Episode 76: Justin Henry – Always Bet on Yourself
If you can’t book the meetings, you can’t close the deals. Even five years past his memoryBlue tenure, Justin Henry still applies the skills he learned as an SDR daily in his AE position.
Now an AE at Zoom, Justin knows that working on a small team means having control of the complete sales cycle, but you need to excel at prospecting. Time and again, Justin has watched would-be closers who lack fundamental sales principles struggle to build pipelines.
In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Justin shares insights about transitioning from SDR to AE, how office politics factor into your professional development, and the importance of focusing on all parts of the sales cycle.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Justin Henry
What he does: Account Executive
Company: Zoom
Noteworthy: Justin has worked at Zoom for almost five years. He started as a business development representative and is now a successful account executive for the Canadian market.
Where to find Justin: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡ Bet on yourself. If you want to move up the career ladder and gain new opportunities, you must bet on yourself. Justin, Marc, and Chris talk about why it’s important to never give up. Justin says, “What’s going to help me, my wife, and my family? What strategic decision, in a year or five, is going to make the most sense? And you’ve got to look two to three to five, six years down the line and the big picture in these chess moves — what’s going to make the most sense? […] It was basically that there’s no choice but to get it.”
⚡ Don’t give up when things get tough. What would you say to your past self if you could go back in time to some of the most challenging (and essential) times in your career? Here’s what Justin would advise his younger self. “I would tell myself it’s going to be a very challenging role, but it’s very rewarding for you. Specifically, it’s going to be very fulfilling because you’re going to find enjoyment in booking these meetings and hitting quotas. It’s cliché, but don’t give up because there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel. This is going to propel you into many different and great things.”
⚡ It’s important to maintain a fulfilling company culture even as you scale. Having been on Zoom’s team even before its huge boom amid the pandemic, Justin says the best thing about it is that everyone stayed so kind and supportive. “What was great is that, for the most part, everybody was still so down to earth. We were growing, but everybody was just so nice, and you would see people talk about Zoom more, but it was great. In fact, just a quick plug to our CEO, Eric Yuan. When we were working in the office, when I was a BDR, he would walk around the sales floor and talk to people who wanted to talk for 30, 40, 45 minutes at a time. And this guy had so much to do, and he would come over to our SDR area and talk to us, and it’s like this guy is making time to talk to us. So from the top down, it was really a company just being so genuine and understanding, and that didn’t really change.”
Episode Highlights
You’ve Got to Be a Great Team Player
“If you start forming a bond and you realize that maybe we’re not best together, then that’s actually really good too because then you can say, ‘Hey, I may look at another team.’ But you need to start talking to all the managers, getting to know them and seeing how you could best work with them because it matters a lot. And on top of that, the fact is that if you’re not a good team player, and if you don’t know how to follow directions, it’s not going to work out. That’s something you just need to learn. In order to be a great leader, you’ve got to be a great follower.”
Key to Learning Fast? Take As Many Calls As Possible
“Just take as many meetings as you can, just take as many calls, and then you start seeing all these different scenarios, and it starts to come in. You do this for that, and that for this because you learn a lot from quick takedowns. What’s great are the larger deals; they’re a whole other beast, which is also great, and you learn a lot in those larger deals. I prefer the larger deals. Who doesn’t? But there’s some people that might not.”
Learn from The Top Performers
“I would also recommend talking to the top performers. So whether you’re using Slack here, whether you’re using Zoom chat here, whatever, reach out to some of the top performers and ask them what they’re doing. And not just one. Multiple. Because I always like to take a little bit from each person: I like that. I don’t like that so much. I like this. I like that. I don’t like that.
And that’s how you’re going to grow — by putting in some of these strategies that the top performers are using.”
Reading Books Leads to Self-Growth
“I’d recommend any SDR, any rep, or just anybody to pick up a book. I wouldn’t have said this five years ago. It sounds silly saying out loud, but it’s the truth. In the last three years, I’ve read over a hundred books, and I’ve taken an incredible leap from a personal and professional perspective, and I attribute so much of my success in the past few years to opening so many books.”
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Justin Henry: It’s going to be a very challenging role, but it’s very rewarding for you, me specifically, it’s going to be very fulfilling because you’re going to find enjoyment in booking these meetings and meeting quota. So that’s cliche, but like don’t give up. Right? Because there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel. This is going to propel you into many different great things. In the past. And I feel, every, so couple of years what’s going to, what’s going to help myself, my wife, my family? What decisions strategically in a year two, year five is going to make the most sense? And to that you got to look two to three to five, six years down the line and big picture in these chess moves. What’s going to make the most sense?
[00:01:04] Marc Gonyea: If you made those decisions, right? You made the tougher decision, because imagine if you had gone to, if you had not qualified for president’s club, as you’re turning on the job, slight risk, but there’s a risk you might not have even gotten promoted. Right. Right. And then you would have turned on the promotion and I found a Hawaii. We’d been like, “What dude? What am I doing?”
[00:01:20] Justin Henry: It was a, it was basically like, there’s no choice, but to get it.
[00:01:23] Marc Gonyea: Right. It’s not even an option. Yeah. What’s it in Chris? It was on yourself. You bet on yourself, essentially. You’re going to get to where you need to go.
[00:01:33] Justin Henry: Yeah. I was thinking about my past company. When I was thinking about memoryBlue, thinking about how I wasn’t in contact with Marc or Chris or Mike or Jeannie to say, “Hey, I’m going out to this. But eventually if I got it, it would be known that I got the president’s club.”
[00:01:48] Marc Gonyea: That’s why we’re sitting here now. Yeah. So you did it, how’d you get into the closing role? Talk, well, how did that happen?
[00:01:54] Justin Henry: Yeah, but the closing role was, I mean, that’s something that, that’s, and it’s very fun. The art of going from SDR to AE, just the transition. It’s like, it’s very meticulous. And one thing that is a lot of people don’t like to do this, but it’s the way it is, the office politics, right. I’ve benefited from being in the office to talk to the managers and they kind of plant that seed for a long time. And a classic, “Hey, give us a demo on Zoom.” And I knew the product really well. You got to know the product. You gotta be, you know, strict on setting next meeting, setting proper expectations. So I got the promotion. And what was unique about my situation is, hadn’t, had an opportunity to either join the San Jose team or join the Canada team. And Canada was a brand new team at Zoom. So they’re building out a this Canada team. Okay. And I decided to go to the Canada team because I don’t, I heard maybe you could take a couple of trips down to Santa Barbara. It’s kind of like the wild, wild west still. And I was kind of used to that from memoryBlue and being SDR. And so I was like, you know, “I’ll join this. I’ll join this team and let’s see what the heck happened.”
[00:03:02] Chris Corcoran: More entrepreneurial.
[00:03:03] Justin Henry: Yes. Thank you. More entrepreneurial. And it turned out that, by no fault of his own, the director of the team had like a 100, excuse me, 150 people under him, that he’s trying to manage. And so I had like no help. And there was me and then two others that got promoted at the same time, and we all kind of talked to each other, but we didn’t, we were thrown into the fire. And so we had to, we had to figure it out. And in fact that’s kind of how it’s always been in my professional career. And so I really enjoyed it that way. It turned out to be really great ’cause I, I learned a lot. And then of course, if I ever had really serious questions, I would ask, but you learn so much in those first, like three to six months, and then.
[00:03:42] Marc Gonyea: We go back real quick. Yeah. ‘Cause you kind of did it real quick. You kind of cast it to the side. And, it’s not office politics, but it’s, talk about how you have to position yourself to be considered and to be moved into that position, besides just the numbers. Because it’s clubhouse, right? It’s how are you in the locker room? It’s like, you have to add value to the company that way. You have that boasting people who are top performers who crush it but they’re kind of cancerous in the locker room, right?
[00:04:11] Justin Henry: Yeah.
[00:04:11] Marc Gonyea: So you got to add to the culture. So talk about what that, because people don’t know how to do that. They know what that means.
[00:04:16] Justin Henry: Yeah. I mean.
[00:04:16] Marc Gonyea: They might think it’s bad.
[00:04:17] Justin Henry: Yeah. So you made a great point. I mean, you could, you can be the top dog, and have all the numbers. And you can still get promoted, but you might have a manager that was going to be like, “I don’t want this person on my team” because maybe they aren’t the best at former relationships. Maybe they, they aren’t great with employees or their colleagues. So, I think planting the seed and getting to know those managers is really important. Because if me and Marc aren’t really like vibing and then you, you got to keep trying, right? You got to try 1, 2, 3, 4, talk to him when you get coffee. It doesn’t have to be like the most grand conversation, but just simple like, “How’s it going? How you doing? How’s your day?” And if, if you start forming like a bond, that great. If you start forming a bond and you realize that, maybe we’re not best together, then that that’s actually really good too, because then you can say, “Hey, maybe I want to look another team.” But you need to start talking to all the managers. Right? All the managers start getting to know them and seeing how you would best, best work with them, because it matters a lot. And on top of that, the fact is that, if you’re not a good team player, and if you don’t know how to follow directions, that it’s not going to work out. That’s something you need to just learn. To in order to be a great leader, you gotta be a great follower. So you gotta figure that out.
[00:05:24] Chris Corcoran: How did being a delivery manager change, your perspective and make you perhaps a better salesperson versus had you not been a DM?
[00:05:35] Justin Henry: It was huge because I knew, I knew what the reps were doing that would, kind of, I know I, me, or I like to see differently. So I knew how to address them. And, I knew what I liked when they addressed me in terms of confrontation, right, difficult conversations. And so I learned for, right now from my managers, I’ve had a few, there’s like, ” I know how to make their life easy. Right. I don’t want to make anything difficult on my manager. In fact, I want to, I want it to where, we’re where it is now.” My manager is like, “Do you need anything?” Like, “What do you mean?” Like, “Let me know if you need anything. If not, I have other people I gotta help.” Right. So it’s like, “I’m good. If I need something, I’ll ping you.” And I learned, I learned that as a DM. Right? Just, there are certain things you could do. One, you gotta develop. You can be good at the job, but staying off the manager’s radar, being one of those employees that helps the team, that lifts up the team. I learned all that from, from being a DM and seeing my SDRs, how they reacted to me, how I react to them.
[00:06:32] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s great. I wanna make sure I understand. So you’re in San Jose, working out in San Jose, but selling into Canada. Was it Greenfield, you could sell wherever you want it, or was there a certain geographic patch? Or like, what was your focus?
[00:06:45] Justin Henry: Yeah, no. So that’s exactly what it is.
[00:06:47] Marc Gonyea: Greenfield.
[00:06:47] Justin Henry: Working out of San Jose, selling into wherever, except we had a certain segment. So I’m in the SMB, small business segment. And so, employees 11 to 250.
[00:06:57] Marc Gonyea: Okay.
[00:06:57] Justin Henry: And, you get your accounts. So you have, you have accounts, and let’s say for example, you get a thousand accounts, they don’t use Zoom. You got to go get them to the Zoom. And so it’s very much like, there’s a couple of different teams at Zoom and they’re both incredibly crucial. There’s a value added sales team, which we’ll call it VAST, where companies are using Zoom. And we’re here to explain Zoom phone, and you could use a conference of solution, you could use this. So try to, you know, get them to use Zoom a little more. And then there’s the other team. Right. The acquisition team, they go find new labels, new logos. And I was on the acquisition side because I got that hunter mentality. A lot more prospecting and trying to find creative ways to set things, meetings. And then when you’re setting the meetings, I mean, now you’re running full sales cycles. Now you got, got to do the whole thing. Close it down.
[00:07:48] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. So, what was the biggest challenge in acquisition for all these companies in Canada that just, that weren’t using Zoom?
[00:07:55] Justin Henry: Yeah. I mean, there’s many.
[00:07:57] Chris Corcoran: Of course.
[00:07:58] Justin Henry: I think the biggest is getting the initial meeting is, is very tough. Right. And you’d be surprised at how quickly some reps would give up. So it’s like, “How do I get this meeting? How it get?” As soon as you gave me a meeting it’s like, “This is Zoom. Look how great it is. This could solve this, this, this.” And they’re like, “You know what? That makes a lot of sense. So you have my attention.” But to get the attention in the first place is, it can be tough. For me, it’s still tough for me, but I have many different right ways get it done. I think getting an initial meeting and acquisition is tough. But that’s the biggest challenge, how you overcome it. I mean, there’s so many things that go into prospecting, that’s how you get those meetings.
[00:08:36] Marc Gonyea: It comes back to your roots as an SDR, right? Like that job for all these years we have over 300 SDRs at memoryBlue. All the SDRs listening wanting to get a closing role, the stuff you’re doing now is going to help you.
[00:08:49] Justin Henry: Oh, it’s going to set you apart from the other reps. ‘Cause you’ll be surprised, to no fault of their own I’m sure. Not everybody has a memoryBlue, but they start at. And so they, they might struggle with, well after the first, second, third, fourth time they can’t get this meeting. It’s like, “What do I do now?” It’s like, “Well try this, try this.” I mean, we have like a plethora of things that we can do. And then on attempt 8, attempt 10, attempt 12 we get them in a meeting. And it’s like, and then we start running these sales cycles where the other person’s like, “What would I do? What do I do?” It’s like you don’t offer run.
[00:09:19] Marc Gonyea: You know, why Justin? ‘Cause you don’t want to come to that weekly client call with that in the meetings.
[00:09:23] Justin Henry: That’s right.
[00:09:24] Chris Corcoran: So Justin, in that role, was this all on your own, or were you able to have kind of Zoom SDRs help?
[00:09:31] Justin Henry: Oh, so it’s all on your own.
[00:09:32] Chris Corcoran: It’s all on your own?
[00:09:33] Justin Henry: Yes. In the SMB segment it’s all on your own.
[00:09:35] Chris Corcoran: You’re on your own.
[00:09:36] Justin Henry: You book your own meetings, you do everything. The step up, which is calm, which is 250 to, I think like maybe 3000 employees, they have SDRs because they’re more counseled, little different, but SMB is great because you’re doing it all on your own.
[00:09:50] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:09:51] Justin Henry: You’re doing everything. So you sit in the meetings, and closing the deals.
[00:09:55] Chris Corcoran: So if you can’t SDR, you can’t sell.
[00:09:58] Justin Henry: Oh, no.
[00:09:58] Chris Corcoran: In that role.
[00:09:59] Justin Henry: And that’s why, in order to get there, I mean, you got to really prove yourself as an SDR within Zoom, or they’re going to look externally, which they do a lot to try to find that experience.
[00:10:09] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. And was your manager in San Jose?
[00:10:11] Justin Henry: No actually. So my manager was in Santa Barbara at the time, when I first started.
[00:10:15] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:10:16] Justin Henry: Then my manager went remote, right before COVID my manager was remote.
[00:10:21] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:10:22] Justin Henry: So it was actually really cool. That was another thing is, we didn’t have a manager in the office. It was like a few of us, and that was pretty cool. It was a little different. It was, I like it tho.
[00:10:29] Chris Corcoran: And so you in acquisition, so when you were bringing in a deal, were you able to keep and grow that account or is it you find that first deal and you give it to someone else and I’ll go find another one?
[00:10:41] Justin Henry: That’s a great question. So you are able to keep it for a quarter.
[00:10:44] Chris Corcoran: Just a quarter?
[00:10:45] Justin Henry: So three months, right. But you have that time, and it might have been two quarters. Because I’d just go and find new ones. But, you do have time after you close it to try and get them to take a look at other products.
[00:10:55] Chris Corcoran: Right.
[00:10:55] Justin Henry: So, but then after that, it goes to that vast value of it sales team I was telling you about I have them for the entirety.
[00:11:01] Chris Corcoran: So hunting, this is a pure hunting. You eat what you kill.
[00:11:05] Justin Henry: Pure hunting, which is, which is great.
[00:11:07] Chris Corcoran: And then, how many sales are you making, or are they being expected to make? Is it one a week, one a month? What are they expecting from you in that role where you’re out there just on your own hunting?
[00:11:17] Justin Henry: Yeah. Great, great question. So we have a quota. So we have a quota, let’s say for example, let’s make it easier of $10,000. You need to go, and whatever you do, however you do it, you’ve got to go find $10,000. It could be in one deal, which is very tough. But it’s SMB is more transactional. It’s a lot of like quick take downs.
[00:11:35] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Justin Henry: And however you do it, that’s fine. But you just got to get it done.
[00:11:39] Chris Corcoran: So that’s great. So quick take downs is a little bit like my first sales job. And what was great about that is when you’re learning how to close, you learn a lot through all these different sales cycles. The ones you lose, the ones you win, that really kind of accelerates your growth. Would you agree?
[00:11:53] Justin Henry: Oh 100%. When I first started, just the advice I got was, “Just take as many meetings as you can. Just take as many calls.” And then you start seeing all these different scenarios and it’s like, it starts to come in. Like you do this for that, this for that. And because of the quick takedowns it’s yeah, you learn a lot. What’s great is the larger deals. Is like, it’s a whole other beast, which is also great. And you learn a lot in those larger deals. I prefer the larger deals. I mean, who doesn’t? But there’s some people that might not, I hadn’t met anybody who doesn’t for the larger deals, but those are very intricate too. There’s a lot of details with those large deals.
[00:13:24] Marc Gonyea: What muscles did you have to develop the most gone from an SDR to a closer?
[00:13:29] Justin Henry: I mean, that’s a good question. I think talking with C-levels. I had discussion, discussing with C-levels, because in the term discussing there’s many things in that, but handling conversation with C-levels whether that’s negotiation or price, or whether that’s pushing back, or that’s challenging. Right. And that’s really, I mean, how do you challenge a CEO when you just come from an SDR role? I mean, it’s like, you gotta learn these things. So conversing with the C-level was something that I think is very crucial and something that I’m very happy I learned. Still learning of course.
[00:14:01] Marc Gonyea: We all still learning. So if we look back kind of where you are now, what advice would you have for yourself? Like the night before you started at memoryBlue, your journey, where you’ve ended up?
[00:14:15] Justin Henry: I would tell myself it’s very challenging. It’s going to be a very challenging role, but it’s very rewarding for you. Me specifically, it’s going to be very fulfilling because you’re going to find enjoyment in booking these meetings and meeting quota. So that’s cliche, but like, don’t give up. Right? Because there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel. This is going to propel you into many different great things. So don’t give up. Also for going to get more in the weeds, always be a top of the leaderboard, which I was. So anybody listening to this, I didn’t get any to tell me to say this, but you should always be a top leaderboard in calls. Always. If you’re not number one, you could be top five, whatever, but even we at the top. Because You’re gonna learn so much when you’re at the top, I would also recommend talking to the top performers. So whether you’re using slack here, whether you’re using zoom, chat here, whatever, reach out some of the top performers and ask them what they’re doing. And not just one, multiple. Because I always like to take a little bit from each person that, that I liked. I liked that, I don’t like that so much. I like this. I like that. I don’t like that. And that’s how you’re going to grow, by putting in some of these strategies that the top performers are using.
[00:15:20] Chris Corcoran: So let’s talk a little bit about deals you’ve closed. Do you remember your first deal?
[00:15:24] Justin Henry: Yeah, I remember our first two. I mean, I needed a lot of help from a lot of people. And it was a very like simple, like audio conferencing, like, which is not the biggest, it’s not glorified. Right? So it’s like, you’re selling audio, doesn’t matter, right. It’s right there. But no, I remember coming back and forth with the customer thinking like, “Is he going to accept this? He’s not going to accept it.” Like, “What’s he going to say?” And we went back and forth a couple of times and he was, luckily he was pretty nice. And it was like my first real deal where we went back and forth. I sent out an DocuSign, DocuSign.
[00:15:57] Chris Corcoran: Some big deal.
[00:15:58] Justin Henry: It helps. We finally got that completed DocuSign in the inbox and was just thinking like, “Wow, that was awesome.” And it was just like, it was so long ago, but looking at it, it was like exhilarating. Like, the back and forth.
[00:16:10] Chris Corcoran: A boy becomes a man.
[00:16:12] Marc Gonyea: To the contrary of nine times before he sent it out. Yeah. ‘Cause you don’t want it to be any mistake on there?
[00:16:16] Justin Henry: And it’s like heaven forbid. Yeah. And I used to think I can’t wait til I’m saying these meetings, writing these demos, negotiating, and the simple fact of like getting signatures. And like, it happens all the time now, but that first one it’s just like, it’s something else.
[00:16:31] Chris Corcoran: What’s your favorite deal?
[00:16:33] Justin Henry: Our popular product right now is Zoom phone. Right. So, it’s a cloud phone you could use on your desktop and mobile app. And what’s great about phone is that everyone in the office, most of the time, on this like a unique use case, we have SDRs and some managers, but we’ll assign everyone needs it, needs a phone, so they’re much more, much larger deals.
[00:16:50] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:16:50] Justin Henry: So I do like phone opportunities because they’re larger deals. Over the last year so I’ve done well with larger deals where let’s say, I have five in the last year. I’ve closed all five. That’s not something that usually happens. There’s usually some detail that could get lost and then it just doesn’t work. But the phone deals usually accounts for larger deals. And so that’s why I like it. I love the larger deals, those big whales, I love them.
[00:17:15] Marc Gonyea: Is there any one in particular that comes to mind that is your favorite?
[00:17:18] Justin Henry: I do have one that, at the time, it was a very, one pro, which is like one meeting license customer. I was kind of, “Hey look, let’s get a meeting, let’s talk.” And he was pushing me off, and it was one pro. And usually it’s like, that’s not going to equate too much because it’s one just from like a, a numbers game, you should focus on like something else. But he finally joined a call. We talked phone and it ended up being like probably my second largest deal ever. And they ended up having 250 employees. We got the meetings, we got them phone, we got them webinars, we’ve got them conference rooms. And what was great about this deal is that it was a smooth rollout. They’re all smooth roll outs. It was a smooth rollout. They love it. There’s like no issues. I’m still on chat. Like, we can add external contacts. I’m still on chat with this customer, and we have a great relationship and everything went smoothly. Right. And during deals it’s probably not always going to be smooth, but not every deal is going to be your favorite deal. With this one, we sold the whole suite. They’re very happy with it. I’m happy. And everyone came out on top.
[00:18:19] Chris Corcoran: So what about your most haunting loss?
[00:18:22] Justin Henry: Yeah, I have one that, that comes to mind. It was a deal where we did a POC. So we did a trial. They’re trialing Zoom. And this was like pumped like a three to four month deal which in SMB is a long, it’s a long sales cycle. It was ran so smoothly. They love Zoom, they tested it and they loved it, and we talked to the CEO. They loved it. CEO’s on board. CFO was on board. But I guess, they had, which is pretty common to have these third party IT companies that manage their services. Right? They came out of left field, got in their ear about something else that would make them money. Right. ‘Cause they’re selling, let’s say for example, they’re selling something different than Zoom. It’s going to make them money. They’re going to recommend that product. And this deal was won before they actually signed. And then at the last moment they said, “Hey, we’re actually going to go a different direction.” Myself, my manager, like everybody, we were just like, “We did everything right, but sometimes it’s just not enough.” And that was something where it’s like, it’s a tough pill to swallow, because you did all you could do. But sometimes that’s not enough. That’s just the way it goes.
[00:19:25] Chris Corcoran: And, talk to us a little bit about, you know, what it’s like working on a such a high explosive growth company and how you were able to kind of bring former memoryBlue folks?
[00:19:33] Justin Henry: Yeah.
[00:19:34] Chris Corcoran: With you?
[00:19:35] Justin Henry: Yeah. Well, the hyper-growth of Zoom was, was awesome. ‘Cause I, I’ve met so many great people at Zoom. Some of them in memoryBlue. And what was great is that the culture when you go from, I think I started all this employee like, I could get this wrong, but I think I was like 500 or 600.
[00:19:52] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:19:52] Justin Henry: Somewhere around there.
[00:19:53] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Justin Henry: And now there are like 3,000 or 4,000, like something crazy.
[00:19:57] Chris Corcoran: Unbelievable.
[00:19:58] Justin Henry: What was great is that for the most part I mean everybody was just still so down to earth. I mean, we were growing, but everybody was just so nice. And you would see people talk about Zoom more, but it was created. In a fact, just a quick plug to our CEO, Eric, you on. We are at working in the office when I was at BDR, he would walk around the sales floor and talk to people who wanted to talk for 40, 30, 45 minutes at a time. And this guy has so much to do. And he would come over to our SDR area and talk to us. And it’s like, this guy making time to talk to us. So from the top down, it was really a company of just being so genuine, being so understanding, and so thoughtful. And that didn’t really change. Right. And so it’s still the same. And then I saw James, I just reached out to him and said, “Hey James”, yeah. I said, “Hey, we got an opening on my team in Canada. On the Canada team.” I said, “If you want it, let me know. I’ll refer you.” Is a little bonus for me, you know, but James is awesome. Love to have him on the team. And it kind of worked out to where he finally got in. I mean, it was like three months after he gave me his resume that he’s finally got an interview. ‘Cause they’re just so busy.
[00:21:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Justin Henry: But he got on the team. And now it’s like me, James, like I know that bionic team sec, and we got a lot buddies on the team, we’re like a little, uh, tripod, if you will. It’s like, times are good, and when times are bad, we still just like, you know, talk shit about it. Like whatever, but it’s all good. Like, so bringing Janes along was awesome because James doesn’t have any problems setting those meetings. Right. He’s got so many tactics that he uses, and I want to bring more people along. So I, when the time is right, I’ll continue to let other people know if they want to come, let me know.
[00:21:34] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. So James doing you’re at the exact same role, selling into Canada.
[00:21:38] Justin Henry: Selling into Canada. Same role, same team. Like, I mean, it’s like, eight or nine of us and he’s on the team. So it’s like, it’s pretty funny. I feel bad though ’cause we haven’t been in the office since he joined, and he’s been on the team for like a year and a half, but hopefully we can go back in.
[00:21:50] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Well you just catch them on a Zoom.
[00:21:52] Justin Henry: That’s right.
[00:21:53] Chris Corcoran: Justin. So where do you want to go with this as we kind of close this out? Like, where do you see yourself progressing? How, what would you like to do next?
[00:22:01] Justin Henry: What I’d like to do next? I would like to manage again. Right. So I think, managing again will be great. I have a much better grasp on when I can do to help, perhaps how I can play into my strengths and playing to my weaknesses. So management is not off the table. Was definitely on the table. So I’m paying attention to that. And for right now, I’m still developing my skills as a rap. I’m learning new things all the time, and new negotiations, how to challenge respectively and how to be aggressive respectively. And so I’m still learning. So things are good. And I know things are good because things can be bad in the sales world. So right now, things are good and I’m going to enjoy it. When the time is right, and management and there’s an opportunity I’m not going to look away. Right. I’ll look at it. And that could definitely be on the horizon.
[00:22:44] Marc Gonyea: And so for listeners, how long have you been at Zoom?
[00:22:46] Justin Henry: Coming up on five years.
[00:22:48] Chris Corcoran: What a run, what a run.
[00:22:50] Justin Henry: So we got in at the right time.
[00:22:52] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
[00:22:53] Justin Henry: And still love it.
[00:22:54] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. That’s great. Very good.
[00:22:56] Marc Gonyea: Well, I’m proud to say that, I know Chris is, that you worked here.
[00:22:59] Chris Corcoran: Definitely.
[00:23:00] Marc Gonyea: You’re a great along the great representation of what Chris and I try and cultivate. And you were part of the office early. In like any offices we’re growing there’s ups and downs, challenges of highs and lows, and like you came out on top. So we appreciate you coming here to the podcast. We’ll listen, love the fact that you’re a crushing it.
[00:23:18] Justin Henry: Thank you. If I could say one last thing before we jump off. I’d recommend any SDR, any rap, anybody to pick up a book. I know, I wouldn’t have said this five years ago. It sounds silly saying out loud, but it’s the truth. In the last three years, I’ve read over a hundred books and I’ve taken an incredible leap from a personal perspective, from a professional perspective, and I attribute so much of my success in the past few years to opening up, opening up so many books. In a fact, I kind of cheat, I was doing on audible, but I still get it done. And I think that’s going to propel so many reps listening, so many SDRs. That if you want to grow, ’cause I grew, and it was in part of these books. So I highly recommended, I think it would really make your quality of life a lot better.
[00:24:07] Marc Gonyea: Recommendations, man.
[00:24:08] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Justin Henry: Extreme ownership, Extreme Ownership. You Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins. That’s always what I recommend.
[00:24:16] Marc Gonyea: I love his videos.
[00:24:17] Justin Henry: His videos are great. Yeah. It was top two, and then if you want to get into more personal like not, I mean, those are both self-development personal-professional. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. That’s a great book. And then, I mean there’s just so many.
[00:24:31] Marc Gonyea: But how about those, top three?
[00:24:33] Justin Henry: That’s the top two. Extreme Ownership and David Goggins. That’s going to set you aside from understanding that life is fucking tough. Right?
[00:24:39] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:24:39] Justin Henry: You gotta make yourself stronger in order to get through it. And there’s so many ways you can do that. And one that I do is just pick up these books, and now I’m just, now I feel like I’m so ready for so many different obstacles that get thrown at me, and then attributed to reading.
[00:24:53] Marc Gonyea: That’s great.
[00:24:54] Chris Corcoran: You got a lot of great perspective because you know, a lot of people might think, “Oh, it must be great selling at Zoom, pandemic,” but you were there well before that. And you’ve got enough self-awareness to know that it’s not always going to be like this, so I’ll enjoy the ride while I can, but also prepare myself for when the storm comes. ‘Cause going to come at some point.
[00:25:11] That absolutely will.