Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 54: Joey Cohen – Always Play the Long Game

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Joey Cohen

What he does: He’s currently the Senior Account Executive at memoryBlue.

Company: memoryBlue

Noteworthy: During his 7-year-long tenure at memoryBlue, Joey went from an SDR to the Inside Sales Manager in charge of managing and leading a team of eight Account Executives.

Where to find Joey: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ When you celebrate the exits of your employees, you create champions. Joey and memoryBlue are all about nurturing good relationships. Joey, in particular, does a great job of staying in touch with company alumni, which he considers vital from both a personal and professional standpoint. “The two of you and the rest of the recruiting team hire very similar profile people. And those people get along. I’m sure sometimes they bump heads, but in the scheme of things, they get along. They have similar missions, both from a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint. So you foster great relationships […] The neat thing is you step into this type of environment, and if you’re open and social and open to making new friends, it’s pretty easy to do so here.”

⚡ The initial period within a new role is never easy because it’s not supposed to be. Jumping into a new position comes with a set of unique challenges that you’re still not fully equipped to tackle. The good news is that you’ll eventually get there, so be patient. According to Joey, you should acknowledge the fact that you’re not supposed to be great at your new role yet. Instead, you should approach it with a learning mindset. “I try to tell myself early on, I don’t think I’m supposed to be good at this yet, but there’s a reason that I emerged out of the pack to be selected for this role. There has to be a reason, but it can be frustrating as a young person who expects to be as good as they were as an SDR.”

⚡ If you take the long-term approach, the world becomes your oyster. Playing the long game will take you places, especially in the sales industry. Getting that first ‘No’ from a prospect can be highly demotivating and discouraging when you’re a newbie SDR. But that’s when you should learn to push through and turn that ‘No’ into a ‘Yes.’ The key is never to burn a bridge. Joey shares his strategy with us, “I try to encourage the people on the team to understand that the first time someone officially tells you no, it’s not the end of that relationship. Realistically, it’s the start of it. You’re in the first couple of phases. So in that vein, never burn a bridge.”

Episode Highlights

From Serving Tables to Selling Services: Resilience and People Skills are Key

“If you do it for a while, it infuses an aspect of resiliency that’s important. There are, especially in Southwest Virginia, more people that don’t treat you as they should as a server when you do a good job than not or than those that do. Up here, as I did serve in Columbia, Maryland, for a summer way different experience. 

And I think the resiliency, being able to read a table and figure out, ‘How do I approach these people?’ I didn’t do it on purpose, but in retrospect, the concept of tone matching when you approach a table is very much a reality and something that impacts how you’re tipped, how they interact with you. So the more I think about it, there’s a lot of things that translate directly from that to a professional sales career.”

The Importance of Building Resilience in Sales: How to Learn to Push Through the Hard Times

“The harsh reality is this is the industry; it’s going to happen again. So focus on the next one. Maybe you get this guy back; maybe you don’t. So early, early on, there was a degree of doubt. ‘Can I do this? Do I have the right support?’ and everything else. […]

But you push through the early rough points where you have the right personality, you’re in the right environment, but naturally, it’s like riding a bike. It’s a little awkward to get started. And two, three months later, I started doing pretty good at it.”

The Reality of Selling the Intangible

“The closest thing we have to a demo is showing people around the office and shaking hands. We have a pretty good close rate when that happens, but it’s a challenging sale, especially in today’s world, and I’m hoping we’re emerging towards more in-person meetings.

But for the last two years, we kind of lost that ability. Our demo was removed from us, especially when the AEs and formerly SDRs were calling for the company. I told them this is a unique SDR job because it’s probably one of the only ones in the world other than our competitors, where you are exemplifying the product in real-time, high pressure.

So, I always tell them the margin of error in success is much wider because when you screw up, your mistakes are amplified. And when you do well, you get more credit for it, especially given who you’re selling to. “

Transcript:

Marc Gonyea: [00:02:00] Well, well, Joey Cohen in the house, not really an alum, although he is moving, not moving from the company, he’s moving across the country, halfway across the country, which we’ll get to later,

but Joey Cohen is approaching, as of July 14th, his seven years with the firm, Chris.

Chris Corcoran: Chris, seven years. It’s gone by quickly. Yeah. Former SDR, 

and I guess we’ll get into this, but he has a little bit of a 

Joey Cohen: seven-year itch. Seven year what? Itch. I think so. Yeah. It’s been a ride. We’ll get, we’ll get into this, but let’s, let’s 

Marc Gonyea: first start by talking a little bit about, yeah.

 Cohen’s, like, one of our most favourite ever people. Yeah. I mean, you’ve done so much for us, right with us and you’re a personal favorite of the Gonyea family, I’ll tell you that much. You and your sister, we’ll be talking about that too, but let’s talk about it Cohen, people want to get to know you a little bit.

This is a little bit different, ’cause you still work here. So, people who work here have been more curious, and then there will be a bunch of lombs listening to this [00:03:00] because they know you, so it’d be good to take them, you know, let us know a little bit about Joey Cohen, where you grew up, what were you like as a kid, 

Joey Cohen: those sorts of things.

Sure. Yeah. So, I grew up in, good old Roanoke Virginia, personal favorite of Chris Corcoran. Big lit. Star city. Him and I have always, I guess, connected the data case during high school and just everything that’s said, that’s Roanoke, and from there. But I, so I grew up in Roanoke. By comparison to Northern Virginia,

I guess a lot of people consider it to be country, but when you get down there and you realize you can get a lot more country than just Roanoke itself, I consider myself because of that, kind of, from the south. Growing up, always super, super competitive into sports. It’s funny, most of the way through school I didn’t really know what I was going to do with a marketing degree.

And, I was blessed for someone at Business Horizons, I think it was a recruiter from NetApp, told me, “Stop waiting with marketing, lead with sales.” And, as I think about what I did previously, I was the guy in 7th grade, like, slinging 70 magazine subscriptions,  an electric [00:04:00] scooter and it’s the sales, I was, kind of,

I think, I don’t know, born to do, and I have fun with it. So, I’m thankful for that. 

Marc Gonyea: So, let’s go back a little bit, right? Because I definitely remember when you were interviewed, you were telling me, I was fascinated with your sisters. One of them is, like, one’s a teacher, right? And, one’s in the medical profession. And, this guy was talking about how great his sisters were, I was 

Chris Corcoran: like,

“Does this guy have any talent lost in the family?”

Marc Gonyea: Right. And then, your mom too,  she should be brought for governor of Virginia, as far as I’m concerned. But so, when you were in, up, when you were at, talk to us about slinging these magazine subscriptions, like, did you, kind of, know, “I’m, kind of, good at the 

Joey Cohen: sales thing.” It was my first real exposure into sales and it was simple.

It was, it was commission-based in the sense that you do X and then you qualify for X prize, right? And then, the prizes became somewhat obsolete, and I think I just wanted to win. So, I just started leveraging network, whether it was utilizing my mother’s network, who’s the rabbi of a local congregation Roanoke, knocking door-to-door in the [00:05:00] neighborhood,

and just having a, in retrospect, a value prop and an opening value statement as I’m knocking on people’s doors. And, it was my first exposure into it, and that led me to serve in tables and serving more tables, and. You just started serving tables. Chris, I love that. Back at fourteen. Fourteen? Fourteen. Wow. Every retirement home, so, no tips other than old ladies throwing you a $20 bill every now and then,

but yes, I, I did that pretty much nonstop from fourteen to twenty two. Oh, right. 

Marc Gonyea: And then, all right, but did you even know sales was a profession? So, you went to Tech, majored 

Joey Cohen: marketing. So, the professional sales program, I was actually approached in my, at the beginning of my second to last semester, with an option to add, like, 22 credits for my last two semesters, add 22 to get the sales concentration.

I  think it was a sales minor at that point. And, just logistically, it just didn’t really make sense. And, that was the first real thought that maybe this is more of a thing outside of slinging [00:06:00] breadsticks at Olive Garden.  Yes, it was, as I mentioned, it was the lady at, at the NetApp recruiting fair that, or the, the, the, the job with the Business Horizons that, out of nowhere, just, kind of, opened my mind to it

and what’s still surprising to me is, I mean, the tech marketing program is pretty damn good. But never in 3,5 to 4 years until that last conversation with, like, my career advisor did the concept of professional sales career ever come up. And, in retrospect, it’s kind of, I, I’m always surprised, never, it never came to be because, like, obviously you have these huge software companies that are notable and someone has to be leading the sales efforts for these companies.

So, it wasn’t until late in college that I really stumbled into this as being a possibility, and then obviously memoryBlue, kind of, let, let me run around with it from there. We’ll 

Marc Gonyea: do some of this when Christian talks about the origin, you guys meet, meeting originally. When you were serving tables,  lots of people

who have been working here who were servers, how do you, what, what is it about serving that, kind of, translated in the sales? What kind of [00:07:00] experiences did you have that made you formulate, formulate, kind of, your take 

Joey Cohen: on on that? It, if you do it for awhile, it infuses an aspect of resiliency, that’s really, really important.

There are, especially in Southwest Virginia, more people that don’t treat you as they should as a server, when you do a good job than, than not, or then, that, that, than those that do. Up here, as I did serve in Columbia, Maryland, for a summer, way, way different experience. And, I just think the resiliency, being able to, kind of, read a table and figure out,

“How do I approach these people?” I didn’t do it on purpose, but in retrospect, the concept of tone-matching when you approach a table is very, very much a reality and some of that impacts how you’re tiped, how they interact with you. So, the more I think about it, there’s a lot of things that translate directly from that to a professional sales career.

You got to come in and work in hustle and, kind of, figure out how that can actually translate to you on the phone, representing a company. Yeah, I, I learned a tremendous [00:08:00] amount doing that, just about people in general. You always talk about it very fondly. I mean, I still love going to Olive Garden.

I went there with my mom, like, a week ago when she was in town, so. All right, 

Chris Corcoran: well, let’s, let’s talk about how we met. I, kind of, I think it’s an interesting story. Yeah. It was at Business Horizons and just some backstory. We, at that point, you know, we’re still, still growing, still small. And, we don’t have the resources of, like, a NetApp or other big software companies.

So, we had to get scrappy. Yup. AF. And so, one of the things we did was we talked to the, the individual who ran Business Horizons, and I asked him, I said, “Hey, there’s this big software company that just dominates recruiting for salespeople at Virginia Tech. Yep. Put us next to them, put us next to them because there’s always a huge line of people waiting to talk to them,

and we want, we want to be able to talk to the people waiting in line, [00:09:00] that’s the overflow.” And so, we were down there and we were, we’re sitting next to this big software company and we were with Justin Brown who was helping out, and I’ll let, I’ll throw it to you, Joey. You tell 

Joey Cohen: a story. Yeah, I actually remember I’m sitting in that line,

I’m a little fatigued just from the fair itself. I think I may have had one or two resumes left in my book. And, the only reason I went to see this event was because as you mentioned, there just appeared to be a lot of people there, and as a young, naive young buck in college, I’m thinking, “You know what? If all these people are in this line, I might as well wait in this line for a few minutes.”

And, I actually remember, I was probably in that line for 2 or 3 minutes, and I believe you all were to my left. And, we now have that fancy elephant at the, at the recruiting job fairs, and it’s very, very clear, what it was back in the day, it was, like, a chalkboard, like, a picture of a chalkboard,

and I just couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what I was looking at to my left. The confusion element. [00:10:00] The elephant, the chalkboard. Who were this guys going with? And, it may have been me peering over there with just this confused look of, “What in the world is this?” And, I think you approached me, most people at that job fair have a name tag, and you called me by first name and told me to come over. In my head

I was like, “I, I guess I should listen to this guy. He seems like he, I should go talk to him.” Right. So. That was the fatigue part. Yeah. Yeah. And, you asked me a few questions. Immediately, I think, I remember that I wasn’t sold on the company, I was just immediately, it was just, you were inquiring about my background and what I was doing, and I felt comfortable,

15, 20 minutes later, you introduced me to J.B, Justin Brown, and I find that talking to him for 30 or 40 minutes, I’m really, really fired up about the opportunity, the company. Even though I was talking to NetApp earlier that day, I wasn’t really interested in a company that size, I, kind of, wanted to join a company that I could, like, be a part of growth.

Yeah. That [00:11:00] pseudo-startup-desk just in terms of how the vibe in the overall culture was. And yeah, I think it was maybe within 48 hours, I was on the phone with Justin, again, talking in detail about the opportunity. We probably spoke for over an hour, and I remember calling my mom and saying, “I think this is right.”

Like, “I, I feel like this is a little impulsive, but I feel right about it.” And she just told me, she’s like, “If your gut’s telling you to do it and, you know, you’ll be happy doing this, go for it.” And, here I am seven years later. Well, Justin’s super passionate and that’s infectious. Oh, very much so. Very much so.

That was one of the first things I, kind of, felt about that and it was really, really neat for me seeing the leader, the CEO, the co-founder, the company, shaking hands, and when I found out that you also went to Tech, it made more sense, but still. And then, he didn’t even know us from Roanoke. I did not know.

I did not know at that point. Yeah. We reconnected on that late, later down the road. So, that was one thing. And then, after talking to Justin, I was like, “This dude has so much passion [00:12:00] for not only the company itself, which was important, but for the industry, for sales development and, like, the impact that he’s already making on his clients and how I can, kind of, be a part of that vision

and it was, kind of, a no-brainer from there. And then, you, 

Chris Corcoran: you reminded me, or I totally forgot about this. Your, your, when you came on site to interview.

Forgot about it, that 

Joey Cohen: day, but seven years later and you still remember it. There’s actually layers of this, I didn’t, I didn’t tell you about earlier. So, I am leaving Blacksburg, the night before, I stayed with a good friend of mine’s parents in Fairfax, and ironically enough, I made the same drive this morning for the first time since then. I’m just moving out of my house and I’m staying with Jessie,

Jessie Gabris. That’s where you stayed seven years ago? No, I stayed in Fairfax. So, it’s the same exact drive. And, she’s a rockstar. She’s doing great at any B2B. But so, I get to the house the night before and I had studied the email. [00:13:00] I thought I was ready for it. I prepared for the interview. I had notes and all kinds of things.

I was, like, asking myself questions the way up, and I thought I did everything right. And, I’m getting in the shower that morning, and I could have sworn the email said, “The interview was on 9:30, September 30th at 9:30.” It didn’t say, “September 30th,” it said, “9/30,” and I’m literally getting into the shower,

I think I have my morning routine good, and, I read it as “9:00 AM on 9/30,” and my heart drops, my internal temp goes up, like, 20 degrees. So, I hop in the shower, I’m in and out in 60 seconds. Sadly to this day, I have no idea how to tie a tie. It’s just not a skill. I just haven’t, I, I much prefer the tireless look in general or the golf-polo, which I wear religiously. Polo.

So, I had my roommate before I left tie my tie. Okay. And, the second I got out of the shower, I touched the tie, it just completely irrelevant. Of course. So, I go up and I wake my mom, my, my friend’s mama, and, I ask [00:14:00] her, I literally wake her up and knock on her door to ask her, I’m freaking out. Yeah. And, I’m  in and she laughs at me,

she goes, “You think I know how to tie a tie?” I said, “Great.” So, I’m weaving in and out of traffic. I’m on the easy pass. I don’t have an easy pass. I have YouTube up on my phone. Like, literally trying to figure out how to tie a tie. I actually tied it. I don’t know how I did it. It was probably so par, but it was enough of a knot that it stayed.

And, I show up at the parking lot, probably 9:15. And the O.G memoryBlue office, 5th floor, old courthouse, you walk in and there’s a nice bookshelf with some good literature and just an empty desk. And, the desk is used here and there for different people who use it, but empty desk and a bell, and I didn’t know what to do,

so I just walked in the office, never been there before. The first door that was open was yours, Chris, and I knocked on your door, and I simply said, “Hey, Chris, I’m here for my interview and I’m late.” 

Chris Corcoran: Just get it, just get it out of the way, just 

Joey Cohen: get it out of the way. And, you gave me the [00:15:00] classic, like, four or five second, Chris-Corcoran stare.

You said, “Go ahead and sit down. I’ll have somebody out.” So, I thought I botched it, but in the grander scheme of things, I think I started rough and then things went okay from there, so. Can you still tie a tie? If I pull up that YouTube video. And, who’d you have interview with? Who did I have Interview with? 

Chris Corcoran: Wait, was, was it Mark or me, or 

Marc Gonyea: do we have… I had some sort of interview,

’cause I remember him telling me about his siblings and his mom, I was like, “All right, this guy’s got, like, a quarter of the horsepower that women have. His mom raised him,  like, then he’s, then he’s a bad-ass.” Yeah. I met your mom. Really? I want to meet 

Joey Cohen: her. You have, right? Shout out to her. I guess you all met my little sister.

And, I remember all of going so fast. It was all, so. I think I interviewed with Nimit. Maybe you did. Who is now my boss and sales leader and he’s awesome to work with. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him in the last couple of months, once he, kind of, stepped into that role. And, I, you know, I’d like to [00:16:00] say it was Nimit, Mike Mishler.

Because I ended up working for Mike. Okay. Okay. All right. You know, my guts telling me it was Lee Ryan. Okay. But it’s been so long, so it’s hard to, hard to pinpoint. Gotcha. So, you said 

Chris Corcoran: you started off as an SDR on Mishler’s team? Yes. Yep. Wow. So, to share with the listeners, the Mishler 

Joey Cohen: experience. Oh man. The Mishler experience.

So, now that I know a little more about the business, Mishler used to be called “claim-happy.” Oh yeah. Mishler would just take any client that would come in. Yeah. Some, some managers had a completely opposite expansion strategy for their own teams, where they’d be very, very selective, they’d be industry-specific, find clients who knew us and Mishler was just, “Give me all the business, let me build a big team,”

which I think had some good and some bad. He was great at, great at it. But Mishler was very much the, and he infused a lot of confidence in his reps ’cause he [00:17:00] would tell you, “I selected you for my team for a reason. I know you can do this. I’d go into rely on you to perform.” In, in your head, you’re like, “Cool.

Oh gosh, I better, better perform, better do this.” But you know, given his, his strategy, there were paper-meeting clients that were plentiful. There were other clients that were plentiful. And, it was a, it was a fun environment, a lot of the people, Brandon Eyring, Omari Morgan, good old Pat Digioia. Good, you are friends to this day. Still friends with all of them to this day, and those were, like, my close early-memoryBlue homeys. Wow.

 We called ourselves the “West Wing”

’cause there was, what was it,  Mark Musitano called the “Mark Logic.” I think he called it “a casino.” Casino, because there was no windows, 

Chris Corcoran: no clocks, moose. 

Marc Gonyea: Musitano was here when you started, 

Joey Cohen: you guys were. He was, like, he was, like, the SDR in the office,  strutting around on his “mark-logic,” pedestal per se. Him, it was him and [00:18:00] actually Ryan Cooper were, like, the guys to be, it seemed like it, at least that’s how they acted.

It was the, the classic “Cooper close.” 

Marc Gonyea: Oh, oh no.  

Joey Cohen: He had, like, 30 meetings a month doing this. It was, it was the “homework close.” So, anytime he didn’t have a specific answer to a prospect’s question, he would say, “I promise you I’ll get the best possible answer for you. I don’t want to give it to you

now. Let me do my homework and let’s you and I come back at X time or X time with my account executive, with my solutions consultant, and we’ll have a more in depth conversation about that, but I’ll document it via email prior.” And, he would get meeting, after meeting, after meeting. 

Marc Gonyea: The homework close. Yeah. Yeah, he did 

Joey Cohen: a really good job. He’s a Foster resident too.

Yeah, he, he’s been living, he just moved, I think, but he lived like five minutes away from me for many years. Cohen, you do a

Marc Gonyea: really good job of staying in touch with people. [00:19:00] Thanks. Why is that? 

Joey Cohen: I mean, a variety of reasons. I think from a personal standpoint, the neat thing about memoryBlue is for better, for worse.

The two of you hire, and the rest of the recruiting team hire very similar profile people, and those people get along, right? I’m sure sometimes they bump heads, but in the scheme of things, they get along. They have similar missions, both from a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint. So, you foster great relationships and especially for a lot of people that might be moving up from a new city, whether it’s Blacksburg or across the country or wherever the office is, the concept of moving can sometimes be, kind of, scary.

And, the neat thing is you step into this type of environment, and if you’re open and social and just open to make new friends, it’s pretty easy to do so here. So, from a personal standpoint, I think that that fueled a large part of my social group the last seven years of living Northern Virginia.

Yeah. From a professional standpoint, the neat thing about this hiring model is when you celebrate the exits of your [00:20:00] employees, you create champions as opposed to the opposite, right? Right. And, being in a sales role for the company, for what, the last 5, 5, 6 years, a lot of those people become really, really great targets for you or at least key influencers in deals.

So, the personal stuff is probably more important to me, longer term, but from a professional standpoint, Ryan Cooper was one that, that was, that was, that ended being a client, that him and I were just brainstorming for months, “How do I help him, and he helps me bring in memoryBlue.” Yeah. For memoryBlue is benefit, for my benefit, for his company’s benefit everything else,

so I guess if I could encapsulate it into two, two things would be that. 

Marc Gonyea: I admire you for that. He’s always, Joey’s always popping up telling me, “I had talked to so-and-so or this did this, or what scheme somebody lived there, all it,” using people he doesn’t work with anymore, so he’s tough. And, you’re, you, you, people always want to hang out with you, I feel like you’re a very social creature,

so, like, it’s really, you can maintain this contacts 

Joey Cohen: which says a lot about you as a person. Thank You. 

[00:21:00] Marc Gonyea: When you were a newbie SDR, what was that like? So, we got the marketing guy, Olive Garden background, but no tech affiliate, tech sales and Google sales affiliation. You’re coming in as you’re making these, and you’re a fish. The fish was good at a lot of things, but he was also like, “Go make it happen,” kind of, more,

he would lead more 

Joey Cohen: that way. It was a grind after that. The, and, Abby Lacy was my, my mentor from day one. And then, I actually followed her to the sales team. And then, she was my mentor. And, when she ultimately left, I, like, overtook, I took over her pipeline, so, like, I kind of, followed in her footsteps throughout all of this.

But early on, she had to, kind of, walk me off the ledge because I got, and I’m a big Baltimore Ravens fan, my first lead I ever booked was the CFO for the Baltimore Ravens, for a Vertex, it’s, like, a tax software long-term client, and I had probably a 10, 15 minute conversation with this guy. I pulled pain.

I had a dope-lead right up. It was the perfect lead for the client. Dope-lead right up, love it. And, the guy ghosted us. He never, ever got back to [00:22:00] me and I was ready to punch a hole through a wall and Abby’s felt frustrated and made me go outside and, kind of, walking around the building, and she just, kind of, had a heart to heart,

she’s like, “You’re good at this. You’re early. You need to believe in this. Harsh reality is this is the industry, it’s going to happen again. Focus on the next one. Maybe you get this guy back, maybe you don’t.” So, early, early on, there was a degree, a degree of doubt, of like, “Can I do this? Do I have the right support and everything else?”

But you, kind of, push through the early rough points where you have the right personality, you’re in the right environment, but naturally it’s like riding a bike. It’s a little awkward to get, to get started, and 2, 3 months later I started doing pretty good at it. And, I, Justin Brown contacts me and starts socializing a potential opportunity to join the internal recruiting team,

and, you know, a couple of weeks later that, that’s kinda where I landed. Yeah. So, 

Marc Gonyea: Cohen started to slot 2014. He was top 10%. So, he got it out [00:23:00] in July, got it figured out, figured out in August, and he was top 10%, September, October, November. Right? And then, Justin approached him in the December, 2014, and he went over to work with J.B.

Okay. Real quick, before we get into that. Sure. Who, besides yourself, who was a baller SDR, who’s the best SDR beside yourself? And, you were rocking that.

Joey Cohen: So, Brandon Eyring. B.E. B.E. Brandon or Brando. Brando coined him. And, I’ve actually learned that I, I apparently no one, no one else has called him that before, and it’s starting to trend. It was trending, it was trending.  Our early, early friendship was fostered by him and I just being a) sitting next to each other and b) just being overtly blunt and honest about how we were doing as sales professionals.

So, if I heard something I liked, I would let him know, if I heard something that I hated I would absolutely let him know. And, that’s how him and I became really good friends is I think just through work into that, kind of, honest approach. But he was by far [00:24:00] one of the better sellers. Pat Digioia, we used to call him “the Sandbag King” because he’d be, on the board,

he’d be at 20% on the 30th of the month and you get to the opposite the next day, and somehow he’s in first place. And, let’s say he was there, and I spoke about, you know, Ryan Cooper earlier and Musitano were, kind of, like, the, the, the people that be back in the day. Honestly, from. Those are all good.

Justin was my recruiter and that was October, 2013. I started about nine months later and I had, he was my early career role model, I had a goal to work with him, work for him, figure out how to learn from him other than anecdotally from a training he might do, but actually be on his team. So, when the call came in of him being like, “Hey, let’s go grab lunch,”

I was ecstatic, to say the least, especially as a young 22-year old and just, kind of, you know, get my ground as professional. Only six months in. 

Marc Gonyea: Yeah, six 

months in, already getting involved. Yeah. 

Joey Cohen: Let’s talk about that. It was a little surprising to me. I didn’t, [00:25:00] and I guess back then we were way smaller. We used to, I remember when Julianne Sweat got.

Sweat-Thompson now, yes, when she got, when she got promoted, someone just stood on a chair, rang a bell, and the whole company knew that Julianne was promoted without a staff email, within two minutes and everyone congratulates. That’s how small we were. So, and that was also, kind of, cool ’cause that girl was just, I mean, hustler to say the least. I think she really encapsulated what you all want as a memoryBlue, you know? I 

Chris Corcoran: mean, Roanoke man. 

Roanoke.

You’re right. Roanoke, William Byrd High School. 

Marc Gonyea: First from Fredericksburg. 

Joey Cohen: No, she went to Roanoke. Yeah, we actually have a couple of mutual friends still that we found out about. ‘Cause I didn’t know her growing up, but a few good friends of ours are our friends, but so, I, I bring that up because it was cool to, kind of, follow in her footsteps and all of a sudden I was like, “Man, I am on this cool recruiting team,”

and [00:26:00] ironically enough, the, the, the, the pitch was, do internal for a little bit higher people, like you seen, who was my first hire actually. Wow. Yeah. You lean into him? I think, I think it was an imbalanced, like. Yeah, that gotta be tough to wrap. But, ’cause he had a connection to Phillipe.

Chris Corcoran: International 

flavor 

Joey Cohen: right there as well. Yeah. But, so, the pitch was join recruiting, learn it, master it. And ultimately what we want is for you to be an external recruiter and start recruiting for clients who need SDRs, sales reps, et cetera, which there’ve been ebbs and flows of that part of the business throughout, obviously. It’s Evan right now to say the least, it’s, kind of, neat seeing that, that take off once again.

So, that was the initial thing, but for me, early on, sales was great. Justin, kind of, sold me on the fact that sales and recruiting were very, very, very similar, which to this day I still [00:27:00] wholeheartedly believe, but for me it was upward progression, very, very early in a professional sales or any career that really spoke to me.

So, I ran with it and learned a lot about being on that side of the table, so. Strong team there. Yeah, very much so. And

Marc Gonyea: then, somehow Tommy Gassman snades you, how did that happen? That’s a steal of the century, 

Joey Cohen: right? Yeah. I, I guess that was 4 or 5 months in, and we had actually just reshuffled the office.

I used to be in the back left corner and then all of a sudden, I don’t know why we did it, it could have just, you know, it could have just made sense that sales and recruiting were now together and the the rest of the delivery team were behind us. I’ll be at this office was relatively small. Relatively small.

Yeah. So, I started sitting next to Brandon and Omari, Morgan and just hearing, kind of, them go through the, the, the sales component of it and the thought of, “This could be an interesting way to, to jump to AE,” and I didn’t know Tommy too well at that point, and Brandon [00:28:00] has mentioned to him, ’cause him and I were good friends still, that I learned a lot in recruiting, but I was at the time, more interested still in sales.

And, it’s actually a funny story. I remember Tommy looked at me and he said, “Hey, Cohen do you wanna come outside and smoke a cigarette with me?” I looked at him and I said, “No, man, I don’t want to do that.” And he goes, and he goes, “Well, can you just come outside while I smoke a cigarette?” I said, “No, no. I had no desire to do that.

I don’t want to.” He goes, “Cohen, come outside with me now.” I haven’t even talked to you about it. So, I went out and that’s how me and Tommy started getting to know each other. Yeah, a couple weeks later, I jumped to the sales team as an SDR for the company, under Tommy and Abby Lacy, and hustled and probably six, seven months later, a job opened up on the next role as an ISR, an AE, wherever you want to call it internally,

and haven’t looked back, so. 

Marc Gonyea:  So, Cohen started in July, 2014, December, [00:29:00] 2015 years he’s closed the work. That’s spectacular, Joey. What was that like? So, what kind of muscles did you have to come up from, like, going to be an SDR, search work to be an SDR for the company, then learned to close? Sure. Certainly it’s a million-dollar question for

every SDR, 

Joey Cohen: right? Yeah. So, I think, and now that I’m coaching new account executives who are, you know, in that role, I try to tell myself early on, I don’t think I’m supposed to be good at this yet, but there’s a reason that I emerged out of the pack to be selected for this role, like there has to be a reason but it can be frustrating as a young AE who just expects to be as good as they were as an SDR.

And, it’s a much less, there’s obviously parts of the SDR job that are far away from a script or what we call “sheet music.” But when you have 30-45 minutes to fill up  call and to really consult versus delivering a value prop in a more condensed fashion, there’s a lot that [00:30:00] can go, right and a lot that can go wrong. In early on a lot goes wrong.

It just, it just, it just has to, right? You have to learn. So, I think it was just sheer internal persistence of saying, “I’m going to get this right. I’m going to keep learning. I’m here for a reason, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be good at this yet.” And, Tommy was a perfect person to learn from. ‘Cause he was at that point there as a seller, and you could, kind of, feed off of his confidence,

but he would give you a reality check and just constantly tell you, “Man, you’re improving. You’re doing well. Let’s work on this. Let’s work on this.” So, the first, like, probably six months of any SDR jumping into an AE role are not going to be easy and it shouldn’t be, but it’s, I think it’s just acknowledging the fact that you’re not supposed to be great at this yet,

and then just approaching with a learning mindset, and eventually you  find your footing and figure out who you are as a seller individually. ‘Cause as much as you can emulate excellent salespeople who you’re [00:31:00] learning from, if you try to copy them altogether, it just, it just doesn’t work. You got to find your voice and that process just takes a couple of months,

Chris Corcoran: so. Very good. So, think about all the deals you’ve closed and that’s a long list. Yeah. 

Marc Gonyea: Wall. 

Chris Corcoran: What’s your favorite one? Favorite deal, oh man. 

Joey Cohen: There’s one that comes to mind in retrospect. So, we worked in, it ended up being a multi-year campaign with Motorola. Wow. And I’ll never forget this. It was a big deal, big company. I’m not even, I can probably check, myself, in the email, but I remember this coming in at, like, 5:43 PM as I was leaving the office. I get all excited,

and back in the day, it was just in this time, I think it was just me and Marco Johnson, M. J. I, we were, the AEs, and he was the outbound AE, and I was the inbound AE, and  Motorola comes in and it was the first company that had come in as an inbound that I instantly recognized, just in terms of the brand. A lot of the companies that we were working with at the [00:32:00] time, still today, exciting startups who had really awesome technology, VC-backed, et cetera.

But they didn’t have that immediate, like, Motorola. Right. Yeah. And. Tommy said something along the lines of like, “Temper your expectations,” like, this isn’t, because at the time and since, we’d won some really, really impressive logos. Yeah. So, it’s become a little bit more common since then. And, I’m sure you all can probably name a few before then that were at similar level, but for me being in the role for a year or so, I’d never seen a logo like that come through. And, it was a complex cycle,

it was competitive, and we got to the end of it and we won it and it was five full-time people. The Motorola team was so thrilled with it that they even, on the one yard line, added in, without touching the actual terms of the agreement, they wanted to pay our reps extra commission, giftings us clothes, and it was just a really, really neat deal to win.

It was the first one that was pseudo-enterprise leaning in terms of the complexity and, you know, jumping from person [00:33:00] to person, and I, I maintain relationships with a lot of the people that were still over there, you know? They ended up, I think, it was Aaron Bravo. Bravo? Aaron Bravo, he ended up, he was the SDR, the SDR in that campaign.

And, there were, there were a few others that were, that were really, really strong. I think him. He still works here. He still works here. Yeah, he was our, not, not alum of the year, but what’s the? Phenom. Phenom. Phenom of the year, so, and funny, actually, he was the one who took my jacket, remember that? You know, going into the, into that presentation, I was about 80,

he, he thanked me profusely afterwards. Didn’t have one, but I, yes, that, that was a, that was a particular win. I’m pretty sure that was 

the biggest deal in the history of the company at that point. 

It was five people over three to six months, give or take. So, very welcome. To Boston too, so. It was a new, 

Marc Gonyea: new office at five picked was pretty for the whole company 

It was 

huge. 

Doing that all.

Yeah. And, that was, like, pre-couch-base days. That was, like, the, the marquee client for that office as they were growing And, there was another one here recently that, one of the internal AEs, Alex Rodriguez, [00:34:00] ran with me for months and it was a specific division within CVS. They invest in startups, and we got the verbal from the startup on, like, December 23rd,

and it took Alex and I five months of negotiating with CVS Procurement to get the deal in. We walked, we 

almost walk, we, kind of, walked, we 

Joey Cohen: walked two or three times. Two or three times, yeah, which I think taught him a lot about the value of our services and the ability to, that clients, in terms of, sometimes you got to say “no” to people when you’ve offered them, literally everything you can offer,

and the, the, the concept of walking away from a deal is pretty powerful sometimes, especially when they come back tail between the legs, “Okay. Let’s do this.” So, those two, kind of, stand out. That’s a good one. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. So, talk a little bit about what it’s like selling services, professional services, and doing it prospecting and outbound for something that’s totally intangible. 

Joey Cohen: It,

I mean, the closest thing we have to a demo [00:35:00] is showing people around the office and then, you know, shaking hands, and we have a pretty good close rate when that happens, but it’s, it’s a difficult and challenging sale because especially in today’s world, and I, I’m hoping we’re emerging towards more in-person meetings, being a possibility here soon.

But for the last two years, we, kind of, lost that ability. Our demo was removed from us and especially when the AEs and formerly the SDRs that were calling for the company, I always told them, “This is a really, really unique SDR job because it’s probably one of the only ones in the world, other than our competitors, where you are exemplifying the product in real time, high pressure.”

So, I always tell them, “The margin of error in success is much, much wider because when you screw up your, your, your mistakes are amplified, and when you do really, really well, you get more credit for it, especially given who you’re selling to.” So, it’s a, it’s a tough and a challenging sale, but I think and, and, and [00:36:00] anyone who is, who has closed this and then left and done something else for the most part is wildly successful.

I mean, a lot of the guys, you know, we talk about Marco, we talk about Omari, Brandon coming back, but he, he went out into the wild and did really, really well, Abby, Abigail. Yep. Brett Siegel, all of them done, done pretty well. And, I think being able to sell something that you can’t touch, that you can really only explain, especially at a premium price level with how we structure it,  is difficult,

it’s humbling, but it creates really, really, really good salespeople, so, yeah. Good 

Marc Gonyea: habits. What, you know, one thing that you’ve always been good at, and we talked about this earlier, before we kicked it off, was, you, you got this ability to, kind of, track people and stay in touch with them and then develop relationships with them.

Talk to us about that. 

Joey Cohen: You know, I can tell you this, the, when I stepped into the management role about a year ago, just managing the internal sales team.  How many people in your team now? [00:37:00] Six direct reports. And then, I guess the team overall is eleven, under with Brandon and Kevin and the other inanimate leading. And, I’ve mentored before,

but my number one goal as a new manager who had never fully managed before was to ensure I was affable and approachable. And, I would rather develop a good relationship with the rep and be a friend first and a boss second, a manager second, than, than the opposites, I think it’s going to foster the best relationships and results and everything else.

So, that was, and I wrote it down, it was, like, my number one goal going into it. I was like, “I need to make sure that these people respect me and I don’t cross the line of, like, friend of boss.” So, there is that level of, like, “What I need to crack down, I do,” but at least from a management standpoint, that was, kind of, one of my early goals.

And, you know, with some of the guys in the team, especially, you know, Ken, Connor, those that have been on the team since, for me, since day one, and really all of them, but I consider them like good friends to this day. So, that was just, I guess, a tidbit about how I approach management in general. But, I don’t know,

I mean, I, I think it just, kind of, goes back to the [00:38:00] types of people we hire. And, if you really, really get to a point where you are, wearing the memoryBlue flag per se, and you’re, kind of, the brand, a lot of people that get to that point just end up easily fostering relationships with one another. We’re similar personalities,

we have a similar drive and we’re all in different respective parts of the company that are aiding to its growth and everything else. So, I don’t know what I do specifically outside of that, that might lead to that. I’m extremely extroverted, high D, high I, I’m disc person in general, but I think a lot of that just, kind of, has to do with the people that are around here.

Marc Gonyea: And, what about the, the, I agree with all that, but what about the, I mean really exemplify that to the behavior. What about these prospects you nurture? Like, you know, you’re, you’ve been, you know, Jim Wilson, I’ve never even talked, I never talked to the guy to this day, we exchanged voicemails until recently, but he’s a venture capitalist and you’ve got to, like, track through the years,

he’s responsible for some of the biggest deals we brought in. But, you know, you have got this way of [00:39:00] following up on these deals, and you talked about how, like, it’s just the, what did you say earlier, it’s the first step? Like, when you get into it? 

Joey Cohen: Yeah. And I think for, you know, any services company, especially a lead-generation company where it’s a crowded industry, there’s a lot of pretenders in the industry as prospects have dealt with,

It’s a, it’s a referral on a relationship-based sale, but some people will hear that, and I’ve heard this for prospects, where they say their services, whether it’s, yeah, IT services, your full, full services with no tech, “An outbound doesn’t work, blah, blah, blah,” and, I, like, wholeheartedly disagree with it,

and, you know, I try to encourage the people on the team to really understand that the first time someone officially tells you “No” it’s not the end of that relationship, realistically, it’s, it’s the start of it. You’re in, kind of, the first couple of phases, so on that vein, never burn a bridge. And, from your first interaction, you have to show people [00:40:00] that you care about them as a prospect, you understand their scenario and you can’t expect to win all of them, but when you lose, you haven’t necessarily lost yet.

There’s always another cycle. Whether three months down the road they’re hiring, and it becomes, it’s logical for you to approach them or  they jump to a new company or someone like Jim, where you say, “All right, you know, I was, we were thankful enough to get a couple of introductions. Let me approach you in a few months, sift through your portfolio, see which clients, or portfolio companies,

of yours are hiring SDRs, hiring AEs, and figure out a way for me to continue to try to and add value.” So, it’s a mixture of persistence, but it’s long-term persistence and it starts with the first interaction, so. 

Chris Corcoran: I think that’s it, that hits on it a little bit. I mean, particularly because long-term thinking is in short supply and I, and a lot of times an AE or a sales rep is gonna be able to, “Why am I worried about two years down the road? It’s so nice to be here.”

Right? Right. But if you take that [00:41:00] long-term approach, then the world becomes your oyster. Indeed, 

Joey Cohen: indeed. And, your network starts feeding you business, right? Feeding you leads and opportunities. Even, you know, even the ones that you tried and you tried and you thought you got close and you didn’t close, even if they never come back, they remember you. And, I get introductions from prospects that have never worked with us that have only worked with me in a sales cycle that then lead to business because of that.

So, every interaction is vital. That’s really important. That’s how, when you’re 

Marc Gonyea: playing the long game, that’s the way I would do it. Right? You know, that’s what you and I tried to do when we started the company. Definitely. We were like, “As long as we can hang around, as long we can hold on. Yeah. These people who we meet now, like, two years later, might come back to be clients.”

Right. So, that’s what you’ve embraced as a sales professional. Let’s talk about competition too because, like, you’ve been so successful. One of your, one of our other favorites, Carley Armentrout, would always talk to me 

like, like, “I just want to beat Joey.”

She’s so competitive, she’s super competitive, but in a good way. And, you know, [00:42:00] she, kind of, followed in your path and she was always trying to like, keep up with you, but you were able to keep it affable.

So, talk to me, give me your perspective on competition, how you can, how you do it, but still have fun with it, but still leads to be competitive? Because a lot of people, like, they get, you know, there’s good competition, there’s bad competition, especially when you’re on the same team together. 

Joey Cohen: And, first of all, Carley, of all the people I’ve worked with, she is one of the most, just trying to figure out the right word,

she just has every kind of pillar that you would want in a sales rep. From internal, from her and I just fostering a good relationship with one another over the years, organization, on the phones, report building, like, this girl’s shark. I tell all my, all my reps to learn from her. And they, they had a few months before she left where she could.

And, it was funny. She, I was working with her on goal-setting into early 2020, and in December, she had this complex board with, “I need to make this many dials and close this many deals and do this, this and this,” and the January comes [00:43:00] around and she erased all of it, and she said, “her annual goal was to beat Joey.”

Yes. See? Which I thought was pretty 

Chris Corcoran: funny. Yeah. That’s what she would talk to me about, I was saying, “Hey Carley, 

Marc Gonyea: how’s it going?” “It’s going well, I’m doing this, closing that, doing this,” and I’m like, a little bit behind joy, but I wanna beat her. How would you hit, like, how did you expect to handle that? ‘Cause some people like you’ve been out of shape by then.  

Joey Cohen: There’s a lot of fish in the sea.

Right? And, I think, one of our pillars, of the company is abundance. Abundance. And, one thing I’ve learned as the team grew and I’ve, I’ve, kind of, been in a seat where I can view it from an external standpoint and as an individual contributor it wasn’t affecting me, but when you’re one of two, and Marc and Chris approach you and say, “Hey, we’re going to hire two more AEs,”

the first thing you think of is, “Well, I’ve had the opportunities, now this BS.” Right? And then, you do it again and you go from four to eight and eight to sixteen, and what I’ve learned from being in not an individual contributor role when this happens, is it works. [00:44:00] It just works. And, the natural inclination is to resist it.

And so, I didn’t have that initially, ’cause obviously I resisted and said, “No, no, I want as many leads as possible,” Of course. “Let me,” you know. So, but you know, from a team standpoint you want to see people grow and develop and especially if they come in with the right mindset and you can, you can show,  that they’re, they’re displaying that they care as much or maybe even more than you do about the company’s mission and who they’re representing and what they can do in terms of actually selling this and getting it in front of the right people.

You’re both on the same train and you’re both, kind of, around the same mission. And, I think you know, competition just breeds success and I, I would rather be on a team where I’m constantly challenged by other people and learning from them, even though I might be, you know. Losing? Yeah. To a degree.

Yeah. But, it just, it’s going to [00:45:00] foster growth in outside of the professional relationship or outside, like, the professional work enviroment. It’s going to make you good friends with these people.

Marc Gonyea: It was a common bond you share. I mean, can you think about the people he’s worked with on the sales team? It’s ridiculous.

Abigail Lacey. It’s an all-star. Even people that are SDRs, right? Abigail, Mossad, Omar, Morgan, Tommy, Armentrout. Right? And then, there’s these SDRs you mentioned. Yosini, you hired him, Digioia, Cooper, I mean, all of this, Musitano, those are fricking bunch of 

Joey Cohen: ballers. They’re sales engineers, enterprisees, VPs, like, these people are.

Marc Gonyea: The marketing network. The ninja. Yeah, the ninja. Right? So, you’ve worked with some really great people, what, what’s the, what’s, what’s going on now with doctor Cohen, well, I actually call Cohen “Esquire Cohen,” Nimit and I do. Because there’s no one with better vision in the company to deal with procurement people than Joey [00:46:00] Cohen. Like, like, no one,  “Esquire Cohen” is legit.

He’ll call me up and say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Or, “Look at this.” And, you’ll think about it in a way, I’m like, “Dude, who’s got a law degree now?” Like, not that I have a law degree, but. Tell me, just tell me, why do you have this fondness for that? ‘Cause I, I love it, but how did it 

Joey Cohen: develop? The contract?

The “Esquire Cohen.” Oh man. A lot of it was just self-taught after sifting through these 40, 50 page MSAs. The first one I ever saw was Motorola, which was part of why Tommy told me to chill out when I was so excited. But, you know, you, when you, a lot of these legal documents are very, very similar at the end of the day.

And, one thing I’ve learned that I think actually made me a much better seller as I stepped into a management role is I was able to remove, kind of, the emotions behind, “I need to close every single deal,” and it makes you a more effective negotiator when you don’t feel the need and the prospect isn’t sensing that, but I have fun with those calls.

I [00:47:00] really do. Like I, like, I appreciate pushing back on procurement and legal folks, and, I guess with time, I’ve had the advantage of dealing with the same 10 to 15  contractual-specific objections over time. But I, you know, I phoned with it. You’re 

Marc Gonyea: on a call with, like, a bunch of people at procurement

and Joey is leading that symphony, conducting, and it’s a beautiful thing to watch, just be a part of. 

Joey Cohen: I mean, I’ve told them, they say, they say, “Nope. If my, if my lawyer’s coming, I need your lawyer to come.” And, I say, “Listen,  Mark Gonyea and I do all this together, everything that I’m talking about, him and I have discussed offline, we went through this line by line,

he’s happy to join, but you know, and he’ll chime in here and there, but this is the conversation we’re adding, so, like, do you want him to join or not?” And, sometimes they do because they appreciate the executive touch. So, I guess, I think Nimit coined the term “Esquire,” just in trying to communicate how we, how we go about contract negotiations.

Marc Gonyea: Nimit and Chris 

are the [00:48:00] best at giving names, 

monikers, monikers. 

All right, so I was already quoting what he’s doing now. Did you have? And, what, I, 

Chris Corcoran: I think our 

listeners would appreciate 

what you saw and how you reacted to selling through COVID, ’cause we’re, we’re, we’re, March of 2020, and things are going extremely well, pandemic hits and we, from a sales perspective, we, like, blew things up and you and Carley and Tommy made it all happen.

And like, your world got changed probably the most dramatically within the company. So, talk a little bit about 

Joey Cohen: that, what that was all about. I mean, I think Carley and I spoke about it, her and I were just thankful to still have a job. Right? And still, you know, be able to sell the same things we were selling, and we, you know, we transferred some people internally, temporarily, which was logical and made sense, but it made me, [00:49:00] Carley, Tommy super, super busy. As I’m learning how to work remotely,

and I remember early, early on, I was working in my bedroom, like, a foot away from my bed and that wasn’t working, so I finagled a new work environment in an extra room in my house. But it was, it was humbling to say the least. I remember being like, 

Marc Gonyea: “We’re going to take these two bad-ass stallions, Carley and Joey, and we’re going to ride them out of this thing.

Like, you can do like those movies, like, The Black Stallion, big-ass horses, like, like,  big muscles, and this is like, you’re going to get on this horse, and this is like, “Let’s go, man.” So, and that’s what it was like, right? Everybody’s hunkered down. So, I remember having the Zoom calls with you and like, Joey, like, was trying to work on the lighting or, like, the audio because nobody was prepared to work from their house. 

Joey Cohen: Not at all,

yeah. So, it was a, it was a culture shock for sure. And, I got real comfortable working from home, I liked it, it was interesting. I had to get, kind of, have, like, a nudge to go back in the office once things were a little safer. [00:50:00] And, it’s funny how much you miss it. Really? Yeah. I mean, sure, my mornings are a little bit more stressful with the dog and just what you gotta do to prep before work.

Imagine if you had a giant time. I know. Coupons. But, you know, we, as a business, we made some adjustments from a pricing standpoint, which made it, I don’t want to say easier, but just a little different in how we approach sales in general. But I think, in the greater scheme of things, given the diversified nature of our portfolio,

sure, we’re 99% tech, but there’s a million different parts of that pie chart. We’re diversified by nature, which I think allowed us to, there were some clients that obviously turned out that were in unfortunate industries for what was going on, but I think it just taught me a lot about staying positive and figuring out, in the grander scheme of things, “You have a job, more importantly, you are healthy, your family’s healthy and just ride it out and stay optimistic and hope at some point, like we are today, that we’re back to a [00:51:00] pseudonormal,”

Marc Gonyea: Yeah, we’re almost there. Yeah, 

Chris Corcoran: that was, that was amazing watching you and Carley and Tommy sell us through that whole storm. Yeah, yeah. 

Joey Cohen: Baller Status. And then, it was neat because, you know, we, early on, everyone says, “Yeah, it’s gonna be over by June or by July,” right? Right, right. And, I’m not sure what the thought-process was from a timing standpoint of starting to rescale the sales team,

but after doing this for two or three months, and you don’t know what’s going to happen to the world, the company, everything else, to be, you know, selected as, as someone who could help to manage the team and, kind of, rebuild it, was awesome. I think, just given what I’d done and mentored that it was a, it was a logical step for me at the time,

but ramping into a management role for the first time remotely was, was challenging. I bet. To say the least, but I think we did a pretty damn good job of, of rescaling the team. Yes. Talk to the listeners a little bit about, so 

Chris Corcoran: as we go into COVID, it’s Tommy, you and [00:52:00] Carley, that’s the entire sales team. We, pandemic hits,

and then talk about what happens with the 

Joey Cohen: team. Yeah. So, Carley switched to an enterprise-focus role, which I think for her, her skillset and where she was in her memoryBlue run was, was, was the right move. I mean, hands down, if there is someone that should sell memoryBlue enterprise it’s Carley Armentrout.

Yeah. So, she switched to that role. Her and I were still working together constantly. And, at this point I had been working for Tommy for four plus years, and I just learned a ridiculous amount from him, and at this point I knew sales pretty well and I even learned management from him, remotely, which, again, was challenging.

So, we brought on Ken and Matt Gloger as, kind of, our first round of AEs. It was challenging because when I told Tommy, I said,  “Why don’t we scale the team to eight?” because it was never the time, I said, “Give me eight all at once.” He said, “Absolutely not.” And so, I had a wave, like, June 2nd, June 15th, mid-July, mid-August, September, everything, which made it a little bit more [00:53:00] challenging because there was just waves of newbies coming

and then you, kind of, start from square one each time. Yup. But, you know, by mid-September, I, kind of, found my groove. We had had some people who had ramped up on onboarding really, really quickly, and we’re doing fairly well. I mean, the advantage of hiring phrase in this company, if you’re willing to do so from the SDR role, is you basically get to, from your perspective, cherry-pick on some really, really good talented people.

Yes. We did pass on a lot of really good, talented people as well, so that made it a little easier, but at the same time, I mean, you’re teaching good, proven SDRs who have a comparable and relatable skillset, a brand new skill, which is closing and really how to be a, you know, kind of, the next level of their sales career.

But it’s been exciting. And then, I had been jokingly working Brandon to come back for years. Him and I would just, we would, kind of, brainstorm about it. There was a conversation about [00:54:00] him coming back in an enablement role at one point, and when the stars aligned, he joined. And, I think at that point, Tommy felt, and you guys felt confident enough in the squad itself to allow him to start scaling a different areas of business, the direct hire team.

And yeah, it’s been, it’s been exciting. I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about management. You know, I, I made the comment about how, “you negotiate different when you’re not an individual contributor,” which I think is going to help me throughout the rest of my career. And then, the training that Stacy put together for managers, it’s just second to none, right?

I mean, the amount that I learned about how to go into one-on-ones, how to carry yourself, the approachability, the affability component, the friend-manager line and what to do, what not to do, things like that, it, kind of, gave me an edge that I needed and didn’t have previously. I didn’t know I needed it until I had it.

So yeah. Yeah. 

Marc Gonyea: I mean, I 

Joey Cohen: say this is amazing. Amazing. 

Marc Gonyea: That’s another person who [00:55:00] didn’t come up until now, but she’s another great one. We have a 

Joey Cohen: lot of great people work here. Mm, for sure. Yeah. She asked, she said “Hey, you know, our, our, our session technically is over in terms of, like, the program itself. Do you want to continue?”

“Yes. Yes, I want to continue. What can I do? What do I need to do?” “Where do I sign up?” You know, “30 minutes before work, after work, it’s okay, do you have time? When can we do it?” And, to this day I, we, we do a session every four to six weeks just to check in and she’s amazing at it. So, I’m, I was extremely thankful, especially in the heart of COVID to have a resource like that to teach me and listen to me and things like that,

Marc Gonyea:  You do a lot of things, man. So, Joey, I remember when you had that, I still think we interviewed you, maybe just you and I talked when you were here earlier, and at one point you’re like, “I’m gonna move to Seattle.” And then, lately it’s been, lately, that, maybe for a year or so, 

Joey Cohen: “I think I’ll move to Denver,” and you’re making and the move. Making the move and running off,

Marc Gonyea: yeah. And, that’s the big deal for the people, I think, you’ve been working here for seven years, but you’re still a young person, in a good way. What, [00:56:00] talk to us about that, like,  making 

Joey Cohen: the move. I’ve been in Virginia since I was three, so basically my whole life for all intents and purposes. And, it was just something new.

I was sitting, you know, working through COVID and thinking to myself, “If I am quarantined for another two years, five years, ten years, is this what I want to see every day?” And, well, Virginia has its pluses, right? But they were, there was just a general eagerness for me to figure out if I wanted to move elsewhere. And, my best friend lives up in Seattle.

It would have been great living up there with him, and I’m sure I would have developed a social group, and now with the Seattle office out there, that could have been logical, but I had a larger group of memoryBlue friends, other friends out there. I’m not very good, but I recently developed a passion for snowboarding,

I, I’m not, I, I don’t. You’ll get good. I will get good, 15 days last season, so that helps. That’s right. So, there’s a lot of reasons that they had me call it, had a new city in general calling my name, and Denver for a variety of [00:57:00] reasons, and I just mentioned, especially the more central location of it, was calling my name.

So, I’m a little worried about proximity to Vegas, but we’ll cross that bridge. Sorry. 

Chris Corcoran: That’s good. And then, talk about what you’re going to be 

Joey Cohen: doing. Yeah. You know, the, the, the last, I guess 13 months in this management role has been awesome. I actually, I think I’ve developed a passion for managing in general, almost equally as I have for sales, and, you know, an opportunity presented itself for a variety of reasons to help scale and, kind of, follow in Tommy’s footsteps, the direct hire practice.

I know it’s been Chris’, and a goal of yours to really get this off the ground and, and  you know, it’s been on and off throughout the history of the company, I think just lots of change going on in my life, and I just, kind of, leaned into it and embraced it. So, I’m stepping into a role with the direct hire team, to work with clients, to work with candidates, to just [00:58:00] help, to, kind of, fuel the growth of that side of the business.

And, I’m hoping where I can, similar to what I’m doing now, that I can help some of the younger guys and gals on the team, just infuse some, to some of the things I’ve learned over the years, just from a sales standpoint, relationship standpoint that I think will help them. But it’s also new to me, so I’m trying to come in like a sponge and learn from them in an equal fashion that they would hopefully learn from me.

Yes. Well, you’ve got the network. 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. You get the network. I think, and the 

Marc Gonyea: know-how. Yeah, and I think what’s really going to be, we’ll be hitting on this, this is the team, like, you’re, you develop relationships and maintain them and build on them, and you’re not afraid to have tough conversations, but that type of work you’re going into, it lends itself to that spectacularly well.

Chris Corcoran: So, you joined the team at the right time too. Yeah. Tommy’s got things cooking. 

Joey Cohen: Yeah. They, I mean, I think just yesterday, like, the, just the, the business that’s coming in is nuts and it’s, I think, that type of business as the [00:59:00] broader memoryBlue business does, but that one, you can tell it’s got a snowball effect to it.

And, it is such a similar to the academy training program and just other diversified one-off service offerings. It’s a no-brainer to offer that from an expertise standpoint, but also just from a sales momentum standpoint, you know, back to the whole services is very referral-based. You work with a company and you do a really, really good job helping them outsource their SDR work.

Sure they can hire the people on the campaigns, which is awesome, but it’s a logical extension for them to say, “Alright, if the delivery manager and everybody else is top-tier, it’s probably a good likelihood that their external recruiting team can, can excel as well. So, I’m excited to join it as we’re launching. 

Marc Gonyea: That’s right. We are launching it,

and it’s going to be good you meet a new city, working on a new revisit, tune in with a new team, but working with Tommy again, it’s going to be great. I think for Tommy, you have a lot to offer the team, so I’m thrilled that you’ve been working here for this long and your [01:00:00] contributions are incredibly valued.

Thank you. We appreciate it. I’m going to miss not seeing you. I’m pestering you to get back in the office and now we’re not even on the same floor, but, you know, it’s obvious from listening this podcast, why I got, like, used to be great to be in the office ’cause, you know, you inspire and motivate and lead and teach people.

It’s harder to do that when you’re remote, it’s doable, but it’s harder. So, you know, everybody benefits when Joey Cohen is around. 

Chris Corcoran: One thing I want, Joey, for you to touch on. Sure. Is the concept of hard work. ‘Cause everyone thinks that, like, if you say, “Hey, you think you’re an above-average hard worker,” most people think they are, but some people work hard and some people think they work hard.

Talk to, talk to the listeners a little bit about what hard work means to you and, kind of, what your day looks like and just how, how you get through that. 

Joey Cohen: Sure. So, I think a trap that some newer SDRs can fall into is, is just connecting the quantitative elements of their job to [01:01:00] hard work. We hustle as a company, it’s in huge letters everywhere.

And, I like to say, and it’s actually really neat, and I firmly believe this. Our A plus players go into environments and they’re just not people out of the water, are, and the ones that are a little lower in the P-chart become the best in their new environment. Still the ones that are a little lower are still

pretty damn good in their next role. And, it’s really exciting as I think it exemplifies the power of that, that hustle-mindset. Once you get to the point where you have a good amount of belief in your sales abilities, you know you can  continue to hustle, that’s, kind of, ingrained in you. But a lot of my definition of hard work comes down to the qualitative components of your day-to-day work,

not only, “What are you doing?” but “Why are you doing it?” And, “Are you doing certain things with intent, with purpose?” And, especially as you look into an AE role, every interaction is so, so, so important. And, the phone interactions are unpredictable and unscriptable but the [01:02:00] static, offline interactions, and every time that you send an email, what you send, why you send, when you send it is so, so important.

So, I think hard work for me is a combo of coming in with a hustle-mindset being caffeinated, if you need to be, and being on it, you know, the whole time and really understanding that you’re maybe here to consult and to help first and to sell second. And, if you can really think about what that means for your respective value prop, you can, kind of, hit that next level in terms of performance, happiness, things along those lines.

So, hard work to me is caring more about, caring outside of just the numbers you’re putting up and figuring out what type of impact you’re trying to make as a seller, as a manager, as an individual contributor, as a recruiter would have you, and thinking about that every day you get to work. 

Chris Corcoran: So, just a quick story from Zoom fatigue.

Jeez. So, you know, hard work and Zoom [01:03:00] fatigue. I remember tommy was like, “Hey, I’m worried about Cohen.” I’m like, “Why?” He’s like, “Tomorrow he has fourteen sales calls back-to-back.”

Joey Cohen: “Fourteen?” 

Chris Corcoran: And, you, how did you navigate that? And, that was like, that was like a typical day. 

 

Marc Gonyea: There are times, ridiculous. 

Joey Cohen: Yeah. There were some late nights, you know, especially remotely managing, managing new AEs.

They, there were some late nights, and you gotta, you gotta give yourself a break. Right? So, there were times where I work, you know, eight to five non-stop, and for me, there’s an aspect of the admin-part of the job, and the longer you wait on your admin tasks, the worst that you are them, logging calls, whatever it might be, sending follow-up.

That’s very interesting, so, “The longer you wait, the worse you are.” By far, I mean, I, you know, so there would be times where I’d worked ’till six, gave myself two or three hours, play with the dog, I’ll cook some [01:04:00] dinner. 

Marc Gonyea: Shoutout to Snowy, memoryBlue

Joey Cohen: employee. Chief-happiness officer, Jordan meringue. I can bring her in the office if you want, Chris.

Chris Corcoran: I think, I think that, 

that violates our 

lease. 

Joey Cohen: Otherwise, I’d be all right. We’ll talk to the landlord. But no, it’s just, it’s making sure that, I guess, as you conclude those days, how to, kind of, categorize and prioritize what you need to get done, but there’d be times where I would give myself a couple-hour break and then, you know, if it, if the job needs to get done from 9:00 to 10:00 PM, one night, you put some music in, you hunker down and you get it done.

And,  maybe you’re on a Friday and your Friday’s a little light, you can take a longer lunch or whatever it is that you have to achieve a balance. But just how I’m, kind of, geared, if there are outstanding items, especially if I’m going into another busy day the next day, I can’t just let them sit overnight,

I’m not going to sleep well. So yeah, there were some, there were some crazy days and that’s the neat part about AEs, as they ramp over time is you can start to look at it and say, “You know what, [01:05:00] Ken, you’ll be just fine on your three o’clock negotiation call, let me see if I can free up some free time to approach some of these admin tasks.”

Yeah. It’s all part of the grind. 

Marc Gonyea: All right. Very good. It’s been good, Cohen. This has been 

Chris Corcoran: a lots, lots of wisdom for 

Joey Cohen: the listeners. I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. It’s been fun. Wisdom for me. 

Chris Corcoran: For me. Yeah. I can’t wait to watch what you do for the direct hire business in Denver. I’m excited. 

Joey Cohen: It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m excited.

It’s a, it’s a lot of change, especially moving out of the house that I’ve lived in for seven years. It’s taken me weeks and weeks and weeks. I’m like, a week away from the final presentation to the landlords, and then move it all across country, getting the dog across. There’s a lot, a lot, lot of change, a lot, lots of my future, but I am, I’m stoked for the move,

I’m stoked to be working back with Tommy and see what type of impact I can make on that team. And, it’s a little bittersweet because, you know, working with the people I’m working with now has been awesome, I’m excited for some change, so. Very good. I’ll see how it pans out. 

Chris Corcoran: Awesome. 

[01:06:00] Marc Gonyea: All 

right, Cohen. All 

Joey Cohen: right, 

Chris Corcoran: Joey. We appreciate the 

Joey Cohen: wisdom.

Of course. Thanks for having me. Thank you.