying, “Hey, saw your internship. we’ve had some people from Catholic before thought you might be a good fit. Would you be interested in a conversation?” And me having no idea what I wanted to do said “Why not?

[00:09:55] Let’s take a conversation.” And from my memory of the way it went on the phone was, I have no idea what I, what I want to do. I don’t even know if sales is what I want to do. And Libby basically said, “Great. Take this as a six month trial, if you like it, great. Keep going. If you don’t no harm, no foul step away and find something else.”

[00:10:12] And I said, “Sure I have no reason not to take an offer like that.” So thought about it for awhile and wanted to see if there was anything else. And then said, you know what? I think this is as good as it’s going to  get. Worst case scenario is I have a job for six months that pays well and in the area that I want to be in and then can continue to look if I really don’t like it.

[00:10:28] And again, no harm, no foul if I want to step away. And then actually ended up liking it way more than I thought it would. So here we are four years later, still in the software sales gig.

[00:10:37]Marc Gonyea: [00:10:37] Yeah. And you’re doing great take us back to starting at memoryBlue.  so you’re coming out of school, econ major, no real sales, like background sort of,  an enterprise. What do you remember from like the first day,  first time on the job?

[00:10:50] Pat Stillmun: [00:10:50] walked into the wrong building, back in my day, we had the HQ and then the boon office. And I missed the part of the email when I was supposed to be in Boone. So I just on my GPS or whatever, typed in memoryBlue. And we went to the first office and everyone’s looking around at me. And I remember I started on the  same day as Aaron Anderson.

[00:11:07] there we go. And another bell who was just on the show and I’m like yeah. and talking to her,  for whatever reason, she just gave off  the vibe that she had been there for a couple months at that point.  I’m talking to her like, Oh, do I go here?

[00:11:19] do you know where I go? And she goes, that’s my first day too, after answering like four or five questions perfectly already. So very. Shows the level of preparation.

[00:11:28] Marc Gonyea: [00:11:28] Not prepared.

[00:11:29] Pat Stillmun: [00:11:29] But yeah, exactly. I mean, if Aaron yeah.

[00:11:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:11:32] You being the college lacrosse player and the college football player.

[00:11:34] Pat Stillmun: [00:11:34] Yeah. Or D1, D3, very different too. Right.  I was going to say the difference between females and males.

[00:11:42] they all work. but yeah, first thing was that I had heard some horror stories about people taking jobs and it was, not what they had. It did not live up to the hype, anything like that. you walk in and people don’t know who you are, what you’re supposed to do.

[00:11:55] There’s no plan for you or anything like that. And so that’s what I was, kind of hypersensitive of when I first started was like, I want to walk in and feel like I’m welcome. I’m supposed to be here. There’s a plan for me, not just people showing up and, expecting me to just figure it out.  (last place I got off) 

[00:12:09] So after getting over the initial shock of being in the wrong office and I forget who someone kind of escorted me over to the annex over there, the Boone office That’s putting it kindly. 

[00:12:19] No I loved it over there. I absolutely loved it over there. it was fun, 

[00:12:22] Chris Corcoran: [00:12:22] Pat, for our listeners. Could you please just describe Boone?

[00:12:28] Pat Stillmun: [00:12:28] Hot. always a million degrees in there. I think the max capacity of that place was supposed to be like 15 people and we probably had 45 in there. I liked it a lot that. it was a separate office space in a building  across the parking lot from the main office and you two were not there, you were in the main office.

[00:12:51] And so it was just the DMs and their teams. it was fun. I mean, it was very kind of self-governing. It was, everybody is  doing their own thing. And  I really just liked the,  different energy. a lot of buzz, a lot of people basketball nets around.

[00:13:02] And I think that was back in the days when we still had a keg in the office. I don’t know if that’s still kosher or anything, but I don’t know. We can cut that out if we don’t want that projected, but.

[00:13:12] Marc Gonyea: [00:13:12] no, that’s fine.

[00:13:13] Pat Stillmun: [00:13:13] it was a lot of fun.  to this day that was still the most energetic office I’ve ever been at, was the Boone office, which was, which is really cool.

[00:13:20] Marc Gonyea: [00:13:20] So for those listening, we had space problems because we were growing., thankfully .We could have good space or a space that we liked, at least in the building we were in. So, we thought it’d be great to get space, literally. I don’t know, 200 yards away in the parking lot in the building right next door.

[00:13:37] we could use it as an incubator for Mishler, Michael Mishler hit the bell for fish, daddy to kind of build out his team and kind of be like a mini launching point. I believe. but it did have its own energy and I would over there every so often, Chris rarely would over there. And when I went over there  anybody wanting to talk about it was how fricking hot it was.

[00:13:57] Pat Stillmun: [00:13:57] Well, there was a stretch in the winter one time where the teeth broke and it was the op I was wearing a winter jacket for a week straight in the office, then even take it. Almost wore gloves to type every day. So  from the looks of the office you guys have now that, and the other 10, 20 offices you guys have now. things have changed quite a bit.

[00:14:14] Marc Gonyea: [00:14:14] Yeah, you’ve cleaned up pretty well too.

[00:14:15] so you started, Who’s your DM, tell us a little bit about your, couple of clients, some coworkers, 

[00:14:20] Pat Stillmun: [00:14:20] DM was Reagan Callahan.  she was great. she was still to this day, one of the most organized managers I’ve ever had, and that was really good for me. It’s every time she was really good with the routine and the structure of, this is what you do at getting to learn the process.

[00:14:34] So it was really nice to learn this is what you do every day, this is the way we do things, this is why we do it. and just keeping track of so much of sales is organization of, when you’re going to call this person back and when you’re going to send this email and follow up on this and that.

[00:14:47] So she was really good at setting reminders and having things planned out for you so that nothing sort of slips through the cracks. so Reagan was my manager. I remember walking in, I sat right next to now I guess a memoryBlue legend, Nick Perry, who he started. Yes. Swaggy P. He had started a week before me and sat right next to me.

[00:15:06] And so we were new hire buddies there for the first 90 days to do hire, whatever it is. that was really cool  to have him throughout the whole way. And, he actually lived a couple minutes away from me. I remember getting rides to work with him when my car broke down or something like that.

[00:15:19] And so that was pretty cool to have him right there and still doing incredible things.  every couple of months I see he’s moving his way up to positions that I didn’t even know existed within memoryBlue. So  What’s his title now? I know he was a DM for awhile.  what is he moved up to now?

[00:15:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:32] Technically, I think his title is associate director of business development.

[00:15:36] Pat Stillmun: [00:15:36] Nice.  it was Tommy Gassman before, and then two or three other people. And  it seemed like that was the sales team. So the fact that we have an associate director of business development is awesome.

[00:15:44] Chris Corcoran: [00:15:44] He’s cool as a cucumber, Swaggy P.

[00:15:47] Pat Stillmun: [00:15:47] You don’t get a nickname like swaggy P without beingcool.

[00:15:49] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:49] You don’t.

[00:15:50] Pat Stillmun: [00:15:50] Yeah. Was that a Josh Crippin name? I think that’s where that came from. probably. So you talked about how Boone had an energy, unlike anything you’ve experienced since. Who was setting the tempo?

[00:16:03] That’s a good question.  you don’t think back this person as if you had met him and you know him. He’s not like a tempo setter necessarily, but Dan Bor he’s very laid back. He’s very relaxed,  he was in the office at 7:45.,’cause he was like, I don’t get it.  Sometimes during the day I get too distracted or whatever from with, so I’m going to get in and build my list and send my emails at 7:45. So no matter when you get into the office, you always see Dan there. And he was the first person who was ready to get a drink after work or relax or joke around.

[00:16:31] He had his priorities straight. He was getting things done. He was always,  doing well. So you had him Reagan obviously always did. She loved the process and I don’t think she kept the  sanctity of blitz time better than anyone else I think is that, when you come in 8:30 to 10, is  you’re nothing but calling. And if you’re not, she  make sure that you were, and then 3:30 to 5, same sort of thing. which is good. who else? Swaggy P Nick always brought the energy. It was fun to sit next to. He’d always kind of give himself a little pep talks and stuff before blitz to get going. that always got me going as well. in those pep talks, was he referring himself into as third person, swaggy P we need a big day out of you swaggy P?

[00:17:06] mostly just  heard the mumblings of it and it was him  very heavily influenced by Batman. I think he was kind of having a Batman voice and he had an action figure on his desk there, Whatever gets you through the day.

[00:17:17] Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:18]

[00:17:18] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:18] So listen, Pat, listen for the craft man. So we’re all taking down this down memory which  Corcoran and I love, but, and maybe the alums love, but some other people aren’t like, okay guys. let’s talk about the job. So how did you learn it? And what was it like when you realized, Oh, this is what I’m doing every day. talk about that.

[00:17:34] the skill, they learn to call,  somebody who is probably close to your parents’ age, who maybe have forgotten more about cybersecurity than you ever hoped to learn. Right. You’re interrupting their day. They’re not expecting you to reach out to them. Like that sort of thing.

[00:17:46]

[00:17:46] Pat Stillmun: [00:17:46] Yeah. So going back to the coachability thing.  You get there and you’ve got to go in with an open mindset of saying okay, I barely know what software sales is. I don’t know  how to make a sale. I don’t really know what the technology I’m doing is, but. if this kind of the Sandler script that we come up with the Guru Ganesha and John Costigan if these things were supposed to say work, then yeah, I’m going to trust them.

[00:18:06] And why would I have any other idea of what to say other than what has been proven to work? So, I read them at first and I vividly remember going through some of these call recordings and scripts and example scripts and, things like that. and thinking this is so stupid, like no way this is going to work.

[00:18:24] who says this stuff,  what does this even mean? And I listen to a call recording, and I hear someone ask a question. I go,  no way they’re going to answer that. And they come back and say exactly what you want them to. And it’s like, all right, well, I guess this stuff works. And then I remember going through and just, I have nothing else to learn other than sort of those recordings and those scripts and the way that it has done the way it has worked in the past.

[00:18:45] And so just going through, and I remember it just saying, all right, well, here it goes nothing. And ask this question that is supposed to be next from what I’m supposed to from learning and the way we’re supposed to  walk someone down the path of the call and being amazed that, this stuff really works. So that was the learning process of just getting through those and understanding the questions that I get the best answers from and picking and choosing questions that other people say and the way that they deliver and the way that they just go about their day. It’s, learning from other people is a huge part of the job while you’re, there. t’Is just looking at the people, looking at the leaderboard, which is always so transparent, which I love.

[00:19:18] and seeing the people who are at the top and understanding what they do every day, why they do things the way that they do. and, there’s no copy and paste answer to everything, but you can pick and choose little things from this person, from that person   and implement it into your day.

[00:19:31] Chris Corcoran: [00:19:31] So Pat, when you’re looking back, who was the strongest SDR that you worked with?

[00:19:37] Pat Stillmun: [00:19:37] That’s a good question. That’s so tough to say because there’s so many people that are, so good at what they do and  there’s repeatable processes that everyone should be doing, but even within those processes there’s things that are so different.

[00:19:49] There’s a million different ways to get meetings. but  geez, Aaron’s gotta be up there. I remember her every single she’s just a model of consistency. I remember I, this might be a little bit of bragging, but one of my mentees, Stephen Duffy was always incredible.  he and I were on,  a client together when he first started.

[00:20:05] And after a couple months, like turning around and seeing, he’s beating me on the leaderboard, and then I’m listening to things that he’s saying and stealing things that he’s doing or just being reminded of things that I might’ve forgot about that he’s sticking to the book on that I should be doing too and deviated from

[00:20:19] Jeremy Wood was awesome. who was my manager and my, yeah. Oh yeah. He moved up to Boston. That’s awesome. I’d love seeing that. yeah,  I remember he was one of those few and other kinds of just consistency and to see that, there is a bit of a science to this that it’s not all just flying by the seat of your pants and I’m social.

[00:20:37] I can talk to people, I can be good at sales. Right. I can just kind of wing it on the phone. That’s not at all what it is. And Jeremy was so good at, this is your script and he was so good at finding what works for you. So  he gets a little double whammy of, I think, best manager and best SDR that I’d come across too.

[00:20:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:53] And Pat, as you were developing your game, what was your signature move? What did you, what were you good at? this is this is what, I was very question heavy sometimes to a fault. I just,  Ask a lot of,  yes or no questions. And then my favorite one was always I lead someone down a path and then I’d ask,  what do you want that process to look like going forward? And then  if I could get someone to that point, that was my favorite thing.

[00:21:14] Pat Stillmun: [00:21:14] And the way I would sort of get to there is I think I had a pretty good understanding of the technology. And by no means would I call myself an expert, but I was lucky enough to be on for, probably 85, 90% of my time at memoryBlue, I was calling on cyber security clients. so, I was genuinely interested in it.

[00:21:30] So I would spend a lot of time, reading about learning about the space. And so I, didn’t have a technical background and I wouldn’t ever call myself a, I say that I was getting into technical conversations, but I could understand the technology and potential pains within the technology to be able to talk about it.

[00:21:44] And if someone threw something at me that, isn’t typical from a technology standpoint I could understand and follow where that we’re going and bring it back to, or related to where we are and finding things that way. So that was always kind of my niche within memoryBlue was understanding the security world specifically and being question-heavy about their current process.

[00:22:03] Chris Corcoran: [00:22:03] so two things. Well, I guess the first thing I want to focus on is cyber. A lot of times SDRs here, they either gravitate towards it or many times want nothing to do with it because they think it’s super challenging. React to that.

[00:22:19] Pat Stillmun: [00:22:19] I just went in with a completely open mind and my first client was a security client. And so I said, you know what? This is cool. I don’t know anything about it. And, security to me, I always found it interesting. But to me, I always thought of technology is, more hardware focused interacting with your iPhone or something like that, or building apps and that kind of thing.

[00:22:35] no idea about security. So I just embraced it and said, all right, well, this is going to be my client. And if I’m going to be talking to a Seesaw, if I’m lucky enough to get one on the phone, they’re going to be asking me things about this, and I have to be able to answer them.

[00:22:46] So might as well get prepared, like while I’m learning about that, just the sales process, let’s learn about the security thing as well. And I just found it interesting.  it was just a whole world that I didn’t know about. And I think that can be scary to people. If You just kind of dive in and say, there’s so much information here, how am I ever going to learn it?

[00:23:03] one step at a time and learned about art, the direct connect was my first client. I really liked them. Just learn about the technology and learn about where they go or what they do. And he realized that it’s really not that complicated  from what we need to know. you don’t have to be an expert, you just have to be able to follow sort of the headlines of what they’re saying and where all of those headlines relate to each other.

[00:23:21] don’t need to know how it works or why it works just  that it works. And this is where this fits on this grand scope of cybersecurity. So it’s constantly learning. And so I think that can kind of potentially scare people, but once you get in and do understand it, there is a group of people that are willing to listen to you. If you can sound credible enough on the phone.

[00:23:39] Chris Corcoran: [00:23:39] And the other thing that I wanted to talk about was  being questioned heavy. Talk about that.

[00:23:44]Pat Stillmun: [00:23:44] I always like to sort of understand  what people are doing and why they’re doing things the way that they’re doing on the phone and understand if they have a certain process that, they have it for a reason and try to figure out why they set up that reason. I learned very quickly that just explaining things to people on a cold call  Maybe it works for other people, but for me, I was getting shut down really quick and just jumping right into a pitch or something like that. So me just talking at somebody I wasn’t getting much engagement with and things like that.  I don’t know how it happened, but I just started sort of falling back on rather than saying, Hey, this is  whatever my technology does, this is how great it is. What time are you free to talk more about it? It was more like, all right, well, have you ever thought about this? Have you ever thought about that? And it just kind of turned into it, just sort of a natural progression from restraining myself from just diving in and talking about things.

[00:24:31] And I think that was something that Jeremy Wood help me with this rather than just diving in and explaining. hold back and then maybe ask one more question  so that you’re telling them the right thing, because if you’re telling someone something that is irrelevant to them,  you’re wasting both of your time.

[00:24:44] So make sure that you’re setting yourself up to then give that pitch, that statement or I say that thing that’s really going to lock down the meeting.

[00:24:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:24:52] typically, SDRs don’t ask anywhere near enough questions. So I love that you take the question heavy approach, and I’m sure we’ll talk about how that’s translated and helped you as you have evolved into a closing role?

[00:25:04] Pat Stillmun: [00:25:04] Yeah. it’s been extremely helpful. again, it comes back to  if you’re saying something irrelevant to somebody, you’re wasting both of your times and you’re discrediting yourself immediately. So I think maybe  asking questions, help kind of hide the fact that I don’t understand something or don’t know, in the vast world of cybersecurity, if someone’s talking about something I don’t get. Just asking a question before saying something could make you save yourself  from sounding stupid on the phone, so it’s really helped in this role specifically, understanding the broad scope of an organization from why people are doing things, the way that they’re doing, who else is involved, who else should be involved in the conversation?

[00:25:42] Why do you want me to pull those people in?  if someone says, Oh, well, we don’t have any budget. You just ask, well, why don’t you have any budget  or if they say I have $20,000 and you say, well, where did that $20,000 come from?  And you might find that, Oh, well, we just thought that’s what this should cost.

[00:25:58] And then you find out that, picking an arbitrary number is your budget is not a great process. So then you start to explain why you cost the, what you cost and then say, Hey, look at our website. This is what it costs. I don’t know why you think  $20,000 is going to cut it here. just look at all of our competitors websites.

[00:26:13] They’re all going to be above that. So, if someone just tells you, Hey,  We’ve got $20,000 and you go, Oh, okay. Well, we’re never going to make this work for 20 K. Rather, if you continue to be questioned heavy, why is it $20,000? Where did that come from? Who came up with that number?

[00:26:27] Who should I talk to about that number? Those kinds of things.  it’s much easier to uncover information that you otherwise wouldn’t have even thought about.

[00:26:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:26:34] So Pat, I asked Jay Wood, “Hey Jeremy, who should we have on the podcast who we haven’t had on?” And he was like, you need to have on Patrick Stillmun and there’s no rhyme or reason or science to who gets asked to be on. Cause I reached out to some people, they get all upset they haven’t been asked to be on yet.

[00:26:48] So they’ll get upset if you’re listening and I don’t want you to be upset back cause we asked you.  we’re on  30 something episodes,  and I said, why? He said your ability to play the long game. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Tell me what you think he meant by that.

[00:27:00] And maybe we start with the fact you were at memoryBlue for 15 months, which is not long, but for some people it’s like fricking eternity for some reason.

[00:27:07]Pat Stillmun: [00:27:07] Take no offense to this, 15 months at memoryBlue feels like longer than 15 months outside of memoryBlue.  those 15 months felt longer and in a good way than normal. So I think that maybe like six months go by at memoryBlue and it feels like an eternity.

[00:27:20] And now I look back six months ago, it was like, Oh, that was just two QERs ago, that was nothing, But in terms of playing the long game, I think Jeremy and I had a lot of long conversations I was with a client with another awesome SDR.

[00:27:30] We probably should have been in the conversation for one of the best, I was around with Kat Toolsie.

[00:27:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:27:34] Oh,

[00:27:35] Pat Stillmun: [00:27:35] SHe was incredible. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. So she and I were on a client together and I had been with this client for a, very long time. that was my goal from when I’ve started with memoryBue. They were who I was assigned to day one.

[00:27:47] They had hired a couple other they had been with memoryBlue before and hired people right off their contract. And, I ended up, I was going to this office once or twice a week, sometimes to work directly with them. I was close with all the sales reps at this client and really enjoyed them.

[00:28:01] And  that was my goal. Was like, all right let’s get here and get moving. I want to work for this client. I’m going to be there. They told us at first yeah, we’ve got a couple spots open there’s I was kind of getting inside information from the sales reps who were actually there and some former memoryBlue alums. saying I think we’re going to hire two or three of you.  You’re all great. So I thought sweet, I’ve got this in the bag and then as we kind of get closer to the end of the contract, they end up, we get word like, Hey we’re only gonna hire one. We only have room for one person.

[00:28:26] And I think there were three of us on the contract, but it was essentially both Kat and I had been on for a long time. And, Long story short, they ended up hiring Kat just her, and then they leave memoryBlue and, she was extremely deserving of it. She was feeding me the last couple of months that we were there and, she beat me flat out.

[00:28:44] And  I was completely pissed. I thought I was doing really great. I even still look back at that time. I was in such a good rhythm and I was so focused. Cause I just, I was like, you know what? I’ve got a month to two months or whatever to prove myself here it is.

[00:28:54] Let’s go. And I was doing really well. I was, motivated every day and didn’t get it and that I was crushing. It stopped.  that was for sure the low point. and so think. That was when, Jeremy had just kind of came on as my DM around for kind of the end of my tenure with that client.

[00:29:08] I’m starting to talk to him about yeah, this really sucks. I don’t really know where I want to go and I’m not sure what I want to be doing. I for sure thought about leaving memoryBlue at the time. I was like, well, this is what I wanted to do and I didn’t get it.

[00:29:18] what else can I get out of here? like I’m done, I don’t need this anymore. And I talked to Jeremy, he’s like, well, look, We’ve got a couple other good clients that are coming in.  They’re in a similar space that,  the security world that I had put all this energy and time into.

[00:29:30] And that was another thing I was worried about. I was like, I’ve got all this head space taken up about cybersecurity. I like it. And then, I don’t want to throw that all away and go to another client where I know nothing about and start from scratch in the industry and put all this effort into learning as much as I can about that and the client and all of this.

[00:29:44] And it just seemed daunting at the time. And Jeremy was like, look,  There’s another security client that I think you’re going to like, we’ve got that ready to go if you want it. And so.

[00:29:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:29:51] It is daunting, Pat.  Cause it’s hardass work.

[00:29:53] Pat Stillmun: [00:29:53] it was tough because I remember for your first two weeks or whatever, when you’re not, you don’t have to blitz, you don’t have to dial, you don’t have your number or anything.

[00:29:59] I was basically spending my blitz time, just reading about the company, reading all of their white papers, reading their competitors’ white papers and about the space and history of the space and why things are the way they are. And I knew that I was never going to have just that free time again, where I’m not blitzing.

[00:30:13] so might as well use those three hours for that then. So the thought of another space, another company, not having the free time being held to the quota right away like this sucks. there’s no point. And so back to what, the conversation Jeremy and I were having, he was like, look, we have one in a similar space.

[00:30:28] I don’t think that information is going to be wasted at all.. You’ve been here long enough, you know how to talk, how to get meetings, all of that. I don’t think it will be wasted if you get onto one of these and, in the long run, I think staying with memoryBlue of course, is going to lead to more opportunities in the future.

[00:30:42] And I think that this could be good. he’s like you’ve got a mentee coming in. I’ve got you lined up for, to start on the same day that this contract or that new client starts.  we have a good setup for you here if you want. And I really think it will be helpful for you to stay. fast forward from there I ended up coming full circle with this first client when I was at my 15 months at memoryBlue, as I was leaving, they had actually offered me a job,

[00:31:05]Marc Gonyea: [00:31:05] to the client that we were like head over heels for the kind of passed you over, it’s like a grandson, right. came back and said, Hey, we’re ready now.

[00:31:15] Pat Stillmun: [00:31:15] it was like, we’re ready now.  isn’t this great you get to come back and be with all your friends that you had. Cause I was literally working from their office twice a week. And so I was close with all of them. They had a bunch of memoryBlue alums.

[00:31:26] and so he was like look how great it’s going to be. You get to come back. And I was like, I’ve got other things here.  and by this time I had applied to a bunch of other jobs that the one I have with Sonatype now was on the table. I had been interviewing with really liking actually ended up making a much better offer.

[00:31:42] just the full package they were offering was better. And I said, no I didn’t want to work for that person. I didn’t really mesh with them that great. And so  I now had the chance to sort of choose where I got to go. And I said, you know what? found a better path then Jeremy was right all along.

[00:31:57] And that if you sit, waiting that out and not leaving and jumping ship immediately I got a much, much better opportunity. And then that ends up playing into the role that I currently have to a similar thing, but we can get to that later.

[00:32:08] Marc Gonyea: [00:32:08] Let’s talk about it now.

[00:32:09] Pat Stillmun: [00:32:09] so one of the things that 15 months at memoryBlue, I was like, all right,  I just want somewhere where SDR for another, this is just a formality, I’ll be an SDR there for a couple months and then boom, ISR, like I’m ready. I know everything I need to know about being an SDR.  (last place) 

[00:32:22] I know everything. I’m ready to be an inside sales rep. I’m ready to go full set, whatever you got. Let’s go. I get there. And I was like, you know what? I want to be an, ISR my Sonatype. I remember my manager Justin Miller, who I’m talking to about sort of, what’s the path here to be an ISR.

[00:32:36] How long are we talking? Three, four, six months tops. And he was like, it’s going to be like a year maybe even more. And so I was like how long? Like a year, but if I’m really good, nine months, he’s like, there’s no openings immediately, but we have these, we call them account development reps, ADR who’s like we have in these ADR openings and we need people in these ADR positions and yeah, there will be ISR openings in the future, but this is the plan right now. Of course, we want you to grow and to move into this role, but we don’t have one right now. And so not like you just have the path immediately, unless something crazy happens. So obviously you ended up taking the job anyway. It’s Sonatype. Absolutely love it. And doing well and a year goes by and, there’s sort of no word on an inside position opening.

[00:33:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:33:15] And how are you doing during this year? Cause I heard stories about how well you were doing.

[00:33:18] Pat Stillmun: [00:33:18] I was doing very well. I mean we’re building out a team, so there was only a couple of us. There was like three, four of us at the time and then one person left. And then one of the ADRs became the manager that was Justin Miller. So then we hired a couple others. So there’s team of five of us and, I’m at the one or two or on a bad month, three every single month.

[00:33:35] doing well. And so I’m sitting there thinking what more do I need to do to be an ISR?  if there’s going to be no openings, I might as well go somewhere where there is one, right? Like I want to be an ISR. that’s my next step. I deserve it at this point, right? That’s what I’m telling myself. we kind of have one open, ISR position open a year and three months. And then we, without me really knowing I, we hired someone else from outside the company to take that role on, on the team that directly the, the territory that I was working in.

[00:34:01] And that was, I was pretty beat up about that one. I have a call with the director, he calls me up to let me know that they’re going to be doing that. And I’m like, well, what is, why what’s going on? He’s I. Just, I don’t think you’re ready right now. We found this person who has been with the company for a long time.

[00:34:18] And he’s look, it’s nothing against you personally, really it’s we didn’t hire any ADR to move into this position. Not you, not anybody else. We had other people, we just, we found some people that have more experience in just feel a little bit more comfortable. They have actually done this job before.

[00:34:33] And so, of course I, I’m mad about that. I was like, well, I’m never going to have experience doing this job. So what am I going to be ready? this is what I came here for. And it turns out it was only a couple months after that. I do end up getting the job and the company continues to grow.

[00:34:47] We have openings left and right for this inside sales position. and we hire, a bunch of us get promoted from the ADR roll up to the ISR role. And I couldn’t imagine doing this ISR role at another company, Because I had known our process, our, we work really closely with our marketing team.

[00:35:05] I understand the technology well. So again, sort of holding out for the position here has been awesome because the company has matured that the inside sales reps are doing better than they were before. We have more resources at our disposal. We have more, we’ve closed more deals in the sort of mid market territory that we’re covering.

[00:35:22] So there’s more of data on what works, what doesn’t. So again, holding out for this position rather than taking the short-term jump is, has paid off huge. So in the position now, and I think a better territory now than I would have had with the one that I was passed up on here and working with, a really high performing team and it’s been great,

[00:35:43] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:43] And how long have you been in that role?

[00:35:46] Pat Stillmun: [00:35:46] since February. So what seven months or that’s nine months.

[00:35:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:52] Almost  all during COVID.

[00:35:54] Pat Stillmun: [00:35:54] Yeah, no, it was funny. I got the job. my birthday is February 15th and I got the promotion on the 13th. So it was a nice little birthday present. And then a month after that is when all of this hits. So I had a couple of deals and. All of this. I thought I was setting myself up for a great, like Q2 Q3, and then everybody’s budgets are frozen and all the chaos and everything.

[00:36:13] And so that of course, as I’m coming in, I’m learning how to go through learning how to grasp a regular cycle or a sales cycle, let alone a COVID effected sales cycle. So that’s been awesome.

[00:36:25] Chris Corcoran: [00:36:25] Talk a bit about what you learned from transitioning from kind of a sales development role into a full cycle closing?

[00:36:36] Pat Stillmun: [00:36:36] like what some of the differences are or what was some of the carry over?

[00:36:39] Chris Corcoran: [00:36:39] So both in what you thought it was going to be and what it actually turned out to be.

[00:36:44] Pat Stillmun: [00:36:44] The, yeah, so I, jeez, the sales development role sets you up so nice, so great for it. I mean, it’s so many of the same principles of. like for us, especially where, you know, a lot of, and most inside sales reps are setting their own meetings and things like that. And taking things, you still do have to be an SDR for yourself and set your own meetings and, find good companies to go after those kinds of things, build your own lists and take them, and just instead of passing them off, you just keep going with it.

[00:37:12] So, so much of the, so much of the pr So many, there’s so many transferable skills from that, and the way to get good is, getting reps, getting at-bats at going through the sales cycles, winning deals and losing deals. But it doesn’t matter if you win or lose it’s the at-bats that are gonna make it better.

[00:37:27] So the only way to get more at bats is by getting them for yourself. And the way to get them is through setting your own meetings and being your own SDR. So so much of it carries over just from that aspect of it. It’s just getting those deals and, being at the top of your team for pipeline creation, just because you’re a good SDR for yourself. and then on top of that, it’s so many people, you hear on the phone and call me in six months or call me in three months or something like that. you get those objections, those same sort of objections all through the sales cycle. And so the way that you handle them and as well, the way that you are organized about the way you respond to them.

[00:38:01] So, understanding well, okay, what’s going to happen in six months and working back from there the same way you would as an SDR and they tell you, well, that’s when our we’re starting our budget creation for, for next year or something like that. And that’s when we’re going to start running these demos, you go, okay, great.

[00:38:18] Write a note, put it in a calendar invite for your reminder, for yourself, something like that. it’s all,, it’s all the same thing that you would do if someone on a cold call says, call you back, call me back in three months and it’s the same sort of thing, except you already have a relationship with them.

[00:38:30] So they actually, they’re more likely to answer your email when you come back to them or, when you call them or whatever So it’s honestly from that perspective, it’s nice actually sending emails to people, knowing they’re going to answer you rather than just kind of hoping.

[00:38:44] Cause that’s so much of the, so there’s so much of the SDR role of just, you can only control so much. And obviously there is a little bit of luck involved when someone does pick up the phone or something like that. But yeah, I think there, there is so much crossover, but one of the biggest differences though is it’s just being a little bit more a little more knowledgeable of the sales cycle and why people make the decisions that they do around like why, why they pick one tool over another where budget gets set, where I’m always running into problems with like legal and things like that. If they don’t like a ULA, if they want an NDA,.It’s just facilitating those kinds of conversations are some of the bigger things, but it’s nothing. But it’s nothing, It’s not like rocket science or anything like that. You just have to learn it and get through it as much as you can.

[00:39:30] Chris Corcoran: [00:39:30] Great. And so since February, since you’ve moved into a closing role, what’s your most memorable deal?

[00:39:41] Pat Stillmun: [00:39:41] Most memorable. I think one. My actually, my first deal that I closed is I would say it’s probably my most memorable. It’s a second. I had a small one. and then this one, so it’s I was working with this company who had told us that we gave them a demo. They really liked it. And then came back to us and said, Oh, well, this is great and all, but you know, reach back out to us in, in October of 20. This is in early March or late February, something like that. And they say, Oh, reach out to us in October. And we’re like, well, what happened? I thought this was great. I thought you loved it. And they were like, Oh, well, we’re not even going to run the evaluation until later in the year.

[00:40:15] And then we said, well, going back to asking questions. Well, why did we give this demo today? Why did you all agree to get on? And they said, well, someone on our team kind of jumped the gun, scheduling demos for us in the space. So, here we are, we took it. And so We actually were, I was working with a partner on that one, which is the first time I’d ever done that.

[00:40:34] That was a whole new world working with working deals with partner, bringing them in. Why do you bring them in? Why do you give them points on, your deal, if you’re the one selling it. And, depending on the partner and if you’ve got good relationships with them, they can really help you out.

[00:40:45] So this guy I was working with really helped me out with this deal. He kind of coached me through it. Knew this was early. I didn’t tell him this was like the first real big sales cycle I had been in, but you knew I was young and new to the role. so we ended up turning that into like saying, well, Hey, if you really liked it, you really what we do and our tools, but we have a couple of different tools that you can sell people.

[00:41:06] And If you kind of get started, you, we can give you something cheap. And then a lot of times people will kind of grow and buy more software from us later on. So we ended up telling them, well, Hey, if we give you something right now would you be interested in it? They were already using the free version of our tools.

[00:41:20] So we were like if you upgrade that, would you have any interest in upgrading to that? And they said, Oh yeah, actually, yeah that kinda sounds good. we could potentially get that done. And then they come back to us and say, actually, no, there’s no budget. And then instead of just saying great, okay, sure.

[00:41:34] We go, well, why don’t you have any budget? And they said, Oh, well, we again, like we told you before, we’re planning on doing this later in the year, so there’s nothing available. And so we came back and just said, well, what do you have available? And I said, Oh, well, we have $10,000 right now that we have available.

[00:41:51] And again, where did that $10,000 come from? And they said, well, it was leftover from another thing. So that, this is just kind of free to spend so that, that’s a legit answer that didn’t just make up. We thought this was going to cost $10,000. Our solution costs 30 K. So what we or the version, the thing that they were looking at was 30 K.

[00:42:08] So we basically just told them, well, Okay, well, why don’t you just give us the 10 K right now and then pay us the other 20 whenever your budget freeze up. And they said in January of 20, January, 2021, it’ll be open. So we get them to agree to that. And then, so all during this time, what ends up happening is they use our tool to get in with our, kind of what we call customer success team.

[00:42:30] And, essentially what that means without getting into too much details. During this six months that they have our software, when they were going to just be kind of letting this thing kind of simmer and marinade, and they were going to pick up the evaluation in October. They’ve already bought our software.

[00:42:46] They’re already ingrained with our company and in a rhythm with our customer success team and using our security tools. And then come October when they were going to be doing the big evaluation of all of our competitors and all of these POCs and everything, like they said, they were going to do.

[00:43:00] They basically just came to us and said, okay, well now we’re ready to buy the second part of your platform. The big, more expensive tool that is kind of our sort of flagship product. And they came to us without that. We basically did a two day POC with them. I said, great. It works the way we thought it was going to let’s get it done now.

[00:43:16] And we just closed the deal last week. So I was able to get in. Yeah, it was great. It got the first deal able to box out all competition and that was, it wasn’t, the company really did well. I mean, our CSE did well, the tool did well, but you know, if they had done a whole big, long POC with us and everybody else, there’s so much that gets lost in the mix with that.

[00:43:37] And there’s so much information that gets lost. They get information overload. Sometimes they just go, ah, whatever these people were nice enough. I kind of liked that tool. So we. Avoided that process entirely. And they just said, great, you guys are awesome. We want the second part. So basically tripled the size of the deal from just getting lending that first one.

[00:43:55] Chris Corcoran: [00:43:55] Wow. That was you. you heard no a bunch and you would got super creative.

[00:44:01] Pat Stillmun: [00:44:01] yeah. that was, it was all very new. It was, working with this partner. Who’s great. But it’s it’s all just understanding, Well, why did, why are you saying no to that? Why doesn’t it? If you’d like what we do. Why what’s the issue here? What do we have to do to get this done?

[00:44:15] So it’s just really understanding what they want and then responding rather than just blurting something out and telling them what you think they should do or something along those lines. So just understanding throughout the whole process was the best thing you could do.

[00:44:29] Chris Corcoran: [00:44:29] And w how much selling internally did you have to do to convince the company to allow them to do with the 10 K and the remainder in January, 2021?

[00:44:39] Pat Stillmun: [00:44:39] Quite a bit. I mean, I, it was a little bit daunting going to our CFO and saying, so we’re going to let this person just pay us a third of what they’re supposed to and they’re not even going to give us the rest until nine months from now. And this is, a month into the job and all of our approvals and stuff go through the CFO.

[00:44:59] sorry. I lost track of the question there. what was that? My dog is running around.

[00:45:04] Chris Corcoran: [00:45:04] Selling internally.

[00:45:05] Pat Stillmun: [00:45:05] Oh, yeah, the internal. Yeah, it was. The company is great in that if you can tie it back to future revenue in any kind of way, they’re always going to be for it. So basically, and we discounted this first deal to a decent bit.

[00:45:19] And so they were like, so we’re going to give them a huge discount are, did they just give a list of demands? And you just said, here I’m at your will. And we said, no, I, we actually kind of planted the seeds for this because they told us they’re going to do a whole huge evaluation nine months from now.

[00:45:33] And if we can land this deal, get them ingrained with our entire company, then there’s going to be no other option, but us nine months from now, when we get the big one and they said, Oh, well, when you put it that way that’s exactly what we want. That’s the kind of creativity that we need to promote.

[00:45:47] And our finance team is all for it, as long as it was a financial services company that we were that I sold this to. So they’re, a credible organization they’re gonna, they’re willing to have an outstanding balance to someone like that. And that comes into play when you say, know, we’re going to let them have this for cheap for awhile, but then they’re going to pay us later.

[00:46:05] So all that has to come into play, but as at a good company, like Sonatype, if you have reasoning behind what you’re doing and you can tie it back to, to what tie it back to the future revenue or greater good for the company, things like that, and you yourself are a credible person, why would they say no to you?

[00:46:24] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:24] There you go. All right, let’s play. What can I get? We’re coming up a little bit on time, but let’s play a little rapid fire round here with you, 

[00:46:32] Pat Stillmun: [00:46:32] Yeah,

[00:46:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:33] this is especially a good one, I think because you you had some good companies and some good managers, what’s more important. What would you tell, the 20, 21 year old version of yourself, what’s more important, a better company or better manager?

[00:46:47] Pat Stillmun: [00:46:47] That’s a great question. I always think about that one. I. It depends on your goal. It depends on what you’re looking to get out of it. if you’re looking to play the long game somewhere, if you want to be somewhere for a while, obviously it’s gotta be the company. I, if you’re looking for, to grow with the company, things like that. If the company offers you like a stock option or something along those lines, you got to say, maybe my manager’s not the best right now, but if I’m going to be here for a while, maybe I might outlast them. And if I’m good at what I’m doing, and I know what I’m doing, any manager, if what’s working, if you’re doing things well, when you’re doing things the right way is not gonna get on you so much. So you have to be able to take care of things yourself. And if you’re more willing to put up with little annoyances that they, that may bother you. But, if you are looking, if it is somewhere, if it is somewhere where you don’t see yourself for an extremely long term, or you’re comfortable with the technology that you’re selling and things like that.

[00:47:47] and your If you’re comfortable enough with the company and the way that it’s going and you know that it’s not going to crash or anything like that, then yeah, I would 100% say that the manager makes it a much bigger difference. if you, yeah, I’d say that.

[00:48:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:00] How do you keep your skills sharp?

[00:48:03] Pat Stillmun: [00:48:03] looking at, just looking at what other people are doing that, or that works. and revisiting, I still listen to calls. I still listen to tapes. I We’re doing a sales training thing right now internally. That is I. I really feel like I have a leg up on, because I was at memoryBlue that the whole process of listening back to sale or calls and things like that is something I’m,

[00:48:23] I am very comfortable listening to myself on the phone. And it’s so funny listening to people say, I hate listening to my calls. I don’t like doing it. it, I get uncomfortable when I listen to my own calls and I was like, well, how do you get, how do you get better? How do you go back and listen to how do you know what you did right? How do you know what is actually working? Because your memory of a call is so much different than what actually happens so much of the time, so I’d say just continuing to go back in and listening to calls.

[00:48:49] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:49] Okay. Let’s do that. That’s music to my ears and definitely Chris’s ears because we still do that all the time. Every

[00:48:57] Pat Stillmun: [00:48:57] And do you still get pushback from people?

[00:48:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:59] Yeah. Right Chris?

[00:49:00] Pat Stillmun: [00:49:00] I don’t get it. There’s nothing better. I mean, it’s, there’s nothing better than watching back the tape and figuring out like what it is. Same thing with sports. if you thought you were perfect on a play or something like that, and you go back and look and say, Oh, you missed seven or eight steps.

[00:49:15] You’ve just got lucky that the receiver dropped the ball or something like that. Then you know, that’s not a good play on your part. a bad process can’t justify a good outcome. it’s all you can control is the process. So if you have a perfect process going forward, then you’re going to win more often than you’re not.

[00:49:30] And you can’t just rely on the kind of, you’re always going to luck into some deals and some meetings and things like that, but you can’t rely on that.

[00:49:38] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:38] Right. Yeah, no, I think it’s just, people get uncomfortable hearing how they sound on the phone, how they sound live. And it’s a lot easier to not look outwards and look inward to fix things and change behavior. So a lot of work. Like you said, the reason why the 16, 15 months seems so long, cause it’s a lot of really hard work, especially someone in your first game.

[00:49:57] Pat Stillmun: [00:49:57] Yeah, and I didn’t mean to that sound as a bad way, but I think you, you work so hard that it, 8:00 getting in and making your first dial at 8;30 is not if you do that in almost any company, you’re gonna, people are gonna look at you funny. if you’re on the phone at 8:30, like by 8:30 and calling straight through 10 and say, don’t bother me.

[00:50:14] I’m on the phone. Like I’m calling til 10. People are gonna. People will respect it, but it’s not like that’s not the norm. Like it’s very, it’s very weird to some people and very foreign. So it, it’s a great practice that I think everyone should 

[00:50:26] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:26] do.

[00:50:27] Do.

[00:50:27] Yeah, shout out to Reagan Callahan.

[00:50:29] Pat Stillmun: [00:50:29] Yeah.

[00:50:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:30] What’s the biggest mistake made by your former member of Lou contemporaries?

[00:50:37] Pat Stillmun: [00:50:37] I think chasing a quick win with like careers, things like that. chasing, well, twofold. One is sitting back and feeling content that okay, I’m good. I know what I’m doing here. And closing yourself off to coachability because especially while you’re at memoryBlue, you’re an infant in your sales career to think that, enough is just completely naive.

[00:50:59] so you just have to completely keep keep listening and, even if you don’t think that, even if you think you’re a better SDR than someone who gave you a tip doesn’t mean that tip is bad, it could be right. there’s that, and then the other one is like chasing a quick win, a quick jump.

[00:51:14] people leave memoryBlue all the time because they like a client left or something like that, that they really liked. Or, just thinking that they’re there. I’ve got everything I need to know. I think I used with you guys the analogy of taking guitar lessons for a month and like being able to play a couple chords and like, all right, I got this, I know how to play guitar.

[00:51:31] And then I don’t need lessons anymore. I know how to play this. And then you, that’s just completely stupid. you’re never going to write a great song or anything like that, or be able to play well, you’re just going to be able to pack off a couple chords there and that’s about it. it’s the same sort of thing is that it takes a long time to, to learn what you’re doing and know what’s best for yourself. So I have seen plenty of people jump to a company that was like, Oh, we’re going to give you a full cycle sales rep. You’re going to be a hundred k OTE right off the bat. your background. It’s incredible. It’s exactly what we’re looking for.

[00:52:05] And you jump. And, it’s, it’s basically, they just drop you in a territory and say, go figure it out, with no resources, anything like that. So rather than taking the time to sit back and say, I, this is fine, but I there’s better things on the horizon for me. I think that I’ve done enough work.

[00:52:21] I know what I’m doing. I know that there are better things for me out there. I can do better than this, honestly. And so just even though that like the carrot of Oh, full cycle sales rep, higher base salary, right, right off the bat might be best. you gotta think about five years from now where Is that going to be best for you five years from now?

[00:52:37] Is that going to be best for you? you could be stuck at a company for five years that you absolutely hate with a bad manager and it’s a bad company and you don’t really know what’s next, or, you’re stuck there with crappy sales training for six years. And you will, after, down the line, your other friends from memoryBlue or in the same sort of classes you or, now much farther along than you because they waited for the best offer. They jumped at that. They jumped at the right time that was good for them personally and at the company and continue to grow from there.

[00:53:10] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:10] Well said, Patrick. Well said, man. A lot of people it’s tough to have a five-year timeline. And somebody is dangling like maybe a slightly higher base in front of you and that you’re having a bad quarter or a bad day. So it’d been a testament to the focus you put in with us, and the focus you put in Sonatype is clearly evident in kind of where you are today.

[00:53:31] And I know, it’s not over, right. It’s just a journey, but you know, well done.

[00:53:40] Thank you.

[00:53:41] for joining us today.

[00:53:42] Pat Stillmun: [00:53:42] Is that it? That’s the rapid fire.

[00:53:47] Chris Corcoran: [00:53:47] Mark. I think Mark sold it, sold us up. We thought we would get a bunch out around rapid questions.

[00:53:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:51] Oh, well, I did four of them. And then it’s, we’re done.

[00:53:56] Pat Stillmun: [00:53:56] Okay. I can keep going. I got, I don’t have anything till.

[00:53:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:59] If Chris has got some more, well, I mean, I mean, I thought we were, I thought, I don’t know that I there’s more that I could talk about it. There’s I think some stories and things like the Jeremy Wood, I had a bunch of things running through my head when you were talking about playing the long game and those kinds of things.

[00:54:14] Pat Stillmun: [00:54:14] I, as I’m sitting here, I told you guys yesterday, there’s a picture of me on the wall, right there from the trip I went on to Barcelona from the 15 months, What I forget what it was even called at the time. but if at your year, Mark, you get to go on a trip or for that, it was like a 3k holiday.

[00:54:30] That’s what you

[00:54:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:54:31] 3k holidays. That what we called it.

[00:54:32] Pat Stillmun: [00:54:32] yeah, It was, is that still around or is it kind of been?

[00:54:35] Marc Gonyea: [00:54:35] No, they’re still doing

[00:54:35] Pat Stillmun: [00:54:35] else?

[00:54:36] Chris Corcoran: [00:54:36] we’re still doing it.

[00:54:37] Pat Stillmun: [00:54:37] Do people jump on it? I don’t. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. it was amazing.

[00:54:43] Chris Corcoran: [00:54:43] Yeah, we just had an SDR last week who got, just got back from Hawaii.

[00:54:47] Pat Stillmun: [00:54:47] Oh, that’s incredible. Nice. Yeah. I mean, I, that was another thing that honestly, I, that kept me wanting to stay around. It was, I knew, I would be, I’d be stupid to, after threat connect laughter or sorry, it’s the client left after, what is six, nine months or something like that, that I was working with them and, after they left, I wanted to jump and then I kind of stopped.

[00:55:08] And I, again, I’m more conversation with Jeremy. It was he was looking like, Hey, what’s going to happen nine months from now, when you do hit your, when you’re at 18 months or when you hit 15 months, like you could be at a company who dangled some sort of offer at you that seems really great right now.

[00:55:24] Or you could be at memoryBlue that people know is a great training program around the, the software sales circle and you Mark and Chris are gonna open up their whole network to you, and you’re going to have any offer you want. And I. And he was like, can you get the holiday at the end? Do like you get the a paid vacation.

[00:55:42] It’s what are you going to get out of leaving right now? And, I, that was incredibly insightful because I, the answer was I’m going to get nothing out of it. I’m going to feel like I, I’ve walked away on my own terms. And like, I. Some stupid that you think when you’re 22 or whatever I don’t know.

[00:55:59] it was stupid, but here I am, I walked out of memoryBlue. I had, I. I had seven offers that I was able to choose the best from. And I don’t regret where I was at all. And I was basically, I remember putting off interviews because I was like, ah, I’m going to be on vacation. I’m going to be in Barcelona that week.

[00:56:15] I can’t come in for an interview. well, why are you going? I was like, Oh, well, my company’s paying for it. it’s great. I, I can kind of, I was able to kind of set the terms for my next step, rather than just sort of whatever was at the mercy of what came my way. And, I got my job because of a connection from you guys.

[00:56:31] It was what was it? Bill Smith had worked with Bill Smith, my former VP or director of global sales had worked with Marco Johnson. There’s a, another ding.

[00:56:41] I’d worked with Marco and Marco pinged me one day and just said Hey, I, Bill Smith is a great guy. I know him from, I forgot what the connection was, but he goes, yeah, his company Sonatype has, is hiring.

[00:56:50] And would you be interested in it? So I just kind of, yeah, sure. Why not? A rising star. This is what you do is you take interviews left and right. And It was a great fit. It was a security company. it was exactly what I was looking for. And I, another reason why we had the connection too, was our CMO I’ve learned this a couple of months into the job.

[00:57:09] Our chief marketing officer had turned to kind of our director of sales and said, you should check out memoryBlue if we’re looking to hire SDRs. And he was like, yeah, they’ve kind of been on my radar. Let’s figure it out. And the reason why I pointed to memoryBlue is because he had been with memoryBlue at his past company or a couple of companies ago, his name’s Matt Hauer and his first SDR was Tommy Gassman.

[00:57:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:57:32] I was just. It was his SDR.

[00:57:35] Pat Stillmun: [00:57:35] Yeah, exactly. And he was like, Oh, he was like, Oh yeah. Do you know Tommy Gassman? He was  my first SDR. It was like, Tommy Gassman was your SDR? Are you kidding me? It’s it was, I was like, that’s as great of a memoryBlue experience as you can get.

[00:57:48] I’m sure, know This 

[00:57:49] guy 

[00:57:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:57:51] This guy was terrible. It was Tommy Gassman. Do you know?

[00:57:54] Pat Stillmun: [00:57:54] Yeah. Oh, funny enough. Yeah. He runs the sales department at memoryBlue now. Yeah, he sucked, right? Yeah, no, I know. Yeah. So Matt. Yeah. So they’re like, again, you never get those connections if you just take that quick little short term win because of, your pride gets in the way of wanting to stay with the, wanting to go leave the company on your own terms or some stupid thing that you tell yourself to help you sleep better at night or whatever.

[00:58:20] I remeber 

[00:58:20] Marc Gonyea: [00:58:20] like you going through just word of mouth, right? Cause we weren’t that we were we’re much larger now that we’re still a small business.

[00:58:26] Pat Stillmun: [00:58:26] I was in HQ so you guys cared about me. When I was in Boone you didn’t care.

[00:58:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:58:31] Right. So you’re back in,  back in excuse that we cared more about you. But I remember like talking about it, I think with Wood or, about you and your path.

[00:58:41] And I remember being really happy when I saw the pictures come in feed from your 3K. I definitely remember that cause you and your girlfriend, I guess now fiance. Right? Am I 

[00:58:49] Pat Stillmun: [00:58:49] right?

[00:58:49] Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:58:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:58:50] With the Barcelona. Like this guy with the Barcelona? That’s like the kind of place I’d go. My employer had a 3K holiday.

[00:58:56] So, and you stuck it through and now I forgot about your seven offers.

[00:59:01] Pat Stillmun: [00:59:01] Yeah, that was I have that memory in my mind. Cause every time I come back to a, first Friday or something, Nick Perry or Jeremy Wood go, so how many was it when you walked out? these people don’t believe me that I say people get their pick of the litter when you walk out a memoryBlue. And if you’re doing well and play your cards, right.

[00:59:15] It was, I heard stories from, people like negotiating contracts and things like that, really setting their own terms. But yeah, I walked out and had seven different offers to choose from, and it was, I can’t think of a pet what else are you going to get that opportunity to to be able to choose from that many different offers and you never know what’s going to happen.

[00:59:33] So it was, yeah. 

[00:59:35] Marc Gonyea: [00:59:35] Well it’s because you had the fortitude to kind of stick with it, man. That’s the thing. It’s not easy. And we try and help people stick with it through the coaching and not. I mean, we’re not perfect as a company, right? There are all sorts of things we need to improve on. Boon maybe was the best call, but you stuck with it and did it the right way.

[00:59:53] So congrats.

[00:59:55] Pat Stillmun: [00:59:55] Yeah. It’s Yeah, you get to pick the company and manager. You don’t have to choose from one of the other, which is happens quite a lot while I like this guy. I don’t like that guy. I mean, Sonatype has tripled in size since the time I’ve been there. It’s we’ve gotten acquired by a private equity firm.

[01:00:09] We’ve got, we I’ve had a position where I was interviewing SDR as I was interviewing, now, ISR is at my position pretty early on. And those are things that you get to going forward when someone, I move onto my next role or whatever that you always get to say in an interview.

[01:00:24] Like I have experienced like interviewing and hiring and, I was trusted with all these different responsibilities outside of my day-to-day, hitting my quota, things like that. That’s, I don’t think I would have had that opportunity if I had just sort of, again, taken one of those quick wins four years ago just for the sake of walking out or whatever. Why whatever reason I was mad at the time. And it sounds so stupid saying now. But like, why was I ever mad about that? Look how great things worked out. But, in the moment you’re really beat up about it. And that was something I talked to Jeremy a lot about.

[01:00:55] That was, he was incredible and, keeping my spirits up and keeping me going and I actually think I like my second client, the one he had kind of ready to go in the hopper for me when, after the first one left. I think what I look back at my time at memoryBlue. I identify them as my client, my second one.

[01:01:13] Marc Gonyea: [01:01:13] Yeah, man. I know that’s part of the experience.

[01:01:15] Chris Corcoran: [01:01:15] Hey, so, so, so talk a little bit about what you look for when you’re interviewing an SDR.

[01:01:21] Pat Stillmun: [01:01:21] Yeah. it’s wild. It’s absolutely wild, the kind of responses you get from people that the, just the, some of the arrogance that people kind of have coming into an interview about they say, you know what, I set 15, 30 meetings last month, and then you talk about the sort of, okay, well, what did you do?

[01:01:40] How did you get the meetings? And they’re like, Oh, we’ve got this marketing tool is great. I sent out 10,000 emails last month, then got got 15 meetings off of it. I was like, okay, well, what’d you say in the email? It’s I, I, my marketing team sent me a thing and I shot it back out.

[01:01:55] It’s okay, well you boasted about all the meetings again. How are you getting those meetings? And so you go, okay, well, what do what’s if you just flat out ask them, so it’s wild. Like how unprepared people are for this. One of the first things we say is, what does your company do?

[01:02:09] Because we want, I want to hear you pitch the company that you’re pitching every single day to people on the phone and they fumble through a four minute explanation of what their company does. And that right off the bat tells me, well, all right, well, you haven’t even, you don’t have something prepared.

[01:02:24] They don’t have your, you don’t have the lemonade statement ready to go of, this is what we do so that there’s a red flag. And so there’s just it is unbelievable. Some of the, some of just the sort of ad hoc nature of people go about being an SDR. They just kind of show up and wing it.

[01:02:40] And there’s no, you ask about their process. When do you make calls? Why do you make calls during that time? How many calls do you make? Why is it that number? People don’t have any answer for that. it’s it was almost mind blew my mind coming from the memoryBlue world of like 8:30 to 10, you’re making your calls.

[01:02:55] It’s a hundred dials a day. It’s there’s a reason why it’s a hundred, there’s a reason why you called at the times that you call. And then, I sort of started introducing that to Sonatype of okay, well, why are we calling in the middle of the day? If you were like, Hey, I’ve got my free time in the middle of the day.

[01:03:09] So that’s when I make my calls. It’s well, you should be setting your schedule around your calls and then you have free time. that should be the thing that’s and, pick up rates are higher and early in the morning, and later in the, it was like another language to me hearing, like hearing people talk about their sales process.

[01:03:24] So that is the biggest thing is people don’t have a real process. They don’t really take the time to understand what they’re doing. They just kind of get into sales because they think it’s cool and fun and I, I’m smooth, I can talk to people. And it’s so far from that it’s so far from just being able to talk to people and people give that answer.

[01:03:43] why’d you get into sales. Why are what are you good at? And they’re like, Oh yeah I’m smooth on the phone. I know how to talk to people. And then I’d go, okay, well, what does your company do? And I will, it’s one of these kind of things and they get this whole big like big, long explanation about what the, and it’s incoherent rant.

[01:04:01] And it’s Oh, well you just told me, you don’t know how to talk on the phone. And you just said, that’s your skill? So how are you getting meetings? it’s wild.

[01:04:10] Chris Corcoran: [01:04:10] Wow.

[01:04:11] Pat Stillmun: [01:04:11] Yeah, I have a lot of I’ve had so many, I felt like I’ve wasted so much time interviewing just. It like if people just don’t have, they have no, I feel like I’m ranting a little, but they feel like it’s no respect for the role and the work that it takes. Like they just think they could show up and be like, yeah, I deserve this job.

[01:04:30] I know X, Y, Z person or whatever. And I know how to get it done. And just people saying that I’m a people person I’m smooth. I know how to navigate. And then, you know, their answer to well, what do you typically send in an email? how do you handle loss? How do you just ask any of these questions?

[01:04:45] And they’re they have no comeback for, they have no answer. That’s it, they’re taken aback that I would ask questions about what their current company does, why they’re, how they perform. it’s just frustrating to see coming from memoryBlue and how knowing the work that there’s a reason why 15 months of memoryBlue feels like a long time is because you’ve worked really hard for 15 months.

[01:05:05] And, you continue to worry if, like the work stops. But knowing that I went through that, and then I get a little bit mad when someone feels like they, and knowing how hard I’ve worked and everything I went through to get to the job that I have now, it feels it’s a little bit insulting hearing someone just feel like they can sort of waltz into the position and they’re gonna, they’re gonna kick ass right away just because they’re the man or something like that, Respect the craft.

[01:05:28] Yes. Yes. people don’t, more often than they should.

[01:05:36] Chris Corcoran: [01:05:36] That was great. I think. Well, why don’t we end on that one?

[01:05:40] Pat Stillmun: [01:05:40] Yeah. 

[01:05:41] Chris Corcoran: [01:05:41] Yeah, that was great.

[01:05:43] Pat Stillmun: [01:05:43] Thank you.

[01:05:44] Chris Corcoran: [01:05:44] That was great. That was great. Well, Mr. Stillmun, thanks for joining us. This has been very insightful. It’s been great catching up with you and we appreciate it.

[01:05:52] Pat Stillmun: [01:05:52] Yeah, of course. Thank you guys. Thank you for everything. Thank you for the opportunity. I honestly, would not be anywhere close to where I am right now without the opportunity you guys gave. So I don’t know if I’ve said it enough, but thank you. I’m sure you hear it all the time, but thank you. Thank you.

[01:06:05] Thank

[01:06:05] Marc Gonyea: [01:06:05] Now, it sounds like you need to thank yourself and, and Jeremy and Reagan. Chris, I’ll take a little bit of credit for it, but maybe Aaron.

[01:06:12] Pat Stillmun: [01:06:12] can I get Jeremy a raise? if I say his name enough or anything like that, can I give him, I honestly cannot give Jeremy Wood enough credit. he’s been incredible and Reagan too, but I just think Jeremy, I went through a lot during my time at memoryBlue with Jeremy. So I always kind of identify him as my DM and, Even outside of that, I like, jeez, I still play basketball with people that I went to memoryBlue, or I was at memoryBlue with, I what’s that,

[01:06:36] Marc Gonyea: [01:06:36] Leave Anyone else out, anybody out That 

[01:06:38] Pat Stillmun: [01:06:38] we should give shout outs to?

[01:06:39] Marc Gonyea: [01:06:39] shout outs to.

[01:06:41] Pat Stillmun: [01:06:41] Dylan Dunn, Carly Harm and shot. Incredible. Both of them. there’s a little double whammy for you there. yeah. Yeah. Carly and Dylan just moved a couple blocks down the street from me here. So seeing them, I golf with Duffy and Steven Duffy and Dylan a lot. I don’t know who else Eric Spenson was there while I was there.

[01:06:58] He was right next to me for a long time. Teammates works there now.

[01:07:03] Marc Gonyea: [01:07:03] your former teammates works there from football.

[01:07:06] Pat Stillmun: [01:07:06] Oh, Andrew DiNardo. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Here we are. And I didn’t even mention DiNardo. Yeah, he’s a, I talk to him all the time. He’s great. yeah. Keep the Catholic connect football connection going. there’s a lot of good people coming out of there. So and I, I know I’m still involved with the business school at Catholic.

[01:07:22] I don’t know if you all have talked to Mark Weber at all.

[01:07:25] Chris Corcoran: [01:07:25] Oh, yeah.

[01:07:27] Pat Stillmun: [01:07:27] Yeah, he’s a.

[01:07:28] Marc Gonyea: [01:07:28] man, we sponsor the sales program there or what.

[01:07:31] Pat Stillmun: [01:07:31] That’s right. I just, I, you can’t go to any of those things anymore. So it’s been so long. I was happy to see memoryBlue when I went to my one of those happy hours. that was really, I saw Libby there.

[01:07:40] I was like, what the hell are you doing here? And she was like, Oh, we to these now it was awesome. yeah, it’s, it feels so long ago when we could do that, but Maybe we’ll do it. We’ll do it again. We’ll do it again. Would you, can.

[01:07:50] Of course.

[01:07:51] Marc Gonyea: [01:07:51] I look forward to hearing more about your exploits.

[01:07:54] Chris Corcoran: [01:07:54] Keep selling.

[01:07:55] Pat Stillmun: [01:07:55] I will. And I do have we can talk about it offline, but yeah. Mark Weber got Courtney. My fiance, her first job actually got her into sales too.

[01:08:04] Marc Gonyea: [01:08:04] Well, she did too, by the way, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Courtney.

[01:08:08] Pat Stillmun: [01:08:08] Oh yeah. I got to give her a shout out.

[01:08:10] Marc Gonyea: [01:08:10] She gets more credit than Jeremy Wood.

[01:08:12] Pat Stillmun: [01:08:12] Yeah. Oh yeah. She’s yeah. She makes me feel bad about myself all the time. Cause she’s uber successful.

[01:08:18] Marc Gonyea: [01:08:18] Well, she can come to our happy hours and answer all the questions that we have for.

[01:08:22] Pat Stillmun: [01:08:22] Yeah. She’s, he’s a sales engineer and people all the time are coming up to her like, Oh, what’s it like being an SE? I can do that. I could definitely do that. And she was like I respect what you do. Have respect for what I do, because they’re totally different worlds. I have an engineering degree and spent, went through a bootcamp with my company and that’s just to get started.

[01:08:39] you did your whole thing if you want to stop and start over. Sure.

[01:08:42] But let’s not pretend We can do the crossover here.

[01:08:45] Marc Gonyea: [01:08:45] All right. We’ll have her on as guest at some point. All right, Pat.

[01:08:50] Chris Corcoran: [01:08:50] Thanks Pat. We appreciate it. See ya.

[01:08:52] Thanks 

[01:08:53] Pat Stillmun: [01:08:53] guys. Thanks everybody.