Episode 63: Blake Erwin – The Guide
It takes more than a compass to blaze a trail like Blake Erwin.
Blake, an accomplished Enterprise Sales Rep at Couchbase, charted a course for the entire memoryBlue team as the first to ever be hired by this longstanding client. Since that time, more than 20 elephants have charged down the path he helped build with the database solutions powerhouse. A relentless goal-setter and hard worker, Blake’s drive to succeed and commitment to the sales craft fuel his rapid career advancement.
As the Tech Sales is for Hustlers Austin Series rolls on, you’ll hear Blake explain the key differences between an Inside Sales Rep role and the SDR position, the reason he focuses on career goals vs job jumping, and why there is no “one size fits all” approach to professional sales.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Blake Erwin
What he does: Enterprise Sales Representative
Company: Couchbase
Noteworthy: Blakes short-term goals included, becoming an enterprise sales rep and earning six figures by the time he was 28, and going public with a company before the age of 30.
Where to find Blake: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡If you’re learning, you’re growing. Don’t allow yourself to become stagnant. Be open to feedback, try new techniques, even consider changing companies to help diversify and strengthen your skillsets.
⚡There are no shortcuts. Regardless of what professional path you want to take, you’ll need to master the basics. Consider your time as an SDR a prerequisite to a successful career in sales.
⚡Lose the “one size fits all” approach to sales positions. An inside sales role and an SDR role, for example, may have similar objectives but, each emphasizes different skillsets and presents unique challenges.
Episode Highlights
Inside Sales Rep vs. SDR
“The whole SDR thing is about repetition, whereas the inside sales thing is more about perfecting, not only the pitch, but asking the right questions and navigating all sales processes. Those are different kinds of tough, in my opinion.
With both jobs, everyone can blame your pitch, the leads, classic sales things. I think the SDR is the pure grind. Number of calls, number of emails, and staying on top of the people you’ve spoken to. That’s going to carry over to the whole inside sales job too because you have to do a pipeline.
You have to follow up with your leads and navigate your deals, but progressing a deal is in itself hard because you have to work with different stakeholders within the company. You have to figure out what their KPIs are. You have to navigate those just to push something up the ladder.”
There’s No Substitution for Practice
“I started with Stibo Systems. They provide master data management software to large healthcare organizations. And it was my first-time cold calling, trying to set meetings. It was tough at first. I’m not going to lie. It was very tough to schedule meetings for this particular client, having no experience and being brand new to the whole SDR role.
I remember making a lot of calls, not getting many connections, and the people that I did connect with were between running around to hospital rooms and beds. […] They ended up leaving, which everybody saw coming. It was a tough client. But as I made more and more cold calls over time, I got more comfortable with it.”
Staying the Course: A Smart Strategy
“A lot of the time, I wasn’t the top guy in the leaderboard. You mentioned people leaving. A lot of top guys were in front of promotion, but maybe they didn’t want to stick it out for a whole year. And they end up leaving, and that opens the door to opportunities that were there before but weren’t as clear.
And I think that’s also attributed to my success at Couchbase. Doors have opened for me. When you jump ship and go to a new company all the time, it takes longer.
There were a few goals that I wanted to hit, and I knew I was so close to hitting. One of which was making six figures, becoming an ESR, and being with the company when they go public.
Couchbase went public in July, so I didn’t want to jump ship before that. I wanted to be a part of that experience. I thought it’d be a great resume builder for my future. And I thought that getting that experience at such a young age and building equity in the company was fantastic.”
Know Your Strengths and Call in Reinforcements
“We sell database software. It’s a very technical sale from start to finish. 95% of the time, you’re dealing with very technical people. I, myself, am not technical. I have no technical background. I’ve learned a lot of technical things over the past five years, but to this day, you’ll probably be able to see right through my technical jargon. I’m a sales guy.
So, I’m paired up with an SE – solutions engineer. I try to include them on almost every call that I take. We essentially need a Batman and Robin tag team. I ask the questions, probe, qualify. He talks about the product. In many cases, it’s always been good because I’ve been paired up with studs, but I can see how, in some cases, it can be a lot tougher for others if they don’t have as great a partner.
A lot of times, you’ll lose credibility. So, if they have questions regarding the product, and every sales guy wants to be a product expert, but if it’s a very technical product, there’s only so much you can do to be a product expert. And the SEs are product experts.
So, when you hop on a call, and they have all these questions, if you’re not able to answer those questions sufficiently, they are going to move to a competitor. Maybe the competitor in the first call will be able to answer those. And, they’ll feel more safe going one way or the other.”
Everything is Clearer in Hindsight
“If I were to give myself advice — if I went back in time — it would be to set more one-on-one meetings with people, like Austin Birch, and pick their brains even more. Because a lot of times, I was doing everything myself, and then they overheard me. Or, if I was not having a good week, they’d come in and try and help. But I think if I was more proactive in trying to learn from them on a weekly and daily basis, I probably could have fast-tracked my promotional processes.”
Transcript:
[00:05:41] Marc Gonyea: The OG, Corcoran.
[00:05:43] Chris Corcoran: Yes, sir.
[00:05:45] Marc Gonyea: Blake Erwin in the house.
[00:05:48] Blake Erwin: Thanks for having me, guys.
[00:05:49] Chris Corcoran: Great seeing you again.
[00:05:51] Blake Erwin: It’s been a while. It’s probably been two years since I’ve been back in this office, but it’s, it’s good to be back. Everything’s the same, but just more high-tech. So you guys must be doing well.
[00:06:00] Chris Corcoran: It’s probably your last time in this office.
[00:06:04] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Chris Corcoran: But, hopefully you’ll, you’ll come to our new office when we’re there in December.
[00:06:08] Blake Erwin: If I’m still in Austin, definitely.
[00:06:09] Chris Corcoran: Awesome.
[00:06:10] Marc Gonyea: Did you do ‘as far as I chat’ with this guy?
[00:06:12] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, for sure.
[00:06:13] Marc Gonyea: First guy on Couchbase. Right?
[00:06:16] Chris Corcoran: The first of over 20.
[00:06:17] Marc Gonyea: The first guy converted?
[00:06:19] Chris Corcoran: The first converted.
[00:06:20] Marc Gonyea: Doesn’t matter. OG. That is, that’s, that’s a campaign that we talk about on many sales calls.
[00:06:27] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:06:28] Marc Gonyea: Because the whole story. And then if I was in SDR thinking of coming to work at memoryBlue, if I was a hiring manager, I’d talk about that all the time.
[00:06:34] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, of course.
[00:06:36] Marc Gonyea: We’re talking about now, Blake.
[00:06:38] Blake Erwin: Let’s do it.
[00:06:38] Marc Gonyea: Before we get into it though, tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:06:41] Like kind of where you’re from, you know, where you grew up, went to college. That things just do it.
[00:06:47] Blake Erwin: Yeah. So, started, grew up out, Chicago, Illinois. I grew up as an athlete, played sports, went to University of Colorado.
[00:06:55] Marc Gonyea: What is your sport of choice?
[00:06:58] Blake Erwin: Grew up, soccer was always the big one.
[00:07:00] Marc Gonyea: Boom, Corcoran, not baseball.
[00:07:01] Blake Erwin: Yeah. I picked up lacrosse kind of in middle school, high school.
[00:07:05] And then it was both soccer and lacrosse from that point on.
[00:07:07] Defense in soccer or maybe in lacrosse. Because I was fast from playing soccer. Went to school, got accepted at the business school and University of Colorado.
[00:07:18] Chris Corcoran: Leads?
[00:07:19] Blake Erwin: Leads. And it was kind of a no brainer. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen that campus.
[00:07:24] Beautiful. I’d go on ski trips once a year. In my family’s time, we visited it. Good skiing. They had a good lacrosse team, beautiful campus, good business school. I was home when Derek got a business degree.
[00:07:37] Marc Gonyea: Real quick, or?
[00:07:38] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:07:38] Marc Gonyea: So when you’re like in high school and you’re in a high school, you’re in sales now, or if your enterprise sales rep catch this, was there any sort of sales influence or, or sales, if you did some of that sales off peak out at some point? Because it’s really, that’s your profession now. I’m curious as to when maybe that sort of surfaced.
[00:07:57] Blake Erwin: So I was probably too [00:08:00] competitive my whole life, like aggressively competitive and I, I never even thought about sales. I did some marketing internships early in college. Didn’t even know sales was actually a serious profession, right? Like actually until I got to my senior year of college where they actually, it was the first time offering a sales one-on-one class with some sort of high tech sales professional. He’s done it 30 years.
[00:08:26] And he came in and you know, you start learning all of these things. Okay. What are the attributes of a successful salesperson? What is sales? How are you compensated? And all these things. I’m like light bulb went off, “Wow, I should like, I should probably check out sales.”
[00:08:41] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Blake Erwin: And following that, I have a step-brother and he’s been successful in sales probably for the past five to ten years.
[00:08:50] And so, as I was graduating college, he kind of helped me, lead me into, “Okay, Blake, you should probably check out sales. I think you’d have a good fit. I’ve been successful.” And so..
[00:09:01] Chris Corcoran: How much older?
[00:09:02] Blake Erwin: Five years.
[00:09:03] Chris Corcoran: Five years older, right?
[00:09:03] Blake Erwin: Seven years. I was never super close with them until probably the end of college.
[00:09:08] Right? And so that’s, when we connected and he started telling me about his experience and he’s the one connecting me to memoryBlue. He knew Kristen from a past.
[00:09:17] Chris Corcoran: Oh, really?
[00:09:20] Blake Erwin: Yeah, he was trying to figure out, “Okay, well, what kind of sales you want to do?” And I was like, “I have no idea. I know there’s money in tech.
[00:09:24] I know there’s money in healthcare. I had no tech background. I have no healthcare background. What do I do?” So he introduced me to Kristen. Kristen got me an interview at memoryBlue and starting that program, and..
[00:09:42] Marc Gonyea: Kristen Wisdorf?
[00:09:43] Blake Erwin: Yeah. Kristen Wisdorf.
[00:09:44] Marc Gonyea: Interesting.
[00:09:45] Chris Corcoran: How did your step brother know Kristen?
[00:09:49] Blake Erwin: I believe it was a past job where they worked together.
[00:09:52] Chris Corcoran: AroundCampus?
[00:09:53] Blake Erwin: Maybe it was school.
[00:09:55] Marc Gonyea: Hell’s right.
[00:09:56] Chris Corcoran: What’s his name?
[00:09:57] Blake Erwin: Kyle Mosher.
[00:09:59] Chris Corcoran: Want to ask Kristen about that. That’s awesome.
[00:10:02] Blake Erwin: Small world.
[00:10:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So your step brother introduced you to Kristen? Kristen gets you an interview? And at this point you’re in Boulder?
[00:10:11] Blake Erwin: This point I’m in Boulder. And so oh, yeah, I knew memoryBlue had an Austin, office in Austin.
[00:10:17] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:10:18] Blake Erwin: And I, one semester I worked abroad in Spain for a year. I met one of my best buddies. He’s the one who knew after college he wanted to move to Austin. He’s been here, he loves the town. It’s young, it’s vibrant. There’s a lot of money made. So he’s like, “Blake, you should be thinking about Austin.” So I’m connected to Kristen. I know I want to potentially move to Austin. memoryBlue has an Austin office.
[00:10:42] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Marc Gonyea: Has offices, man.
[00:10:43] Blake Erwin: “Let’s interview.” So I interviewed with Kristen. It all went well. Remember you’re still taking that personality assessment.
[00:10:51] “How can you get any of these questions wrong?” Exactly. Right? “If you’re hungry, aggressive, competitive person, right, you know exactly what to answer.”
[00:11:01] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:11:02] Marc Gonyea: That’s so funny you remember that.
[00:11:04] Chris Corcoran: So you interviewed with Kristen and then did you, you interview in Austin with Nimit, or what was the, when you were at Boulder or how did, how did that, all that your recruitment?
[00:11:13] Blake Erwin: It started virtually. I did one or two calls on the phone.
[00:11:16] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:11:17] Blake Erwin: And then I was offered the final interview in Austin. Right? And that point they were like, “Can you come to, number one, see the city? Make sure you want to move here. Number two, check out the office.” So I was fortunate enough. My mom paid for my flight down here, paid for a hotel for me to stay.
[00:11:31] Marc Gonyea: Shout out to mom of Erwin.
[00:11:33] Blake Erwin: So that’s my mama. And coincidentally, the week of my interview was the week of South by Southwest. So I’m in the Hilton or the Hyatt downtown Austin. I have an interview here. Thank God, I came the day of my interview, ’cause I probably would have had some fun the night before, came to the office, met everybody.
[00:11:50] I think the office was like 12 people, was small. Everyone was super warm and welcoming and they wanted to, you know, show me where to live in Austin and go to eat. And [00:12:00] I guess I did well enough in the interview ’cause I got the job offer and then I got to spend a couple of days here at South by Southwest, before I went home.
[00:12:09] Chris Corcoran: Did you interview with Nimit?
[00:12:09] Blake Erwin: I interviewed with Nimit. Yes.
[00:12:10] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:12:11] Blake Erwin: And Will Vining was there.
[00:12:12] Chris Corcoran: Will Vining in the house. You had the original crew?
[00:12:18] Marc Gonyea: Will was like the right hand guy for a long time.
[00:12:20] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:12:20] Okay. And so then you end up getting the job and then you move from Boulder to Austin and then what happened?
[00:12:29] Blake Erwin: Move from Boulder to Austin and started my gig here at memoryBlue.
[00:12:35] I remember I lived, actually I had a ‘hole in the wall place’, right downtown. Great location, great experience. But it’s ‘hole in wall’. I’d commute everyday up to memoryBlue. Try and be one of the first people here.
[00:12:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Started on client call. I don’t know, I don’t know if I should name them. Again.
[00:12:52] Blake Erwin: Start over the Stibo Systems. They, they provide a master data management software to large healthcare organizations. [00:13:00] And, you know, it was my first time cold calling, trying to set meetings. It was tough at first. I’m not going to lie. It was very tough to schedule meetings for this particular client, having, I would say no experience and being brand new to the whole SDR role.
[00:13:15] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:13:16] Blake Erwin: Right?
[00:13:16] Marc Gonyea: So that category has always been a very difficult to collect technology to work on it. So who was on that, because the first campaign, massive, massive data management, reference data management, very, very technical. It’s like a weird little science of BI. It’s weird shit. So it’s supposed to be hard, but keep going and tell, tell us how hard it was.
[00:13:37] Blake Erwin: It was, it was tough. I remember making a lot of calls, not getting many connections and the people that I did connect with were in between running around to hospital rooms and beds. So they talk to me. I think it’s sad to say, but I think me and the other guy on Stibo Systems, Sam Lowry.
[00:13:56] Marc Gonyea: Sam Lowry.
[00:13:57] Blake Erwin: My partner in crime.
[00:13:59] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Blake Erwin: Me and him together out of the three months we’re on that campaign, I think we probably got four meetings collectively. That’s how tough it was.
[00:14:08] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:14:09] Blake Erwin: Right? Now through the whole thing, I know we were doing a lot of training with Will ’cause he was trying to help us. He was a pro and it was, it was just tough.
[00:14:18] Right? They ended up leaving, which was everybody kind of saw it coming. It was a tough client. And then I think, thankfully, hopefully it was because I showed I had good work ethic. I was fortunate enough to be put on my next client.
[00:14:30] Marc Gonyea: Exactly why.
[00:14:31] Blake Erwin: And they were FeeAdvisor. They sold Amazon repricing software. And there was already one person from memoryBlue that had been really successful in the account. His name’s Austin Birch.
[00:14:42] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Blake Erwin: He was a killer, stud. He probably got, I don’t know, 5 to 10 meetings a week. So I got put on this account and I was still ’cause like, “Finally, I can sell something.” I understand Amazon repricing software.
[00:14:56] It helps you win the buy box. And I learned under Austin, Austin kind of taught [00:15:00] me the ropes. Like, “This here’s the script. Here’s what you need to say. Here’s the people you call. Here’s my process.” I copied him to a T and I, I was really successful. You know, I believe Will told me at one point they wanted to hire me out.
[00:15:13] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:15:14] Blake Erwin: However, the catch was, they were a Tel Aviv company. They wanted us to move to Tel Aviv.
[00:15:18] Chris Corcoran: Oh, wow.
[00:15:19] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:15:20] Chris Corcoran: Did you consider it?
[00:15:23] Blake Erwin: For about half a second.
[00:15:24] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Blake Erwin: You know, I, I didn’t, I didn’t want to move to Tel Aviv and I wanted to stay here and keep learning. I was still really young, really new to sales.
[00:15:33] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Blake Erwin: And the only reason why I was successful was I was following Austin’s process.
[00:15:38] Right? So like, I, you know, I was thinking, “Okay, maybe I do get hired out and move.” Right? Be, be fun, but I wasn’t ready to move off, to leave Austin yet.
[00:15:49] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:15:49] Blake Erwin: I was still brand new. I was having a good time. memoryBlue was awesome. I met all my friends here actually, ’cause everyone is their young twenties, fresh out of college. So it’s a great place to go.
[00:15:58] Marc Gonyea: Go-getters.
[00:15:59] Blake Erwin: Yeah, go-getters. One group…
[00:16:00] Marc Gonyea: Fun people work hard, have fun.
[00:16:03] Blake Erwin: And so I don’t know exactly what happened. One thing led to another. FeeAdvisor left because I don’t know if they were paying too much. They, whatever. It happens.
[00:16:13] Marc Gonyea: We did a really good job.
[00:16:16] Blake Erwin: Yeah. I mean, I think they stuck around six, nine months, so.
[00:16:19] Marc Gonyea: Awesome.
[00:16:19] Blake Erwin: Pretty much.
[00:16:20] Marc Gonyea: An attorney now.
[00:16:21] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:16:21] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Doing big things. Super smart, hardworking guy. You’re doing great. They got up-and-comers.
[00:16:27] Blake Erwin: Yeah. And so then I get to my third client. This is Couchbase. And so the first two SDRs on Couchbase were me and Aspen Streety.
[00:16:38] Marc Gonyea: That’s right.
[00:16:39] Blake Erwin: You guys are asking.
[00:16:40] Marc Gonyea: I remember…
[00:16:41] Blake Erwin: Aspen was a killer too.
[00:16:42] She was crushing on accounts. More or less we’re killing it, I think of the SDR side. Aspen ended up leaving memoryBlue and I think to go travel the world. She just got married with her husband. And so then that led an open spot on the account. And so then a couple months later, Ruben Rosado…
[00:17:00] Chris Corcoran: Yes.
[00:17:00] Marc Gonyea: Mister Rosado.
[00:17:01] Blake Erwin: He joined Couchbase.
[00:17:02] Chris Corcoran: Splash brothers.
[00:17:05] Marc Gonyea: Legends in the making.
[00:17:09] Blake Erwin: And so me and Ruben were successful. I think I had been on Couchbase, I was giving up all my six-month mark and Ruben was on for about maybe three, four months. And that’s when we did so well that Couchbase send us offer letters and want us to hire us out.
[00:17:27] Chris Corcoran: And you didn’t have to move to Tel Aviv?
[00:17:29] Blake Erwin: And I got to stay in Austin.
[00:17:32] Marc Gonyea: So you rolled into this job, right? So it sounds like you had some good help from some of the folks on the campaigns. Learning skills, your knees got teeth kicked in on the phones. Right? All that stuff happens. Who, what are, what did you get good at during that process? Like you go back to that.
[00:17:52] Blake Erwin: A lot of things I’ll say. You know, number one. As I made more and more cold calls, I think over time, I just got more comfortable with it. [00:18:00] Right? So naturally as I got more comfortable on the phone, my scripts were better. I delivered everything with more confidence. So I, you know, naturally talking to people was easier.
[00:18:11] That’s number one, you know, organization, time management. All of those things got better too.
[00:18:17] Marc Gonyea: We were joking about this before we started, but I mean, Couchbase is a legendary client.
[00:18:22] Chris Corcoran: Beautiful. Definitely.
[00:18:24] Marc Gonyea: Hands down. It was like my baby and then this baby was rolling. And there are these dips that you go through in this job here.
[00:18:35] You know, I wonder if he would be you sitting here today, if Couchbase wasn’t his first client, you know.
[00:18:41] Blake Erwin: Maybe not.
[00:18:42] Marc Gonyea: Those clients kinda got you and you worked hard and we did good by them, but that got you ready for, for like, the main event when you got rolled down on Couchbase.
[00:18:52] Blake Erwin: No, seriously. I think timing just worked out with everything. Right? And I think when they came on, you guys knew they were a good [00:19:00] client and you put some of your best available SDRs on them.
[00:19:03] Marc Gonyea: Yep.
[00:19:04] Blake Erwin: Everything just worked out.
[00:19:06] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:19:07] Yeah. And that’s the whole purpose of the program at the time. And you’re like, you’re not believing any of it. Look at Blake’s LinkedIn profile. I want to talk about this. Here. I mean, you started off as what? An SDR?
[00:19:22] Blake Erwin: Yup.
[00:19:23] Marc Gonyea: And then it was…
[00:19:26] Chris Corcoran: So how long were you out on Couchbase before they hired you?
[00:19:30] Blake Erwin: Six months.
[00:19:30] Chris Corcoran: Six months? And then they converted you to be an SDR?
[00:19:33] Blake Erwin: Correct.
[00:19:34] Chris Corcoran: And how did you think, how did they let you stay in Austin?
[00:19:39] Blake Erwin: So we stayed in Austin. They actually worked out a contract with you guys where we will be full-time Couchbase employees, but we would essentially be leasing desks from memoryBlue.
[00:19:52] Chris Corcoran: Okay. So for you and Ruben?
[00:19:54] Blake Erwin: For me and Ruben.
[00:19:55] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:19:55] Blake Erwin: That’s starting out. Right? And for me and Ruben it was fantastic because we got to [00:20:00] still, not only hanging out with all of the friends here, but the whole sales culture at memoryBlue. Vibrant sales for, everyone’s always learning, people help each other out.
[00:20:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:20:10] Blake Erwin: That was another part of the job and we didn’t have to move. So it was…
[00:20:14] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:20:15] Marc Gonyea: Couchbase leadership were like, “You guys are crazy.” Grabbed an office in California. We want to get into Austin. And..
[00:20:23] Chris Corcoran: They were early adopters to the Austin. California to Austin.
[00:20:26] Marc Gonyea: They were early in, early in Austin. I mean, there’s tech here, right?
[00:20:29] To the extent that it is now.
[00:20:31] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:20:31] Marc Gonyea: They said, “You like these guys. One of them, we have a, one of them working out of your office with Nelly Lawson, the, you know, Couchbase. Cool. And it was for you guys, like you said, it was the good win.
[00:20:45] Blake Erwin: I couldn’t have asked for anything better, to be honest, at least being hired out. Right? And so continued SDR work for, for Couchbase for another probably year, year and a half. It was very successful. You know, on top of the [00:21:00] leaderboards, helping my reps build a ton of pipeline and it led to a year and a half later, I was promoted to the inside sales team.
[00:21:08] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:21:09] Marc Gonyea: May I ask you a question? Before, before you got there, did you ever doubt doubt it? Before you cash-based like, “Man, shit. Really about this SDR thing.” Like, did, did you ever doubt yourself?
[00:21:21] Blake Erwin: Definitely. There were times, right? ‘Cause everyone hits more patches or low months and you’re not sending as many meetings, you’re getting it from management.
[00:21:29] Rightfully so. But I knew that in order to get to the next step, you have to be a successful SDR, no matter where you go. If I were to change roles and go somewhere else, I be even further down the ladder. I have to work a year or two before I get promoted. But I, so I know it was a good, at a good point with Couchbase that if I just grinded it out, I would get to that next to my. Right?
[00:21:50] I put in enough time, close to a year at that point. And I just, I needed to grind it out in order to get promoted and get more experienced, you know, [00:22:00] for the closing role.
[00:22:02] Marc Gonyea: So you got promoted to the inside sales rep role?
[00:22:04] Blake Erwin: Yes.
[00:22:04] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about that.
[00:22:06] Blake Erwin: So, good and bad.
[00:22:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Blake Erwin: A lot of the goods were, at the time I had a boss that just came from being an enterprise sales rep, a very successful one. And he wanted to get, you know, management experience under his belt.
[00:22:22] So we were learning from a very successful Couchbase sales rep. So coming from the SDR role, you don’t know too much about the product. You’re more focused on setting needs, right? That’s the whole job. So now you have to get to a point where you can sell the product successfully, get to understand it.
[00:22:39] And so he was great and teaching us about that. Little tips and tricks along the way.
[00:22:44] Chris Corcoran: It was here in Austin?
[00:22:46] Blake Erwin: He was in California.
[00:22:48] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:22:49] Blake Erwin: So most of our meetings were virtual, but he came to Austin quite frequently, probably at least a couple of times a quarter. Right? ‘Cause I was… And so the good thing was we got to learn under him.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Right? The, the tough part was that was my first time trying to close business. So just learning the whole sales process and how to be good at it. That was just tough even of itself for me. Right? Especially with the manager across the country in California, right? At least I had my peers here with me. Right?
[00:23:16] I had Ruben, also got promoted at the time. So everything we did we bounced off each other. We even like tag team calls together. ‘Cause we’re learning this whole process as we go. And so my first year on the job as an inside sales rep, it was tough.
[00:23:30] Chris Corcoran: What was harder, the first year as an inside sales rep or a first year as an SDR? Not strictly Couchbase, but the SDR in general.
[00:23:38] Blake Erwin: That’s a really hard question. Different levels of tough, because I, I think, you know, the whole SDR thing it’s about repetition and renewing to now, whereas the inside sales thing, it’s, it’s more about perfecting, not only the pitch, but asking the right questions and navigating all sales process. Different kinds of tough, in my opinion.
[00:23:57] Marc Gonyea: Keep going. This is, this is, we got to spend a little time on this because all the SDRs think their job is the worst, the most challenge job. And it is hard. You’re not gonna find anybody who thinks is, you know, empathize with that. But let’s talk about that a little bit because they think,
[00:24:11] “Oh, inside sales rep’s terrible. Like it’s going to get, it’s the hardest part of the whole thing.” But they don’t know what they don’t know.
[00:24:17] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Marc Gonyea: So what else about the role is harder when you move, the harder or different kind of hard, just as you said?
[00:24:23] Blake Erwin: So the SDR, so with both, with both jobs, right, you can, everyone can blame your patch, the leads that are coming in, right? Classic sales things. Right? But, so when I break it down having been involved in both roles, right? I think the SDR is the pure just grind. Number of calls, number of emails and staying on top of the people that you have spoken to.
[00:24:49] Right? And that that’s going to carry over to the whole inside sales job too, because you obviously have to do a pipeline. You have to follow up with your leads and navigate your deals, but progressing a deal [00:25:00] is in and of itself hard because you have to work with different stakeholders within the company.
[00:25:05] You have to figure out what their KPIs are. You have to navigate those just to push something up the ladder, right? Being an SDR and moving to inside sales, I had to learn that whole process and learn everything about it, essentially myself. I mean, I had a manager, but I was learning it myself. So having to do that on top of build pipeline,’ cause I didn’t have my own SDR.
[00:25:27] It was, it was a lot. You know what I mean? So my first year I struggled and I actually got put on a plan for, for awhile, which is normal in a lot of organizations. But I think once I got comfortable with the process, I learned a little bit more about our product, how to do a sales cycle, you know, grinding in and out. The next year I was very successful.
[00:25:49] Marc Gonyea: And let’s take a pause for that for a second. People think this whole getting, let’s put off that thing. It’s a sad thing. It’s that part of the process, the journey. Did you have got some goals which have more smaller steps that you had, [00:26:00] right?
[00:26:00] Blake Erwin: Yeah. So when I got hired out, right, I wanted to set a few goals for myself, short-term goals.
[00:26:06] Three of them that came to light. One is, I wanted to become an enterprise sales rep by the time I was 28. Right? That was number one because I got promoted to inside sales when I was 25, 24, 25. So I think that gave me, you know, three-year cushion, “I can do that.” Second one was, I wanted to reach six figures by the time I was 27, 28. And the third one was, I wanted to go public with a company before the age of 30.
[00:26:37] Marc Gonyea: But nobody has got that little bit pro-played.
[00:26:39] Blake Erwin: No.
[00:26:40] Marc Gonyea: Right? But that’s part of the journey. So four years pretty much lit, four years and nine months from when you started, you’ve hit all those those walls.
[00:26:49] Blake Erwin: Correct.
[00:26:49] Marc Gonyea: Which is a huge testament.
[00:26:52] Blake Erwin: I know.
[00:26:53] Marc Gonyea: But when those bumps come up, let’s talk about a little bit more, like when the challenges come up, how do you get through them?
[00:26:57] Blake Erwin: With the whole plan thing, you know, [00:27:00] it was a grind, right? Show up early, leave late. You know, as a sales rep, you think you can manage your time the best, right? Whether it’s, “I know I’m going to have more success making calls than I have emails,” or vice versa, but when you’re on a plan, you have to hit metrics, regardless whether you agree with them or not.
[00:27:16] Right? So I had to hit a certain amount of calls. I had to hit certain amount of emails. I had to hit certain amount of meetings, set and pipeline developed on a weekly basis. And honestly, it was just grinding it out. I stuck it out. I worked really hard and, you know, that coupled with a little bit of luck and learning the whole way and getting better with our product.
[00:27:38] It just worked out. Trusting the process, trusting the plan and trusting the products, trusting management and they were helping me in..
[00:27:47] Marc Gonyea: A year or two as a ISR. You got a good year.
[00:27:49] Blake Erwin: I did. Yeah, that was, that was when I hit my finally a six figure mark. I close seven, six or seven net new logos that year.
[00:27:58] You know, one was a Bluebird that called in and it was the largest deal of my life.
[00:28:02] Marc Gonyea: You’ll take it?
[00:28:02] Blake Erwin: I’ll take it. I think it was finally something good, kind of came my way after all the hustle.
[00:28:07] Chris Corcoran: You get lots of bad luck. When you have a little piece of good luck, you gotta relish in it.
[00:28:11] Blake Erwin: I still do.
[00:28:13] Marc Gonyea: What I like about Blake is, you’re even keeled, in the sense that you can take the wins, too many bigger wins than the losses, the same in the pro, in the highs and lows, versus some people will their way through the lows. Right? And I don’t want to talk about them through all the, everyone has them. So you and, I mean, some of it’s luck, a lot of it is, and we’ll talk about this later, just working hard and staying the course.
[00:28:35] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:28:35] Marc Gonyea: Because that’s something about you that I appreciate too. You stay the course versus like a lot of your colleagues. People might, they don’t stay the course.
[00:28:42] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:28:43] Marc Gonyea: In order to stay the course, you get blown away way off course sometimes. So..
[00:28:48] Blake Erwin: No, seriously. I think of, you know, my path to being promoted each time rather was from SDR to ISR, ISR to territory, territory to ESR.
[00:28:56] You know, a lot of the times I wasn’t necessarily always the top guy in the leaderboard. Right? It wasn’t several points in time, but you know, you mentioned about people leaving. I know a lot of tough guys were in front of you for promotion, maybe they don’t want to stick it out for that full year. Right? They end up leaving. And that opens the door to opportunities that were there before they just weren’t as clear.
[00:29:19] Right? And so I think that’s also attributed to my success at Couchbase. Like you said, it’s because I’ve stopped the course, doors have opened for me that, you know, when you jump ship and go to a new company all the time, it takes longer.
[00:29:32] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Before we talk about the next gig, I mean, let’s go back and stay on that for a second.
[00:29:37] Why didn’t you jump? You live in Austin, begin with street cred, closed the seven net new logos for an emergent technology firm. People come your way. Have a bad day of working and your boss upset you. You get a call from a recruiter on the next day when your colleagues, when you’re, when your buddy’s leaves and gets a $20,000 sweetheart deal someplace.
[00:29:57] All the things that happened and more, right? What, what is it about it? This is good for the people to hear too, who are working at memoryBlue think about bouncing or even people who left.
[00:30:08] Blake Erwin: Well, I, I think there’s a few things. You know, the top of mind thing is there were a few goals that I talked about before that I wanted to hit. I knew I was so close to hitting, right?
[00:30:16] One of which was making, making six figures, becoming an ESR and being with the company when they go public. I was so close to all those things. Couchbase just went public in July. So I didn’t want to jump ship before that. I wanted to be a part of that experience. I thought it’d be a great resume builder for, you know, my future.
[00:30:34] Right? And just getting that experience at such a young age and building equity of the company I thought was fantastic. So that was probably the primary thing. Right? I wanted to reach those goals and I didn’t want to jump ship before I am. I do have buddies that left and you know, they’re making more money. It happens. It’s fine.
[00:30:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:30:52] Blake Erwin: But you know, they also may be in the same role that they were before. And then to progress might take a little bit long. Everyone’s journey is different, right?
[00:31:01] Marc Gonyea: It’s not linear.
[00:31:02] Blake Erwin: Exactly.
[00:31:03] Marc Gonyea: It was for you, but a lot of people was not long progress. Sorry. Inside rep and territory sales rep. How’d you do that? What does that mean? What did, you know in the role, how you got there?
[00:31:13] Blake Erwin: So I told you my second year as an inside sales rep was, I was pretty successful closing a bunch of new logos, that opened the door to what they Couchbase name is a territory sales rep, which is, they thought of it as a hybrid from inside to enterprise where the, what kind of help mold you to be ready for the field. Right? And so I was given the opportunity to had a much larger territory. I covered all the East Coast and I covered an account range that was before I was essentially working on SMBs right. Now, I got to work with companies that had, you know, 200 to $500 billion of revenue.
[00:31:48] Right? So did that for a year. And I had another, as a TSR. You know, I think you’ve attributed a few things. One, I was kind of familiar with the role. I had a larger patch and work ethic, quite into it. Had a great year and that opened the door to this year. I, February 1st I was promoted to a enterprise sales rep.
[00:32:13] Chris Corcoran: Hell yeah.
[00:32:14] Marc Gonyea: When you were in this TSR role, are you getting support from SDRs? Are you, are you doing it all yourself? Is it a combo?
[00:32:21] Blake Erwin: So as TSR, I was getting support from SDRs, but it wasn’t on a one-to-one basis. It was one SDR supported several of us. Right? Which is helpful, but I was still doing prospecting. I was still doing that work.
[00:32:33] I was born and raised as SDR, did that for a while. So that was my, that’s one of my strengths to so as to this day. Like just, if you find time to prospect a little every day, you’re going to see more success in your pipeline than other reps who don’t prospect. Plain and simple.
[00:32:48] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:32:49] Chris Corcoran: Simple, not easy, but simple.
[00:32:53] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that though, because like something like, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to have an issue. I’m working for them and I’m never going to have to go out about anything. Let’s like be up here. I’m a closer.”
[00:33:01] True or false?
[00:33:03] Blake Erwin: I mean, there, there, there are guys like that, right? They are killer SDRs and they’re really great at closing. I wouldn’t say I’m a master at closing yet, so I need to make that up somewhere else. Right? That’s my whole SDR pipeline thing.
[00:33:17] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:33:17] Blake Erwin: I gotta, I gotta make up for other deficiencies, I’m still getting better at.
[00:33:21] Marc Gonyea: I mean, you’re over five years in and you’ve still got to do a little bit of outbound you’re on your own.
[00:33:25] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:33:26] Marc Gonyea: And I don’t know if ever really, truly goes away if you’re really good at it. Because you might be working a good inbound deal and you’ve got to go outbound in the same company just to make sure you’re covering all your bases, work and the deal. I mean, some of them stop. You shouldn’t, if you’re good at it.
[00:33:40] Blake Erwin: And now in my role, SDR working with Kendall. She, she’s actually at memoryBlue.
[00:33:46] Marc Gonyea: She’s your SDR?
[00:33:46] Blake Erwin: She’s my SDR. I can’t complain.
[00:33:52] Marc Gonyea: You can. No, she’s,
[00:33:54] Blake Erwin: I can’t with her. She’s she’s doing well, good communicator, works hard. You know, I try and teach her things too.
[00:33:59] She’s very receptive. And the good part is, you know, I know with memoryBlue when you, you guys actually trained her, so it’s not like she’s coming in. I mean, she doesn’t have much experience, but she’s not coming in, you know, blindfolded. You know, she’s getting the help from you guys and it’s showing because she’s, she’s getting meetings for us.
[00:34:18] Chris Corcoran: So what does enterprise rep mean? What does that, what does that mean to you in Couchbase parlance?
[00:34:23] Blake Erwin: Enterprise rep essentially means that we can cover accounts at 500 million in revenue on a month.
[00:34:27] Chris Corcoran: And that’s the highest it goes?
[00:34:28] Blake Erwin: Yeah. And a billion above too, but essentially it’s 500 plus.
[00:34:33] Chris Corcoran: Okay. And are you focusing on a specific geographical patch or work industry? Like what’s the territory that you’re covering?
[00:34:40] Blake Erwin: Yeah, so I have a geographical patch. I have certain accounts within Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
[00:34:46] Chris Corcoran: Oh, wow.
[00:34:46] Blake Erwin: In the Northeast.
[00:34:47] Chris Corcoran: Yes. That’s a good patch. It’s a, kind of a subset of what you had as a, as a territory.
[00:34:51] Blake Erwin: Right. Much smaller than what I had the previous year. And hope, and the accounts are very different from what I had the previous year. So I’m starting over, you know, [00:35:00] good and bad to, to both things, but,
[00:35:01] Chris Corcoran: Sure.
[00:35:02] Blake Erwin: We’re, we’re grinding.
[00:35:03] Chris Corcoran: And in that role how’s that is getting a new logos versus kind of growing and expanding the install base?
[00:35:10] Blake Erwin: A little bit of both. So I am given, I have four customers, actually four customers that I’ve worked with for the past couple of years. It has been completely new. Two of which I closed is as net new logos, the previous year or two.
[00:35:22] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:35:23] Blake Erwin: Yeah. So I got to retain those four, so I can work on expansion and renewal, but you know, large part of my quota and large part of the business is net new. So that’s a huge focus mostly.
[00:35:34] Chris Corcoran: And how did this geographic patch open up for you? Did they just kind of slicing up the patch unit, in a smaller, smaller slices or did someone move out of that role or kind of, how did that open up?
[00:35:45] Blake Erwin: There was some turnover on the team. Number one. So that mixed with Couchbase is looking to expand. So they keep refining territories smaller and smaller.
[00:35:55] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:35:56] Blake Erwin: So a little bit of both happened towards the end of last year. So February 1st was a good opportunity to, to be broader. And I am the same manager. I did like, but now I’m just reporting to them in a new role.
[00:36:06] Chris Corcoran: Great. And are you traveling at all into your territory or not yet, or what’s what does that look like?
[00:36:13] Blake Erwin: So I’ve, I was supposed to. Right? And obviously the whole pandemic thing happened. And so I stayed virtual, which was fine. Travel will be expecting. But it’s not mandatory yet.
[00:36:24] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:36:24] Blake Erwin: Right? Probably, you know, my, my gut is telling me beginning of next year.
[00:36:28] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:36:28] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:36:28] Chris Corcoran: And about what about your customers? Do they, are they wanting you to come onsite or or they, or they think everything is good virtual?
[00:36:34] Blake Erwin: Everything’s good virtual. If they ever made the request, I’d be there. You know, I would love to go see them personally, but you know, it’s obviously, everyone’s got different mandates and laws and people feel comfortable doing different things, so.
[00:36:48] Chris Corcoran: And what’s, I guess what’s the different, what’s the biggest difference that you’ve seen going from territory enterprise?
[00:36:54] I mean, other than the size of the company that you’re trying to sell to. Is it pretty much the same thing or is it noticeable?
[00:37:00] Blake Erwin: So as of right now, there isn’t a huge, distinct difference for me because I’m staying virtual. I get to work with bigger accounts, right? Which potentially will mean larger deals just because of this thing.
[00:37:13] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:37:17] Blake Erwin: But as at right now, I haven’t noticed a big difference because I haven’t been out in about yet. I think I will have the opportunity to go onsite for a lot more meetings, but because of the pandemic, I just haven’t yet.
[00:37:24] Chris Corcoran: Right. Unless you were able to kind of keep some as legacy clients.
[00:37:27] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:37:28] Chris Corcoran: So you’ve got some familiarity there. And what sort of, what sort of a technical resources? Are you paired up with a sales engineer kind of like of a Batman and Robin or, or how does it, how does, how does that work with Couchbase?
[00:37:40] Blake Erwin: Yeah, so, so for those who don’t know what Couchbase is, we actually, we sell database software. Very, very technical sale from start to finish. 95% of the time you’re dealing with very, very technical people.
[00:37:52] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:37:52] Blake Erwin: So I, myself am not technical. I have no technical background. I’ve learned a lot of technical things over the past five years, but to this day, you know, you’ll probably be able to see right through my technical jargon. Right? Pretty quickly.
[00:38:07] So I’m pair, yeah. I’m a sales guy. So I’m paired up with an SE, solutions engineer.
[00:38:11] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:38:13] Blake Erwin: I try to include them almost on every call that I take.
[00:38:16] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:38:17] Blake Erwin: We essentially need Batman and Robin tag team. Right? I ask the questions, probe, qualify. He talks about the product.
[00:38:27] Chris Corcoran: Is that SE paired up with other reps too, or just you?
[00:38:32] Blake Erwin: In many cases, they have probably two to three reps.
[00:38:35] Chris Corcoran: Okay. But yours?
[00:38:37] Blake Erwin: Mine has, my SE just left.
[00:38:40] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:38:40] Blake Erwin: So I have a stand in that’s probably on two or three reps.
[00:38:44] Chris Corcoran: And what was it like when you were a territory rep? Same deal?
[00:38:47] Blake Erwin: Same deal, but the SEs would support more people.
[00:38:50] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:38:50] Blake Erwin: So when you become an ESR, it’s more on a one-on-one basis, but they probably support too.
[00:38:55] Chris Corcoran: Okay. So that’s good. And then you got to get the good two men, the chemistry between the sales rep and the SE. Talk a little bit about importance of that.
[00:39:03] Blake Erwin: Yeah. So, you know, fortunately the SEs that I’ve worked with a Couchbase have all been stellar, right? If anything, they have a lot more, I’ll just call it sales experience than me.
[00:39:13] So naturally they’re great at presenting. They know how to talk to customers. They know how to ask the right questions. So I’ve been really lucky in that sense, right? And having a backup guy that is always there. The hard part is with, you know, I’ll be honest with the wholesale is I have to rely heavily on that SE to, to get stuff done. Right? And that can be good or bad. In many cases, it’s always been good because I’ve been paired up with studs, but I can see how, in some cases it can be a lot tougher for others if they don’t have, you know, as, as great as a partner. Right?
[00:39:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. So thinking about that, I think this speaks a little bit to the quality of the company that you joined. Because your success in tech, tech sales, I think has a lot to do, not of course, your own effort, but I’m asking if you’ve got a great SDR versus you have a shitty SDR. Imagine if you have a great SE versus a shitty SE. If you’re paired up with two, a great SDR and a great SE, you’d make a lot more money and do a lot more than if you’re paired up with weak SDRs and we guess SEs. A hundred percent.
[00:40:19] Blake Erwin: Yeah. And that’s why I think it’s important. What I can’t, I can’t control that SE side. I can control the SDR side. So when I do get SDRs, I like to teach them how I was successful in that. I teach them what worked for me, what’s worked historically at Couchbase. And, you know, keep an eye on what they’re doing because I can control that.
[00:40:37] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:40:37] Blake Erwin: Right. But yeah, if you have a good SDR and a good SE, you can make a lot of money.
[00:40:42] Chris Corcoran: You better hold up your end of the deal.
[00:40:44] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:40:45] Marc Gonyea: You would forget about that. I guess why I wanted to make sure we talk about it, about the role the of the SE.
[00:40:52] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:52] Marc Gonyea: Why, from somebody who works in memoryBlue and maybe listening, what is the, why is the SE on an eight figure sales call too? So from a prospect standpoint. Like imagine how the call would go again and take this if it was just you on the call and no SE.
[00:41:08] Blake Erwin: Well, I think a lot of, a lot of times, you know, a lot of times you’ll lose credibility. So if they have questions regarding the product, right, and every sales guy wants to be a product expert, but if it’s a very technical product, there’s only so much you can do to get, to actually be a product expert.
[00:41:24] And the SEs are product experts. So when you hop on a call and they have all these questions, if you’re not able to answer those questions sufficiently, going to walk, move to a competitor, maybe the competitor in the first call will be able to answer those. And, you know, they’ll, they’ll feel more, feel more safe going one way or the other, right?
[00:41:42] Marc Gonyea: That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to be an SE or sales guy, right? At the same time, but why not? We’ll just look at all sorts of product. We’re all about the product, but that they don’t know that’s not possible.
[00:41:54] Blake Erwin: Right. I mean, there are…
[00:41:56] Chris Corcoran: Hard to do.
[00:41:57] Blake Erwin: It’s hard to do, yeah. I will say I’ve seen a couple of very, very successful reps at Couchbase per SE.
[00:42:03] And these guys actually had SE backgrounds came from SEs transitioned to sales reps. They’re killers. Because they don’t need anyone to help them with a sale. They can do everything on their own. Sales guys who are then trying to learn the SE stuff have a bit more struggle, I would say, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be successful.
[00:42:22] They just have to take a more team approach.
[00:42:23] Chris Corcoran: Yep.
[00:42:25] Marc Gonyea: What other skills have you had to develop all the way that have been important to learn how to close work? So are everybody knows what teaches tag memoryBlue from their SDR standpoint? What are the stuff you got to learn on your own or through mentor to Couchbase or maybe any formal training you’ve had at Couchbase or, or from deals?
[00:42:43] Blake Erwin: Oh, that’s a loaded question because there’s so much.
[00:42:45] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Give us like two things you had to learn as a close friend, that’s along away. Number one, be patient. Right? There’s, there’s deadlines for everything and you’re going to have management and their management pushing you, “Okay. When’s the deal coming in?
[00:42:58] Blake Erwin: And what’s the deal coming in?” [00:43:00] When does that happen? You know, once a year.
[00:43:01] Marc Gonyea: What’s that?
[00:43:02] Blake Erwin: Just kidding.
[00:43:04] Marc Gonyea: They don’t know. People listen. I don’t know. What do you mean? They will ask me what the deals are coming in.
[00:43:08] Blake Erwin: Yeah, so I, I, for, for Couchbase strike before forecasting quarters and things have to be brought in, in each quarter, if it’s forecasting accurately.
[00:43:14] Right? And so, you get to the last week of each quarter and you may have one, maybe two deals outstanding. So it could be on a daily basis. It could be on a weekly basis. But as you get closer to the end of the quarter, you’re going to get emails and calls from upper management saying, “Okay, when’s the deal coming in?”
[00:43:31] They’re going to tell you to do things for the customer. And some of it may help, but you know, as a sales rep who works closely with that customer and you know them, and hopefully you have a good relationship, you know what can work and what can’t work. Right? And so you have to mitigate the whole management side of things, but also be respectful for the customer.
[00:43:51] Marc Gonyea: That’s a big energy within your company’s expectations or needs and wants of what the client’s expectations are.
[00:43:59] Chris Corcoran: These ones are just waiting now that your public.
[00:44:02] Blake Erwin: Yes. I believe in effort. It’s going to get more scrutinized.
[00:44:06] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[00:44:07] Marc Gonyea: Yep.
[00:44:08] Blake Erwin: I will say I’ve learned how to qualify better. So as an SDR, you know, I’ve at least been on memoryBlue and as a Couchbase.
[00:44:16] So if I qualify, if I qualify, if I qualify for meeting, that’s all good and dandy, but at the end of the day, you need to set up a meeting and have the rep who’s the best qualifier probably out of everyone. Then they can qualify that further. And so I think being in the position where I run the whole deal cycle, I’m able to qualify prospects in the how, faster and better than I ever have historically, just because I’ve seen the whole sales cycle through. And, you know, I learned better questions to ask over time. It’s just a whole learning process too.
[00:44:46] Chris Corcoran: And it’s important to qualify out as much as it is qualify in.
[00:44:51] Blake Erwin: Exactly. Because if you know, you’re going to spend time chasing something that has no legs and you could have spent your time doing something better.
[00:44:57] Chris Corcoran: Yep.
[00:44:59] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So knowing some of these, kind of know where you are now, what advice would you have for yourself? Like the night before he started at memoryBlue to turn back in time.
[00:45:11] Blake Erwin: If I were to give myself advice, if I went back in time, it would be to, so some of the guys that were killers here, like Will in Nimit and, you know, Austin Birch, it would be set more one-on-one meetings with them and pick their brains even more. Because a lot of times I was doing everything myself and then, you know, they overhear me or if I was not having a good week, they’d come in and try and help.
[00:45:37] But I think if I, if I was more proactive in trying to learn from them on a weekly and daily basis, probably could have fast-tracked my promotional processes even quicker.
[00:45:48] Marc Gonyea: It was pretty fast. Yeah. That’s a good advice, man. Take advantage of the resources that are here.
[00:45:52] Blake Erwin: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:45:54] Marc Gonyea: That’s a good one.
[00:45:55] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:45:56] Marc Gonyea: And where do you want to go with this? And where do you see yourself going? I see, now you hit this enterprise sales rep. What’s next?
[00:46:04] Blake Erwin: Trying to figure that out. If I’m being honest, you know, do I want to get into management? Do I want to get into leadership? Do I want to be, to sell enterprise sales reps who makes half a million dollars? Right. So I’m trying to figure it all out.
[00:46:16] Obviously. I want all those things. But I need to prioritize that in terms of, “Okay, what goals do I want next?” So I can go out and achieve it because, you know, this role is still relatively new. Right? And I want to be successful at it too, before I..
[00:46:30] Marc Gonyea: Sure. Jump ship or nine months somewhere else.
[00:46:32] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:46:33] Chris Corcoran: How do you, how do you get to the a $1 billion and above as opposed to..?
[00:46:38] Blake Erwin: Now I do have some accounts that are billion dollars, but likely just experience.
[00:46:43] Chris Corcoran: More experience.
[00:46:43] Blake Erwin: Right?
[00:46:43] Chris Corcoran: Yep. So is that the highest rep? They have cafes?
[00:46:47] Blake Erwin: Yeah.
[00:46:48] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:46:49] Blake Erwin: Yeah, 1 billion and above.
[00:46:51] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:46:51] Marc Gonyea: Tell you, if you were to like take what people want to do when they come work here, what exactly Blake has done SDR from [00:47:00] memoryBlue?
[00:47:01] Hired by the client. SDR for the client for a little bit longer than a year and a month. Inside, ISR two years.
[00:47:08] Chris Corcoran: Experience.
[00:47:09] Marc Gonyea: Territory sales rep a year on a month. So closing all those bigger deals, and now, you know, enterprise, you know, so from what you started at memoryBlue, to, we just got out of June, five, five years, even five years in, in four years and like two months in and he is, he is in field rep. People kind of stay the course.
[00:47:29] Chris Corcoran: And IPO.
[00:47:30] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:31] Chris Corcoran: Great company.
[00:47:32] Marc Gonyea: You’re a textbook case of that though. Stay the course and a lot of people won’t do that. Like they ping pong around. I think they’re going to close work. Like, “I’ve been, I’m going to stay for eight months. My client, my client said I’m going to be closed to work in two months. They don’t have SE. What’s an SE?” They don’t have, they don’t do the pricing.
[00:47:51] I’m like,” I don’t know. You got a pricing calculator and you don’t have, people will be priced to software.”
[00:47:56] Blake Erwin: I mean, you have just all these things that you don’t even think about.
[00:47:59] Chris Corcoran: You don’t know.
[00:47:59] Blake Erwin: And do you? This is good to a little case, they just don’t like.
[00:48:05] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:48:06] Marc Gonyea: Cool, man.
[00:48:08] Chris Corcoran: Well, very good. This was very informative and valuable for our listeners. You’re, you’re the trail, trailblazer for Couchbase, proven it out.
[00:48:18] Blake Erwin: Yup.
[00:48:18] Chris Corcoran: Get hired. And then seeing over 20 people kind of following your footsteps. How does that make you feel?
[00:48:27] Blake Erwin: Good. And I, you know, I see all those people on a weekly, monthly basis as well. And they’re all hustlers too.
[00:48:34] They came through the memoryBlue program. They get hired out. And I, you know, I see them, they all have their, their Slack things set, smiling and dialing. They’re hustlers.
[00:48:44] Chris Corcoran: So we’re all for SDRs or have some kind of moved up to inside rep or the territory rep kind of like, they’re kind of following your footsteps.
[00:48:50] Blake Erwin: Some have been promoted. So there’s a good chunk of them that are on the inside sales team.
[00:48:55] Chris Corcoran: Okay. You know, somewhere between 5 and 10 of them, at least. So the career path at Couchbase is great, but I also think, you know, they were molded and grew through this whole memoryBlue program, which is why that they’re also having success at their jobs. That’s great.
[00:49:10] Marc Gonyea: Thank you for sharing that. That’s great.
[00:49:12] Blake Erwin: It’s true.
[00:49:13] Marc Gonyea: Well, I appreciate you saying that.
[00:49:16] Blake Erwin: I want to close with, I forgot phone call.
[00:49:18] Marc Gonyea: Oh, play it. Yes. All right. All right. So set the stage.
[00:49:22] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. I always warn.
[00:49:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, no, it’s terrible. This was, I was on the account FeeAdvisor. I’ll just set context to how this,
[00:49:30] Blake Erwin: I called this guy.
[00:49:31] Chris Corcoran: What year are we talking?
[00:49:32] Blake Erwin: We’re talking, goodness, 2017.
[00:49:36] Chris Corcoran: 2017.
[00:49:37] Marc Gonyea: You started June of 2016 and you bounced in January, 2017. So it was probably sometime late or early fall.
[00:49:46] Chris Corcoran: 2016.
[00:49:47] Blake Erwin: 2016. So a while ago, and this was when, I remember using this. Sale, we were using sales loft at the time where it essentially had your cadences built out for you and calls.
[00:49:58] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:49:58] Blake Erwin: I called this guy the first time, it was a bad time, “Blake, give me a call back next week.” Called him back a second time. He said, “Blake, I’m on vacation.’ Pushed me off the phone, hung up. Okay. Called him a third time. This is the following week and this is the phone call. Then I’m about to play for you in a second as I..
[00:50:15] Marc Gonyea: While you set that up, one thing I want to say about him. It’s not like, “Blake did this. You know, he had some ups and downs.”
[00:50:23] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:50:23] Marc Gonyea: And he’s candidly speaking about them and people who are. That’s the authenticity you should be looking for, but that’s what you need to know about when you get into it.
[00:50:30] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:50:31] Marc Gonyea: The second thing is with him and these phone calls is like, he called this guy back three times. A lot of people won’t do that.
[00:50:36] Chris Corcoran: No.
[00:50:36] Marc Gonyea: They’ll forget about it and they won’t call back or whatever. So he’s coming back for more. Some prospects respond to that positively, others no.
[00:50:43] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, and we’re helping.
[00:50:45] Blake Erwin: So I’m going to play it. I bleeped out his name and then the company I worked for, just so I can I share it with other people, but yeah, here we go.
[00:51:11] So, so just a little backdrop to that.
[00:51:14] So after that happened, the first thing I did was explore it because we had the software that save our calls and I played it for the whole office. Right? I brought it into colleague guys, “Hey guys, so, what do I do about this?” And a lot of folks that have actually heard that are now in, you know, SDR management or leadership positions where they’ll hit me up and they’ll say,
[00:51:34] “Hey, Blake, can you send me that one call, that was so bad? I want to play for my SDRs so they know the worst thing that can ever happen.”
[00:51:43] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:51:43] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:51:44] Chris Corcoran: So, so what happened when you called him back the fourth time?
[00:51:48] Blake Erwin: I didn’t have the courage for that.
[00:51:50] Marc Gonyea: Do not call him back.
[00:51:51] Chris Corcoran: No. I mean, who knows what’s going on in that team’s roles?
[00:51:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Can you imagine that?
[00:51:56] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Who knows? [00:52:00]
[00:52:01] Marc Gonyea: That’s that’s the toughest shit that happens, that in others. There’s many other ones. A lot of them complicated remember.
[00:52:06] Chris Corcoran: A simple note.
[00:52:07] Marc Gonyea: You can just say, “Hey man, can you not call me about this anymore? I get up. I appreciate the persistence.”
[00:52:11] Chris Corcoran: “Not a fit, man.”
[00:52:12] Marc Gonyea: Not a fit. “Perfecto. I’ll take you off my list. Have a great day. “But that elders, “Whatever. Is fine.”
[00:52:18] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Wow.
[00:52:20] Marc Gonyea: So well, some more, Corcoran.
[00:52:24] Chris Corcoran: So what next?
[00:52:25] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. We appreciate you come by. We really, really appreciate it.
[00:52:27] Blake Erwin: Thanks for having me. This was fun.
[00:52:29] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Lots of fun. Next time we’ll see ya, so we had a new Austin office.
[00:52:33] Blake Erwin: Definitely.
[00:52:33] Chris Corcoran: So we would have a, we have got an open house down in North. A new office.
[00:52:38] Marc Gonyea: We’ll get them in there. Yeah, we’ll get, we have a big party.
[00:52:40] Blake Erwin: When is the next, first Friday.
[00:52:42] Chris Corcoran: We just had it. Like a couple of days ago.
[00:52:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. All right. Cool.
[00:52:48] Chris Corcoran: Very good. Thank so much.
[00:52:50] Blake Erwin: Thanks, gentlemen.