Episode 62: David Tharp – The Sales Vet
If you’re not prepared to sweat, stay off the field. David Tharp learned that lesson well during his time as a Marine, and then once again in pursuit of a career in sales.
Today David handles OEM licensing sales in the Global Business Development department at Splunk. Practically destined for a career in sales, he carries on a family legacy in the profession for a third generation. memoryBlue provided the opportunity for David to turn bold aspiration into reality. He eventually parlayed his success into a new role with the global data and AI software powerhouse through hard work and an ongoing commitment to his sales craft.
In this second episode of the Tech Sales is for Hustlers Austin Series, David talks about the impact an early sales role in the trucking industry had on his career, the importance of developing a mindset for sales, and how the valuable lessons he learned serving in the military help shape his successful career.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: David Tharp
What he does: Global Business Development, OEM Embedded Licensing Sales at Splunk.
Company: Splunk
Noteworthy: David is an Experienced software sales professional, a tech lover with a demonstrated military background.
Where to find David: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡You need to be an expert in your own craft. People often get discouraged when unable to fully understand something, especially when related to their job. But, as David explains, being in sales, or better say, making sales in the tech industry, doesn’t mean you have to understand all the technical aspects of the product or service you are selling. Of course, you need to know what you are talking about, but concentrate on becoming a good salesperson; that’s your job. ”Running business terms and negotiating contracts, that’s where you need the expert. When it goes technical, you got someone for that, hopefully. And if you don’t then, someone will be able to help for sure. No one’s going to expect you to tell someone how to code.”
⚡Being an SDR is tough. Sales is not rocket science, but it requires devotion, persistence, and willingness to work hard. ”It’s not hard, it’s not the easiest role in the world, but it’s monumental to be good. ‘Cause if you can’t grasp, not that if you can’t, you have to be able to be a good SDR, you have to be able to build your pipeline. Otherwise, the rest of the sales cycle is not great,” David says.
⚡A supportive team is key to success. Being part of memoryBlue showed David how rewarding it is to work with people open to giving you a hand, advice, and support when needed. ”I think memoryBlue gives you every single tool that you need to do that. For myself, at the time, I was struggling on the phone, struggling with LinkedIn cadences; there are probably a hundred people that you can talk to internally for each one of those. You can just reach out to someone crushing quota and be like, ‘What are you doing? Can I have a little bit of advice here?”‘
Episode Highlights
Sales As Part of Family Tradition
”My whole family is a breed of salesmen to some degree. My dad sells metal. My grandpa was in banking. He was more on the sales side of it. It was just like, ‘Let’s try it.’ Well, what can we do here? My dad’s like, ‘I can get you a job selling metal. You’re going to hate it.’ I was like, ‘As great as that sounds, I think I’ll try to flop my wings somewhere else.’
And I just started interviewing at various places; I know nothing about technology at this point. And, these guys say, ‘You, you can make pretty good margins and trading or booking logistics. You basically make money off your customer paying you a portion, and then you get a margin for finding a truck and fulfilling their order.” Let’s say Walmart’s your customer. They give you a thousand bucks for fulfillment from, let’s say, Houston to New York. So you need to find a truck for that thousand bucks from Houston to New York. And ideally, you find that truck for 500, so you’d get 500 bucks as your, they call it rip or your margins so that you can be profitable on it. And you’re selling both ways, is the way I saw it. You have to obviously get the customer, the clientele, and then past that, you gotta sell these trucks on the lane that they might not want, especially for the money. So it was like two tails here. It’s a huge business; very much competitive.
Once I Got on Splunk, Everything Changed
”When I got out, or not got up, but left memoryBlue, I was at 114, something like that, percent of quota attainment. And I think all of that came from Splunk. I was under quota every month prior to. I couldn’t find things clicking. I was doubting myself a little bit, kinda started not to trust the process, which was like, ‘Where I was going wrong?’ And then, I just kinda hit it with a flip, and I was like, ‘Look, fresh start. You went through the scares.’ Like, COVID is still a thing, but we’re finding out that people are still business as usual, especially in technology. So let’s restart. Let’s take what we have, and take what we’ve learned, and let’s try and stack onto our abilities here.”
Selling Directly to the End-User Versus Selling to the OEM
So, selling Splunk directly, I’ve never done it. How that motion is, you’re selling to the person using Splunk and visualizing all this. The end-user is who you’re selling it to, on a direct side. When you’re selling an OEM where you embed it, you’re selling the product management of other technology companies, other ISVs. So ISV is an independent software vendor. And then, it’s similar to an MSP style, except it’s with its productized software instead of a surface. And those ISVs, that product manager is really our business contact. And he works with this dev, or let’s say, an engineering team. And then he works with pretty much financial guys, businesses guys, to figure out how we’re going to fit a margin to build this product.”
Transcript:
[00:04:38] Marc Gonyea: David Tharp. Thank you for joining us.
[00:04:48] David Tharp: Thanks for having me.
[00:04:49] Marc Gonyea: How are you doing?
[00:04:50] David Tharp: Doing good. Great to be here.
[00:04:51] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, it’s great man to be in Austin, Texas, our first expansion location. And in the flesh, typically when we’re, we’re talking with folks that weren’t from Virginia, we have to do it on Zoom, but we’re, we brought a tour stop to Austin and we appreciate you coming out.
[00:05:10] David Tharp: Beautiful city, and glad that you could be here.
[00:05:12] Marc Gonyea: All right, man. Well, let’s kind of get into it. The folks listening don’t know you. And if the company has gotten there, when you started, you know, you and I don’t know each other that well, unfortunately, but I’m gonna get to know you a little bit more now. So let’s just start off by educating us a little bit where you’re from, where did you grow up, what you are like and kind of go through that real quick. Let the audience get to know you..
[00:05:32] David Tharp: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, originally born and raised in Houston. Went to school, and just North in high school in a town called the Woodlands. And, I was kind of that kid growing up, like the problem child no one really wants to deal with. I’m smarter than teachers type. I wasn’t everyone’s favorite. But, shortly after that I decided that I didn’t think education was for me. And so I, I signed up for the Marine Corps and, we can get into that a little [00:06:00] later, but, from that kind of form to, and move down to Houston, and now we’re here. But let’s, we can, we can get back to that.
[00:06:07] Chris Corcoran: For the listeners. You are a Hollywood Marine.
[00:06:09] David Tharp: I was a Hollywood Marine.
[00:06:10] Chris Corcoran: Tell the listeners what that means.
[00:06:12] David Tharp: So, so a Hollywood Marine is someone that, you know, is West of the Mississippi river. And you, actually pretty much, you feel like you’re in Hollywood and bootcamp. You’re looking at all these millionaires outside of you and all these nice estates, and you’re just sitting there at bootcamp. As opposed there are opposite, if you’re East of the Mississippi you go to a swamp, essentially with sand fleas and all kinds of fun games. So.
[00:06:36] Chris Corcoran: In Paris island.
[00:06:38] David Tharp: Paris island is East. And then a MCRD San Diego is West.
[00:06:42] Marc Gonyea: So let’s talk about that. So what I mean, when you say you like a get guy, you ended up going to school.
[00:06:48] David Tharp: I go to school.
[00:06:49] Marc Gonyea: When did, when did you decide like, the school kind of wasn’t for you? Like in your high school or like? ‘Cause you’re in sales now too. And did the sales ever like kinda like peak around or did you not know what it was, like?
[00:07:01] David Tharp: Yeah, you know, it’s weird because I feel like there’s a lot of people like me in sales. I feel like a lot of people that have disconnected education and were kind of like, “This isn’t for me”, it turns out they have great social skills. They can stay organized and they can, you know, work hard, sell anything. And, it’s kind of like that old scumbag style approach of sales. It’s like, I like the guys that just aren’t afraid to roll their sleeves up and get nasty. But yeah, I, I thought school wasn’t for me. I felt like I, I knew I was smart, but I didn’t feel like I was. And, that was really where it was like, “Well, maybe I could try and, you know, use some Braun and go work it off in the Marines.” Then I found out that school might be for me.
[00:07:43] Chris Corcoran: Talk about the Marine Corps.
[00:07:46] David Tharp: Excuse me.
[00:07:47] Chris Corcoran: You can take your time, there’s no rush. It’s 91 degrees today in Austin. Early October.
[00:07:54] David Tharp: Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s a cooker. But, so, yeah, I, I, you know, I, I signed a reserve contract six years. I go to trainings and, and I bootcamp and ITB, and I was an infantry man. And then various trainings throughout that. And, ultimately what I shaped from all that was that like, you should never be afraid of work. Like you, you should always drive to outwork everybody. ‘Cause you’re going to be thrown in situations, especially in the military, where it’s like the only way out is to work hard. You, there’s no turning back.
Like, in every other industry, I feel like you could just turn around and be like, “Okay, not for me, let’s move on.” This one it’s like, the only way to get out cleanly is to continue full throttle. So, I learned a lot through that and it, it kind of shaped a value to college that I didn’t want to see trusting.
[00:08:42] Chris Corcoran: So you, you were in the reserves for six years? And so had, did you have a day job? Like what were you doing, like when you were, were not?
[00:08:49] David Tharp: Yeah, so, so the first year. So I think it was like, I want to say almost a year of training and, and I get out, and I’m like, I re, I reported to Marine reserve unit and they’re like, “Hey, so for a month out of the year, you’re going to be in for another training.” I know like, “At four days of the month you’re going to come in for your reporting.” And I was like, “All right, we got it, we thought we gotta get it together, man. We gotta figure out something.” And so I went to a community college.
[00:09:14] Chris Corcoran: Where are you living at this point?
[00:09:15] David Tharp: I’m in Houston. So I’m in Houston, going to a community college. The Dean looked at me like I was just some psychopath. Because he was like, I told him I wanted to take 24 hours. And, he was like, “You were awful in high school. You didn’t even take the SAT, ACT. What makes you think that you’re going to be okay with 24 hours?” And I was like, “I want to go to a university, and you’re right. I didn’t take my ACT. I didn’t take my SAT. And I was on the minimum plan in high school.” So it’s like, I don’t have anything. I got a proof here. And so I went through another bootcamp. Life is, I guess, about a bunch of boot camps. But I go through that, and aced all my classes, have 24 credits.
It started with single one of [00:10:00] them, took all the hard ones like algebra and biology and all these nasty classes. And aced it. Got into a state school. Actually got into UT here too, but I didn’t want to use too much GI bill. So, state school it is. And, yeah, I was decent until again, I felt once more disconnect with school. It was like, “This is too easy. I need to move on to something. You know, go work.” So.
[00:10:25] Marc Gonyea: You, when, when you were in the reserves you were going to school?
[00:10:28] David Tharp: Yeah. So I was going to school, and in most cases working two jobs.
[00:10:32] Marc Gonyea: Talk about that a little bit.
[00:10:33] David Tharp: Yeah. So I bartended. I worked at a bar. All my friends would be like, “Yeah, he worked at a bar.”
[00:10:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:10:40] David Tharp: I got out of bartender, but I was pretty much like a door guy, bar-back the majority of the time. And then, and in college at Texas State, you can tube the river and it’s highly recommend to anybody. It’s, it’s one of the best things to do. Very fun. But I worked on that as well. So I worked on the river, and then go work at the bar after I got off.
[00:10:59] Marc Gonyea: And then went to school.
[00:11:00] David Tharp: And I’d go to school full-time.
[00:11:01] Marc Gonyea: And was a Marine.
[00:11:02] David Tharp: And reserve. Yeah. I was.
[00:11:04] Chris Corcoran: Did you have to pay for school, a part of school?
[00:11:06] David Tharp: A portion of that school I would pay for. It’s a good gig. And honestly, like, life’s kind of all about it, the way I see it, like finding out, you might never find out what you want to do, but you find out real quick what you don’t want to do. You go through all these trials and errors. Like, I did a construction job in high school and I was like, “Nope, I’m not going to do that.”
[00:11:26] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Not respectful, not professional. Yeah.
[00:11:30] David Tharp: Hell yeah. It’s, it’s tough.
[00:11:32] Chris Corcoran: And what do you mean the school’s too easy?
[00:11:35] David Tharp: It’s.
[00:11:35] Chris Corcoran: Wasn’t challenging you?
[00:11:36] David Tharp: It wasn’t challenging me. I have to be, I’m that person that has to be challenged otherwise, like, I don’t know. You know, I’d have a disconnect somehow. So somewhere in there it’s like, I get bored. Yeah. And, so I, that is something I try to do every day. It’s like find something challenging, do something that scares you a little bit.
[00:11:53] Chris Corcoran: Okay. That’s great. So you’re going, you’re going, you’re in the reserves, you started at community college in Houston, moved to San Marcos, go to Texas State and then eventually you finish?
[00:12:03] David Tharp: Yeah. So I finished in three years, altogether three and a half, if you add the community college. So, after that, I go into broking logistics, which.
[00:12:13] Chris Corcoran: How’d you get into that? How’d the whole sales thing kind of start?
[00:12:16] David Tharp: The sales thing started. So my, my degree wasn’t anything special, justice and criminology. And I thought I wanted to go into the FBI or some sort of three letter agency. You know, coming off, I’m still in the military at this point. We’re going to carry a gun our whole life. This is what we’re going to do. And I didn’t want to be a cop.
So I’m like three letter agency. They’d pretty much told me to kick rocks. I mean, they’re like get 30-years experience and come talk to us. And I was like, “Wow. Nope, not going to do that.” So, you know, I was looking at things I could get into and things that I could see myself with. My whole family is a breed of salesmen at some degree. My dad sells metal. My grandpa, I told you, was in banking. And, he, he was more on the sales side of it. It was just like, [00:13:00] let’s try it.
Well, what can we do here? My dad’s like, “I can get you a job selling metal. You’re going to hate it.” I was like that, as much as you, as, as great as that sounds, I think I’ll, you know, try to flop my wings somewhere else. And I just started interviewing at various places, know nothing about technology at this point. And, these guys say, you know, you, you can make pretty good margins and, and trading or broking logistics, and you basically, you make money off, you know, your customer paying you a portion, and then you get a margin for finding a truck and fulfilling their order.
[00:13:32] Marc Gonyea: Share with the listeners a little bit about like, what, what, what exactly you were doing in terms of like. Give an example of, of who would be a customer and who would be a trucker? Because all that. Third party logistics is a big industry, but lots of people don’t know what it is.
[00:13:45] David Tharp: It’s huge. And, and, yeah, I mean it. So you, you essentially say Walmart, which you could only hope that’s your customer. Let’s say, Walmart’s your customer. You, and then give you, just to make the math easy. They give you a thousand bucks for a fulfillment from, let’s say Houston to New York. So you need to now find a truck for that thousand bucks from Houston to New York. And ideally you find that truck for 500, so you’d get 500 bucks as your, they call it rip or, or your, your margins so that you can be profitable on it. And, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, you’re selling both ways, is the way I saw it. Was like, you have to obviously get the customer, the clientele, and then past that, you gotta sell these trucks on the lane that they might not want, specially for the money. So it was like two tail here. It’s like, you know, it’s a, it’s a huge business. It really is. Very much competitive.
[00:14:34] When people tell me about what it was like working in that industry.
[00:14:37] Chris Corcoran: It’s full.
[00:14:38] David Tharp: It’s cutthroat.
[00:14:41] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. So how’d you find that, find this company?
[00:14:44] David Tharp: Yeah. So, I, I was talking to someone I worked with in logistics and he went to Coastal and he knew Rubin.
[00:14:52] Marc Gonyea: How’d you find the logistics company?
[00:14:54] Chris Corcoran: But we’ll get to the memoryBlue.
[00:14:55] Marc Gonyea: We’ll get there. So like, so. You already talked to your pop’s thousand sales, grandfather says, “Okay. There’s this sales thing.” How did you, how at TQL, how did you find out about them?
[00:15:05] David Tharp: Yeah, I was interviewing at some places that I just didn’t feel were fit. Like, a New York Life is one of them, where you’re kind of all commission. You have to build your book. And yeah, I was like, I kind of want some structure here. I interviewed at like door-to-door pest control. Like, I was going all over the place, and trying to stand out as much as I could. And it just seemed like this had the best opportunity for like a guaranteed base with a decent margin to be made.
[00:15:34] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Okay.
[00:15:34] David Tharp: Commission-wise.
[00:15:35] Chris Corcoran: You found them on a job board or?
[00:15:37] David Tharp: Yes. So I didn’t use, so I wasn’t in the business school. So it was like, the access of getting some of those job fairs we’re like, “Hey, well, why are you here?”
[00:15:46] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:15:47] David Tharp: So I was like, all right, cool. We’ll just go on a deed and try and find something.
[00:15:50] Chris Corcoran: Okay. And so was it the office here in Austin?
[00:15:53] David Tharp: Yes. It’s a South Austin office. I think TQL is one of the bigger players in that game. And, they have offices and I’d like to say like, maybe even something like 50 satellite offices. It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere.
[00:16:05] Marc Gonyea: And what was the day-to-day like in that role? So this is your first introduction to sales.
[00:16:09] David Tharp: This is the first.
[00:16:09] Marc Gonyea: You kind of had an idea, you’re going in interviews, talking to these companies about what they do. But what was, was it like there? And now you’re in sales world.
[00:16:17] David Tharp: Yeah. Yeah, it was. I mean, like I said, it was pretty cutthroat. It was like, you were, you had, so they, I think they went on Talk Time is the metric, but you were making a hundred dials a day. It’s easy, which seems like a lot of the time but now you know, if you want to get things pop it…
[00:16:34] Marc Gonyea: Things, pop it, mean talk time. So.
[00:16:38] Chris Corcoran: We used to do talk time.
[00:16:39] Marc Gonyea: So refreshing to hear.
[00:16:40] Chris Corcoran: Is it though? ‘Cause it could, people game that shit all the time. And I mean I guess.
[00:16:47] Marc Gonyea: I know, I like it’s a game time.
[00:16:49] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:16:50] Marc Gonyea: How many minutes?
[00:16:51] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:16:51] David Tharp: And people were, were slick and passive. There’s a way passed it, and I think it’s called Ghost Calling or something. You can just let it.
[00:16:59] Marc Gonyea: We used to have it. And people will like call the main line and kind of let it go a little bit longer. Whether to call it people call it Delta reservations and their phone bill.
[00:17:13] Chris Corcoran: Well, why don’t you, why don’t you focus on the ultimate metric? Your paycheck. So anyway. So show you what, you’re in here, you’re doing your thing, Talk Time is the metric. Describe like the sales flow, the sales culture, or kind of what you got started and what you learned?
[00:17:31] David Tharp: So it was a, it was actually a pretty cool culture. I mean, you got, it felt like, you know, back in the fraternity days, day mirrors. Like, you’re, you’re wearing jerseys, run around, throwing footballs and. ‘Cause, you got to kind of take your mind off how hard the job may be.
And I think they did a pretty good job of that. But yeah, the sales cycle could be, you know, one day it could be, who knows? You know, it could be a year before you could penetrate something. So, it was a lot in the air and I didn’t really like that. And I saw some people there that had been there for quite some time. And I was like, “Ooh, I don’t know.” I kind of was like, Is this where we want to be?
[00:18:08] Chris Corcoran: Which is okay.
[00:18:09] David Tharp: Which is always okay.
[00:18:10] Marc Gonyea: Right, because you’re trying to figure out what you want to do. Schools are doing a better job now. But sometimes coming out they’ll give you an idea as to what type of productional sales departments exists.
[00:18:21] David Tharp: Right.
[00:18:21] Marc Gonyea: Right. It’d be nice if they did. And we, one of the delivery managers was telling me last night, he played for a sales professor. I call out of ExecVision and ExecVision blew the guy’s mind. Like the whole idea of the concept of it. And that’s pretty common nowadays. Kids who think they might go to the sales should know about this stuff. And listen to calls, breaking a call down…
[00:18:42] Chris Corcoran: Go back to you. So you were there for a little while. What’d you learn before you said, “Hey, I, okay, I think I needed, I need to reorient myself to more we’ll talk about.” But you had to learn some things here.
[00:18:51] David Tharp: Yeah, no, I, I learned a lot there. I learned really the sales cycle. ‘Cause you know, I didn’t go to college for anything like [00:19:00] marketing or sales. So it was like, I learned kind of full cycle sales, how to, how to really narrow down and, and develop a pipeline and, and kind of move forward through the sales funnel. And, again, I, I kept behind that idea that I knew how you had to do things but still, you have to work hard. And everything you, like, it was just another reminder of like, nothing’s gonna come easy at all. You’re just going to have to outwork and like care. So those were some good takeaways.
[00:19:28] Marc Gonyea: So earlier you said that there was a lot up in the air. What do you mean by that?
[00:19:32] David Tharp: A lot up in the air with, with the company?
[00:19:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, with the role.
[00:19:37] David Tharp: It was more the role. I saw that there was, I saw that there was not much growth. And it was kind of how I build my book is how I grew up, which in a way is a good thing, ’cause it’s a gamble on yourself. But, I just, I saw that ironically technology might be able to fade this industry out.
[00:19:54] Marc Gonyea: Interesting.
[00:19:55] David Tharp: Which is what had my jets turning at all. But my, my permission [00:20:00] is still not correct. So maybe one day if I’m at still a booming industry.
[00:20:04] Chris Corcoran: And what, what separated the top performers from the average or the mediocre at the, in that world?
[00:20:10] David Tharp: So a lot of it was who you knew. And if you knew anyone that did kind of the operational side of, of receiving, that, they’re gonna, you’re gonna get some handouts. Not handouts by all means ’cause you know these people, but you’re gonna get helped out.
And then other than that, it was the dudes that devoted 48 hours of their life every day. Like they did too much. ‘Cause you have to have a work like life, or work-life balance, I think. And the guys that did really well there did not. It was like all day, all night, 24/7. Just keep in mind. You know, if you have a line out and it’s 3:00 AM and something gets squirrely, you’re liable for all this. Your customer doesn’t really know the truck driver too well. They just sign the papers, and you know, you hold the liability here. So you have 10-year needs and it’s a very asking job.
[00:20:58] Marc Gonyea: So you’re always on call?
[00:20:59] David Tharp: Always on call, always on call.
[00:21:01] Marc Gonyea: What was that like?
[00:21:02] David Tharp: So I never had really a big enough book to always be on call, but I did get some times where it’s like, you know, you’re out there having a couple beers with your friends on the weekend, you get a phone call from a number that looks oddly familiar and you have to just tend to it. And it’s just like, you have to, you have to be on it. Otherwise it’ll whisk away. And then, now your customer’s going to lose the lane. So I mean, you gotta, you gotta really be on your game.
[00:21:28] Chris Corcoran: Wow. It sounds like 365, 24/7.
[00:21:33] David Tharp: And you know, a lot of people make a lot of money doing it. So it, it has its pace, but it is a very asking position.
[00:21:40] Chris Corcoran: So how long did you do that?
[00:21:41] David Tharp: About, I think 10 months to a year. Something like that.
[00:21:44] Chris Corcoran: What a great experience, great experience. And so then you ended up deciding to leave. and go explore different opportunities. Walk us through how’d you come to that thought process?
[00:21:57] David Tharp: Yeah. So, you know, I thought the technology would be the one to replace this. That’s where my head was the whole time. How can this be more efficient? How can this industry fade? Does this have longevity? These are kind of things I was going through. And, I was like, technology could probably take this down. So why don’t we explore that?
You know, even, whether it’s databases or what have you. It doesn’t have to be like logistics type like. Let’s see what we got. And, so I start talking around the office, and I was like, “Yeah, I think I’m going to move out. Like, what, do you guys have any recommendations where people have gone?” These kinds of things. And one of my buddies, Casey May, he knew, he is fraternity brothers with, Ruben and, Foley.
[00:22:38] Chris Corcoran: Oh, there you go.
[00:22:41] David Tharp: Hell yeah. Yeah. So. He basically was like, go check out memoryBlue. And so I checked out Oracle Procor, I think OutboundEngine was the name of it. And then, and then memoryBlue. And then Oracle, I was going for an AE position, because I was an AE previously. Little did I know that [00:23:00] does not translate. Just tried.
[00:23:03] Chris Corcoran: What’d you hear from Oracle?
[00:23:04] David Tharp: Nothing but great things. So I was going for their hardware side, which I’m quite glad I didn’t do today. They don’t, down with Oracle. So, but no. So I was going to go on their hardware side, sell X-37s. And, you know, I didn’t know a thing about any of that. And you know, they, they try to get you to describe a full tech stack and where this would fit in on the interview. I did my research, got pretty good. I actually went all the way to the final round of interviews. And the director out there told me that I’m just not qualified. He’s like, you should tap yourself on the shoulder for making it this far, but you’re like, you’re just. It would take you a year to be profitable in this role.
[00:23:40] Marc Gonyea: This, when you were interviewing. I think I remember this.
[00:23:43] Chris Corcoran: Where was this director? Was it here in Austin or where was he?
[00:23:44] David Tharp: Yeah, he was here in Austin. And, there was actually kind of like comforting. Because it’s like, damn, like, I didn’t know anything about this. And I tried it, and I somehow got here and he was like, honestly, like be happy because like, you did really well and get through here and talk here. So, use that as a learning curve and just moved on. And, I think I, I didn’t, I didn’t go too far without Outbound engine. And then I got an offer from Procore, and I was interviewing with memoryBlue. And I was like, I definitely need to check this out.
So like this, this seems like a good gig here. And, then I get the offer from memoryBlue. Abby Curtis was my recruiter. Shout out Abby. And you know, I was like, this, this is the model. This is what, this is how you get your feet wet here. Like this is what I got to do. And so I accepted the offer and then, came into the office.
[00:24:33] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:24:34] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. And who is, who is your, who’d you work with back in the, back in the day when you started? Wasn’t that long ago?
[00:24:39] David Tharp: TC was my first manager.
[00:24:41] Chris Corcoran: Psycho T.
[00:24:43] Marc Gonyea: It’s that guy.
[00:24:44] Chris Corcoran: And then, and then Jackson was, was I think he was actually, yeah, he was still a DM. He was still a DM. He wasn’t an MD yet. And then Taylor Ritchie was still here, and then, yeah, that, that was the three DMs.
[00:24:57] Marc Gonyea: Okay.
[00:24:57] David Tharp: And I think Nimit was now transitioning to his new position.
[00:25:02] Marc Gonyea: Okay. And what was the tradition like? So you’d come from TQL, and you’re doing the full cycle.
[00:25:08] David Tharp: Yep.
[00:25:09] Marc Gonyea: And then we’re in like, “Congratulations, you’re working on Boots.”
[00:25:13] David Tharp: Boots. Yeah. Boots was my first, my first client. Wow. That was like, throw it in the lion’s den. Thankfully Jace was also on that. And he was like seasoned vet when I got it. Yeah. So he was like, “Yeah, here’s everything you need to say. Here’s like what you need to learn. Here’s where you need to, like, here’s some talking points.”
And it, it, wasn’t a very call heavy. Like it didn’t, ’cause you’re, you know, you’re going to the C-suite and they had a, I think it was an enterprise team as well. So you don’t get anyone picking it up. So it was like, you need to work on like getting really good at emails. You have to be good at emails. And yeah, he was just sharpening the tools for me.
But realistically, I, I still wasn’t that like comfortable ’cause it was like a learning curve of everything. It was like, I don’t, [00:26:00] I don’t know a thing about tech. I think that’s where I’m stuck here. Like but that, I think to be a sales professional, you, you kind of like, if you’re too comfortable, kind of, because now we’re getting towards the technical side, it’s like, you need to only hit you. You need to be okay with being uncomfortable.
[00:26:15] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, totally.
[00:26:16] David Tharp: And just knowing your talking points and, and sticking to that.
[00:26:19] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s a good point. People get really into, I need to know the tech. The tech and the reality is, you never going to know the tech as well as the people you’re selling to. Right. Right. And so you got to figure out how to make up for that. Sorry. You know better than I do.
[00:26:30] David Tharp: Well, no, I was going to say, you know, that they might get offended too.
[00:26:33] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:26:33] David Tharp: If you’re trying to out-think a thinker, it’s like just, no, no. Hey, I’m the business contact here. And then, you know, for the brains they have, or the brains of this operation it’s right here. Yeah. And I think that that’s a tangible tool that’s scary to have. Because it’s like, you know, you don’t, you don’t want to not know what you’re talking about.
[00:26:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It’s hard for people to get over that hump rather than you get some people who they’re focused on getting certified. And I think you need those things for more technical, but from the sales side you’re focus on the other parts of the sales game. Which is as craft oriented as the technical side, really, just different.
[00:27:07] David Tharp: You need to be an expert in your own craft, which, you know, running business terms and negotiating contracts, that’s where you need the expert. When it goes to technical, you got some money for that hopefully. And if you don’t then, you know, someone, someone will be able to help for sure. No one’s going to expect you to tell someone how to code…
[00:27:26] Chris Corcoran: What, right. So what were you doing for Boots? What sort of technology were you selling?
[00:27:31] David Tharp: So it was there, it was an MSP route to market. And it was a, their ND, NDR, on the commercial side. I know they were very successful with, you know, their, their federal side of that. And, I was on the commercial side that was kind of starting up. And, yeah, it was, it was like building a whole fresh pipeline. I mean, it was.
[00:27:47] Chris Corcoran: From scratch.
[00:27:48] David Tharp: From scratch.
[00:27:49] Chris Corcoran: And so you, who were you selling to and what, what was it, what did it essentially did the technology do?
[00:27:52] David Tharp: So, so our champion was, champion was the CSO. But anyone like director of IT and above we could rock into. [00:28:00] And, yeah, it was just a manager tech to respond. They’ll go in and, kind of, there was a compromise assessment that I remember being a part of where they’ll go in and actually check how you were compromised and go backfill it. But it was, it was all in MSP, go-to-market strategy. So it wasn’t the software itself. I believe. I could, I was, I was.
[00:28:18] Marc Gonyea: Knowledge of combination.
[00:28:19] David Tharp: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Chris Corcoran: Because they have all these experience building out of all these socks and things for the government. And all this knowledge they’re trying to do a commercial. Combine with technology, combined with really smart analyst and see with the help someone out there on the dark web.
[00:28:33] David Tharp: Yeah.
[00:28:33] Chris Corcoran: We’re fascinated. Amazing company to work with.
[00:28:35] Marc Gonyea: It was great experience to get to. Right? There’s a huge agree, huge name.
[00:28:40] David Tharp: And that’s, I’m a little less knowledgeable on, on more exact, because I was in my like, stay in my alley, like tunnel vision. This is this, I need leads. Like my, my, the way I view it was like, my sole job is to kind of qualify someone and then make sure they show up to a meeting. Right. That’s, if they’re qualified, get them to a meeting and the rest is [00:29:00] history. And I’ve done my part. And, you know, we can focus on another one.
[00:29:04] Marc Gonyea: What was it like shifting from, not only when you in closing role, but you could close each deal twice. Right? With your customer and your trucker. Right?
[00:29:17] David Tharp: Many times.
[00:29:17] Marc Gonyea: Two closes. It’s now, you don’t close anything other than you’re closing the meeting. What was that like, kind of where you had the full control over everything and now it’s just tee it up and go find the next one.
[00:29:28] David Tharp: Well, so, so Jackson in the interview. He, he put this perfectly placed. And he’s, he’s like becoming an SDR from a full cycle role is hundred percent investment in yourself. This is a good industry. Like technology, and tech sales specifically, you’re going to go places. Just got to, you know, stay with it and stay organized. And he’s like, “You’re going to invest in yourself to learn this, be good at this. And then one day you’ll be back where you were, and hopefully for a more promising role.”
[00:30:00] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:30:01] David Tharp: And, and that was kind of the, what, what resonated with me. Again, bootcamps of life. Like, I was like, “This is it.” Like, this is, this is just bootcamp, you know. Being an SDR is tough. It’s not the hard, it’s not the easiest role in the world, but it’s monumental to be good. ‘Cause if, if you can’t grasp, not that if you can’t. You have to be able to be a good SDR, you have to be able to build your pipeline. Otherwise, you know, the rest of the sales cycle is not great, so.
[00:30:28] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:30:29] David Tharp: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Chris Corcoran: Right. What was it? What did you learn? W, what did you get good at? So obviously before, I know you moved to another campaign. Well, what, w what, so you got Jace, who’s kind of run in the office, but what, what was in thought that you started getting good at in those six months, months?
[00:30:47] David Tharp: So first six months, let’s say, we were emails, was what I got very good at giving you an organized purpose built email. I was still trash at LinkedIn. Didn’t know, I couldn’t get any traction with LinkedIn. [00:31:00] And I was almost like uncomfortable on phones. Like it was like, I was a little shaky. It’s like, “Hey.”
[00:31:07] Marc Gonyea: You had a year of experience it, do logistic sales where you’re on the phone, they’re measuring your talk times and you had a lot of experience in sales.
[00:31:18] David Tharp: I had a lot of experience and.
[00:31:20] Marc Gonyea: Then you’re, now you’re nervous?
[00:31:21] David Tharp: I’m still, now I’m getting like the pregame shakes and it’s like “Oh no.”
[00:31:25] Marc Gonyea: Why was that?
[00:31:26] David Tharp: You know, I think it was ’cause I wasn’t comfortable with not knowing everything about what’s up. ‘Cause you know, logistics, it’s a pretty easy world. I guess someone’s gonna know more than you, but you know a decent amount. And you know, going into this, I was like, “I don’t know anything.” You can question me right now and I’m vulnerable.
[00:31:43] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:31:43] David Tharp: And of course you get really good at like, like deflecting that away, but you could, you could come at me very hard and I would, I would be vulnerable. I, I would know. And that, that kind of scared me.
[00:31:54] Marc Gonyea: Sure. Okay. How’d you get past that?
[00:31:57] David Tharp: I got comfortable with it. But [00:32:00] like, there was a training, oh man, I’m going to blank on the name, but it’s a Snowman method where, you know, if like this SDR, the top of the Snowman, he doesn’t know anything or she doesn’t know anything. And then this middle guy is the mix of in between this, the bottom of the snowman knows too much, knows everything. And it was like, you want to know as much as the bottom of the Snowman, but act like you know the top of the Snowman, you don’t know much.
So I might be butchering that train. It was along those lines in it. That one was like, that’s perfect, that’s exactly how you need to be. When you, when you’re developing pipeline, you have to be, you have to proceed, be proceed as an expert. But, you know, talk like you don’t know anything.
[00:32:40] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:32:40] David Tharp: So.
[00:32:41] Marc Gonyea: It’s never about, well, you’re trained your whole life to know the answers, all these questions, give the answers. It’s how the school system works. Right, right. Oh, I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know the answer. Let me tell you, let me tell you me tell, tell, tell, tell versus in sales we want to know as much as we can know, but even when you know, it’s not really what the answer is. It’s like, why are they asking those [00:33:00] questions? What’s behind that?
Then you figure it out and then maybe you’d give up the candy over the answer. But only when you, ’cause you got to make sure the answer positioned the right way. Right. The person who’s asking the questions, because the answer is, look, it’s the most impactful. It’s usually why are they asking it. Right. So.
[00:33:17] Chris Corcoran: So as you’re doing your thing, you’re on Booz and then just move to another campaign. Right.
[00:33:22] David Tharp: So now, okay. So Booz, so Booz it stopped it and pandemic hits.
[00:33:27] Chris Corcoran: Wow. Yeah pandemic.
[00:33:30] David Tharp: Yeah, that was, that was like, you know, no one really knew what was going on. Kudos to you too. Y’all handled that better than any company I’ve heard off.
[00:33:40] Marc Gonyea: Two weeks to flatten the curve.
[00:33:43] Chris Corcoran: There we are two years later, two weeks flatten the curve. Two weeks.
[00:33:49] David Tharp: So yeah, I was, I was full PPM at that point.
[00:33:52] Chris Corcoran: Oh, wow. So PPM, and then not only pandemic, but PPM. Wow. So you’re, you’re you, can you feel.
[00:33:59] David Tharp: Yeah. Back to square one. It’s like, okay. Job security work. Kind of have to work through this one. I don’t know. I know one thing is that there’s six meetings left in this basket.
[00:34:10] Chris Corcoran: Yes.
[00:34:10] David Tharp: I need to be that guy to fill all of them.
[00:34:12] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:14] Marc Gonyea: Pretty basic. And so how long were you on, PPM is our price per meeting where we have a different engagement model with our clients, but how were you, how long were you doing that?
[00:34:21] David Tharp: I was doing that, oh man. Probably I’d say two months to, to give it a rough estimate. And then
[00:34:28] Marc Gonyea: Reece.
[00:34:29] David Tharp: No, no, I’m on, I’m still in Austin.
[00:34:31] Marc Gonyea: Okay.
[00:34:31] David Tharp: Now we’re just remote, you know, working from my house. Kind of scared in there what’s going to happen. You know, I stayed true, didn’t apply for a single job. I was like, work, the way you guys were managing this it was like, there was comfort. It was like, don’t worry too much. Like we’re, we’re still good. You know, let’s, let’s still, let’s still keep after it. We are still good.
[00:34:51] Marc Gonyea: I remember that. It takes me back. Right. Since along the way we had those little town halls, we were trying to like, you know, make sure that everybody was focused.
[00:35:00] David Tharp: Yeah. And you were up front about it. You’re a hundred percent candid. And it was like, it was, you know, it gave you hope. You’re like, all right, we can, we can punch forward as a team. Let’s get through this.
[00:35:09] Chris Corcoran: It’s amazing.
[00:35:10] Marc Gonyea: Remember there’s a time, when everyone thought we were going to turn into zombies? We were like, “Covid is going to kill us all.” And then that puts things in perspective. And luckily for us too, but the world kept going. People need to build the pipeline.
[00:35:27] David Tharp: Right.
[00:35:27] Marc Gonyea: Right. And like that events stop. But if you want to sell something, you got to get a pipeline cooking.
[00:35:33] David Tharp: Every company needs a sales team. That’s right. Everyone does. There was, so I actually got COVID like first. I remember literally drinking coffee in the office and we were watching it come in essentially. And it’s like first Texas case was in a Bear County, which looks like Bexar, but San Antonio. And it was on the Air Force base. And I was like, “Man, this is probably gonna come here.” Or, or actually Matthew Bascom said that. And I was like, “Ah, no, it’s never coming here.” Yeah. I [00:36:00] was like in denial and naive and like, “Ah, it’s not going here”. Next week I get COVID. And I was like, “Oh no.” Like right when we go to remote, like I think a week after that I got COVID. And I was like.
[00:36:11] Chris Corcoran: So this is, this is March.
[00:36:12] David Tharp: This is March. Yeah. We’re like first wave in right now. And you know, I was telling everyone. Everyone was all curious like, “What’s going on?” And like, you know, I didn’t have a bad case by all means. So I was like cool with it, but.
[00:36:23] Chris Corcoran: Do you have any idea how you got it?
[00:36:25] David Tharp: No, I, so I was going out and drinking and, and, and, you know, acting like nothing had happened. Because, you know, I was living in my mamby pamby land at the time and, yeah, just got COVID. And I was like, well, here we are. I felt, I felt a fever and I went and got tested. It was almost like, because this thing was kind of scary at first.
[00:36:44] Marc Gonyea: Early, early, it was scary.
[00:36:45] David Tharp: It was like, “Ooh, Ooh, what’s this going to do?” Like, I was kind of asking the nurse, like, you know, “Am I going to be okay? Do I need to like, get a seat in the ER now? What’s, what’s going on?” But it ended up just being like a couple of sweaty nights and I worked through it. And then, so it wasn’t too, too bad.
[00:37:00] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Dave worked with through early, early COVID.
[00:37:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. That’s good.
[00:37:04] David Tharp: First wave.
[00:37:05] Chris Corcoran: That’s good. So PPM with COVID.
[00:37:09] David Tharp: PPM with COVID.
[00:37:10] Chris Corcoran: Boom. All right. That’s good. So you did that for about two months working on PPM. And then what happened?
[00:37:15] David Tharp: And then I get a call from TC, which I am scared to answer this because it’s a, “Hey, can we go live in five star things? That’s a Zoom link. Little scared at this point. And he’s like, “Hey, they, don’t say I’ve never done nothing for you.” And I was like, “This is going better than I thought.” It was like, so I reached out to Joe Reeves, if you know who he is. And I was like, “No, we don’t know who Joe.” Now I know who Joe is. Awesome, dude.
[00:37:44] Marc Gonyea: Joe’s amazing.
[00:37:45] David Tharp: And he’s like, “Yes. So they have an opening with Splunk and, you know, since you were on Booz, there, they’re a large company, they’re enterprise company. So we’re going to, we’re going to trust that you can jump over there and kind of onboard a little remote and figure it out.” So I was like, “Perfect.” All I needed was this chance. Like off PPMs now, like ball’s rolling.
[00:38:05] Chris Corcoran: You know what mail is for the listeners? Joseph Joe Reeves oversees and runs our, our office in Silicon valley.
[00:38:11] Marc Gonyea: And you and people like don’t, a lot of this is pedigree. And I’m trying to talk about this when people, when they figure out where they want to go work on, what they want to do, and you came in and some people be like, “Damn, Booz, you gotta call, you know, you can’t even call them or you can’t call them ’cause they were always telling you guys to call them. I don’t want to do that.” Cyber, is that very difficult? Who wants to be on that? You know I would put you on Splunk. But beside that, you work hard, you’re great guy, professional is because we can tell Splunk that you are at Booz.
[00:38:41] David Tharp: Yeah. Yeah. And that goes distance.
[00:38:44] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. When they hear that thought like, “Okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” Like memoryBlue’s kind of got me, but people think about that when they’re on it. They’re like…
[00:38:55] David Tharp: Cyber’s frustrating, but there’s still huge opportunity in it too. [00:39:00] Huge opportunity.
[00:39:00] Marc Gonyea: Huge opportunity.
[00:39:02] David Tharp: From an SDR perspective, your quote is probably going to be a little lower because it’s harder to grab meetings. Take that as a compliment because once I take jumps. It’s like more daunting than any cyber campaign could ever be. So.
[00:39:13] Marc Gonyea: But people that know, know that. Right. So, so we’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to put this guy Tharp who’s not even in the West Coast.” He was working out at his house during COVID is coming to the office a little bit. I don’t know what’s going on, and we’ll put you on Splunk, and Splunk was like, okay. Sounds good to me. But the Marine, Booz little bit of sales experience guy on my campaign. All that I’ll do that. Yeah. Who’s going to say no to that?
[00:39:38] Chris Corcoran: When we were talking before you said once you got on Splunk everything changed.
[00:39:43] David Tharp: Everything changed.
[00:39:44] Chris Corcoran: Everything. Talk us trough about what happened.
[00:39:47] David Tharp: So I, I honestly, I’m trying to think of my, so I know when I got out, I was like, or not got up, but left a memoryBlue, I was at 114, something like that percent of quota attainment. And I [00:40:00] think all of that came from Splunk. I think I was like under quota, every month prior prior to. And you know, I just couldn’t find things clicking. I was kind of doubting myself a little bit, kinda started to not trust the process, which was like, “Where I was going wrong?” and then I just kinda hit it a flip and I was like, “Look, fresh start. You went through the scares.” Like, COVID is still a thing. But you know, we’re finding out that people are still business as usual, specially in technology. So let’s just, let’s restart. Let’s take what we have, and take what we’ve learned, and let’s try and stack onto our abilities here.
[00:40:35] Marc Gonyea: When you say you, you were starting to doubt the process, what do you mean? What process are you talking about?
[00:40:39] David Tharp: I was starting to doubt that like, you know, ’cause there’s a lot of trainings associated with memoryBlue and I was like, “These aren’t helping me, you know. Like this isn’t for me, like I’m sucking. Like, that and I don’t know how to break it.” But I just, I don’t know, I kept my head down and I was just like, we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, and trust and put the fidelity in that this is going to work out. And.
[00:40:59] Marc Gonyea: It’s kinda, [00:41:00] can we not it’s the same, but if someone similar ’cause you talked about there’s somethings you just know when you’re in the Marines or the military. There’s no, there’s no going back. When you get into the SDR role to a certain level, if you want to get to the next stage, there’s no world going back.
[00:41:12] David Tharp: Oh yeah.
[00:41:13] Marc Gonyea: You got to muscle through, you got to muscle through it. You got to muscle through it. And ’cause at that point you invest too much time in it. What you’re going to do? I’m going to TQL.
[00:41:21] David Tharp: Right, right.
[00:41:21] Chris Corcoran: Right. And it’d be one of you were like, “Oh, this texting’s for me.”
[00:41:25] David Tharp: Right.
[00:41:25] Marc Gonyea: So you got to, but it’s hard. It’s so hard. It’s such a hard job. You’ve got a muscle through.
[00:41:30] David Tharp: And like you’re saying that you don’t want to regress, not regress, but stay stagnant. Like I thought it it’s like, well, you know, I could be stagnant here and wait for a new client to come through and hopefully smoke it. Or you could just, you know, kind of grab the bull by the horns and just unleash.
[00:41:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:41:47] David Tharp: And I think memoryBlue gives you every single tool that you need to do that. You know, you, you, like for myself at the time I was struggling on the phones, struggling with LinkedIn cadences, there’s like probably a hundred people that you can talk to internally for each one of those. You can just reach out to someone that you see is crushing quota and be like, “What are you doing? Can I have a little bit of advice here?” And that’s why this environment is like, kind of unbeaten compared to like, you know, a direct company, or like, not like working for your client I guess. Like, just directly because it’s like, now all I get to talk to a Splunk people every day. But here I can talk to someone on Booz or Splunk or what have you, whatever clients.
[00:42:36] Chris Corcoran: You learn every company’s.
[00:42:37] David Tharp: Yeah. I mean, just anyone you possibly could think about. And they all have everyone working on them has different perspectives and different methodologies of work. And so you can kind of pick the brain of everybody.
[00:42:48] Chris Corcoran: And they’re all SDRs.
[00:42:49] David Tharp: And they’re all out there.
[00:42:50] Marc Gonyea: The cool thing is too, you’re not really competing with one another. Sometimes you’re a bigger company, and they may want to share with you, but it’s the same company that may not ’cause maybe their competence was [00:43:00] here. We’re trying to get everybody better.
[00:43:01] Marc Gonyea: Trade in for clients, right?
[00:43:03] Chris Corcoran: Well, by, by getting us, you’re better.
[00:43:04] David Tharp: Yeah.
[00:43:04] Marc Gonyea: And what’s interesting about you is some people may listen to this and get it twisted. Like, well maybe he just got on like a campaign that was easier or some shit like that. The reason why, well it’s blocked was because all the work you put it in on Booz. All the work you put on those PPMs. PPMs are challenging. Right? And in your experience at TQL, and their life experience to that point.
But the, but the work you put in on Booz, on the PPMs, then you kind of arrived, say Booz, or those other firms got shortchanged. You’re still working hard, doing the thing, producing for them. It’s just not as much as you would have liked, what they were like, ideally, but you know, who knows? Everybody always wants more leads, no matter how many leads you get. But so, now you’re on Splunk and let’s talk, let’s talk about it. So what, what were you doing for them? And you’ve got rockets.
[00:43:50] David Tharp: So to be, to be candid too, on that point, a Splunk is no easy sell. I mean, it’s like, it’s a super, like, yeah, you got great brand recognition, like great [00:44:00] company in the space, but it’s a super competitive.
[00:44:02] Marc Gonyea: Super competitive.
[00:44:03] David Tharp: I mean, you’re, you’re going against every vendor and their mom. So it’s like, “Ah, okay.” But what I was specifically doing was on the OEM side where you actually take, you take Splunk enterprise and also, a universal forwarder, but you, you actually embed that into your product. And then you build on top of that, and engineer on top of that. You white label it. So you don’t even like, Splunkers know that’s Splunk’s in there, but like most people won’t.
And, there were the largest cybersecurity firms in the world as an example of this. And then, on, you know, we say it’s a horizontal platform because it can really apply to anything. We have IOT companies, we have healthcare, we have actually, we don’t have any financial services but it’s a very prime use case. And then, you know, cyber is our probably biggest area. But for example, like one of the largest EHR companies is an example of embedding Splunk.
[00:44:54] Chris Corcoran: So, when we talked earlier, you were talking about how big data analytics, there’s something that you became passionate, passionate about. What made you so passionate about big data analytics?
[00:45:05] David Tharp: Yeah, I mean, I’m over here already on my soapbox about it. So, I, I think that what it was for me was like, I can understand the technology. It kind of like, is sensible in a way, like you, you can see how, what, you know, this is like, this tangible, in my opinion, and then we specify a machine data. So we can see how this is, let’s say streaming off of some edge computing device and coming in to. You know, you can watch the flow of data and it just makes sense.
So that’s where it was like, with cybersecurity specifically, I, I still to the day don’t truly understand what, what happens and what kind of code is being thrown in there. With Splunk, I can, I can almost tell you, you know, from a technical side where we need to, what we need to be doing and how it happens. And that to me was like, just that it was like, this is it. This, this makes no sense of what I’ve done so far.
[00:45:56] Chris Corcoran: So what’s interesting. And I think it’d be, helpful for the listeners. If you could explain a little bit about selling directly to the end-user versus selling to the OEM. Because if you kind of, at least for me, if I’m looking at kind of the degree of difficulty from a sales perspective, selling OEM is much more difficult than it is on to the end user. If you could talk to the listeners a little bit about the differences between the two.
[00:46:23] David Tharp: Yeah. So, so, selling Splunk direct while all I’ve never done it. How, how that motion is, is, you know, you’re selling to the person using Splunk and visualizing all this. Like they, they are, who is going to be in charge and utilize Splunk’s whatever product, whether it be our Soar or we have a cloud product now, and maybe it’s Splunk Enterprise. Whatever, whatever product suite your Observability as well. I have to advention that one.
[00:46:48] Chris Corcoran: The, that would be the end user. They’re the ones who were using this software.
[00:46:52] David Tharp: The end user is who you’re selling it to, on a direct side.
[00:46:54] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:46:55] David Tharp: So for myself, when you’re, when you’re selling an OEM where you embed it, you’re selling the product management.
[00:47:01] Chris Corcoran: Product management of other technology companies.
[00:47:03] David Tharp: Correct. Other ISVs. So ISV is independent software vendor. And then, you know, it’s similar to an MSP style except it’s with it’s productized software instead of a service. And those ISVs, that product manager is really our business contact of that. And he works with this dev, or the let’s say an engineering team. And then he works with pretty much financial guys, businesses guys, to figure out how we’re going to fit a margin to build this product.
And so they’re, they’re working out, you know, how are we going to pay the mothership, whether that be AWS, AWS or GCP. How do we, how do we flip a margin while embedding someone’s tech and paying for storage and pay for all. We need, we need to make sure we’re profitable, and then, you know. Since what I, let’s say they buy Splunk and they’re going to invent Splunk since that an engineering team, and then they build on top and turn it into their own. So it’s kind of nice to work with product management in a way, but it’s a lot, a lot more difficult too in a way, because it’s like these guys aren’t going to be the ones utilizing it. So they’re simply just building something.
[00:48:05] Chris Corcoran: Building their product to sell to their customers.
[00:48:07] David Tharp: Right. They’re, they’re worried about their product, which is how it should be. I mean, you should be worried about your product, but it’s just a different dynamic.
[00:48:13] Chris Corcoran: This is way more sophisticated.
[00:48:15] David Tharp: It was very hard to learn.
[00:48:17] Chris Corcoran: How did you do it?
[00:48:19] David Tharp: Over time. It took it, it took quite some time.
[00:48:22] Chris Corcoran: And this is all, so you’re, you’re reporting into a team in their headquarters in San Francisco. You’re doing this out of your house in Texas.
[00:48:30] David Tharp: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:31] Chris Corcoran: So what was that like?
[00:48:33] David Tharp: Well, you know, like learning stuff in a remote world isn’t the easiest in the world. So it’s like, you’re kind of just relaying, and that’s where Tom and Joe were just so helpful. ‘Cause they’d like have time for me any, any day, any hour, it’s like, “Hey, yeah, let’s think up, let’s, let’s talk you through.” And so I just had questions galore and you know, Joe had been, Joe had Splunk probably for years.
[00:48:55] Marc Gpnyea: Yes.
[00:48:55] David Tharp: And, and he just knew everything. He was like, shootin’ everything I had on them. So that was a huge help and kind of ramping up. And then part of it was just baptized by fire, like everything, you know. You get shot and burn on the, on the phone and you’re not going to make that same mistake again. So just kind of get out there and try it, but.
[00:49:17] Chris Corcoran: Do you, I’m sorry.
[00:49:19] David Tharp: Go for it.
[00:49:19] Marc Gonyea: So what, at what point did you kind of realize, “Okay, I think I want to go work for these guys. I want to work for Splunk.” Because you got your Splunk pullover on and get that little ball or Target’s SWAT bag out there.
[00:49:31] David Tharp: All the merch.
[00:49:31] Marc Gonyea: All the merge. Right. So we’ve got our little offerings for you here too. But, but the, but what when is that okay? This is, this is the process. This is the process member who keeps harping on, now I’m seeing it.
[00:49:43] David Tharp: Yeah. So I thought to myself, so there was two, two thinking hats here. And one of them was, okay, we’re going to try and go sell-side from memoryBlue. And so I was exploring that avenue and I was exploring.
[00:49:55] Chris Corcoran: You’d have been good.
[00:49:57] David Tharp: I know, [00:50:00] I was excited, you know, going out on the direct side of the Splunk. And I viewed one is way riskier than the other. So I, I, I, as well thought I could be pretty good on the sales team.
[00:50:08] Marc Gonyea: Of course.
[00:50:09] David Tharp: And so I was like, you know, I feel like that’s my like sure bet. Like, I think I’m, not sure bet, nothing’s a sure bet. But I was like, I could be pretty good. And, on the OEM side, it’s like, I don’t know if Splunk’s going to scrap this team up and throw it away. That this is a total risk, it’s a small team, but if it expands, I’ll be a founding father of it. So I was like, let’s, let’s just try it, see where it goes. And that’s where I was thinking wise. Like, well, screw it. You know, I I’m I’m at this time 25, you know, like, why not? Why not?
[00:50:42] Marc Gonyea: You got options too. It’s nice to have options you would have taken to either team.
[00:50:46] Chris Corcoran: So then they said, “Hey, let’s, why don’t you join the team?”
[00:50:50] David Tharp: Yeah. So they, they created a role and they.
[00:50:53] Chris Corcoran: Created a role.
[00:50:54] David Tharp: They created a role over there. And I was, I didn’t, so I knew one thing. And if it came down to sales team at memoryBlue or direct sales at the Splunk, I was gonna stay at memoryBlue. I was like, I don’t want to go to direct sales org. This is attractive because it’s such a risk. And I’m in, and then match basically. So I went for an interview with the direct side, got the position there. And then.
[00:51:20] Chris Corcoran: Where would that position would been?
[00:51:22] David Tharp: Dallas.
[00:51:22] Chris Corcoran: In Dallas. Okay.
[00:51:24] David Tharp: So I didn’t want to move to Dallas, but I was kind of bluffing because I was like, “Oh, I could”, you know, I’m not going to throw it away for a move. You know, you gotta, you gotta make, a wise man once said like, never like no matter where you are in life always take a good opportunity. Like don’t, like the guy that can move always does well. And you gotta be flexible and be able to just kind of maneuver.
[00:51:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:51:47] David Tharp: But at the time I was like, that’s bottom priority. I don’t want to, I don’t want to do that. If I have to I’ll do it, but I don’t want to.
[00:51:53] Marc Gonyea: You didn’t have to.
[00:51:54] David Tharp: And I didn’t have to.
[00:51:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:51:56] David Tharp: So I played that against the OEM side and I was like, “Hey, I got an offer. And I, I’m, [00:52:00] I I’ll take it too. Like, I, I need something tangible. And then they just created a position and, you know, kept it on the market for a little bit and then said, “Here you are.”
[00:52:10] Marc Gonyea: That’s great, man. That’s great. How long ago was that?
[00:52:13] David Tharp: That was November of last year. I think so, at the TOPs trip, Kristen came up and was like, “Hey, I heard about, you know, the news.” And I was like, “How’d you hear about the news?” She’s like, “I hear everything.” So I, I, I already knew I was going to go to Splunk at TOPs. And that, that was pretty, that whole December I knew, and in January I started.
[00:52:32] Chris Corcoran: Started January. That’s great. Very good. And so I remember you telling me you’re on this cool OEM team and your territory is?
[00:52:41] David Tharp: Global.
[00:52:42] Chris Corcoran: Global. So you’re just, you’re selling.
[00:52:43] David Tharp: No reigns.
[00:52:44] Chris Corcoran: No reigns. And how big is the team?
[00:52:47] David Tharp: So the team is, what, was Garren. We’ll get into that a little bit, and then we have an SE attached. And then we also had me, which was managing the pipeline. And.
[00:52:56] Chris Corcoran: So the whole team is, is a.
[00:52:57] David Tharp: It’s three.
[00:52:58] Chris Corcoran: Biz development, [00:53:00] SDR, sales engineer, and then sales leader.
[00:53:03] David Tharp: Yep. You got.
[00:53:04] Chris Corcoran: Really three.
[00:53:05] David Tharp: Business, sales, tech. And that was that.
[00:53:07] Chris Corcoran: And that’s it? And the globe.
[00:53:09] David Tharp: And the globe.
[00:53:10] Chris Corcoran: What a cool opportunity for Splunk.
[00:53:12] David Tharp: It’s an, I mean, it’s an eight figure business. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s large. And yeah, the greatest part about global and, and no reigns for size of company is that you can literally contact anybody. But the worst part about that is that you can literally contact anyone. Sometimes it’s really good to be targeted.
[00:53:30] Chris Corcoran: So of course.
[00:53:31] David Tharp: I go through, so I like to use Advance a lot. Like I like to use like Black Hat, for example, security is a strong suit of where you can embed Splunk. So build out like every sponsor’s name, every, you know, I’ll create a list of who I think could be a decent application there, and I’ll go after them. Or like Israel’s really fertile with, with cyber startups. So I’ll, I’ll look at like their startup kind of campaigns out there, and all their conferences and again, build it out. That’s how I try to stay targeted, [00:54:00] but you gotta, it’s a learning effort.
[00:54:02] Chris Corcoran: That’s great. That’s fantastic. And so your sales leader and the sales engineer are both headquarters in the Bay area?
[00:54:09] David Tharp: Correct.
[00:54:10] Chris Corcoran: And you’re here, you’re in Texas. You’re still remote. And how has that been?
[00:54:14] David Tharp: It’s been great. You know, we, we pretty much talk every day. I actually was up in San Francisco a couple months ago. Don’t tell Joe. But yeah, I’ve checked out the headquarters and I, you know, I’m just assuming here because Doug Merritt, our CEO has moved out to Austin since. So it’s only, it’s gotta be a ticking time bomb, I, I feel like before we get something brewing out here.
[00:54:36] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. Interesting. Very good. And so you’re doing new business, but you’re also doing renewals, royalties, just all you’re managing the entire piece of business.
[00:54:45] David Tharp: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a trip. So you get, so it’s a pre-pay. Right?
[00:54:51] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:54:52] David Tharp: The deal sizing would be like a prepayment. And then that goes a two-year royalty. So in a perfect world, it breaks even, and we don’t have to collect any money from you because everyone’s done our math correctly and your prepayment matches, you know, your usage. But beyond that, yeah, there, there’s royalties for your usage. You have to report it quarterly. And then, on top of that, we, so inside of Splunk, you know, if you’re dealing with the field, they have renewal stands for that. Yeah. We have to manage our own renewals. So, so the thing about OEM business, which I thought was very attractive is that like only our team is responsible or responsible for it. And I think we have one, if not the highest revenue per head. So just a three team, for three men team.
[00:55:38] Chris Corcoran: Absolutely. So the cool thing about this is like, there’s, you’re like getting very itched in a, in a, in a year now, like an OEM specialists, these different technology companies there, they look for people who are OEM specialists and you’ve already got that. So that’s awesome. and it’s kind of…
[00:55:56] David Tharp: And Garren who was my boss came from, I [00:56:00] might be butchering this one, with 15-years experience of Adobe. So on the OEM side.
[00:56:04] Chris Corcoran: On the OEM side, okay.
[00:56:05] David Tharp: And then a couple of startups before he found itself in Splunk. And now he’s actually an AWS.
[00:56:11] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:56:12] David Tharp: So
[00:56:12] Chris Corcoran: Doing the OEM stuff?
[00:56:14] David Tharp: ISV stuff. So he’s, he’s running like interview us has a pretty cool business model from my understanding of that, they run like all the direct deals through partners. Like, so someone is managing the partnership and running up and down for all ISV. But that’s another opportunity and another bootcamp let’s call it, but I am transitioned into that role currently. So it’s like a global sales manager role. And currently I’m supporting the team. I think it’s, you know, you know, it’s like a kind of like, I don’t know how I’m here, I’m not going to ask questions. I kind of feel like I was like a boxer in like way outweighed by the other guy. Like.
[00:56:50] Chris Corcoran: You, what you need.
[00:56:51] David Tharp: What do I need?
[00:56:52] Chris Corcoran: You need an SDR.
[00:56:53] David Tharp: I do need an SDR. I know. I know where to get a good one. So, yeah. I mean, I, I’ve been super busy with that as a sort of.
[00:57:03] Chris Corcoran: What a great experience.
[00:57:04] David Tharp: Well, that’s the thing alone, you know, it’s like, if, let’s say I’m just interim head coach and then gets back-filled let’s say next year.
[00:57:11] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:57:12] David Tharp: The experience alone is like you’re brought into a seven, eight figure business I mean that is a big deal.
[00:57:18] Chris Corcoran: Who you, since your boss left and you kind of assumed his responsibility, who do you roll up into?
[00:57:24] David Tharp: So I roll up to the vice president of go-to-market for a Splunk. Yeah.
[00:57:31] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:57:31] David Tharp: That’s like.
[00:57:32] Chris Corcoran: That’s the bright lights right there.
[00:57:34] Marc Gonyea: He couldn’t use, you knew he assessed the situations.
[00:57:37] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:57:38] Marc Gonyea: You kind of assess correctly. ‘Cause you’d had seen a lot of things. Right. And again, going back to like, what kind of TQL or at memoryBlue am I thinking about what you want to do when you’re thinking Marines? You know, you, you see lots of things like, “Okay. I think this could be bigger than I think it can be that it is now and it turned out that way.” Right.
[00:57:59] Chris Corcoran: So [00:58:00] Dave, looking back at your memoryBlue time, who was the best SDR you worked with?
[00:58:06] David Tharp: Best SDR I worked with, oh he’s going to love the shout out, but it’s only because I liked his methods and it was Johnny Marshall. So him and I would catch up a lot. We still actually were due up to, to grab a beer or something, girlfriends and all that, you know, would get to know my buddy.
[00:58:28] Chris Corcoran: Well, we know.
[00:58:28] David Tharp: But yeah, so he was just like, and it kind of shaped how I presented things and it’s very much like uniqueness, like find out what everybody, and there’s a pamphlet that I’ve read previous to Johnny Marshall, which kind of just put this all together. And there was the common denominator of success, and it’s an old financial banking pamphlet, but it says the common denominator of success is finding what losers do and excelling it. Or what they hate doing and excelling in that.
[00:58:55] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:58:55] David Tharp: And if you can do that, you’ll find a way to be successful. So Johnny tells me.
[00:59:00] Marc Gonyea: What losers do, don’t do. We don’t do.
[00:59:02] Chris Corcoran: Well, look at me.
[00:59:03] David Tharp: What they hate to do, Excel on that. Because it is probably something you need.
[00:59:08] Marc Gonyea: That’s called prospecting.
[00:59:09] David Tharp: But he was just, his styles were so unique and I, I would be like, “Okay, here’s what every SDR and their mom is doing. Let’s try something else.” And again, it’s not risk-reward type thing. Worst thing that happens is I don’t, don’t do too well for a month and I switch it up. Or I try this and it’s largely successful and I’m going to continue. So why not? And, yeah, that, that kind of formed this uniqueness of like, if everyone was doing it this way, let’s try something different.
[00:59:38] Like let’s, let’s, let’s look through different avenues and see what we can do,
[00:59:41] Chris Corcoran: Watch the crowd and go the other direction.
[00:59:43] Marc Gonyea: Okay. As we kind of wrap up what. This is a good piece of advice. What advice would you have for yourself? You know, the night before we started at memory blokes, we had lots of people knew who were, who always started all the time and they always get a little nervous, but you know what they should know.
[00:59:58] David Tharp: Yeah. I think circling back to kind of the idea of like, you know, life’s a bootcamp and this is just a step. And memoryBlue can take you anywhere you even dream, but you just have, it’s in your own hands. And you, you, you’re going to dock yourself possibly. And you just need to get that out of your head and power through, muscle through everything. And you have the tools tend to go where you need to go. So you, you just need to kind of take it, take it with a grain of salt and get after it. I mean, it’s nothing to be too worried about, because again, your, your control is controlled, and you just need to come in with an open mind and be ready to work. Roll the sleeves up.
[01:00:38] Chris Corcoran: Roll the sleeves up. People don’t like doing that.
[01:00:41] Marc Gonyea: No.
[01:00:43] Chris Corcoran: But you know what, that’s what losers don’t want to do. So get good at working.
[01:00:51] David Tharp: It’s not like you’re going to do it for 45 years or anything.
[01:00:53] Marc Gonyea: So that’s why I talk about. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this. People make the mistake of it’s not working. Sometimes the SDR thing is not gonna work the way you intended to work as well this is not going to work in this being the high-tech sales roles. Like no, no, no, no, no.
That is, the SDR is supposed to be difficult. You’re gonna doubt yourself, but not much. We don’t pay a quota. Calling, you’re trying to get the attention of people who are executives of Fortune 500 companies. It’s very disciplined. So we’ll view you kind of saw through it, man. I’m so thrilled that you’re alumn.
[01:01:23] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, you’re doing some cool stuff at a cool company. Like you’re crushing it.
[01:01:28] David Tharp: Like, I was sayin, it wouldn’t even have been an opportunity in my head without memoryBlue. So I just got to stick and trust the process.
[01:01:33] Chris Corcoran: There you go.
[01:01:33] David Tharp: I appreciate it.
[01:01:34] Chris Corcoran: Good. Well, we appreciate you seizing the opportunities. Many people who come through these doors don’t, and it’s always awesome when someone does. So awesome, thanks for the wisdom.
[01:01:44] David Tharp: Absolutely. Thanks for having me guys.
[01:01:46] Marc Gonyea: Thanks. Thanks, Dave.