Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Episode 68: Caroline Sullivan – Ms. Phenom

Can introverts succeed in sales? Caroline Sullivan’s career is undeniable proof that the answer is an emphatic yes.

The 2021 memoryBlue Phenom Alumni Award winner collects accolades and honors in her role as an Inside Account Executive at Rubrik because she understands an important sales secret: demonstrate that you genuinely care about people, prospects, and colleagues, and the achievements will follow. That secret, along with her competitive nature, helped her hit two different quotas on the way to winning two major sales awards in one quarter at Rubrik.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Caroline discusses the unique elements of her daily routine that unlock big results, highlights the difference between selling a product vs. selling a service, and demonstrates what the ascension to a closing role really looks like. 

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Caroline Sullivan

What she does: Inside Account Executive

Company: Rubrik

Noteworthy: She began her career as an SDR at memoryBlue. Hard work and dedication in the role led to her current job: Inside Account Executive for State and Local Government at Rubrik.

💡 Where to find Caroline: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Selling a service is selling what it means to do business with you. How you communicate with the prospect, your level of professionalism, your knowledge of your prospect’s business, and how your service offering relates — these are all paramount when selling a service. Be prepared and flexible. Going the extra mile will make you the easy choice.

⚡ A solid network will do more for you than metrics in the long run. You’re in the business of people. Demonstrate that you genuinely care and consistently keep a line of communication open with clients, prospects, and colleagues; that’s the fasted way to impressive metrics. 

⚡ Humanize your sales strategy. Being nice goes a long way. Don’t be all business all the time. When talking to a prospect, look for opportunities to connect to them personally and not just professionally; it will make the rest of the conversation much more natural. 

Episode Highlights

Differentiate yourself from the competition by asking questions.

“They [the prospects] will give you as much information as they’re going to want to, but you can leverage your research or your teammates saying, ‘Hey, I ran into X competitor, does anyone have any intel on them?’ […] The internet is such a wide space of information. You can utilize it so much. And I do recommend just using the resources you have internally; even outside of my team, I ask product teams. I ask my managers. I ask other teams just to see what they have on them [competitors].”

Going from an SDR into a closing role is like walking up the stairs.

“It’s not a leap. It’s definitely like walking up the stairs because there is such a big learning curve. And I remember starting at memoryBlue, I was scared to ask questions because I thought people would be like, ‘Oh, who’s this dumb person?’ But now that I’m here in this role, I’m like, ‘Thank gosh, I asked every question on my mind,’ because I know a lot of SDRs wouldn’t make the jump to closing right away. But if you don’t have closing experience, it’s definitely a big jump. There’s a lot of training.”

How to be an introvert in sales:

“My first day, I was so quiet and into myself. I was so worried about what everyone was gonna think about me or if this was the right thing for me, but I got more comfortable with the people around me. The thought that if I’m cold calling someone, I’ll never see him in person again or something like that — that definitely helped me too. Obviously, in a closing role, it’s a little bit different, but the more comfortable I got with the selling environment and the people around, my coworkers, it just made me more vocal about everything.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:20] Marc Gonyea: Caroline Sullivan, welcome back. 

[00:00:49] Caroline Sullivan: Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:50] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, great seeing you again. Thanks for spending some time with us. Looking forward to catching up with you. 

[00:00:53] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:00:55] Marc Gonyea: It hasn’t been that long since you left us, since you dumped us. About a year and four months. 

[00:01:00] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I think June, 2020.

[00:01:03] Marc Gonyea: But lots of big things have happened since you left, we’re going to get to that. First, let’s go back in a time machine a little bit. Just quickly give the folks listening, and Chris and I, a little background about yourself. Where you’re from? Where you grew up? College? Give us a little bit of that.

[00:01:19] Caroline Sullivan: So I was born in Virginia and like down the road Fairfax County, but I grew up in New Jersey, probably like 40 minutes outside of New York City. Lived there my whole life and then decided I wanted to go to JMU. For that called process was interesting because I was kind of the lazy high school kid, and didn’t really know where I wanted to go and stuff. 

[00:01:41] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, no, no. 

[00:01:43] Marc Gonyea: Objection. Objection. Well, what does that even mean, ” I was a lazy high school kid?” We’re not buying that. 

[00:01:49] Caroline Sullivan: Like school-wise, like academics, I was fine. I think I was pretty glued to my cell phone, if I’m being honest. And my grades were fine, like average, like Bs probably. But when it came time to like applying to colleges, how long the application process took, your, one, you’re paying for them. Two, the ASTs and, ASTs, I think? Those were tedious too. So I did, I made it a point to submit everything, but when it came to choosing, I had some problems because, one, I didn’t tour all the campuses I wish I could have tour. Two, I actually didn’t get into my top school, Rutgers, which kind of upset me for a little bit. 

[00:02:28] Marc Gonyea: Isn’t that the only school, and so… isn’t that? I was just crushed Jersey. Like my wife is from the University of Maryland, College Park, and like, a bunch of her friends are all Jersey. Like, is it Rutgers that’s the only school everybody in New Jersey wants to go to? 

[00:02:40] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, basically. Yeah. They’re like the Big 10 school that everyone wants to go to. And when I toured it, it was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. I think it’s around five campuses. But I remember you literally had to go on a bus to go from one to the other. My mom and me, like… “No.” “This is too big for you,” but she liked how close it was. It was only a 35 minute drive. 

[00:03:02] Marc Gonyea: You have been at Rutgers? Ok you have. 

[00:03:05] Alright. So when you were in high school, what did she think you, did you have any idea what you wanted to major and what you want to be coming out of college?

[00:03:12] Caroline Sullivan: I thought architecture for like a hot second, because I always wanted to get into like artistic side for my career, but then, you know, after a couple months I was like, “This is probably where I’m not gonna be making all the money that I want to.” So my dad’s always been in business. So I said, “I’ll just do that, figure out where I want to do in college from there.”

[00:03:29] I saw JMU had a pretty good business school. So I was between them and Providence. Didn’t tour either of those either, but I remember decision day was coming up. And I think my parents wanted me to go to Providence, “It’s okay. We can do that.” Like, it’s their money at the end of the day. But then the next day I woke up and I was like, “I don’t think I want to go there.

[00:03:51] I think I’m going to go to JMU.” 

[00:03:53] Marc Gonyea: But you hadn’t been to either school yet? 

[00:03:54] Caroline Sullivan: No. 

[00:03:54] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Did you know kids from your high school with the JMU or…? 

[00:03:57] Caroline Sullivan: Oddly, a good amount of people went to JMU. 

[00:04:00] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause there was only Rutgers in New Jersey. That’s my point, right? 

[00:04:03] Caroline Sullivan: But I feel like JMU’s kind of in a random location. So I don’t know why all of my people from New Jersey went there.

[00:04:09] It is what it is. But I woke up the next day and I said, “I don’t think I’m feeling Providence. I think I want to go to JMU.” And my parents were like, “Okay. Well, we’re going to go on a tour today then, because we’re not going to be paying this tuition, if you don’t know where you want to go.” So we went that day, toured it. I said, “Okay,” like, ” that’s where I want.” 

[00:04:27] Marc Gonyea: There’s a lot to be said for that. Pushing nowadays where everyone overanalyzes everything. Right?

[00:04:32] Or parents who have way joysticking where kids going to go to school and they’re sophomores in college. And you’re doing great in life, as far as I can tell. 

[00:04:38] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:04:38] Marc Gonyea: And you kind of went to college, not a whim, but…

[00:04:41] Chris Corcoran: Got a feel. 

[00:04:42] Caroline Sullivan: Got a feel. 

[00:04:43] Marc Gonyea: Got a feel. So what’d you major in? 

[00:04:45] Caroline Sullivan: Marketing.  Just the business standpoint of it.

[00:04:49] I was not feeling finance or accounting. It wasn’t a very numbers person. I’m not a big fan of math either. So I just figured marketing with a concentration of sales will probably more likely get me the career that I want, because it have a lot more options. 

[00:05:03] Marc Gonyea: Where did the sales thing come from? ‘Cause a lot of people are like, “Sales…” Like it’s a dirty word.

[00:05:09] Caroline Sullivan: I saw the requirements for it, as though this shouldn’t be bad, it’s only collection credits. I know Steve Hertzenberg. I think you guys might be familiar with him. He is the one who drew me into it. ‘Cause I think I had a lecture with him. And he said, “You should take this other class to get this concentration.”

[00:05:26] So I think it was only like three or four other classes I took. It was pretty easy. 

[00:05:30] Marc Gonyea: I’ve never personally met Steve before. 

[00:05:31] Chris Corcoran: He’s been in our office. 

[00:05:32] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Got it. 

[00:05:33] Chris Corcoran: Actually, he’s one of the, one of the sales program professors at JMU. 

[00:05:37] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. Good. All right. So what else did you do when you were at at Madison?

[00:05:43] Caroline Sullivan: I was on the club swim team for four years. 

[00:05:45] Marc Gonyea: So I have a soft spot for that sport. I have, Chris probably turned on to this earlier. We had swimmers early. Swimmers are really good, employees. Or just really successful people in life, as far as I can tell. Discipline. How long have you been swimming? When did you start?

[00:06:00] Caroline Sullivan: I think I swim for on 18 years. Yeah. My mom put me in the pool when I was very young to do swim lessons. ‘Cause I think when she grew up, her mom didn’t know how to swim, so she didn’t want us to go through the same thing. So we were put in the pool very early. 

[00:06:14] Marc Gonyea: And you’re like, you’re a fish to water?

[00:06:15] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:06:16] Marc Gonyea: There you go. Okay. And then what was really your stroke? 

[00:06:20] Caroline Sullivan: Breaststroke. 

[00:06:21] Marc Gonyea: Alright. You swim in the high school and then what possessed someone to want to swim in college, close swimming? Division wants some here. Close swimming, like tell me why? 

[00:06:28] Caroline Sullivan: I really don’t know. I think I originally wanted to run in college and I tried getting credit for it. Yeah. 

[00:06:36] Marc Gonyea: What’d you run? 

[00:06:37] Caroline Sullivan: It was up for a track. So I ran the 100 hurdles, the 400 hurdles and the 800. 

[00:06:45] Chris Corcoran: The 400 hurdles it’s like the hardest event in track. It’s a sprint. It’s tiring. In hurdles? 

[00:06:52] Marc Gonyea: I would fall down. 

[00:06:56] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I never fell down. It’s the one thing I can say. Yeah. 

[00:07:00] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So, but you’re swimming. Tell us a little about swimming, then we’ll talk about, we’ll do a little side sidetrack on swimming and the discipline that Chris and I like. 

[00:07:09] Caroline Sullivan: Like,… 

[00:07:10] Marc Gonyea: I, we have never been swimmers, be like, you know… 

[00:07:13] Caroline Sullivan: I tried to looking into what club running at JMU, for some reason, and I just couldn’t find where the meanings were. And a lot of my friends from home who also swam I’ve recommended joining club swim. ‘Cause it’s where I meet all my friends. And you can take it as seriously as you want.

[00:07:30] You can do the practices, you can get social events from X-Lab events. So I said, “Why not?” So I walked in, just named a couple of my friends, who know me very well. That’s where I met my core friends for the next four years. That’s spread throughout my class, but like older, younger, but yeah. 

[00:07:50] Marc Gonyea: This talk about swimming, because it’s not one of these sports where you can blame the coach or the all offense, “A teammate does not give me the ball in the right spots, Corcoran.”

[00:07:59] Right? Or, “I’m better than that person.” Like what does it boil down to? 

[00:08:04] Caroline Sullivan: Just yourself. 

[00:08:05] Yeah. ‘Cause I mean, obviously the results are going to see every based on how much practice, or even if you show the practice, you can still sit on the lawn for like 20 minutes or something, but it’s going to show. And like, everyone’s going to see your time or how you plays in the race.

[00:08:20] All to see given the fact that sometimes you’re going to be racing against the top threes learners and you’re not there, but it’ll still show. And like, if everyone’s watching, that’s what gets me going. And I don’t want to be the one in the pool getting last by like 10 seconds or something, ’cause I wasn’t practicing for a couple of weeks.

[00:08:35] Marc Gonyea: How do you equate that discipline in the like when you got into working with us? Because we were your first gig, right? So just to say in sales actually, but maybe related to your first job, because most people, they’re probably listening, thinking about memoryBlue been their first job or they’re already working here now.

[00:08:51] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, same thing. I’m a very competitive person. And I know since like swimming is an individual sport also sales can be pretty individual too. You can rely on hearing your mentors or your team to help around, then your numbers basically gonna reflect what you did at the end of the day. And I’m also about, like, if everyone’s gonna be watching me, all the sale want to show like my best and I’ll be like, “Why did Caroline get 25% of quota?”

[00:09:17] For example, “Why didn’t she get last by 10 seconds?” or something like that. So it’s kind of the same thing. That mix of being competitive and your numbers is going to reflect what you’re doing at the end of the day. 

[00:09:27] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. So in JMU, doing club swim, marketing major concentration sales, how did she, how did memoryBlue happen?

[00:09:36] Caroline Sullivan: Well, being honest, I don’t know the very first conversation I’ve had with memoryBlue, but I do remember… in one of my sales classes. Here’s my first manager, Jeremy Wood, he was sitting in the class just listening to other like sales pitches on the project we were doing. And then I think Libby was the one who reached out to me, from the recruiting side.

[00:10:00] And I spoke with her with group of interviews, with Jeremy, I remember Joey Plesce came at one point. And then they took me out to dinner in Harrisonburg. There was me and Olivia Knight. 

[00:10:13] Marc Gonyea: There you go. 

[00:10:14] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. And then I think she started a couple of months before me, but that’s basically how it started. 

[00:10:19] Marc Gonyea: So we met you down there and then couraged you a little bit. And then did you think about that you kind of know what you were doing before you signed up for it? Did you have good idea? 

[00:10:27] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:10:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. It was that more from the s classes at JMU, was it more interacting with like Wood and Libby or? 

[00:10:34] Caroline Sullivan: It was a mix of those. 

[00:10:35] Marc Gonyea: It was. 

[00:10:35] Caroline Sullivan: Libby did a great job, like describing the program for what it was in which you’re ready to get into.

[00:10:40] And I’ve always said like, “Oh, I want to be away from the desk or something,” like Jeremy says like, “You’re going to be on a desk.” But eventually like, “You’ll be able to move around and stuff.” So I knew going in when I was going to get into. 

[00:10:51] Marc Gonyea: Got it. 

[00:10:51] Caroline Sullivan: And it was nice. Like my goal was to accept an offer before spring semester of senior year, just so I can relax and get through classes and stuff, so…

[00:11:00] I was able, I think I accepted around Thanksgiving of my senior year. So I was able to relax. 

[00:11:05] Marc Gonyea: A little different than applying to college or how your college process, right? So you were an early accept. 

[00:11:11] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:11:12] Marc Gonyea: Those are the Jeremy Woods specialties. 

[00:11:14] Chris Corcoran: They are. Absolutely. Why, I always say that the, number one, the best candidate, sales development representative candidates are on a college campus. And the best ones on a college campus are in the fall semester of their senior year, because they are, they got their act together and they’re ambitious.

[00:11:29] They know what they want. And they want to have it all done so that they can enjoy the rest of their college time. 

[00:11:34] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. 

[00:11:35] Marc Gonyea: So what’d you do? So you walked in May? When you’d start working for us, May of 2019? 

[00:11:41] Caroline Sullivan: 2018. 

[00:11:42] Marc Gonyea: 2018. Okay. Oh, that’s right, because you’d smart stuff for us. 

[00:11:46] Caroline Sullivan: But I started in August.

[00:11:49] I remember like wanting a summer to spend time with family before I moved down and stuff. And all to make time to move because moving to different states it’s not fun. 

[00:11:57] Chris Corcoran: Talk about that a little bit, because we’re talking to a lot of college students and they’re leaving college. And a lot of them aren’t, they don’t have the fortune of being able to live at home.

[00:12:05] They have to move to a new city. So talk to us a little bit about what that was like and how that unfolded for you. 

[00:12:12] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, so it was a process. As long as,.. I had Rubrik right off the bat. So that made it easier. We also had to coordinate commutes and everything. All of a sudden I had nice one being two minutes of that.

[00:12:23] But I definitely recommend just waiting. If you’re playing to move August 1st, for example, I wouldn’t stress yourself out looking in January for an apartment, because more than likely they’re going to be gone. 

[00:12:33] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:12:34] Caroline Sullivan: So I waited until probably June or July, even the month before, to find an apartment, because more than likely going to say ‘yes’ so they don’t have to waste rent paying for themselves for 10 months or something, for example.

[00:12:46] So I did that. And then my mom was pretty generous and had a lot of extra furniture because she likes to replace things with season or something. So I took a bunch of that down, but I just slowly started building up, like my furniture, things I needed, made a list. Just hiring a new hall, drove it down with my dad.

[00:13:06] It was pretty, I want to say simple operations. It seems straightforward, but obviously it was a lot of work, but yes. 

[00:13:13] Chris Corcoran: I think one of the things I remember is that you did not have expenses that most people coming out of college have. Talk to the listeners a little bit about your decision and how that was able to help you? Because I think it’s super scrappy.

[00:13:28] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. So I guess what do you mean by expense, just? 

[00:13:31] Chris Corcoran: Car expense. 

[00:13:32] Caroline Sullivan: Oh, car expense. Oh yeah. I mean, that’s why I make commute like a big priority when looking into places where I want to live. Because obviously car expenses are gonna be a burden on top of your rent and what not. And if I don’t need a car, I’m not going to get a car. And Uber’s are such a big thing now, compared to, what six years ago. I remember freshman year at college, I had to call a cab, which is so weird to say.

[00:13:57] I felt really old saying that. Like the times have really changed. So as long as you’re by like an easy commute to your job, you’re by a grocery store. If you’re by metro, then you’re fine. Like the car really isn’t necessary. 

[00:14:12] Chris Corcoran: So yeah, you say that, do you need a car. Most people think they do need a car.

[00:14:16] Caroline Sullivan: They really don’t. As long as you’re walking distance to like things you need to have, like a dress store, for sure, then you’re fine. But having the metro is definitely like the cherry on top, because if you want to go to Arlington or something or happy going to DC for meeting, you can just hop on that for a couple dollars and go.

[00:14:33] Chris Corcoran: Right. I’m scrapping, I’m resourceful. Those are skills that help you become successful. 

[00:14:39] Marc Gonyea: Where’d you learn that stuff? To be resourceful. 

[00:14:42] Caroline Sullivan: Probably my parents.

[00:14:43] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Shout out to the parents. 

[00:14:46] Caroline Sullivan: I also, I mean, to be fair, I did specifically ask for a car, for a very long time.

[00:14:51] They’re like, “No. You don’t need one.” But I didn’t click with me in top or college where I’m like, “Oh, I actually, like, I survived all of college without a car there. Is on campus parking is just the… Like I figured out the bus system pretty easily. ‘ Cause I didn’t want to be a burden on my friends who drive me to classes all the time.

[00:15:11] Marc Gonyea: Oh, you’re not like my friends. One of our friends, we nicknamed him Burden. 

[00:15:20] Caroline Sullivan: That’s funny.

[00:15:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It is funny. It’s true. I love getting the job in November, graduating in May and then having June and July to chill out. Relax. 

[00:15:33] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. You need it, especially after finals graduation. My graduation, those couple of weeks were such a roll run because you’re saying about your college friends.

[00:15:42] You have to move back home. Given I had to move back home and then moved back down from Virginia. But I just felt it was like definitely family needed time, because I’m not going to be living there anymore. You know, on a side note from my parents and everything, but I have to leave at the time. 

[00:15:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, my kids are going to be like that.

[00:16:02] All right. So you moved down here. Walkable, no car. Good pull, Chris. And you started. What was it like? 

[00:16:11] Caroline Sullivan: I was definitely pretty nervous starting. I know I said I knew what I was expecting, but when I show up the first day, I remember being very quiet. I think I met my client, Stem. I think he flew in from California, and I was with three pretty established memoryBluers here, and then Connall Pettit.

[00:16:35] That I remember he was like the star of the campaign. I remember him talking to the client face to face and I said, “Oh my gosh.” I didn’t know what to expect on this on day one. 

[00:16:42] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:16:42] Caroline Sullivan: And your first cold call to see it’s going to give you the shakes. You will hear the shaking in my voice on the first month. I remember Jeremy coming up and saying, “It’s okay, just breathe.”

[00:16:52] Like, “You could be doing this a lot. Like you’ll nail it down.” But that’s what I tell everyone. Like, “Obviously your first cold call is going to be like probably your worst one, given, unique situations outside of that.” But I specifically remember that moment being like, “Oh my gosh, that was so bad.”

[00:17:07] But I remember how supportive everyone was saying like, “No, it’s okay. You got that one out of the way.” So… 

[00:17:13] Marc Gonyea: That’s a good crew of folks. Hey, and who else? Who’s that person? 

[00:17:17] Caroline Sullivan: I think Jesse. 

[00:17:19] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Nice. Jessie Gabris? Jesse Matthews? 

[00:17:24] Chris Corcoran: No. 

[00:17:24] Marc Gonyea: That’s too old. We’ve got a lot of Jessies. Yeah, we’ll come back to that. Okay. All right. So you had a mentor too, right? 

[00:17:31] Caroline Sullivan: Abby Curtis. 

[00:17:32] Marc Gonyea: Abby Curtis. 

[00:17:34] Chris Corcoran: Another Jersey JMU. 

[00:17:35] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. 

[00:17:36] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:17:36] Chris Corcoran: Connection. 

[00:17:38] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:17:39] Marc Gonyea: What did she help you with? 

[00:17:41] Caroline Sullivan: She made me feel very welcomed here. I think she was basically my first friend here. 

[00:17:45] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Caroline Sullivan: She really helped me through in walking from calls, objections how to do the calendar invites and check in with them, a day or two beforehand.

[00:17:54] And even from a social aspect, I think my first week was when we made that trip to Atlantic City. And I didn’t know anyone, but she made me feel very welcomed, introduced me to everyone. Made some great friends on that trip. So… 

[00:18:09] Marc Gonyea: For people listening, if you don’t know, Atlantic City, we haven’t done it in a couple of years. It got crushed by COVID in the downfall of Atlantic City. 

[00:18:17] Caroline Sullivan: Labor day with a couple of alum and yeah, I totally get that. Olivia Knight. And then, who I just went with lunch? Joe Trapasso. Yeah. I’m trying to think who else….. Yeah, Patrick Martin. JC. 

[00:18:36] Marc Gonyea: JC. Wow. The guy’s good too. Look for those that don’t know what memoryBlue, we’re kind…split the costs more or less. We get a bus, get beverages and food, drive up to Atlantic City. Leave work early, like on a Friday, and then spend some time in Atlantic City. Doing what you do up there. Gambling, eating, drinking, riding the mechanical bull, and then, then come on back. Right? And get back kind of late and get early start on the weekend.

[00:19:03] That’s a good way to kind of blow off some steam and meet some folks. So you met everybody. On the bus? 

[00:19:07] Caroline Sullivan: Yup. 

[00:19:07] Marc Gonyea: Okay, good. That’s a good first week. 

[00:19:10] Chris Corcoran: Good time to start for sure. 

[00:19:11] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, definitely.

[00:19:12] Marc Gonyea: Look at this, this is a stat sheet, Chris. August, 2019. Is this right? Hit quota by 100%. July, 2019, I know there’s some that you graduated 110% made to a 100%. April 100%.

[00:19:26] I mean, if I go back in time, you’re just crushing it, crushing it. But how long did it take you to get this good? 

[00:19:31] Caroline Sullivan: No, I wish I knew. I remember being here, I think we’re monthly quotas. 

[00:19:36] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:19:37] Caroline Sullivan: I just need to get one meeting. I remember not getting it and seems like that zero on the DHR. I was like so embarrassing and like, “Why am I in the red? Why am I on the bottom?” I remember Jeremy gave me this incentive saying, “Hey, we’re doing this TOPS trip. Never done it before, but if you get this percentage,” I think it was something crazy high, like…

[00:19:58] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah. You were, yeah, you were probably behind. So, you’re so behind on qualify for tops. So Jeremy rolled it out. 

[00:20:04] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. And he said, “You got this number, like it’s free trip.” Is okay, I want this ’cause who doesn’t want a free vacation. So I just went for it. And then since then, “Okay, again” It gets zero again. So I just kept going and definitely like incentives like TOPS trips, little team incentives and whatnot.

[00:20:20] That definitely pushed me. 

[00:20:22] Marc Gonyea: Did you go on the TOPs? Which one’s going, the first one? Okay. Got it. The Costa Rica was the first one. Did you go to Costa Rica? 

[00:20:32] I love it. All right. That’s so great. Yeah. All right. So mixing the fun with the hard. 

[00:20:38] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:20:38] Marc Gonyea: What was it about being on the phone or get meetings that you figured out was more for you?

[00:20:43] What did you get good at? 

[00:20:45] Caroline Sullivan: Just being more personal to them. I learned that it’s like you’re not going to be a metric to really talking to someone and interrupt them on your work day. You might as well make it worthwhile to be nice about it. I tried doing the pushy side maybe once or twice, but it came off the wrong way.

[00:21:00] Chris Corcoran: That’s the Bones’ influence. 

[00:21:02] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:21:07] Chris Corcoran: The quick book Bones. 

[00:21:10] Marc Gonyea: Do they have a name for it?

[00:21:15] The close at the open. Is it new to stop doing that? They call it the clopening.

[00:21:24] Caroline Sullivan: But no, just being nice to them, throwing on a joke or a laugh at them. If they say like, “Oh, I have to take my kids to school.” Just say, “How old are they?” I always, my mom’s a school nurse at New Jersey, so I always say, “My mom’s a school nurse. Like totally get it, hear these stories all the time.” When you find a little fine little personal connection to them, you’re more than likely going to be remembered, and sell it through this stamped call or something like that.

[00:21:47] So that’s what I found. Yeah, humanize it. Short answer. Yeah. 

[00:21:51] Marc Gonyea: Was that your signature move? Would you say that that was your signature move? Humanizing? Can I try to connect with them? 

[00:21:59] Caroline Sullivan: And I still do it to this day. 

[00:22:01] Marc Gonyea: We see it works. What does it get you? 

[00:22:03] Caroline Sullivan: I mean, it drives them to come to the next call, like flip into the next step of the process.

[00:22:08] Even when you jump on the call you don’t have like the awkward introduction. So you can say like, “Oh, how did you’re kid do at school the other day?” Refer back to that other example. Yeah, it makes me be more memorable and it helps you build your network. Like say, if I leave Rubrik for some reason, and go to another company like Palo Alto or something that helps you leverage, ” Oh, I can reach back up to this person because we talked about their kids and stuff, the solution. Maybe something might happen there.”

[00:22:34] Chris Corcoran: So you have all these conversations. How do you remember all these details about the different people that you end up speaking of? 

[00:22:40] Caroline Sullivan: So I actually built, and I actually got this idea, I can’t take credit from one of my coworkers at Rubrik. I have this Excel sheet and, if I know I’m going to be talking to this person more than once, then I put like personalized follow up, like title it. But I literally write the name, I think, account they have, contact information.

And then a note section I just type like, “Oh, has two kids there in this grade. Likes this sports team.” Like Alabama, for example. And then just like any followup notes saying to, “Go follow up in December, they’re going to be looking to New Year,” or something like that. But in like organize it by like what state they’re in, what school they’re in and stuff like that.

[00:23:15] Chris Corcoran: So you use Excel and not, not the CRM system? 

[00:23:19] Caroline Sullivan: I wish I was good at CRM system, I’m still learning it. But one day… 

[00:23:25] Marc Gonyea: She said, “One day.”

[00:23:27] Chris Corcoran: As long as, all that matters is that you remember and you know how to access the data. 

[00:23:31] Marc Gonyea: You sound like you’re organized. So I’m sure you get it, but you need to get a CRM you get it in. 

[00:23:38] When you were at memoryBlue in the early days, we’re going to transition to kind of your game now. But who was like besides yourself, who was one of the best SDRs there? 

[00:23:47] Caroline Sullivan: That’s a great question. 

[00:23:49] Marc Gonyea: Put you on the spot. 

[00:23:50] Caroline Sullivan: Bones was for sure. ‘Cause he liked books. 

[00:23:53] Chris Corcoran: We found Bones with his quick books. 

[00:23:57] Marc Gonyea: “Amy, if you can quick book and they show up,” that’s what Bones would say.

[00:24:03] Caroline Sullivan: I remember Raphael. He’s on STEM Listening. I remember like we would compete a little bit on the campaigns. He’d be so good, like right out the door. And you’re like, “Gosh, this guy’s good.” Ben Kampa was good on STEM with me. Peyton Saunders.

[00:24:24] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. 

[00:24:25] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, no, there, I mean, obviously I can name more, but I know those guys. These guys were really good. I got to look at the HR, see where they’re at, so I… But,  yep. 

[00:24:35] Marc Gonyea: And then when you were here, we assigned you a mentee too, right? Who is that?

[00:24:39] Caroline Sullivan: Brenda Gandin. 

[00:24:42] Marc Gonyea: How did that relationship work? You come to memoryBlue, you get a mentor that’s, who’s been here for a little bit longer than you. Kind of show, it’s not your boss. Kind of show you the ropes a little bit, take you on your way, you can go and talk to besides your boss. And then you’ve proven your worth and we’ll give you someone, then you become a mentor, and you have a mentee. So yours was Brenda, right? What was that like?

[00:25:06] Caroline Sullivan: I’ll give a shout out Jeremy. He,… that was like the perfect match for me. We just clicked, we were just able like she’s such a good learner. And sometimes it’s hard for me to explain some things, while examples for showing her the cues so open to learning.

[00:25:22] I think we just had the same language whenever we were on the phone, or meetings, or like with the client or whatnot. But we both went internal around the same time, like we were both the Rubrik client at the same time. We went to Rubrik, like full time, around the same time. I think we just went through like everything together, but like, she became my mentor at one point,

[00:25:44] ’cause we were just slinging it back and forth information and knowledge. So, yeah, I think it really worked out and she turned out to be one of my best friends. Yeah. 

[00:25:52] Marc Gonyea: I haven’t been to, got to get up to Seattle. 

[00:25:53] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, it’s great out there. I went up to visit them think early October. They were on the first Friday.

[00:26:01] So we saw the office, showed us the city. We were loving that stuff. No, it’s a really nice city. 

[00:26:07] Chris Corcoran: It’s fun. 

[00:26:08] Marc Gonyea: I think I’ll go out there. 

[00:26:09] Chris Corcoran: For sure. 

[00:26:09] Marc Gonyea: Stopping by after that office yet? 

[00:26:11] Caroline Sullivan: Their food’s fantastic there. 

[00:26:12] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[00:26:13] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:26:14] Marc Gonyea: Okay. All right. Let’s talk about a couple of other things too. So you were on TalkPoint? 

[00:26:18] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:19] Marc Gonyea: A PGi company. 

[00:26:21] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. 

[00:26:21] Marc Gonyea: TalkPoint. In TalkPoint, Chris, they just had like an all-star roster of SDRs out there… 

[00:26:26] Sadie was the first SDR on that. She destroyed that. And then somehow they got just to, I don’t know how many people on that campaign, but they’re a multi-year client and that’s different than STEM though, right? It’s more transactional in a way. 

[00:26:40] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. So STEM was more, I guess, more of a new concept because it was saving energies, I guess, batteries. But people were so used to they’re always in hundred percent energy and costs. But like TalkPoint where PGi was webcast and it’s something that everyone already had like Zoom or Webex.

[00:26:57] So it was different because like STEM you’re teaching someone something new, but TalkPoint you’re trying replace something that they already have. So it was just showing how they’re different and whatnot. 

[00:27:06] Chris Corcoran: So I think that this is a very important for the listeners to hear from you from your perspective is kind of the difference, right?

[00:27:13] One is something that’s evangelical, it’s something that’s new and innovative and transformational in theory. And the other one is almost like a commodity. And that people have this and it’s, do you want this brand A or brand B? What was it like kind of selling for both of those two separate solutions? 

[00:27:31] Caroline Sullivan: It was definitely a learning experience.

[00:27:33] I remember the diving in the top where like how I to put STEM. And then I remember I had to take a step back and say, “Hey, I got to go into this differently. ” 

[00:27:39] Chris Corcoran: How so?

[00:27:40] Caroline Sullivan: I think for obviously, the goal in sales is to learn like what their needs are. And it’s hard to do it right on a cold call. But with clients like TalkPoint in like what I’m selling now at Rubrik, there are a lot of similar solutions out there. But if you learn what they’re trying, like what they want and what they need to have by like X date, even more than likely to thrive it, if you can help them with that or not.

[00:28:04] ‘Cause I remember talk when had certain features that I’m like, I don’t know if a competitor of theirs didn’t, so you kind of leverage it like that, then you’re more than likely create interest for them. 

[00:28:14] Chris Corcoran: And so how do you find out that information? 

[00:28:17] Caroline Sullivan: You could ask questions, like a lot of open-ended questions and if you hear the slightest, like if you say break, one to five, “How comfortable do you feel about this?”

[00:28:27] And they’re like, “Oh, like I’m a three or four out of five.” The solution that they have fifty, a five out of five. And you ask like, “Oh, this should probably be a five out of five. Why, why isn’t it? Like what’s missing here?” And then they’ll tell you, because it’s not like they’re gonna lie to you and be like, “No, it’s perfect.” No, it’s not perfect. 

[00:28:43] Chris Corcoran: So it sounds like that type of sale it’s kind of above you, you’re just trying to replace kind of an incumbent. 

[00:28:48] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:28:49] Chris Corcoran: Versus at STEM, there is no incumbent because they’re not … 

[00:28:52] Caroline Sullivan: There’s… Yeah. It’s a new concept.  It’s a new concept. 

[00:28:54] Chris Corcoran: So how, was that challenging? 

[00:28:56] Caroline Sullivan: Yes and no. 

[00:28:57] Chris Corcoran: Talk a little bit about that. 

[00:28:58] Caroline Sullivan: If you show the value of like putting something in new that it’s going to save them costs, going to save them downtime, for example. I think that will entice them to hop on more. Say they get an outage, like the STEM battery, for example, can probably get them up pack and running, in no time. So as long as you show them the value off of that, like something that they could have, if they have STEM in comparison to something that they don’t have now, that would probably entice them to get onto.

[00:29:27] Chris Corcoran: Okay. Did you have a preference in terms of which type of solution to sell kind of like transformational versus kind of a replacement? 

[00:29:35] Caroline Sullivan: I kind of like the replacement one. It just makes me more competitive. It makes me learn what else is out there because I remember being on standby here, a competitor of theirs.

[00:29:44] I remember just having no idea because I would always think like, “Oh, we’re the only one out there.” Which we were like there’s always another way. So, I like having the challenge of beating out of competitor, seeing what’s different with that. Using all my resources and figure that out.

[00:29:58] So I like to replace the things a little bit more. 

[00:30:00] Chris Corcoran: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do you find out about your competition and how do you differentiate from the competition? 

[00:30:05] Caroline Sullivan: Just question asking. 

[00:31:04] Chris Corcoran: So have your prospects educated you on, on the competition? 

[00:31:08] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. As much as they want to, obviously some of them are going to be a little bit harder.

[00:31:12] Chris Corcoran: Sure. 

[00:31:13] Caroline Sullivan: Obviously given that I’m selling to the same government too. But you can utilize them. They’ll give you as much information as they’re going to want to. But you can leverage your research or your teammates saying, “Hey, I ran into this X competitor. Anyone have any intel on them or any questions I can ask?”

[00:31:30] And they’ll say yes or no, give you some information on that. And like, it’s up to your research too. Like, I subscribed to a lot of articles that my competitors post. I follow them on LinkedIn. I’ve added some account executives on LinkedIn to see what they’re posting, what news they have, see what features they’re adding.

[00:31:48] Marc Gonyea: I love that. 

[00:31:49] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. And then, you know, any events that are having that looks similar to ours or something, for some reason. I haven’t registered to one yet, ’cause I’m not sure if that’s going to be like a red line or something, but yeah, little things like that. Just use the resources, the internet is such a wide space of information.

[00:32:08] You can utilize it so much. And I do recommend, just using the resources you have internally. Like even outside of my team, I ask like product teams, I ask my managers. I ask other teams, just to see what they have on them. And everyone’s so willing to help, like no questions are dumb questions. Like we’ve all been in that place before. So all willing to like lend hand lend. 

[00:32:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Excellent. All right. So you’re with memoryBlue you’re doing your thing, and we like, “God just this young woman is really good at her job.” So we’ve so, yeah, there are given options at memoryBlue that would eventually with Rubrik getting ever closer to. But we were like, “Hey Caroline, here’s what you can do, something else at the company.” What was that? How did that go down? At memoryBlue, when you went to go work with Tommy. 

[00:32:54] Caroline Sullivan: Oh yeah. So I’m trying to remember who last client was. I think it was…. on Joey Plesce’s team. But I remember Abby Curtis coming up to me and saying, ” There’s no opening on the sales team.”

[00:33:07] Like, “I think you should look at it and you have a lot of potential.” So I reached out to Tommy Gassman and I just stated my successes here at memoryBlue. I’m interested in this role, if there was an opening with him. I think a handful of times anything after, they around my one-year mark, they’re able to put me on the team.

[00:33:25] I was on the team for a year, a couple months. You know, COVID hit. 

[00:33:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. No, that all that happened for a reason. And you have a great COVID success story. So you were on that team, you’re booking meetings from memoryBlue, right? And how was that different than the what you did before? 

[00:33:40] Caroline Sullivan: It was definitely different because I wasn’t selling a product.

[00:33:43] It’s selling a service. You’re selling your professionalism, like your trust. If you’re selling to the sales guys, they’re going to know if you did your research. And you say like, “Oh,” like, “we do services for other manufacturer companies.” And they say like, “No,” like, “I’m a technology company.” And obviously that’s going to be an out.

[00:33:59] So you just gotta be on your feet all the time, because I’ve learned the way you present yourself when you’re cold calling these people are going to be the way you’re presenting memoryBlue too. So you just got to be tip-top shape for that. 

[00:34:13] Marc Gonyea: Yep, agreed. So you’re doing that and COVID hit. And like most companies, we had to make some changes. And we put you on the, on the Rubrik. It’s where your work now.

[00:34:22] And tell everyone a little bit about that, because everybody wants to know the story. This is the story that kind of transition you away from the company. But how it was done, I thought was pretty interesting. 

[00:34:30] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. So trying to think. When COVID hit, I remember I was on a cruise with my friend and his family. 

[00:34:36] Chris Corcoran: What a place to be when COVID hits. 

[00:34:38] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I remember the week before I was looking, sitting right at that desk and my mom’s texted me about it. She was like, “Look at this map, but where these cases are.” So maybe like three or four dots on the map. Like, “No big deal.” I remember leading up to the cruise, my aunts, like you know this protective aunts. They were texting me, and I have like six of them, and were like, “You want to be on this cruise?”

[00:35:01] Like, “You shouldn’t go on.” I started freaking out. I eventually went on the boat. And I remember during March Madness, ’cause they had the section bar where they showed all the basketball games at a sports bar. And I get, Nick Perry was my,

[00:35:19] he was my manager at the time. And thank gosh I paid for the internet on the boat, ’cause I might as well look at emails or whatever. He said, “Can you call me really quick?” I said, “Okay.” So he’s like, “Hey, just letting you know, everyone’s being sent home. I will gave everything you need, to Brenda or something like that.” “What’s going on?”

[00:35:40] Chris Corcoran: Flatten the curve. 

[00:35:42] Caroline Sullivan: And I knew it was about when they canceled March Madness. Sport’s bar was just black, like nothing on the screen. I think that she was showing games from the 80s. That’s when I knew something was up. Like this million dollar, multimillion dollar events that goes on this just shut down.

[00:36:02] Marc Gonyea: So billions of dollars, right? 

[00:36:04] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. And we’re hearing these boats, I think off of like California or Washington or something like having to sit out and seek. People were getting the cases. So obviously like my family was freaking out, but we are the second to last boat allowed back into the Baltimore port.

[00:36:19] Thank gosh. And we thought like, everyone was like, “Oh, it takes probably like an hour or two to get off the boat, ’cause we’re on the seventh floor.” We were on like 20 minutes because they thought they were going to screen us or whatever. But they’re just saying, “No, definitely go to your cars.” I assumed to like have white press or something like that. But it was a ghost town. Like I’ve never seen DC or 66th so empty. It’s like a twilight zone. 

[00:36:40] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It was those… 

[00:36:40] Chris Corcoran: We sent everybody home on Friday the 13th, March 13th. When did you get back into Baltimore, was it on Sunday? 

[00:36:49] Caroline Sullivan: I think it was Sunday.

[00:36:52] Marc Gonyea: School’s getting canceled, but the week before I think. 

[00:36:55] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. That’s freaky, freak time, but anyway. 

[00:36:59] Marc Gonyea: You still had a job. 

[00:37:00] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. Thank God. 

[00:37:01] Marc Gonyea: You have a job on a Rubrik. 

[00:37:02] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:37:03] So I remember meeting, I think it was both of you guys, Tommy, Nick Perry. They go, “We’re going to put you on this client call,” or I think he said you’re going to put me back in the SDR role for now.

[00:37:13] I think we have a client call, “Rubrik coming in.” “Is this what you want to do?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely. Happy to help. And then Rubrik eventually came along. Was on there, was I think five other people. And yeah, it really worked out. I loved, I think Sarah was the point of contact Rubrik, her and Brian DeRosa.

[00:37:31] They’re super welcoming. I knew it was a super technical product, but they were super helpful resources and everything. And it definitely helped having such a large team, to go back and forth on it, because I never sold it in the SLED until I can remember, I was always… Stay in local government.

[00:37:48] Marc Gonyea: Education. 

[00:37:49] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:37:49] Marc Gonyea: That’s funny, all the culmination of all of your experience selling through TalkPoints, STEM, some memoryBlue. I remember talking about it, ’cause it sounded a pretty good chance, “She’s going to leave and go more for Rubrik.” Which worked, and you were ready, right, for that opportunity. Even though it’s a technical product like you yet so much game going into that thing.

[00:38:09] And I think that’s reflected in it now. So you went to go work for them and they will a bit… Well, it’s not that easy, like you have to impress them. They have to want to convert you, because they have to cut us a check, a commercial fee. So… and they didn’t convert everyone on the campaign, for some people, not everyone.

[00:38:25] So they converted you and you went over there and what were you doing for them for a little bit? 

[00:38:29] Caroline Sullivan: Same thing. It was a very seamless transition because the accounting executives were supporting or the same ones as I did. They just, “Let’s make this as seamless as possible, put you guys back in there.” I specifically took like a two week break because it was right before the holiday.

[00:38:42] And I wanted a break to refresh or get back into it. Yeah, for sure. Again, just business as usual, just an onboarding paperwork and sign up things and everything. But yes. 

[00:38:54] Marc Gonyea: So you started doing, so you’re doing SLED and what does that mean? Like what did you have to learn? 

[00:38:58] Caroline Sullivan: I had to learn how to sell into them,’ cause they’re definitely a different animal or beast compared to commercial.

[00:39:05] Just the messaging. Yeah, definitely messaging. A good chunk of our products is about cybersecurity, ransomware stories and everything. And obviously a county government’s going to be a little bit more hesitant to be very open about how they’re protecting it and everything. Then a commercial…

[00:39:23] Marc Gonyea: Especially nowadays… data getting accessed and put out there. 

[00:39:31] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:39:32] So you definitely need to like tip-top around, ask like, “Is this okay to dive into?” especially on cold call. I mean there’s specific laws, like you can’t get gifts over X amount of money, gifts in general. That will lead them towards a resolution or something like that,

[00:39:49] ’cause that’s pretty bad. I’ve learned referencing other accounts. I’m like, “Oh, your neighboring counties are Rupert customer. And why not you look at it?” Like, “The talents that are in school districts.” But yeah, just like being more cautious. You definitely can’t like span them with a thousand emails or something like that.

[00:40:08] But little things like that. Just being tip-top shaped, like, what I said before. 

[00:40:13] Marc Gonyea: And you, and…

[00:40:13] So you’re an SDR for, it looks like a year and two months, and you got promoted, into a closing role? That was what you’re doing now. How do you make that leap from SDR to inside sales closer? 

[00:40:24] Caroline Sullivan: It’s definitely not a leap.

[00:40:26] It’s definitely like walking up the stairs type of process, because it is such a big learning curve. And I remember starting at memoryBlue, I was scared to ask questions, ’cause I thought people would be like, “Oh, who’s this dumb person starting?” But now that I’m like here in this role, I’m like, “Thank gosh I asked every question on my mind,” because I know a lot of SDRs wouldn’t make the jump to closing right away. But if you don’t have closing experience, it’s definitely a big jump. It’s a lot of training to it. I’m trying to take webinars, trying to find your own mentors, for example. 

[00:41:01] Marc Gonyea: Some of that, for second. So you got promoted fairly quickly, I think, in that role of a technical product.

[00:41:07] So in a closing role, I mean, you’re not that far in your career really. How are you able to like capture the attention and the mind share of those who make those decisions and coordinate? What are the things you have you had to do? 

[00:41:24] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. So I know a lot about the SDR roles, about the metrics think, “Oh, hit this percentage of this quota and this month.” I think it’s about the personal relationships too.

[00:41:37] Like getting along with the account executives, getting along with your manager, you know higher ups. Like, I mentioned this before we hopped on, but we have a organization within Rubrik called “Women at Rubrik.” 

[00:41:49] Marc Gonyea: “Women at Rubrik.”

[00:41:50] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. It just basically, there are a lot of men in this industry. Yeah, especially, you know, in the technical industry too. So it’s just basically an organization for a women that work at Rubrik, to get together and share ideas, catch up on each other and just know we’re all in this together. Not be cliche or anything?

[00:42:07] Marc Gonyea: No, it’s an issue within the industry.

[00:42:09] There aren’t enough, in tech sales there aren’t enough women doing the role. So we always get asked that all the time by prospects, as well. We’re working on it. If we can find them, we certainly get them in. So, but tell me more about that. So it’s not about the metrics it’s about these and why are these relationships important?

[00:42:24] Caroline Sullivan: It just shows that you’re reliable. Like you can be trusted at the end of the day. I mean, I personally would be more fine for having SDR that I can just pick up the phone and talk to if they’re available, then someone that I don’t talk to ever. And I’m literally experiencing that right now, too. Like I have such a strong relationship with some SDRs and others not so much.

[00:42:42] And I find that my most successful the ones that I talked to. Like send them a quick message being like, “Oh, this person changed positions. Why don’t you hit them up? Hit them up, give me intel and be done with it. And so just being reliable. Always be willing to help, always be willing to learn, be coached. Just easy going, really, at the end of the day.

[00:43:01] So, again, going to the personal touches we touched on before, you’re more likely to be remembered through that than a number that you put up on LinkedIn or something. 

[00:43:10] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:43:11] Chris Corcoran: So talk about the challenge of moving from SDR to closing rep.

[00:43:18] However, you somehow were able to achieve two quotas at the same quarter?

[00:43:24] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:43:24] Chris Corcoran: One as the SDRs and one as an inside rep? 

[00:43:26] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. 

[00:43:26] Chris Corcoran: Can you talk a little bit about that? 

[00:43:28] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, those were a fun three months. So we were on a quarterly quota, one month late. In this role that I’m in now is pretty new in our state and local government vertical at Rubrik. 

[00:43:42] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:43:43] Caroline Sullivan: So I think they were going to have me start mid summer.

[00:43:48] They saw the successes in within I’m selling. And I thought, “Let’s just start from now.” But I didn’t have my backfill as an SDR, which is fine. Which is why I hit two quotas. And, but, so it was a mix of work on my SDR quota, getting through the training, having the inside account executive broad up. But I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do all that,

[00:44:10] if it weren’t to help from the account executives that I work with still today. They literally stood up to that, “Look, I’m going to be your mentor. I want you to succeed ’cause that’s going to help us succeed, because we have team quotas and everything too.” So if I didn’t have them, then I don’t know where I would be.

[00:44:27] And if I didn’t ask all the questions that I had, ’cause outside of the product things with technical, being a closing role it’s a different monster itself. Even just the skills, how to make next steps and everything, and what stages were. It’s a lot. But if I didn’t have the help from, in my resources, from people working at Rubrik, then I definitely wouldn’t have be where I am today.

[00:44:48] So. 

[00:44:48] Chris Corcoran: So you were able to hit both of quotas at the same quarter? 

[00:44:51] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. 

[00:44:51] Chris Corcoran: That’s fantastic. So you talked a little bit about what it’s like being an SDR and kind of servicing opportunities for your AE. Now it sounds like you’re an AE and you have supportive SDRs? 

[00:45:01] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. 

[00:45:01] Chris Corcoran: And is it, the way it works over there, are you assigned or a dedicated SDR or is it kind of just you share the resource, your entire resource team?

[00:45:08] How does that work? 

[00:45:10] Caroline Sullivan: I have dedicated SDRs. And given the fact that my territory is so large, I have a handful of them. But I think over time obviously like, as business grows in state or local government, obviously it’s going to be chopped up a little bit. More people to the team. So yeah. Long answer short, I have a couple of dedicated SDRs.

[00:45:30] Chris Corcoran: So from an AEs perspective, what is it that you like from an SDR? Like what things should SDRs try to do to support their AEs and what sort of things that you don’t want them to do? 

[00:45:41] Caroline Sullivan: Communication is huge. I know I say this probably on like everything that I talked about, but staying in touch saying like, “Oh, I got in touch with this account, but they said ‘no’ because of this reason.” It’s good to know for me,

[00:45:54] ’cause if I reach out to that same account two hours later, I’m going to look very dumb. You need to stop counseling about this. 

[00:46:00] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:46:00] Caroline Sullivan: So communication, quality of leads is definitely huge. And yeah, I’ve definitely been a position or admittedly I’ve given leads to account executives, not just Rubrik, but other clients. Like kind of like quick book for quota, like benefits me, but I get on a call and like, “Oh, this is so cringe.”

[00:46:19] Chris Corcoran: That’s like a campaign slogan. For quota. “Born to 2024.” “Caroline for quota.” 

[00:46:28] Marc Gonyea: I support this message or whatever.

[00:46:35] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, no. Definitely quality. Like as many notes as possible from like a cold call or like any research, so I just know what I’m getting into. But if I hop on a call and it’s like an interview or something, oh it’s y’all laugh at all. Like, wow. Like an hour of my day was blocked off for this call or something like that.

[00:46:53] So all I say I want to help the SDRs as much as I can, set their goal because hitting quota is also stressful. But as the more quality calls that I hop on to, and the more I know going into all, these are the more appreciative I’m going to be. 

[00:47:07] Chris Corcoran: Very good. Very good.  Talk a little bit about how you learned how to close.

[00:47:13] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, so I wish there was a short answer to say it, because it’s such like a whirlwind, but… We had a couple trainings, even like throughout the mentors quote that adopted me and help me. I’ve had a couple of them shadow my calls. Say like, “You should ask these questions,” or like, “Say something about this.”

[00:47:28] I look to chime in and interrupt me if they want to hop in and say something nice about it. We’ve had technical trainings right off the bat. We have this command of message or command of the message training. I think it was a week, like a couple hours every morning before the workday, just to figure out the empathy side of selling. How to really get their pain and really to get that out, how we can solve their problems for them. Because really the end of the day, someone’s buying a solution to help save their butts, basically. Like, “Oh, if you’re not showing this number by the end of the quarter, then what are you doing?”

[00:48:03] And then if you dig deeper into that, they’ll be like, “Oh,” like, “I’ll lose my job if I don’t hit this number,” for example. But yeah, just a variety of trainings. A lot of leaning on other people. A lot of questions asking. And I definitely shaved an hour or two of my time a week just to research what Rubrik does and what’s going on in the market basically, leverage that around. 

[00:48:25] Chris Corcoran: And so you talk about those very technical solution. Do you have sales engineers that help? 

[00:48:30] Caroline Sullivan: Yep, I do. 

[00:48:31] Chris Corcoran: Talk a little bit about is a dedicated SE or do you have it just pulling from like a stable? 

[00:48:37] Caroline Sullivan: I have a dedicated one, but it’s kind of a one to three ratio.

[00:48:41] So like three account executive share one SE. And I’ll give them all a shout out, I don’t know how they’re doing, what they’re doing. Because they’re just, I look at their calendars and they’re so busy all the time, but they do so much for us. But having that counterpart is definitely nice, as much as I want to know all the technical information,

[00:48:58] I try to know as much as I can. If I hear like the slightest slightest like word, technical term, I don’t know. I’m just like, “Hey,” my SE name is Zach, “Zach, can you answer this one for me?” He’ll be like, “Yes.” Get something spot on for us. Yeah. 

[00:49:12] Chris Corcoran: Do you talk about the importance of kind of utilizing a sales engineer?

[00:49:16] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:49:17] So obviously if a customer asks me something that like I don’t want to watch or give them wrong answer or anything, so they’re not going back with the wrong impression. It will look bad if they come back and say, “Oh, you said you do this,” that they asked me, and be like, “Technically no.” But using them, not using them, relying on them for running demos, answering these technical questions,

[00:49:41] it just makes us more trustworthy in our product, like we know what we’re selling to you. It will help us determine if they’re a fit or not. Like if they’re requiring this and this is something you don’t have, like, “Let’s not quote and waste our time with it.” And they have their own network too. Like they run a lot of events, they have their own sales engineer network.

[00:50:00] They worked, they have extensive experience in other, big tech companies. But it’s so important to have an SE that you get along with, because they’re going to be your counterpart, who you are going to work through thick and thin. So you just gotta make sure you get along with them really. 

[00:50:14] Chris Corcoran: So interesting. You got to have good relationships with your SDRs, yours sales engineers, with your management, that’s internally. Very interesting. Okay. So you had to go fully remote? 

[00:50:26] Caroline Sullivan: I am. So technically my position is permanent remote, but we have an office over in Reston Town Center. It’s still closed with COVID.

[00:50:34] I think they’re looking into next year. There’s like a transition period. They sit in the beginning, but they’ve been updating us monthly about it. 

[00:50:40] Chris Corcoran: I see. What do you like about remote or do you like remote? 

[00:50:45] Caroline Sullivan: Well, this is the first time I’ve worn dress pants in like two years. So,… I don’t miss the commute.

[00:50:53] I like having time to myself, just to like think about, reflecting my work day so far on everything. The one thing I do miss is having the social aspect. Like turning to a coworker and be like, “Oh, I just got off the phone with this person,” blah, blah, blah. And they’ll totally be able to relate to that and ask questions about it.

[00:51:12] But if I go to my roommate to say, “Oh, I got off the call with this customer about their data center,” and everything just go into like their size and stuff. They’ll just be like, “Okay.” 

[00:51:24] Marc Gonyea: “You leave now?” 

[00:51:24] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I can’t only type so much on like Slack or something, right? So I’m starting to pick up the phone, like call Brenda or Sarah, for example, to talk them through that.

[00:51:33] But I definitely miss turning my head to like someone at their desk and talking about it. But going back to liken remote. It just keeps me super organized and definitely discipline plays a huge factor in being remote. 

[00:51:45] Marc Gonyea: Huge. 

[00:51:47] Caroline Sullivan: Because you’re by a TV. 

[00:51:48] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:51:48] Caroline Sullivan: You’re by like, I don’t even know, the grocery store or the gym or something like that.

[00:51:53] And like, everyone kind of slips up in their workday from time to time. And I always like feel guilty about it if you’d go to the grocery store during the day or something like that. But going back to this other thing too, it kind of reflects how you’re doing working from home. Like you get kind of like 40% of your clutter or so for example, you’re probably spending too much time in front of your TV or something like that. 

[00:52:12] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:52:13] Caroline Sullivan: So yeah, no, it’s definitely a lot of discipline trying to stay at your desk all day. And it’s okay like to lay on your couch once in a while or something like that. That’s just how I am now.

[00:52:22] Obviously everyone works differently. But yeah, it’s a lot of discipline trying to stay concentrated. 

[00:52:28] Chris Corcoran: So would you describe yourself as an extrovert or introvert? 

[00:52:33] Caroline Sullivan: Introvert, I want to say. 

[00:52:35] Chris Corcoran: So… 

[00:52:35] Caroline Sullivan: I’m not sure to be honest. I’m… 

[00:52:37] Chris Corcoran: Can you shatter the myth about introverts not being in sales or succeeding in sales? 

[00:52:43] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah, definitely.

[00:52:45] Again, like my first day I was so quiet into myself. I was so worried about like, whatever I was gonna think about me or like, if this was the right thing for me. But the more comfortable I got with the people around me and the thought if I’m cold calling someone, I’ll never go to see him in person. Again or something like that.

[00:53:01] So that definitely helped me too. Obviously in a closing role it’s a little bit different. But, yeah. No, the more comfortable I got into like the selling environment and people around me, my coworkers, and just made it more, maybe be more vocal about everything. So. 

[00:53:13] Chris Corcoran: What do you like best about the profession?

[00:53:15] Caroline Sullivan: Probably the challenge. I don’t want to say the money, ’cause it’s obvious, that’s the obvious one. So,… I like the challenge though in like helping people at the end of the day. I find that you go find you the problem that they want to solve, kind of like a game. Like if they’re looking for a specific attribute is the why they’re looking to replace their solution, for example. It’s kind of like for, for me to like, figure that out, whether it’s me or my SE or something like that.

[00:53:39] But again, like if they’re looking to replace something or explore, educate something, obviously there’s a need there. And obviously we want to help as much as we can without bothering them or pushing too hard or something like that. So as long as I’m helping someone out, that’s what I’m looking.

[00:53:53] Marc Gonyea: So you’ve reached the place where everybody wants to go to a lot of people. And a lot of people know, but a lot of SDRs want to get to a closing role. So congratulations on reaching that summit. But let’s talk a little bit about, we talked about this in the prep at The Dip because the dip comes for everybody at some point, right?

[00:54:11] It never goes away. But can you expand on that a little bit, particularly for the people who hope to or aspiring to kinda get the where you are? 

[00:54:18] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I literally saw that book on a desk downstairs before I came up there. 

[00:54:23] Yeah, so obviously sales has its ups and downs. And patience comes a lot when it comes to this, because obviously again everyone wants to jump into closing role, but like even your managers know you’re not going to be ready for it yet.

[00:54:37] So you just gotta wait for the right time, knowing you’re ready and then you can be vocal about it. But going back, everyone goes through their ups and downs in this role, whether it was just like a bad month and not hitting any quota or getting off a really bad crunch sales call, or even like your first cold call that I mentioned before.

[00:54:55] As long as you keep pushing through, like, go back to that call then made a stock or something like that. Kind of learn from, I don’t want to say mistakes or learn from like that bad experience or something like that, or see what you could have done differently. Just utilize your resources and then you keep pushing through, obviously, your successes are just going to be up in the sky.

[00:55:15] So, as long as you keep learning and pushing through those ups and downs, those downs aren’t going to be like as low as they were a year ago on your first cold call or something like that. 

[00:55:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s good advice because people get impatient and, you know, you kind of got stuck in the COVID thing for a second there.

[00:55:34] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:55:34] Marc Gonyea: A lot of people would have quit. When she was an SDR, she got promoted to SDE. She’s close to get promoted at memoryBlue to closure. And COVID came and she had to go back to being an SDR. Right? Now for six months for a little bit, she had learned in the highly technical product. Selling SLED, but then, this what got to, led you to win Phenom, which I didn’t mention in the intro.

[00:55:54] So I used the memoryBlue Phenom, which is great. I mean, I’d always want to call myself a Phenom, but you could officially do it ’cause you officially won a Phenom contest. 

[00:56:02] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:56:02] Marc Gonyea: Right? 

[00:56:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:56:03] Marc Gonyea: Little Caroline Sullivan one day can be like, “Hey, your mom’s a Phenom.” 

[00:56:07] Chris Corcoran: Well, I mean, if you talk about it, you figure out, she beat out some worthy… 

[00:56:10] Marc Gonyea: Oh yes.

[00:56:12] Chris Corcoran: Competitors for that award. One of the ways she was able to do it was, hey she hit her quota two times in the same quarter. She also, in the same quarter, won two sales awards. Top Public Sector Sales Rep Award, and Top Sales Excellence Award. All because she also generated over $16 million in pipeline in 12 months. So what’s your secret? 

[00:56:32] Caroline Sullivan: Just keep going. Like, I always made a challenge for myself in the morning to… I was like, “Oh, if I get a book by 10 o’clock,” then like, ” I’ll go for a walk,” or something like that. I’m just like, I’m a big morning dialer book booker. ‘Cause I hate coming until like 4:30 at the end of the day with nothing.

[00:56:50] “Oh, my gosh, what’s going on?” So, just like little challenges for yourself. That’s what keeps me going obviously, being recognized by people within. Even go what, “Why’s Caroline not really this, not this?” or something like that. So. 

[00:57:02] Marc Gonyea: Talk about that. So you said you were a morning booker? But tell us what that means.

[00:57:06] Like we, Chris and I know, but some people might not know, but it’s good to hear. I want to hear. 

[00:57:11] Chris Corcoran: It was the swimming. Is this the 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM hitting the water. This is it? This is it, morning booker. 

[00:57:17] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. I’m dialing in the morning. I’ve always been about it since, probably since I start on Jeremy’s team. And even like my SDR manager been over at Rubrik, I was like, “Oh, I looked down, I’m going to.”

[00:57:31] “Oh, I know.” I know you’re catching people starting their day, and like, you don’t know what their schedule looks like at three o’clock or four o’clock or something. Clearly they want to wrap up their day and go. I always feel bad if you catch them at 4:59 or something like that, they’re literally getting out the door and beat rush hour traffic or something like that.

[00:57:50] But I always felt comfortable getting a book at 9:30 that morning, then having the day to focus on my other tasks, unless I want to keep going obviously. Instead of getting nothing that morning and then coming into the end of the day. You know, and you can even hear it in their tone too.

[00:58:06] Like you’re frazzled getting on the phone the other day with nothing. And you sound more pushy, and more nervous, and be like, “Come on, please take this,” or something like that. 

[00:58:16] Marc Gonyea: And what do you have the most energy, right? 

[00:58:19] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. 

[00:58:19] Marc Gonyea: The morning or the end of the day?

[00:58:21] Chris Corcoran: We asked people. 

[00:58:22] Marc Gonyea: That’s about 6:00 AM talking about it, you know? So 38, 39, 35 it’s still early. Good. All right. 

[00:58:29] Chris Corcoran: I like to focus in the morning. I also, like you can tell, like, you’ve looked at everything you do on a daily basis, day by day basis. Like that’s the best mentality that you need to have instead of the manana manana manana manana.

[00:58:42] Marc Gonyea: Then it gets overwhelming too. 

[00:58:44] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. You make your checklist. This is what I do. I make a checklist for the day. And I’ve started making it public on my calendar. Be like, “Tasks for the day.” ‘Cause now like, “Oh, people can look at my calendar and see like, ‘Oh look what she’s done.'” And when I’m done with that task or, “I done. Next to it.”

[00:59:00] Marc Gonyea: Holy shit. Yeah. Back it up, back it up. 

[00:59:03] Chris Corcoran: You think Santa Claus has a list. 

[00:59:07] Marc Gonyea: So you got to, when you get up, and you do this list in the morning or the night before, is it like a rolling list? 

[00:59:14] Caroline Sullivan: I pick my lists the night before, just so I can sleep at night. And not be like, “What do I have to do tomorrow? What do I have to do tomorrow?”

[00:59:21] So I make it at a night, sleep a night, wake up to it on my calendar. Obviously like outside of meetings. It really depends for my meetings were like that day, but if I have an open slot or if I’m like back to back all day, I’ll just start a little bit earlier. And hop on, it’s just emails or something like that.

[00:59:40] Marc Gonyea: She’s a perfect person, while working from home can be good for her. Most people don’t have any discipline. 

[00:59:45] Chris Corcoran: No. 

[00:59:45] Marc Gonyea: So it’s not. But I hope the real quick. So this lets you put the list public? So other people can see what you’re working on? 

[00:59:52] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. Because I think SDRs have looked at your calendar anyway so they can schedule.

[00:59:56] So it’s not back and forth with them and with the customers someday. But no, everyone has access to my calendar. So I just write down my list. And… 

[01:00:04] Marc Gonyea: Where’s the list, in the meeting calendar? Is it? 

[01:00:08] Caroline Sullivan: I just write it. Sometimes not to like block off time. I think they know like what’s actually meeting, what’s now. But sometimes I just like put a big block in my day and say, “These are my tasks for the day,” or put something on top. Revive, like a two hour, two hour space.

[01:00:23] I’ll just put my tasks in there and say, “I have two hours to get this done.” 

[01:00:27] Marc Gonyea: Got it. 

[01:00:27] Chris Corcoran: So what I love about that is one, the night before. So while she’s sleeping, the subconscious is already… I’m thinking, I’m not kidding. We’re working on those things. Two, kind of the transparency. Because I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but the fact that you put a list and you share it with other people, you probably.

[01:00:45] Well also the fact that you commit to doing something, and you’ve done that publicly, the likelihood of you actually doing it goes up exponentially. So you’ve built all, your whole career day around being accountable and kind of set yourself up for success. And by the way you learned this from no one, right?

[01:01:07] So like there’s no training that you went to, this is just you being accountable and kind of setting your up self up for success. It’s obviously working. 

[01:01:13] Caroline Sullivan: Yep. Thank you. 

[01:01:14] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. 

[01:01:16] Marc Gonyea: Man. She kills the game. That’s kind of it. I mean, there’s some good couple of notes to end things on, but I look forward to doing this again. 

[01:01:25] Chris Corcoran: Again. Any, any parting shots or words of wisdom for the listeners? 

[01:01:30] Caroline Sullivan: I would just say, you know, we went back touched us on the depth, but I mean, push through. Obviously like there’s going to be days where this job’s just going to give you a headache or like up or down or something like that.

[01:01:41] We’ve all been there. 

[01:01:44] Chris Corcoran: Exactly. 

[01:01:45] Caroline Sullivan: But, no if you just tell yourself and make yourself open to learning, pushing through those bad days, letting people know that you’re open to like learn more. Make yourself more present even for future career activities, or opportunities to. It’s cliche, but the sky’s the limit.

[01:02:01] The more you learn, the more things you can put on your resume or the more you’ll be able to spit knowledge on a sales call or something like that. And if you present yourself to even your higher helps so, you know what I’ve learned outside of your accomplishments, here are my relationships that can vouch for me and everything.

[01:02:17] You’ll have a really solid chance of getting the career that you want. 

[01:02:20] Chris Corcoran: Let’s talk just a little bit about that for one moment in terms of the career that you want. So you’ve obviously been wildly successful as an individual contributor. You talk about swimming and how it’s all kind of an individual contributor model.

[01:02:32] Do you foresee the future for you always to be an individual contributor or have you thought about leadership? Talk to us a little bit about that. 

[01:02:38] Caroline Sullivan: I think for now individual, for sure. I think the next step for me would be account executive having my own patch of states or state or county or something like that.

[01:02:46] I think that would be the next step for me. I guess leadership position, I probably get to it when it comes. I haven’t really thought about that too much yet, because I’m still learning this role. 

[01:02:57] Marc Gonyea: She’s even been out of school for four years. Four years, man. And I’m not saying that I’m just saying more like you, your perspective has obviously evolved so much.

[01:03:06] You’ve seen so much in three and a half years, right? That like you’ve got such a great take on it. And, I mean, it’s so refreshing. You could come and give advice to Chris and I. 

[01:03:19] Chris Corcoran: I didn’t make my list tonight. 

[01:03:21] Marc Gonyea: Check it. I’m like a paranoid freak. I get up in the morning that unfortunately to keep the phone, most of the calendar, as soon as I wake up in the morning.

[01:03:27] But if I do the night before, it will be as like breathing as fast. 

[01:03:31] Caroline Sullivan: Yeah. No, I definitely recommend looking at the calendar, at least like the end of the day, or like… 

[01:03:38] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.  I look at it at night. Very good. Caroline, thank you so much. We appreciate your time and great advice for all the listeners. 

[01:03:48] Caroline Sullivan: Thanks for having me. It’s been a lot of fun.