Episode 96: Yacine Allaoua -From Public Sector to Private Sector

Yacine Allaoua highlights how work in the public sector is full of opportunities to improve people’s livelihoods and make a difference. The public sector is an environment driven by the quality of service, rather than profit. It works with a mission and vision, allowing you to grow a true passion for the work you’re doing and well-rounded knowledge to do it well.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Yacine Allaoua, Federal Account Executive of Strategic Accounts at Chainalysis, breaks down the differences between federal sales and private sector sales, discusses the advancement of an individual in both areas, and points out the differences between working for a market leader vs. selling for a challenger.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Yacine Allaoua

💡 What he does: Yacine is a federal account executive – strategic accounts at Chainalysis.

💡 Company: Chainalysis

💡 Noteworthy: Yacine is a first-generation Algerian American born and raised in the Washington area. He attended a Montessori School to learn English, and from there, he went to a French international school and then to Marymount University. He received his BBA in General Business/Marketing. He earned money waiting tables for a while, and then he started working at memoryBlue. Yacine is a driven, multilingual professional who is immensely passionate about the high-tech industry, most notably cryptocurrency/blockchain, and the power that this technology can bring to the world.  

💡 Where to find Yacine: LinkedIn | Website

Key Insights

⚡ Working in the public vs. private sector. Working for the public sector, Yacine noticed how it differs from the private sector. According to him, one of the great things about the public sector is that it serves the public. Solving the problem efficiently requires preparation, research, and doing what is expected of you; the private sector can go much quicker and with fewer folks involved. “Private sector can move quicker. Public sector, there’s so much that you need to know about. One person is not making a decision; there are several people you need to sell to. Once you sell the meeting, the deal, et cetera, then you move on a contract, and you’re selling and closing the deal another 50 times, and so it’s a longer process. That being said, you really feel like you’re solving problems and you’re supporting a mission. And so, for me, for folks that are maybe starting out in the public sector, I would say, ‘What is their mission?'”

⚡ In SDR calls, it’s important to understand your technology. One of the tasks of an SDR is to call someone they have never spoken to before and schedule a conversation about the service they are selling. Yacine was very successful as an SDR and was able to get in the door through a phone conversation. Yacine points out that you should not start a call without the upfront contact and an understanding of what you’re selling. “If you don’t understand what you’re representing, then how can they? But also my big thing was just, ‘Don’t give a lot.’ I think early on, I gave everything, and then I realized, ‘Well, if I give everything, then why are they gonna go for the meeting with the AE, which I’m trying to set up?’ And for me, there’s an art in that of turning those questions into, ‘Hey, it sounds like there’s interest,’ but also being like, ‘Hey, I’m not the guy.’ Like, ‘I’m the tip of the spear, the outreach guy. I’m the biz dev guy, whatever your key phrase was there. Let me tee something up.’ And I also think that depending on who you were talking to. If I was talking to a CIO, I didn’t ask for 30 minutes, I asked for 15. And I told the AE that I was representing, ‘You have 15 minutes. This is a CIO.'”

⚡ Work hard if you want to move faster. Although many people think of federal sales as slow sales, Yacine notes that federal salespeople can progress just as quickly as those in the private sector, if they have the desire and competitive spirit. “Whether you’re first, fourth, 10th, you’re always looking to climb the ranks. For me, it’s just about working harder than the next person. If you know that you’re not working as hard as you can possibly work, that you’re not overturning each rock that you could possibly overturn. I guarantee you somebody hungry is out there doing that. And so, they’re going to come and take your food. At the end of the day, they’re going to take your meal.” 

Episode Highlights

The World of Federal Sales 

“If you don’t have a plan, if you’re just shooting darts on the wall in federal, you’re not going to be very successful because you’re probably going to talk to two people when ten are making a decision. And so I think there are a lot of strategies involved, and I love that; going back to the entrepreneurial spirit, I get to work with a team, with the solutions architect, where they are engineers, customer success managers, all of these various resources. And I love being able to work collaboratively as a team and align towards a common goal. […] And to quote my current sales leader, ‘Don’t win alone, don’t lose alone.’ And so, you never wanna be a single point of failure, but you also wanna understand that, like, ‘I am not gonna know all the answers, I’m not gonna have all the perspectives, and I’m not gonna have all the same perspectives.’ And having different ones [perspectives] and all coming together to figure out that strategy together, there’s something powerful in there.” 

Working at Chainalysis

“We’re a crypto and blockchain data company and are the market leader. I’ve always worked for the challenger, and it’s awesome to work for the leader now and help grow our footprint across both private and public sectors globally. So that part’s been exciting — looking towards the future. I think I’ve always had this split in my career where I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s just go for it, move to Europe somewhere, either build a team or take on a new kind of vertical or something to that effect.’ Maybe if you’re at a smaller startup, maybe it’s not this company, they’re like, ‘Hey, we wanna send you to start the region in Europe, et cetera,’ because, with my background, I’ve got family over there. And then, with my background, I feel like I can probably do a pretty solid job. I speak French, Spanish, Arabic, and English, and so with those four languages, you can hit a good amount of Europe. You can hit North Africa. You can hit the Middle East. And so, I’d love to see if I can be successful in a role like that. So I’d probably see that at some point being maybe a future move. That being said, I still love where I’m at now with Chainalysis. I’m just as excited to get out of bed every day.”

Working for a Market Leader vs. Selling for a Challenger

“Working for a market leader, it’s proven. So there are going to be some times where folks are just going to come directly to you; you’re going to have a lot more inbound opportunities. But also, folks are going to talk about you. And so you’re going to have that word of mouth that goes around. And so, if you do things in a good manner, and you constantly exceed expectations, word gets around. So that part is super exciting because, a lot of times, you don’t need to introduce the company as much as what the company can do forthrightly. […]

Selling for a challenger is super fun as well because the wins are fewer and far between, but when you get the wins, they’re that much more fun to celebrate. 

I think it’s scale. What I learned is that you might be in [the running for] one for every ten deals your competitive counterpart is. So if I’m selling, for example, to the Department of Justice, he might have ten deals with them, whereas I’m just competing with him on the one. And so, you have less at-bats to make a mark, and understanding that it’s also like, ‘I’m the kind of guy who wants to go after everything.’ And you have to understand where you have more chances of winning if you don’t have the right resources to go after everything.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Yacine Allaoua: If I write an email, you don’t know me, and I’m asking for your time. Everybody’s busy in this world.

[00:00:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:00:04] Yacine Allaoua: Why are you gonna gimme your time? And so, I think for any new SDR, whether public or private sector, if you read an email, or if you listen back to a call, and you can’t answer that question for yourself, then how can the person who has no idea who you are, answer that question and say to themselves I’m gonna give you time? 

[00:00:41] Marc Gonyea: Yacine Allaoua in the house. What’s up, man?

[00:00:46] Yacine Allaoua: Hey, nothing much, Marc. How are you? 

[00:00:48] Chris Corcoran: The pride of Algeria? 

[00:00:52] Yacine Allaoua: Hopefully, after the podcast, they still see me in that, uh, in that light, right? 

[00:00:57] Chris Corcoran: The multilingual, the Kobe Bryant’s. 

[00:00:59] Marc Gonyea: There, we have, we don’t have many people in position in business ever, we speak two or three languages. This guy speaks four. 

[00:01:06] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:01:07] Marc Gonyea: That’s, that’s a talent.

[00:01:08] Chris Corcoran: That is impressive.

[00:01:09] Marc Gonyea: But that’s not his biggest talent. We’re gonna get into that. Yes. So, Yacine, welcome. Thanks for joining us. 

[00:01:16] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:01:17] Marc Gonyea: It’s been a little while. It’s been a long time as my Eric being, like to say, 2015 was your departure.

[00:01:24] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:01:24] Marc Gonyea: October 2015. Yo, we’re coming up on seven years, Corcoran. 

[00:01:30] Chris Corcoran: Shit.

[00:01:31] Marc Gonyea: We’re getting old, but when age comes, experience and stories to talk about. 

[00:01:36] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:01:36] Marc Gonyea: So, before we get into yours, let the audience know, and Chris and I, fill us in on, like, a little who you are, where you’re from, where you grew up, the little backgrounds, we connect with you a little bit on a personal level, and people can relate, those, those who are listening. 

[00:01:48] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, absolutely. So, Yacine, right, um, I, my, my ethnicity, and my background is from Algeria. I’ve got two parents that were born actually in Algeria when it wasn’t even independent yet, so they’re actually older than the country itself. 

[00:02:01] Marc Gonyea: Wow.

[00:02:01] And so, you know, they worked hard.

[00:02:03] Chris Corcoran: What country was it before? 

[00:02:04] Yacine Allaoua: It was colonized by the French. So, you know, they’re born into French territory, right, and the revolution was happening. So, the in, the revolution for Algeria’s independence was happening when they were born into the world. So, they were born into that kind of instability, right, and so, with that, they really, you know, busted their behinds to first go to the UK, and then come here to, uh, the US.

[00:02:22] And so, I’m a first generation, you know, American Algerian, born and raised here in the, uh, the DMV, the Washington DC area. 

[00:02:28] Marc Gonyea: Where were you born?

[00:02:29] So, funny enough, I’m a typical DMV transplant. I’m born in DC, I grew up in Maryland, and then I went to college in Virginia, so I tackled all three, just for good, you know, measure.

[00:02:39] We’ll come back to, but now you live in Maryland. 

[00:02:41] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. So, now living again in Maryland, although I lived, I live downtown for close to a decade, right. And so, when I was actually coming to memoryBlue, part of my interview process was like, “Hey, you don’t have a car. How are you gonna get here?” Right.

[00:02:51] Right when the, right when the metro was opening in Tysons, right, so.

[00:02:55] Marc Gonyea: So, let’s back up, sorry, ’cause I, I did jump ahead, which is I’m prone to do, just go back to, so you grow, grew, grew up, born in

[00:03:01] Yacine Allaoua: Born in DC, DC, yep. I went to a Montessori school just to kind of learn the English language, right, and then from there, I went to the French International School.

[00:03:08] Marc Gonyea: What was the language spoke in your house when you were growing up? 

[00:03:11] Yacine Allaoua: Oh, it was a, it was a multitude,

[00:03:12] Marc Gonyea: Really?

[00:03:12] Yacine Allaoua: I mean, you know, as you grow up, you try to, you’re living here, so you, you, you’re heavy on English, but my parents really wanted to force the French, the Arabic, to make sure that we didn’t lose that.

[00:03:21] So, I mean, in one sentence at our house on, on one a week evening, you could hear three languages in that same sentence.

[00:03:27] Marc Gonyea: When your father was upset at you, or your mother, I’m sure it happened a quite bit. 

[00:03:31] Yacine Allaoua: A, a, a, it was Arabic.

[00:03:31] Marc Gonyea: Arabic.

[00:03:32] Yacine Allaoua: It was Arabic. 

[00:03:33] Marc Gonyea: Did they let you up on, let you a bit?

[00:03:36] Yacine Allaoua: They went down, they went back to the mother tongue where they had all the insults down, right? 

[00:03:39] Marc Gonyea: Right.

[00:03:40] Yacine Allaoua: And they could really go at you, so.

[00:03:42] Marc Gonyea: Did you really upset at someone referring to you? Well, I wanna give them a shout-out before, like, Chris and I got to work with you for a while, we’ve stayed in touch with you over the years, you’ve been great to the business, you’ve been great alumni, and you were great when you were here.

[00:03:53] Shout-out to your parents.

[00:03:54] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:03:55] Marc Gonyea: They’ve done seriously, they’ve, they’ve done, they’ve done a great job, as far as I can tell. All right, so keep going back to where you grew up. Tell us about that Montessori school. 

[00:04:01] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Montessori school, then the French international school, right, and, um, you know, made, made a ton of awesome friends. I think when I went through it, I kind of hated it because I was the only kid that went to school till 5:30, you know, most days, right, whereas everybody’s in the park playing around. And so, but, you know, like most of my best friends now, my network, et cetera, I mean, it consists heavily of some of those folks that I met there, and those.

[00:04:21] Marc Gonyea: Talk about that school. Yeah. 

[00:04:22] Yacine Allaoua: Sorry. 

[00:04:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:04:23] Yacine Allaoua: So, ’cause people thought, I was at the French International School, people, like, what the hell’s he talking about? 

[00:04:26] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:04:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Break it down. 

[00:04:28] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, it’s French International School, Lycee Rochambeau, in French, it’s in Bethesda, Marilyn. And there you’re gonna have, I mean, it’s a melting pot of cultures, right? You’ve got sons of ambassadors, a lot of world bank group, you know, parent kids or kids of, of world bank parents, if you will, right. 

[00:04:42] Yep. And all of the NGOs, all of the international organizations, and then you’ve just got folks, right, that are living here, maybe working for private sector companies, and have their kids, and they’re coming from kind of similar backgrounds as me. So, still a small school though, right, my graduating class was 120, and that was one of the biggest ones in the school history. 

[00:04:58] Marc Gonyea: And it was, what’s in French?

[00:05:00] Lycee Rochambeau

[00:05:01] Marc Gonyea: The whole thing’s in French? You go to school,

[00:05:03] Yacine Allaoua: Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:04] Marc Gonyea: all the classes in French?

[00:05:05] Pretty much most of them, except for actually like, you know, your Spanish class, you could do, um, languages. So, Spanish, German was one, Italian was another. And then, you had English and American history.

[00:05:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:05:14] Yacine Allaoua: Those two were in English, other than that, everything was in French. So, when I went to college, I was great at math, but my, my kind of struggles initially was, I just need to know what that word is in French that you’re telling me to calculate, right, like integer, integer, right?

[00:05:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:05:29] Yacine Allaoua: Like that word was absolutely foreign to me going into college, right? So, there was a bit of a transition where I had to learn like the English concepts for what I already knew, but in another language.

[00:05:39] Marc Gonyea: And why did you have to go to school till 5:30?

[00:05:41] Uh, it’s just the French curriculum.

[00:05:43] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause the French, they’re not known for working long hours, like.

[00:05:46] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, you know, they, they work too hard during your youth going through your, your educational process, and then, they’re very notorious for striking any given occasions. So, you’re not wrong there. 

[00:05:55] Marc Gonyea: No strike in High School. No, but also why school’s to 5:30, like? 

[00:05:58] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s just the curriculum, right? The curriculum brought you till then, I mean, you know, we get our High School diploma after 11th grade, some people will just leave and go to college, but the whole point that your parents are really paying that money,

[00:06:08] it’s for you to get your international and your French baccalaureate. So, I mean your whole senior year is just studying for that, and, I mean, I’m talking, these are, they could give you a one pager and tell you to write eight pages on what the author was trying to say in like the 1700s, right, and there’s no right or wrong answer, they don’t know what the author was trying to say, either right. But so, there was a lot of different things, and, you know, I, looking back on it now, I, I love it, right, because, you know, I went to college, and I knew a lot of things that a lot of folks just had never learned before.

[00:06:36] And so, it gave me kind of a, an extra step, if you will. I felt over others where, you know, I wasn’t the best student. But then, I was like, dang, but like I know a lot of things, right? And so, that, that kind of got me to say in college, like,” All right, let me kind of grind, let me get some good, some, you know, good grades, let me get my business degree, and let me get out into the world.” Right?

[00:06:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:06:54] Yacine Allaoua: So, you know, I do look back on it with absolute positive thoughts. I stay close with some of the teachers, et cetera, so yeah. And now, I coach there. So, I guess I wasn’t that bad that they brought me back as a contractor, so.

[00:07:05] Marc Gonyea: That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. 

[00:07:07] Chris Corcoran: What are you coaching?

[00:07:08] Yacine Allaoua: Soccer. So, I’ve had a, 

[00:07:09] Marc Gonyea: the beautiful game, Corcoran, come on.

[00:07:11] Yacine Allaoua: the game that the world abides by, but

[00:07:13] Marc Gonyea: It’s not a beautiful game. 

[00:07:14] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, exactly. But, uh, I’ve, I’ve been coaching a team that are now sev, they’re going into seventh grade. They’re 13-year-olds, but I’ve had ’em since they were seven. 

[00:07:21] Marc Gonyea: Oh. 

[00:07:21] Yacine Allaoua: So, been a fun ride, and it’s just, it’s super rewarding, and it’s also a great way to just turn off, right, from what you normally do. Sales is not, you know, you have great days in there, you have brutal days, right? So, it’s you go, and you train these little kids that are just so happy to be there and just so happy to play and learn, and, you know, you exit and whatever happened in your day, if you had a rough day, I mean, it’s just, it’s not important at that point, right, there’s, you get that bigger picture sense from that? 

[00:07:46] Marc Gonyea: When you do get upset at the players in your team, what language do you yell at them in? 

[00:07:50] It depends on the players. It depends on the player. No, when I say that, because, you know, me too, right. Growing up, you know, you have everything in friendship by the time you got to sports or your, your team it’s English, right? 

[00:08:00] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:08:00] Yacine Allaoua: And so, some kids wanna talk in English, and I’ll talk to them in English. Some, you know, are new to the country. And so, they don’t actually speak English yet, they’re learning. And so, I’ll talk to them in French, you know, I’ll meet them where they’re most comfortable. 

[00:08:12] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, going back this time, speaking of kids, let’s go back to you as, as kid. What were you like as a kid? A little like this whole, you’re in tech sales now. 

[00:08:18] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:08:19] Marc Gonyea: Working with Uncle Sam. 

[00:08:19] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:08:20] Marc Gonyea: But did the sales thing turn up?

[00:08:22] Yacine Allaoua: Oh, yeah.

[00:08:23] Marc Gonyea: What did you, what’d you think you wanted to be when you were going to the French International School with, with, you know, some of your cronies? 

[00:08:28] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, no, I’m, I was a terror, right, and, and in a way where it’s like, I just, I had so much energy, I was bouncing off of the walls, I mean, you guys could probably see it now and I can’t even sit straight here.

[00:08:38] Marc Gonyea: You were terrible, remember? 

[00:08:40] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, I, I’ve got loads of energy. So, I just, I was always, you know, active. It, wasn’t, you couldn’t just sit there and relax if you needed to watch me, it was hands on, right? 

[00:08:48] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:48] Yacine Allaoua: And I think I always knew that I had a business entrepreneurial sense, and that I wanted to go into something like this, to give you guys a story, right.

[00:08:54] Is like early on, I found, uh, just on the ground downtown, right, like a, a “Yes, we’re open. Sorry, we’re closed” sign, and I hung that up on the fireplace, and with my Hot Wheels, I ran a Hot Wheel rental business, and, you know, if, if, if you look at it now, my business practices might have been illegal

[00:09:11] Marc Gonyea: Yes. 

[00:09:11] Yacine Allaoua: because what I did is, so my parents would never come home before 7:00 PM, so we would close at 6:00, so they couldn’t return that Hot Wheel for multiple days. And so, there’s late fees then getting detached. And so, you know, I was, I was not only were they buying me the Hot Wheel, but then I was renting out the Hot Wheel and buying another six Hot Wheels for my fleet off of that one rental, right? 

[00:09:31] And so, I mean, it was definitely, uh, some deceptive business practices going on over there, but kind of just got me going to like, “Hey, I’d love to own a business. I’d love to, to run something, I’d love to just, you know, be able to kind of take bets, take chances, fail fast, and, and learn from ’em, and just kind of have a full business experience in my life.”

[00:09:49] So, that’s kind of what led me to business school and then, you know, to you guys, right? 

[00:09:53] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. So, have, what was the last time you re, you returned to Algeria or, or actually went to Algeria? 

[00:09:57] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, 20, summer 2018. 

[00:10:00] Chris Corcoran: Okay.

[00:10:01] Yacine Allaoua: Um, you know, growing up, it was yearly, and very early on, I just get shipped out there, right, so that was how I learned Arabic. It was, was, you know, hey, my parents don’t have summer vacation, we don’t have summer vacation like our kids do, right? 

[00:10:12] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:10:13] Yacine Allaoua: And so, they were like, all right, June 20th arrived, you’re on a plane, right, so I, very early on, I mean, probably by eight, nine years old, I’m flying alone.

[00:10:20] I’m going there, you know, my uncles or my cousins will be meeting me at the, the airport in Algiers. And then, I would stay, you know, my mom is a bit from the north, my dad from the south. And so, I would just ship between, you know, kind of the two sides of the family and hang out with my cousins.

[00:10:33] Yacine Allaoua: And for me, it was awesome because it’s like, you’re having a sleepover every night, your parents are like thousands of miles away, you know, your, your aunts and uncles are always gonna spoil you. And so, uh, it was fun, but so I went back yearly, and then, you know, as you grow older and stuff, you gotta kind of, you know, you don’t get as much PTO, you gotta plan things out.

[00:10:49] So, try to keep it every other year. 

[00:10:51] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:10:51] And, of course, the pandemic kind of just completely threw a nail in, in sort of the, the cadence of which I would go back and see family. But, I mean, I’ve got a ton of extended family that still lives there. 

[00:11:01] Chris Corcoran: Nice. What have your parents said in terms of how much has changed?

[00:11:05] I mean, so much from when they were there, right? I mean, e, even just from like, you look at smartphones and stuff, I mean, it, some of these people have like three lines, right? Like, I’ve got cousins who have no job and three cell phones, three lines, right? It’s just, it’s a completely different world where everything is connected. 

[00:11:20] Chris Corcoran: Uh-huh.

[00:11:20] Yacine Allaoua: Back then, there was no connection, right, I mean, we were not connected to, you know, some of the integral parts that we use today, the internet and some of these technological innovations that we have, right. And that’s why, you know, for example, I’m so big on, on the field I’m in now, cryptocurrency, and, and blockchain, right?

[00:11:34] Because anybody with a smartphone can participate in the global economy.

[00:11:38] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:11:38] Yacine Allaoua: You don’t need a mailing address, you don’t need a bank address, or a bank account, right? And those are some of the things that, that kind of continue to persist today. If you want to take money out from an ATM, and by the way, those are very few and far between, you’re, you’re getting shafted on the exchange rate, right?

[00:11:52] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:11:52] Yacine Allaoua: You’re probably losing 50% of your money. And so,

[00:11:54] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:11:54] Yacine Allaoua: a lot of people don’t, there isn’t a stable financial system to count on over there. And that is the reason that a lot of people still kind of wanna leave, right, they wanna find whether it’s educational opportunities abroad that’s then gonna lead them to their careers.

[00:12:06] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. 

[00:12:07] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:12:07] Chris Corcoran: Very good. 

[00:12:08] Marc Gonyea: Got it. All right. So, you went to college locally. 

[00:12:09] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. 

[00:12:10] Marc Gonyea: Right, and what, what’d you major in, and what’d you think you wanted to do when you were in school? 

[00:12:13] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, so I, I did a BBA, a little small focus in marketing. And so, I graduated in 2013, so it was still kind of a bit tough after the crash in ’09

[00:12:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:12:22] ] Yacine Allaoua: to find things. So, that was my humbling experience to understand that what you probably learnt you might not go and do. Like, I really wanted to find a marketing gig, right? 

[00:12:30] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm 

[00:12:30] And you just couldn’t find anything. And so, you know, for a while I waited tables just to kind of bring in some money, right, be able to kind of live and whatnot, but I was still looking around. And then that’s what kind of got me to create a LinkedIn, and, you know, just kind of learning like, okay, there’s a social media for professionals, like, I should probably get my resume on there, right, let me see what comes of it.

[00:12:48] Yacine Allaoua: And, you know, I think the next story is probably the, the fun one with, uh, with Chris here. 

[00:12:52] Chris Corcoran: And before we get onto that, what hap, what happened to the Hot Wheels operation? 

[00:12:56] I, you know, I cannot remember what happened. I think, I think we,

[00:13:00] Marc Gonyea: It was a strike. 

[00:13:00] Yacine Allaoua: yeah, I, I think I probably grew up, probably got into the, the n64, uh, the regular Nintendo, played a little bit of Super Mario, and so, just kind of progressed towards, “All right, let me be more of a kid,” right, but, I mean, I kept always reading, just like business books we’ve been geared towards kids. How to save money, right, how to save money in different manners, right, maybe grow money here, throw it into an account that’s exposed to the market, right, I learned, like, at nine-years-old, what blue chip stops are, and the slow growth, slow consistent growth that you can get from those,

[00:13:29] right, so, every time I’d make money, shoveling driveways when there was a snow day, or, you know, pedaling out Hot Wheels to my parents, and by the way, to all of their friends at dinner parties, that was a very, very lucrative side, side hustle there. You know, I, I’d give my dad the money, and I’d be like, “Hey, throw that into my account.”

[00:13:46] Right, throw that into my investment account. And so, it, it slowly grew right to where I could use it to make, you know, once I graduated college a down payment on a, on an apartment. 

[00:13:53] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:13:54] Marc Gonyea: There you go, man. Wow. All right. So, so you’re, so you’re doing your thing.

[00:13:59] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:13:59] Marc Gonyea: Beginning your investment in real estate, which I know you doing some stuff now, and that actually based on where you live and all the jobs, but you waiting tables?

[00:14:07] Well, what happened? Like, how did you ’cause you didn’t know one who had worked here? 

[00:14:12] Yacine Allaoua: Technically, technically, yeah.

[00:14:13] Marc Gonyea: Active, you were like in touch with them. 

[00:14:15] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:14:15] Marc Gonyea: They were like, “Hey, don’t you come work here.”

[00:14:17] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:14:17] Marc Gonyea: That sort of thing. What happens? 

[00:14:18] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, you know, again, make a LinkedIn profile, right, take a selfie in front of my orange apartment wall. Get my picture and my face out there, right? And, and I say that just to say, you know what I mean, like, these days you have all these professional headshots, et cetera, like just take a picture of yourself, show your visual, show that you’re somebody that’s put together. And also, you know, you humanize yourself to folks reaching out to you.

[00:14:41] Marc Gonyea: Sure. 

[00:14:41] Yacine Allaoua: Right, they, they’re visualizing who they’re reaching out to. And that, that’s also, you know, part of sometimes the struggle of being an SDR, but also, sometimes, kind of the, the relief when you have a bad day, right, you don’t know what these people look like, right, but to go back, you know, I, I make that LinkedIn profile.

[00:14:55] And I get a call, right, and I do not know B2B sales at this point, right, I mean, I know it exists, but I, I don’t know about memoryBlue. I don’t know anything. And, uh, Chris Corcoran is on the other line in this call. So, Chris Corcoran

[00:15:07] Chris Corcoran: This is all on me.

[00:15:09] Yacine Allaoua:  calls me October 2014. This is November 2014, October, November 2014.

[00:15:14] Yacine Allaoua: Let’s guesstimate, right.

[00:15:15] Chris Corcoran: Oh, wow. 

[00:15:16] Yacine Allaoua: And so, he’s cold calling me, and actually what he’s doing is he’s training, Joey Cohen, Joey,

[00:15:21] Chris Corcoran: Oh, my goodness, Cohen. 

[00:15:22] Yacine Allaoua: Joey Cohen, who, who I love and, and continue to remain in touch with to this day, right? Joey was moving to, I guess, recruitment, right? And so, Chris was running through the sheet music, just kind of training him.

[00:15:32] And I was the, I was the guy, and, and, of course, Chris, you know, being a good, you know, seller, and, and just knowing how to kind of build that rapport and close very quickly and not give too much, he sees that I went to the French International School, talks about Philippe Ghattas, who, who used to work here, right? 

[00:15:49] Marc Gonyea: Fiji.

[00:15:50] Yacine Allaoua: Um, yeah. Who, who I, you know, I see every time I, I fly to London, he’s a great family friend. You know, we, we stay very close in touch. So, he built that rapport, but then didn’t give me enough, you know, tip of the spear kind of thing, right, it was quick. And, uh, and then I think a day or two later, I was here in, well, not this new swanky, beautiful headquarters you have, but Boone and Gallows, right, on the other side of Tysons gallery.

[00:16:13] And, and I’m in there, and, and, you know, when I get there, I realized very quickly, I had no idea what memoryBlue did. Like, I, I, I went on the website, right? I did like my minimal due diligence, but it’s 2014, guys, right? Like, you don’t have all the stuff that you have on the website today, back then, and Tommy Gassman and Marc hand me a phone, and they’re like, “Yeah, here’s some sheet music, and you’re about to close.”

[00:16:35] Yacine Allaoua: And I’m like, “Wait, what, what do I have to do?” I’m calling some dude on the other side of this wall, trying to close him off what, like, you know what I mean? And so, but, you know, it went well. And I almost loved it because it was like trial by fire. 

[00:16:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:16:46] Yacine Allaoua: It was also an honest assessment, right? Is, is this person trainable because I think the memoryBlue business model, right, is, “Hey, if you have the work ethic and you have the hustle, the grind, you know, that’s all you need to bring to the table every day,” you guys will take care of the rest, 

[00:16:59] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[00:16:59] Yacine Allaoua: the, the process, the structure that you guys have put together will kind of, you know, jumpstart your career, and, and also your performance here at memoryBlue. So, that is kind of how I found myself to then land at memoryBlue in early, you know, first or second week of January in 2015.

[00:17:14] Chris Corcoran: So, what a great story. And it illustrates something that I’ve noticed is you, you remember this vividly? 

[00:17:20] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:17:21] Chris Corcoran: I had no recollection of it whatsoever. And I think it illustrates the point that just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t

[00:17:31] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:17:31] Chris Corcoran: remember it. 

[00:17:32] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:17:32] Chris Corcoran: And that people have a big impact on one another.

[00:17:35] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:17:35] Chris Corcoran: Whether you yourself realize it or not.

[00:17:38] Yacine Allaoua: A hundred percent, that’s a…

[00:17:39] Marc Gonyea: That’s huge, right, and you can, you’ve been, you know, you’re longer in your career now. 

[00:17:43] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:17:43] Marc Gonyea: Like, you, things you may not consider as significant are super, super important.

[00:17:48] Yacine Allaoua: Right.

[00:17:49] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s some, you’ve seen Junior run around there saying like, “Hey, remember this time you’ve seen to this.” And if he came and told you about it, he’d be like, “I, I have no idea what you’re talking about, 

[00:17:58] Yacine Allaoua: I had no idea, right. It’s, it’s one of those things where sometimes you’re, whether it’s performance or even just a few things you’ve done right, can kind of still survive after you’ve left, right. And that’s awesome to hear.

[00:18:08] Marc Gonyea: We’re gonna do a podcast with somebody who worked here when you were like on your ninth month with us, you know, towards end,

[00:18:14] Yacine Allaoua: yeah. 

[00:18:14] Marc Gonyea: and who was like, it was my first week. I remember, like, Yacine was, like, the baller in the office. And no, this is gonna happen, and he did A, B and C, and then I’m gonna talk to you about it, and you’re not gonna remember.

[00:18:24] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:18:25] Marc Gonyea: And then, did that person, that’s like seared into their mind for the rest of your lives.

[00:18:28] Yacine Allaoua: Okay, that’s, it’s that first impression, right 

[00:18:29] Marc Gonyea: And it should be, right? 

[00:18:30] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:18:30] Marc Gonyea: Or, yeah, or it could have been not even a first impression. They just remember something you did or you said,

[00:18:35] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:18:36] Marc Gonyea: so that’s why you gotta put more attention into what you are doing, which is hard to do when you don’t have that experience in that perspective anyways.

[00:18:43] Okay. All right. So, you ended up coming to work here? 

[00:18:45] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:18:46] Marc Gonyea: All, and what was that like? 

[00:18:48] Yacine Allaoua: It was, it, it, again, more, uh, trial by fire, right? Let’s just grab this guy, throw him off the defend and see how he died. 

[00:18:54] Chris Corcoran: Well, before did, did you, did you, so Philippe predates you here. 

[00:18:58] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:18:58] Chris Corcoran: So, did you ask him, “Hey, what am I getting myself into?”

[00:19:01] Yacine Allaoua: 1000%, right.

[00:19:02] Chris Corcoran: French speaker to French speaker, like, what’s going on here? 

[00:19:05] Yeah. And so, at, at this time, he’s at Logi, right? So, you know, of course, I kind of connected with him and sort of just asked, like, what is memoryBlue? You were there. And, of course, he had positive things to say, right, he was like, “Hey, where I’m at now, what I’m able to do, my success at Logi.” And, you know, his success since then to today is all attributable to memoryBlue, right? Not all of it.

[00:19:26] Marc Gonyea: Not all of it.

[00:19:28] Yacine Allaoua: So, it, but you know what I mean?

[00:19:31] Marc Gonyea: He spoke highly of Justin State bank.

[00:19:34] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you guys grabbed him out of selling suits, right? I didn’t tell you guys about the Hot Wheels when Chris Corcoran cold called me, but, but I was waiting the tables, right, and so, for me, like, as soon as then we got into that, I was like, “Okay, let me gear up for this career.” 

[00:19:47] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[00:19:47] Yacine Allaoua: Because I saw this as like, okay, you know, I go in here and I put my best foot forward. This is the beginning of the rest of my life, right, this is just, I, again, I saw it as one of those,

[00:19:57] you know, hey, platforms, I could be there three months, I could be there 10 months, I could be there 18 months, right? 

[00:20:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:20:03] Yacine Allaoua: And I think, you know, by the end I was here 10, 11 months, but, um, you know, that, that part was exciting too, right, the part that it was like, “Hey, this is a short-term kind of boot camp, if you will.”

[00:20:13] Chris Corcoran: Yes. 

[00:20:13] Yacine Allaoua: And from there I’ll really kickstart my, my tech sales career. 

[00:20:16] Chris Corcoran: Kinda like an incubator. 

[00:20:17] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, right, a hundred percent.

[00:20:19] Chris Corcoran: Tech sales incubator. 

[00:20:20] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. And like you, you mean, Philippe, to a certain extent as well, Philippe with the UA, was, you know, as a summer job, he was selling Hawkin suits at Justin State bank and getting ready to dress for the workforce.

[00:20:30] Right, yeah. But his dad is, old man was in tech sales. 

[00:20:32] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:20:33] Yacine Allaoua: Right. 

[00:20:33] Marc Gonyea: And public sector, too.

[00:20:34] Yacine Allaoua: Pub, public sector, right, and you know, your parents were in tech sales, but your ridiculous talent with a work ethic and great perspective and smart, all those things, that emphasize, represents what Chris and I were trying to do with the business, we’re still trying to do this day, like get other people into the business,

[00:20:49] Marc Gonyea: yeah.

[00:20:49] Yacine Allaoua: that would not have, otherwise, gotten in. 

[00:20:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, but what of you to pick up your phone? 

[00:20:53] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:20:54] Marc Gonyea: Would voice glad I did, right? 

[00:20:55] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:20:55] Marc Gonyea: What if, like, Chris and Joey, 

[00:20:56] Yacine Allaoua: Then I would’ve gotten Joey instead of Chris, right?

[00:20:58] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, yeah, or maybe no one, right? 

[00:21:01] Yacine Allaoua: That’s true.

[00:21:01] Marc Gonyea: Maybe you’d be successful no matter what, but like, you’re great for sales, and that’s the thing. So, when you like, oh, we talk about this towards the end, I guess, I wanna circle back on how we get more your scenes into the business, how, how you think we should get more of them into the business, right? 

[00:21:14] Yacine Allaoua: Sure. Sure. Yeah. 

[00:21:15] Marc Gonyea: But, alright, so, I’m sorry, where were we? So, you were here. 

[00:21:18] Yacine Allaoua: So, yeah, coming in, you know, my mentor was Robbie Connors, so, oh, the good old Robbie.

[00:21:23] Marc Gonyea: Wow.

[00:21:23] Yacine Allaoua: He’s, he’s been killing it for a, a very long time at sciences logic. 

[00:21:26] Chris Corcoran: Doing well.

[00:21:27] Yacine Allaoua: Man, he, he’s a company, man. But no, Rob, you know, I come in and as I mentioned, phone off the deep end, right, so I inherit a client that was kind of heading towards the red, right, they weren’t too happy. 

[00:21:39] Marc Gonyea: Who was it?

[00:21:40] Yacine Allaoua: Right, and so, it was Avnet supporting NetApp, but for public sector only. And so, day three, it’s like, alright, listen, we need you to hop on with your mentor, Robbie, you guys are gonna tag team this,

[00:21:52] Yacine Allaoua: And, uh, and we need to save this thing, right? So, uh, we, we start to have a few good weeks. We really, who’d you… At the time, this was Mishler, so

[00:22:00] Marc Gonyea: Mish daddy, miss daddy, Michael Mishler, the one and only.

[00:22:03] So, Mishler bought me on, and then gave me, you know, and this is when we were all at Boone, right?

[00:22:08] Yacine Allaoua: So, Mishler had his whole side operation going on at Boone Boulevard away from the, the co-founders. 

[00:22:14] Marc Gonyea: Yes. It’s like, it’s like an off short tax haven place, like.

[00:22:19] Yacine Allaoua: I, I, I don’t know what Mish was doing behind the scenes on the spreadsheets, right, but, um, but no, so Mishler brings me over, um, and Robbie and I, one of the things we did, that I think it really

[00:22:29] goes to how we were successful is that he was also coming sort of onto that account. He wasn’t the main person that was there constantly. So, it was like, all right, first of all, what does NetApp do? What is the hook? Who are we gonna call? Right? Because, like, these guys they’re gonna give you, and, and that’s what I realized, probably later on in my career, I was naive in, at the first few days of memoryBlue, like they’re giving you all these people that they can’t get.

[00:22:50] Right, and so, you’re, they’re not giving you these low-hanging fruit leads to go after. They’re like, “Oh, we’re paying these guys, give ’em all these CIOs and all these execs that, you know, no 22, 23-year-old should be calling on and trying to sell to.” And, and that was our list, right? And so, it was just kind of, “Hey, how do we do the research,” and with public sector, one of the big things, and, and I’m still in it today, and I love it, is public, right?

[00:23:10] Like, it is very apparent if you do your homework when you make a call, whether you have done that because nobody has time to waste, and in public sector, you know, they only buy in with compelling events, something’s on fire, something isn’t working, end of contract, right, or you’re, you’re solving a problem.

[00:23:26] There’s an initiative that you can go after. And so, understanding for each of those execs, what mattered to them, so that when we hit their gatekeeper, when we hit their email inbox, it was very abundantly clear that it was worth providing some time because we could help solve that problem, right.

[00:23:42] And so, that was one of the things that Robbie and I did, early on to kind of save that. And then, of course, Avnet came and were like, “Hey, we’ll bring you Hitachi data systems federal,” they brought quantum computing, I think, after a while, and so, it became this massive account. 

[00:23:55] Marc Gonyea: My god, this memory, this is knocking it out.

[00:23:58] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and it was fun stuff, right? I mean, it was the winning thing. Yeah, exactly. Like, we were, we were starting to be successful.

[00:24:04] Chris Corcoran: Wait for team like Chelsea, right?

[00:24:07] Yacine Allaoua: We’re gonna, we’re gonna have to say on the record that, uh, you know, there is one true massive champion of England, that’s Manchester United.

[00:24:14] I just need to make sure that that stays on this podcast, so.

[00:24:18] Chris Corcoran: The Red Devils.

[00:24:19] Yacine Allaoua: The Red Devils, right, so, but yeah, you know, and, and the cool part about that was that there was a complimentary feel where these different kind of similar technologies, but they all had something they did better than the others, et cetera.

[00:24:31] They were all having us attack different verticals of government. So, that was cool ’cause then that gave me the exposure to, like, DOD versus civilian versus the other, uh, you know, IC for some, right, and so, and again, it, it was super exciting, I think, from the Avnet perspective, then that account kept growing,

[00:24:46] right, even though, uh, I think Robbie might have stayed on it a bit longer than me, but then there was an exciting client that came on board that was down to have somebody kind of close, minimal, small-deals business, right, and so, for me looking like, “All right, where is my growth?” Right. I was very quick to kind of put my hand up and say, “Hey, I’d want one of those roles.”

[00:25:03] Right? And at the beginning, it was just one, and then, you know, through success, we were able to grow that, then I was given some mentees, to help bring onto the fold, so Marco Johnson was one that, you know, helped on Avnet, right, so he kind of took my spot-on Avnet, but also was just such a killer.

[00:25:17] You know, in terms of just, he very early wanted to put in the work to be successful. And, you know, a lot of people want that quick success, right?

[00:25:24] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:25:24] Yacine Allaoua: He was willing to do the research. And so, he, he was great at that. Didn’t do public sector too long, but understood he had to do that to be successful in kind of BD outreach for public sector, right?

[00:25:34] Chris Corcoran: Hey, Yacine, so let me jump in real quick, so

[00:25:35] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:25:36] Chris Corcoran: you talked a little bit about some of the differences in terms of calling different groups within the government. 

[00:25:40] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:25:41] Chris Corcoran: So, list, some of our listeners are just starting their career in tech sales,

[00:25:44] Yacine Allaoua: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:45] Chris Corcoran: or they’re brand new SDRs, or they’re thinking about becoming SDR. Talk a little bit about some of the differences in the fed space and how it’s different because it’s, as someone who’s never done fed, it’s all foreign to me. So, educate me and our listeners a little bit about it. 

[00:26:00] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the toughest things folks will realize is that private sector can go so much quicker and with less folks involved, right? And so, one of those kind of examples for me, early on is, you know, I’m seeing, for example, I started first day with Nate Cassa, you know, one of my best friends, best men in my wedding, or not best man, but groomsman in my wedding. I was groomsman at his, just now in L.A., a few months ago, so 

[00:26:22] Marc Gonyea: Really, are you serious?

[00:26:23] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I’ve got a few more weddings to, to go through from memoryBlue, so don’t worry, that’s the first of many.

[00:26:28] Chris Corcoran: You met him here?

[00:26:29] Yacine Allaoua: I, for, we both started on the same day.

[00:26:31] Marc Gonyea: Before we moved, right?

[00:26:32] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, he’s now out in, uh, Scottsdale, but he was out in San Jose for a while. I mean, we did a bunch of trips together over the years. We’ve remained close, right? But, so, for example, he’s right next to me calling Osama or, and these other places first, I think there was that one place that got bought out by, uh, MarkLogic when we were here is Enterprise, Enterprise EDB, or there was, there was some database company that got bought out by MarkLogic. He was on there.

[00:26:56] DB Foundation? No, I can’t remember. 

[00:26:58] No. Yeah, and so, but, but, you know, like, I’m calling, and I’m, you know, doing all of this research and this strategy, and here he is calling, and then, like, two weeks later, he is getting the AE calling him like, “Hey, we closed that deal.” And I’m like, “Man, I haven’t even occurred this meeting yet,

[00:27:11] like, what do you mean?” 

[00:27:12] Chris Corcoran: And he was calling commercial.

[00:27:13] Yacine Allaoua: He was calling commercial. And so, I think that’s one of the biggest things, early on you need to realize is that, and, you know, private sector can move quicker. 

[00:27:21] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:27:21] Yacine Allaoua: Public sector, I mean, there’s so much that you need to know about, right?

[00:27:26] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:26] Yacine Allaoua: Not one person is making a decision,

[00:27:28] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[00:27:28] there are several people you need to sell to, once you sell the meeting, the deal, et cetera, then you move on a contract and you’re selling and closing the deal another 50 times.

[00:27:37] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[00:27:37] And so, it’s just, it’s a longer process, right? That being said, you really feel like you’re solving problems and you’re supporting a mission set.

[00:27:44] Yacine Allaoua: And so, for me, you know, for folks that are maybe starting out in public sector, I would say, you know, what is their mission? If you’re, for example, selling to DOD, and I don’t know, you’re selling something that has nothing to do with defense, that has nothing to do with protecting American interest through military, through the different arms of

[00:28:02] the military, then you’re probably gonna fall on deaf ears.

[00:28:05] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:28:05] Yacine Allaoua: And so, understanding what that mission is, understanding why people are going to give a shit. And that was one of the things that I learned early on. Like, if I write an email, you don’t know me, and I’m asking for your time, everybody’s busy in this world.

[00:28:16] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:28:17] Yacine Allaoua: Why are you gonna gimme your time? And so, I think for any new SDR, whether public or private sector, if you read an email, or if you listen back to a call, and you can’t answer that question for yourself, then how can the person who has no idea who you are, answer that question and say to themselves, I’m gonna give you time.

[00:28:32] So, for me, again, I think for public sector, especially, do the homework, do the due diligence. There are so many pieces of collateral online, four-year strategy reports,

[00:28:43] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:43] Yacine Allaoua: or briefings for the agency, annual reports, et cetera. If you can use a customer’s own language from their business plan to tell them how you can affect their day-to-day, then you are going to be successful.

[00:28:53] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:53] Yacine Allaoua: You might not close every deal, but you’re going to be successful. 

[00:28:56] Chris Corcoran: I agree. It just reminds me of the old saying, “Would you buy from you?”

[00:29:00] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:29:00] Chris Corcoran: And if the answer’s no, you got a lot of work to do because no one else is going to.

[00:29:04] Yacine Allaoua: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. 

[00:29:06] Marc Gonyea: When you were learning the phone game ‘cause you talked about the research aspect of, of it, which is supercritical and in all walks of life, but certainly in the fed side, when you talk about the list building, which is supercritical 

[00:29:17] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Marc Gonyea: in all aspects of the game, right, even now. 

[00:29:20] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, outbound is so important. 

[00:29:22] Marc Gonyea: What were you really good at on the phones? On the discovery side that you like, this is like a, that, you know, this is what I’m good at, like what part of the gang I game. 

[00:29:31] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, I mean, it very, just very easily I was able to, and, and not easily, right, but like very quickly, I should say, very quickly I was able to kind of get my sheet music down where it wasn’t, I was reading off of a script, but more I knew the little, like, almost gates, right, the gates like, “Hey, you pass this gate to go to the next gate.” Right? The upfront contract, if, if you start a call without the upfront contract, right,

[00:29:54] you’re missing a big piece of, “Hey, that can probably buy you an extra two minutes.” And I think every time you pass a gate, you buy yourself a minute, you buy yourself a minute, right? And so.

[00:30:03] Chris Corcoran: Yacine thinks it’s like a video game.

[00:30:06] Yacine Allaoua: But whatever you need to do to make a hard job, a bit funnier. 

[00:30:10] Chris Corcoran: Right, right.

[00:30:10] Yacine Allaoua: Because let’s be honest. Like, there are some days you can make a hundred calls, not speak to a, a soul, 

[00:30:15] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:30:15] Yacine Allaoua: and there’s nothing you could have done about that, right, they didn’t pick up the phone. You can’t schedule meetings.

[00:30:19] Not a soul, right?

[00:30:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s true. 

[00:30:22] Yacine Allaoua: And so, the, the way I saw it was, “Hey, like, first of all, understand your tech.” I think if you don’t understand what you’re representing, then how can they?

[00:30:30] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:30:30] But also my big thing was just don’t give a lot, like, I think early on I gave everything, and then I realized, well, if I give everything, then why are they gonna go meet the AE that I’m trying to set up? 

[00:30:38] Chris Corcoran: Remember when, remember when that guy, Corcoran, called me? He didn’t tell me shit.

[00:30:42] Yacine Allaoua: Exactly, right. And so, and, and again, for me though, there’s an art in that of like, turning those questions into, “Hey, it sounds like there’s interest,” but also being like, “Hey, I’m not the guy,” like I’m the tip of the spear outreach guy, I’m the biz dev guy, whatever your, your key phrase was there.

[00:30:57] Let me tee something up, and, you know, I also think that depending on who you were talking to if I was talking to a CIO, I didn’t ask for 30 minutes, I asked for 15, and I told my AE that I was representing, you have 15 minutes. This is a CIO. And if he, he couldn’t, you know, present the value prop in 15 minutes, that’s between him and his company, right?

[00:31:15] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:31:15] Yacine Allaoua: But, uh, for me, I, I also saw the different kind of things, where it’s like, “Hey, maybe let’s not ask the CIO for 30 minutes.” Right,

[00:31:22] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:22] Yacine Allaoua: but then, the other people that are involved in that same decision-making process where you can gather intelligence, those are the folks that you, you can ask for 30 minutes to get 30 minutes from.

[00:31:30] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:30] Yacine Allaoua: So, I also took into account who was who, in the account.

[00:31:33] Chris Corcoran: Smart. 

[00:31:34] Marc Gonyea: When you’re doing all this at memoryBlue and Boone, the wild, used to joke, I’ll bring to my favorite jokes is we would say Corcoran would go to California more often than he’d go to Boone, and I would be much farther behind, and we were let Mike use that as a, as an area to help figure out how he was gonna run his California office, which he subsequently opened.

[00:31:51] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. 

[00:31:52] Marc Gonyea: Well, who else had some major game there besides yourself? Who was the best person in the, in the Boone office? 

[00:31:57] Yacine Allaoua: The best person in the Boone office.

[00:32:02] Chris Corcoran: Put on the spot, you could lose some friendships here. 

[00:32:03] Yacine Allaoua: So, so another French International School transplant, Tommy, who’d you know, 

[00:32:07] Marc Gonyea: Tommy O.

[00:32:08] Yacine Allaoua: Tommy O, man, killing, killing the game at, uh, at Adobe. I think he just went back. You know, there was a few folks that started in Gallows, came over to Boone J Holt, Adam, you know, of course, I’ve got Sarah Welch, who kind of was on that, that, the secondary CA led computing with me. 

[00:32:25] Chris Corcoran: She was a California. 

[00:32:26] Yacine Allaoua: Um, yup, exactly. Ashley Harding, who then came in, and I was her mentor. And so, another wedding story right there, we were at her wedding in July of ’21. 

[00:32:35] Marc Gonyea: You say we, who’s we?

[00:32:36] My wife and I, so, uh, my partner and I, yep. So, we, we went over there. It was fantastic wedding, you know, out, it was, man, I forget the, the name of the city, but it was about probably another 40 minutes south of here in Tyson’s, near where the wineries are and stuff like that.

[00:32:52] Absolute, beautiful place, was like a barn kind of set up in open field.

[00:32:57] Chris Corcoran: Ashley Harding, gotta catch up with her, soon. 

[00:32:58] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, and she’s doing amazing. So, but yeah, those were some of the folks, right? I mean, you know, the cool thing also, I think, with memoryBlue is that I also started to interface a lot with people through the network.

[00:33:08] You know, so like, you’ll chat with people with that commonality of, “Hey, we both worked at memoryBlue,” but, you know, especially in fed too, there weren’t too many memoryBluers that were doing fed. 

[00:33:17] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, right.

[00:33:18] And public sector, and so Nelson Imade, Matt Bright were some folks that I’ve, I’ve chatted up with over the years, and I’ve tried hiring both of them to places like, so, you know, you, you know, they’re solid there, and by the way, I mean, I, I do have to give a shout-out because when I did move accounts, and when I kind of then didn’t move to California with Mishler, I went under Lee Ryan’s leadership, and I think Lee, you know, Lee is definitely somebody that kind of got me more in the straight and narrow where it was like, “Alright, you can have fun, but, like, understand too that like, you know, people are watching, you need to be an example,

[00:33:51] Yacine Allaoua: like, I know you’re doing great on your goals, but you can’t be sitting there playing FIFA on the Xbox all day, right?” And so, Lee, I, I do have to give her so much credit, right, because like, I think Lee, where she kind of honed in on me was like, “Hey, let’s start thinking about that next step in your life,

[00:34:04] right, like, you’re killing it here, let’s figure out where you go next.” Right, and so like, she kind of brought me back to the initial reality of like, “Hey, this is that jump-start that I’m gonna go to the next place,” and started getting me excited about that. You know, Abi, Abigail, I, I think she recently got married, so I don’t know her last name anymore.

[00:34:20] Yeah, yeah. But Abi is, 

[00:34:21] Marc Gonyea: Abigail Lacy.

[00:34:22] Yacine Allaoua: But Abigail Lacy to memoryBlue, yeah.

[00:34:24] Marc Gonyea: I don’t know your name, neither do I.

[00:34:26] Yacine Allaoua: But, um, but no, she, again, somebody I’ve almost gone and worked with and for, and, and vice versa, I’ve tried recruiting her.

[00:34:32] Marc Gonyea: Yep.

[00:34:32] I’ve done some special Olympics volunteering with her. She’s just an amazing person to know, to have in your network.

[00:34:37] Yacine Allaoua: And, you know, other folks, Jim Gandolfo was a hustler over, over in the Boone Boulevard office.

[00:34:44] Marc Gonyea: Wave somewhere right now. 

[00:34:45] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, uh, he, he, he was a surfer man. He, he was like, every time we, we wanna do something on the week, like, “Hey Jim, where you at?” Like, “Oh, I’m in Delaware on the beach.”

[00:34:54] Right, so, he, he lived that surfer life.

[00:34:56] Marc Gonyea: Like, it could have been February. 

[00:34:58] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, right. 

[00:34:59] I would not put it fast to have been there in February, but, uh, Ruby, Julie, Ruby, Julie Forbes were also some, some awesome performers out in the Boone Boulevard office. Man, who, who else?

[00:35:10] Yacine Allaoua: Mack, Mack White. He went to California.

[00:35:13] Yeah. Mack was such a methodical seller. Like, you know, where a lot of us might not have the best organization, turn to Mack, turn to Mack. So, Mack was also, he had started right before me. But was also just somebody that was, you know, you get closer to people that are like similar tenure to you, right?

[00:35:32] Mm-hmm. You look up to the people that are getting close to the finish line and that are maybe getting hired out, but the people that you kind of join memoryBlue at the same time, you stay close with them. And so, Mack was somebody that, you know, he sat near me, and so, I’d steal best practices from him.

[00:35:46] He’d steal things from me. 

[00:35:48] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm

[00:35:48] Yacine Allaoua: I think that’s also one of the, the big things about sales and, and the way the memoryBlue office is designed, right? Like, I would walk around on calls, I mean, it’s just something I do, I have to pace around, but selfishly also I’d have like, one year in, one year out, for active listening, but also because I wanted to steal that good line that that person just dropped on the phone and make it my own.

[00:36:07] And similarly, people would do the same with what I would say. And I think that is a beautiful part of, like, imitation as flattery. Right, and so, I would look the steel things. 

[00:36:15] Chris Corcoran: It accelerates development too. 

[00:36:17] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:36:17] Marc Gonyea: Absolutely. Compresses the amount of time for them to be efficient on their own, and that, that’s why we’re big believers in people working from the office.

[00:36:24] Yacine Allaoua: Oh, 100%. 

[00:36:25] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause for certain roles you get to your stage, and the game, people more experienced, they can do a lot of things from their house.

[00:36:30] Yacine Allaoua: Right. 

[00:36:31] Marc Gonyea: But like, when you’re earlier in your career, when I say early, first five, seven years, you know, it depends upon your role, so yeah, and that’s huge from the learn that.

[00:36:41] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:36:42] Marc Gonyea: So, when you, when you and Lee were talking about what you wanted to do, and you’re obviously successful, and this is the beautiful thing about it, right, whether people wanna believe it or not, like, you wouldn’t strike me up, knowing you and your personality, as like a fed guy, right, right? And people in the fed don’t get upset at that.

[00:36:57] My wife’s in the federal sales world, like, it’s just not right, and, and, and that’s another thing too. ‘Cause people think it’s a slow-moving sale, blah, blah, blah. But that’s not, that doesn’t mean people in fed sales are slow moving. 

[00:37:09] Yacine Allaoua: No, not, I mean, not at all, right. I think like, and, and I’m a big sports guy, right?

[00:37:14] Yeah, so I think like one of the big sayings I always go by is, you know, if you’re not working hard, your competitor, you’re the guy who’s number two, the gal who’s number two, right. Is working two times harder than you to unsee you, right? 

[00:37:24] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:25] Yacine Allaoua: Whether you’re 1st, 4th, 10th, right? I mean, you’re, you’re always looking to climb the ranks. And so, I think, for me, it’s just work harder than the next person. If you know that you’re not working as hard as you can possibly work that you’re not, you know, overturning each rock that you could possibly overturn. I guarantee you somebody’s hungry are out there doing that. And so, they’re going to come, and, and take your food, right?

[00:37:44] I mean, at the end of the day, they’re gonna take your meal. And so, um, you know, for me, I, I do think, like, my parents working for NGOs, working for a mission-focused company, like I never saw myself doing public sector, but I was able to very quickly, you know, lean on their experiences, and kind of their challenges, and what they’ve done throughout their careers, to understand kind of, you know, how to be a good partner, because at the end of the day, I, I don’t see myself as a, a seller.

[00:38:09] I see myself as a partner to my customers, right, and I want them to say the same thing if they think I’m just that sales guy, then I’m doing something wrong too because I want them to understand, you know, your problem’s my problem, because if you have a problem and I can’t solve it, you’re gonna look somewhere else to solve it,

[00:38:22] right, and I, I can’t solve every problem. And I think that’s also something, you know, there was a, a situation where I had to tell somebody, “Hey, I couldn’t solve your problem.” Well, I sold him in my next company because 

[00:38:33] Chris Corcoran: Wait, hold on. 

[00:38:34] Yacine Allaoua: he appreciated that 

[00:38:35] Chris Corcoran: Story, yeah. This is salesmanship. 

[00:38:37] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:38:37] Chris Corcoran: This is a great story. I forget to hear it, but I just tell our listeners a little bit about what happened. 

[00:38:42] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:38:42] Marc Gonyea: So, this is, just to clear things up, you at memoryBlue, you’re successful as you are, you’re like, you don’t wanna go into federal sales. 

[00:38:49] Yacine Allaoua: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:49] Marc Gonyea: And you departed, and you went into federal sales,

[00:38:51] Yacine Allaoua: So, this is

[00:38:52] Marc Gonyea: as a federal seller we’re talking about. 

[00:38:54] Yacine Allaoua: Exactly. 

[00:38:54] Marc Gonyea: And we, you just gave your philosophy on how you sell. 

[00:38:57] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:38:57] Marc Gonyea: Which is on your partner, I’m not a salesperson just trying to stuff licenses down your throat, right.

[00:39:01] Yacine Allaoua: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. 

[00:39:02] Marc Gonyea: So, now you’re talking about a situation where you, go ahead, take it away.

[00:39:06] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, I mean, it was, was a deal at NIH, right, and, you know, we, we could do 70% of the stuff, but there was a key component that was very important to this customer, could we work around it and create a band-aid on a thing? And I was like, “Guys like, like, we will not renew. We will never sell again,” right? 

[00:39:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:39:22] Yacine Allaoua: So, I called this gentleman up, and I told him very kind of straightforward, “Hey, listen, like, we can do all of this, we can Excel at these parts, but this part that I think you’re putting a lot of weight on, is probably the part where we’re not too strong.” And, you know, just kind of coming up up front, well, he really appreciated that. And so, at my next gig, you know, they needed a, a business process automation platform where they bought it from me. And that was awesome because…

[00:39:46] Marc Gonyea: Trust.

[00:39:46] Yacine Allaoua: Exactly, I, I had built trust where he understood that when he gave me requirements, I was not going to give him fluff and say, “Put a green check under every requirement.”

[00:39:56] Right? I was gonna let him know where we could perform strongly and where we could not perform as strongly, right?

[00:40:02] Marc Gonyea: Why is that important?

[00:40:03] Yacine Allaoua: I think that’s important because, you know, there’s so many stories of solutions that get rip and replaced. 

[00:40:08] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:40:08] Yacine Allaoua: Not because the solution just fell on its feet, it’s because it was sold to do x, when they were buying y, right, and I think for me, having seen those situations and having started in data storage, right, like that’s a lot more prevalent, I don’t wanna ever be ripped and replaced, like, for me, it’s just, yeah, you know, like I never wanna be fired from a job, like I hold myself to those standards.

[00:40:27] I never wanna be ripped and replaced because I think for me if that’s the case, unless it’s something like, “Hey, you guys proved just so much, became so expensive, or whatever,” right, but for the wrong reasons, I’d never wanna put myself in that situation because also in fed sales, I mean, the DMV is a small place, right?

[00:40:42] Chris Corcoran: Yes, yes. 

[00:40:43] And so, you know, that, that word goes around, and so you’re only as strong as, as your reputation. 

[00:40:48] Marc Gonyea: And for the DMV, we’re not talking about the department, right? We’re talking about the District Maryland in Virginia. 

[00:40:54] Yacine Allaoua: Right. 

[00:40:54] Marc Gonyea: And, like, the community for high tech and fed is public sectors, it is small.

[00:40:59] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, a hundred percent. 

[00:41:00] Marc Gonyea: It’s not, and folks, there’s not a whole lot of movement, I mean, there’s movement, but like 

[00:41:06] Yacine Allaoua: It’s slower, right, I mean, it’s slower. There’s, I think it’s better, there’s a buying cycle, yeah. 

[00:41:09] Marc Gonyea: Because, like, what, ideally what should work is, like, the person who passed on you first time, came back second time because you know, you don’t see that as much in commercial sometimes ’cause people were moving around and those sorts of things, but that guy was a buyer at another place for you.

[00:41:23] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. Yeah, exactly.

[00:41:24] Marc Gonyea: So, probably, was you working at the same place? 

[00:41:26] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Working at the same Institute at NIH, doing the same thing, um, yeah, I mean, you know, doing the same thing, he was leading, leading IT for that Institute, right? And so, he, he still was the guy where once I saw that next opportunity, at my next job, which was the previous one, compared to where I’m at now, I jumped on it, right, and, and I had that leg up because he knew me as that honest guy who didn’t sell him

[00:41:46] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:41:46] Yacine Allaoua: a 70% solution, right, from my previous gig.

[00:41:50] Chris Corcoran: That’s how you build a career.

[00:41:51] Yacine Allaoua: That’s how you build relationships, right? Do the right thing, and I’m a big believer in karma too. 

[00:41:55] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:41:55] Yacine Allaoua: And paid forward, right, good things are gonna happen if you do the right thing. 

[00:41:58] Chris Corcoran: Yep, and that’s you playing a long game? 

[00:42:01] Marc Gonyea: So, you’re in the fed sales world when you were part of memoryBlue, what do you like about it? Like, what are the, because people are SDRs. 

[00:43:11] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:43:11] Marc Gonyea: And they’re like, man, it seems so far away, like, when am I gonna get to a closing role? And what’s that like? And yeah, we tell people be patient, make sure you do it the right time, so on and so forth, but now that you’re there too, what’s the role like? And what do you like about it for the folks that are listening that are currently SCRs? And we have a public sector team now. 

[00:43:29] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it’s, man, it’s impressive, it is impressive, but no it’s, uh, strategy, strategy, for me I love the strategy, I think, you know, one of the big books to read, and this is my current VP for public sector that, that put this on my radar and that I read recently, The Art of War.

[00:43:43] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:43:44] Yacine Allaoua: It is a very easy book to read, I mean, when, when I tell you it’s like little bullet points with three sentences, but, uh, you know, failed to plan, plan to fail.

[00:43:51] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:52] Yacine Allaoua: And so, if, if you don’t have a plan, if you’re just shooting darts on the wall and fed, you’re not gonna be very successful because you’re probably gonna talk to two people when 10 are making the decision.

[00:44:01] And so, you know, I think there’s a lot of strategy involved, and for me, I love that, going back to the entrepreneurial spirit, right? I get to work with a team, with the solutions architect, where they, you know, are an engineer, a customer success manager, all of these various resources, and I love being able to work as a team, collaboratively, and align towards a, a, a common goal,

[00:44:21] right. And I think that also comes from just kind of my background in team sports, right? I’m, I’m a team player. I love being a part of the team, and, and I, again, just to quote my current sales leader, right, I mean, it’s, “Don’t win alone, don’t lose alone.” Right. And so, uh, you never wanna be a single point of failure, but you also wanna understand that, like, I am not gonna know all the answers,

[00:44:38] I’m not gonna have all the perspectives, and I’m not gonna have all the same perspectives, and having different ones and all coming together to figure out that strategy together, there’s something powerful in there, and it’s super fun when you do win an exciting opportunity, an exciting contract, right?

[00:44:52] That camaraderie, the team vibe that you have in terms of celebrating the hard work, I mean, it’s super rewarding, right? It’s like you won the league title at the end of the year, the championship, you won the playoffs, right, and then you go back and do it all over again for the next one. But, for me, I think for folks that are maybe antsy, right, what I would say is just, especially if you’re going into public sector, you are always learning.

[00:45:14] Yacine Allaoua: Like, you are always learning. I’m learning something new every day. I had somebody at my previous gig came out of the Pentagon after 28 years of service was still learning stuff, acronyms, et cetera, at the end of his career, right, so, and that’s somebody who was on the inside. So, I, I will say don’t squander the fact that right now you don’t have a number above your head,

[00:45:32] and that you can learn a lot and make yourself that much sharper as you then go into a closing role and hold a bag because, let’s be honest, it’s exciting, but it can also be, you know, the beginning of the end, right. And, and you have an, a, polish your resume and look for something new, and so, you know, I’m looking back at this now from where I am.

[00:45:47] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:45:48] Yacine Allaoua: Not having had this perspective as a younger me, but I think we all, and I was the same, right guys, I wanted that closing role. 

[00:45:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:45:56] Yacine Allaoua: And, and I think, you know, small amounts of closing is great to build that experience, but for fed, I mean, just take advantage of the fact that you are in a safe environment and are able to learn more.

[00:46:04] Because, again, right, especially as you’re starting your career, it’s not as easy as, like, 10 years down the road, you’ve built relationships, you understand it a lot more, so you are gonna struggle early on

[00:46:14] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:14] Yacine Allaoua: as you try to kind of kickstart, you know, being an outside salesperson. 

[00:46:18] Chris Corcoran: Right, so you’ve been closing deals for years.

[00:46:22] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:46:22] Chris Corcoran: And you’ve got a lot of perspective, and you talked about winning. 

[00:46:25] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:46:25] Chris Corcoran: What’s your favorite win?

[00:46:27] Yacine Allaoua: Okay. Yeah, I’ve got one. So, I’ve got, I’ve got one, and I’ve got a, a brutal loss that was.

[00:46:33] Chris Corcoran: I wanna hear about both of them. 

[00:46:34] Yacine Allaoua: Okay. Okay. I’ll start, I’ll start with the win then. 

[00:46:36] Yeah. So, the win was, you know, I was working for a company that was really the challenger in the market, right? 

[00:46:42] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:46:42] Yacine Allaoua: And the market leader really had a firm kind of foothold within the market. You know, I was working with a reseller and I, I was doing everything, and then probably a month and a half before the end of, of September, which is the end of the government fiscal year, so by then they, they’ve made a decision they’re buying, and they, they’ve gotta spend the money.

[00:47:00] I’m starting to hear that the reseller is potentially going to sell the market leader. 

[00:47:04] Chris Corcoran: So, you, you work at a manufacturer. 

[00:47:06] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. 

[00:47:07] Chris Corcoran: You brought in a reseller. 

[00:47:08] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. 

[00:47:08] Chris Corcoran: And you’re getting whispers that the reseller that you brought into the deal

[00:47:12] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:47:12] Chris Corcoran: is gonna sell the market leader?

[00:47:13] Yacine Allaoua: Exactly. 

[00:47:14] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:47:14] Yacine Allaoua: And so, you know, there were some salient characteristics, the leader was saying that they could do ’em, but I had a patent for one of ’em. And so, based on what I know from the research I did with the US Patent and Trademark Office, there’s this 10-year gap between when somebody gets a patent and when others can then, you know, basically mimic that technology so that nobody really has a, a lifetime monopoly on something.

[00:47:38] Chris Corcoran: Right, right.

[00:47:39] Yacine Allaoua: It’s about two years after the patent. 

[00:47:40] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:47:40] Yacine Allaoua: So, I just basically told the contracting officer in the core, contracting officer representative, “Well, listen, there is no other solution on the market that can do 0.3 out of the many salient characteristics you have in your RFP because here is the US Patent and Trademark Office saying we are the only ones with a patent on it.”

[00:47:58] Chris Corcoran: Yep.

[00:47:59] Yacine Allaoua: And so, I won that deal because of that, although the customer even was trying to go to the market leader as well. And so, and, of course, that was because the reseller was guiding them there. 

[00:48:08] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. I hope you took the deal direct. 

[00:48:10] Yacine Allaoua: I definitely did. You know, at that point it, it was too late in the game, right?

[00:48:14] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:48:14] Yacine Allaoua: It was too late in the game, we were set up to take it. And so, we, we, we took it down. We took it down, and actually, to give, uh, props for another album, I had a SEWP contract holder because my company didn’t have a NASA SEWP contract at the time. There was a gentleman by the name of Mo Hassan working at a DH Tech in Leesburg.

[00:48:30] So, I, you know, I, I definitely owe my, my boy Mo a call here. We, we’ve gotta catch up, but, so,

[00:48:36] Chris Corcoran: Has Mo here closed the deal for you?

[00:48:37] Yacine Allaoua: So, Mo is the one who actually closed the deals, the prime, I was the actual seller behind it, right? And so, Mo and I actually closed probably, like, half a dozen deals together.

[00:48:45] Chris Corcoran: Wow, wow. 

[00:48:46] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that was a fun relationship. 

[00:48:48] Marc Gonyea: Did you know him well when he worked at memoryBlue? 

[00:48:49] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, uh, he was on Tommy Gassman’s team, I wanna say. And, I think the sales team, right? 

[00:48:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:48:55] Yacine Allaoua: Tommy Gassman’s sales team. So, but he was here, and then I think he got towards the end of his tenure, and then kind of just went out and went to DH Tech, which was closer to him as well, living-wise.

[00:49:03] Yep. But he played a, you know, we, we had the soccer team I put together, remember, uh, the memoryBlue soccer team in 2015. So, we had, Mo played goalie a few times, and then Toby Hardell played goalie a few times. And that was another guy that, you know, I will say, like, Toby was my age now, when he was at memoryBlue.

[00:49:22] And I think that the important lesson for anybody, either listening, or that’s maybe, you know, early thirties thinking like, “Ah, I don’t wanna be an SDR.” I mean, my brother is, is 40, and he just, you know, he’s about to be a year of being an SDR for an OEM. It’s never too late, I mean, if you apply yourself and learn the skill, it’s never too late. I mean, a lot of people change careers, 

[00:49:41] Marc Gonyea: Right.

[00:49:42] and industries, completely, you know, at ages that aren’t the norm, right, and I think, just don’t listen to the norm, right? There is no norm, there is no, if there was a norm to live life, you’d get the book when you were born, right? And so, I think Toby’s kind of story was a great one, too.

[00:49:57] Yacine Allaoua: ‘Cause as a young guy seeing that it showed you like, “Oh my God, I’m doing this at this age, well, like, man, I can’t wait to see what I’m doing when I’m Toby’s age.” Right? And so, that, that’s cool to see and know about, as a young kid coming outta school, and so looking to get their feet under them. 

[00:50:12] Chris Corcoran: Definitely. 

[00:50:12] Marc Gonyea: So, we got a question for you, for two things that’s one quick point. 

[00:50:16] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:50:16] Marc Gonyea: And we have people like that, like Toby, or your bro, who are in the game a little bit later on life. We always tell them that, “Look, all these experiences are gonna serve you so well in the next role,

[00:50:28] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:50:28] Marc Gonyea: and even better in the role after that, doesn’t mean it’s not helping you now, but you just kind of have to prove yourself, say what you want about it, get in, your foot in the door, just, it’s like to get through the dip.”

[00:50:37] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:50:37] Marc Gonyea: Those sorts of things. What you just said, though, was like, we’re constantly trying to improve the business and make it a place where people can learn and succeed and excel, and there’s a lot more support, 

[00:50:48] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:50:49] Marc Gonyea: and demonstrated success now than it was when you worked here, and it was just like Austin, 75 people in the total of the company.

[00:50:54] Yacine Allaoua: 75 people in 2015, including the Austin office.

[00:50:57] Marc Gonyea: Including Austin office, yeah, no California office, no alum of the year, no public sector group, no academy training, you know, we’ve, software companies pay us to train their people now.

[00:51:07] Yacine Allaoua: Oh, wow. 

[00:51:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, all sorts of shit.

[00:51:09] Why do you think some people look at Toby, who’s a badass in his own, right?

[00:51:13] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:51:14] Marc Gonyea: And say, and you’re like, “Man, I’m, I’m early in here, I must be onto something, I gotta get, take this serious.” Why don’t some people see that and recognize that as like, this must be a tremendous opportunity, if you got, like, Toby’s doing this, and I’m younger. And other people like, get it twisted, or like, get off the path, like why?

[00:51:30] Yacine Allaoua: That’s your mindset, right? 

[00:51:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:51:31] Yacine Allaoua: I mean, at the end of the day, it, your mind is the most powerful part of your body. You, you could be lifting 600 pounds at the gym, it does not matter, you know, I go by the, the Navy SEALs rule too, the 40% Rule.

[00:51:42] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:43] Yacine Allaoua: The first time you try to stop and give up on something, whether you’re running a marathon, and I do not run a marathon, um, but whatever you’re doing, something challenging, right? The first time your, your body wants to give up, your mind, your body’s actually at 40% energy expended.

[00:51:59] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:59] Yacine Allaoua: So, you still have over 50% to go, right, and this is, um, I’m blanking on the guy, David Goggins or, or something like that, great, great books to read, right, ’cause he’s a, he’s a motivational guy, I mean, like literally the story where I heard this was these people were running like a hundred miler, and it was teams, and then there was one guy running it by himself, who broke like, every bone in his foot, and was receiving salt team crackers as he kept going.

[00:52:23] And it was the Navy SEAL 40% Rule guy, and so I think it’s all about mindset. If you want me to convince you why something is not a good idea, I will always be able to, the same way I can convince you it is a good idea, and so if you always want to talk yourself out of it or not see the positive, you’re always gonna be able to.

[00:52:39] So, at the end of the day, it’s all about mindset. When you wake up in the morning, whatever your morning routine is, I challenge that person get into the right mindset. Is it listening to that, that playlist, that album, that whatever, blocking the first hour of your calendar to not be on calls and listen to music, whatever gets you in that right mindset?

[00:52:55] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:56] Yacine Allaoua: You want to see things from that mindset.

[00:52:58] Marc Gonyea: That’s good advice. So, to take us to, this is also good advice, right, lesson learned, like biggest loss, biggest loss.

[00:53:04] Yacine Allaoua: Biggest loss, yeah. 

[00:53:06] Yeah, and this was actually at memoryBlue. So, I, you know, I, I’m like kind of SDR inside sales rep, right, for, for the vendor at Atlanta.

[00:53:15] Yup, and so EMC is at Walter Reed, and, you know, this, this is array, hardware storage arrays, right, and, and the business model for all these companies is you buy the array, three years later, the maintenance and support for that old array is more expensive than a new array, right, so, you know, these EMCs, these apps, they were just continuously, just installing new storage arrays,

[00:53:37] right, and, and government agencies would just allow the maintenance and support to lapse. And so, of course, I’m coming in like, you know, oh my God, I’ve got this technology, it’s software to find, right, and we’re not only, and I’m like, not only are we going to show you that it performs better for you than your current environment, and what you have, but we’re going to also be able to give you all of this for a cheaper price.

[00:53:59] We did a POC. We proved both of those elements. What I did not know at the time was that the EMC guy and whoever that decision maker was, because again, SDR, right, I wasn’t in the POC, I just tee things up. They went to college together, they had, you know, a monthly dinners. And so, I was never gonna unseat that guy, even if I could give all of these advantages, right? 

[00:54:20] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:21] Yacine Allaoua: And so, very early on, I realized I need to know about the internal politics. That probably wasn’t the person we wanted to run the POC with. 

[00:54:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:54:27] Yacine Allaoua: Because that person kept control and made sure that, and I don’t know what happened, right, but probably made sure that maybe the data that we actually recorded off the p, proof of concept didn’t make it to, you know, these higher levels.

[00:54:38] Why? Because his vested interest was well, the EMC guy takes care of me, he’s my boy. And so, understanding that there are these things to know, I think that’s key too, right? 

[00:54:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:54:47] Yacine Allaoua: And so, that was, that was a massive, you know, kind of punching the gut for me because, you know, I’m naive, still at this point where I’m thinking, well, if I give you something better for cheaper, duh, right?

[00:54:58] Marc Gonyea: What did you do?

[00:54:59] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Why, why, why would you not jump on that? But, you know, I learned the hard way that, you know, there’s a lot more to kind of peel back and figure out before you even get in the door, right? And so, that was a tough loss for me, that was a tough loss for me, early on.

[00:55:12] Marc Gonyea: What I liked too, the lesson learned. I noticed you said we never would’ve won the deal, but like, it probably wasn’t the best person to work the POC with. 

[00:55:20] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:55:21] Marc Gonyea: There’s a nuance in that, a lot of people like, “We never would’ve won this deal anyways.” That’s like, kind of throw your hands up. 

[00:55:26] Yacine Allaoua: You don’t know that, you don’t know that, right?

[00:55:27] Marc Gonyea: And that’s like advocating all your responsibilities as sales professional when the reality is that probably wasn’t the best person, they gotta figure out how to neutralize that person. 

[00:55:35] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:55:35] Marc Gonyea: Or do it with somebody else, or like get out in front of a,

[00:55:38] Yacine Allaoua: Hundred percent. 

[00:55:39] Marc Gonyea: but you know, everybody’s assuming they got the deal done, right? It’s coming in, Chris. That’s coming in verbal, verbal.

[00:55:48] So, how about this, you’re smart guy, understand the space. 

[00:55:52] Yacine Allaoua: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:53] Marc Gonyea: Not that you’re looking to move opportunities, but people probably come to you, or when you’re evaluating technologies in the marketplace when you’re evaluating where you work now, what’s important to you in a role?

[00:56:04] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. I mean, for me, where I work now, so I work for a company named Chainanalysis. 

[00:56:07] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:08] Yacine Allaoua: Um, and, you know, one of my dreams when I came to memoryBlue, or at least my initial goal was like, I’d love to join a rocket ship at an early stage. 

[00:56:14] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:14] Yacine Allaoua: So, you get there early enough, and you’re part of the building. I’ve always had that picture of like, you know, we’re all over there on Wall Street, ringing the bell, going public. 

[00:56:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:56:22] Yacine Allaoua: That was at least what I have in my brain

[00:56:24] Marc Gonyea: yeah. 

[00:56:24] Yacine Allaoua: to like, you know, continue to, to truck towards that goal. And so, I’m, I’m super excited where I’m at, again, I have a personal attribution to what we do, you know, mentioning the smartphone and the global kind of economy story earlier. So, you know, when I joined, we’re about 150 employees, I’ve been there two and a half years, we’re past 800 now. 

[00:56:41] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:56:41] Yacine Allaoua: We’ve gone from like a 200-million-dollar valuation to over 8.6 billion dollars in a, in evaluation.

[00:56:46] So, you know, I, I already feel so fulfilled with what we’ve, I’ve been able to help contribute, and what we’ve done together as a company, and as a team, over the last two and a half years. And I’m, I’m very excited for the next two and a half years, right, so, that part’s been exciting, we do crypto and blockchain data.

[00:57:02] So, we’re a crypto and blockchain data company. And are the market leader, right, and so I’ve always worked for the Challenger, and it’s, it’s kind of awesome to work for the leader now, and, and kind of help grow our footprint right across both private and public sector, globally. So, that part’s been exciting.

[00:57:16] I mean, looking towards the future, I think I’ve always sort of had this, this split in my career where I maybe then like, hey, let’s just go for it, move to Europe somewhere, take on either, you know, you either build a team, or you take on a new kind of vertical, or something to that effect, right? Maybe if you’re at a, a smaller startup, maybe it’s not this company.

[00:57:37] They’re like, “Hey, we wanna send you to start the region in Europe,” et cetera. Because with my background, I mean, I’ve got family over there, et cetera. And then, with my background, I feel like I can probably do a pretty solid job, I mean, speak French, I speak Spanish, speak Arabic, I speak English,

[00:57:51] right, and so, with those four languages, you can hit a good amount of, like, Europe, you can hit North Africa, you can hit The Middle East, and so, I’d love to see, you know, if, if I can be successful in, in a role like that. So, I, I’d probably see that at some point being maybe a future move. 

[00:58:06] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:58:07] Yacine Allaoua: That being said, I mean, I, I still just love where I’m at now with Chainanalysis, I’m just as excited to get out of bed on day, not whatever it is set, 900 as day one. And I love supporting, you know, the government mission right now, I think, for us, the cool thing is like, we are actually helping solve our government’s problems, and attributing ourselves to supporting that mission. And so, for that, that part is super exciting.

[00:58:29] Marc Gonyea: So, how did you pick that opportunity, though? Right? Like, you’re still relatively early in your career. 

[00:58:35] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:58:35] Marc Gonyea: Lots of companies are coming at you. 

[00:58:37] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[00:58:37] Marc Gonyea: Trying to get you, how do you size up? And this is advice for someone who’s coming out memoryBlue, who’s sizing up an opportunity, or maybe somebody who’s at memoryBlue, they’re going on in their second, like what do you look at? 

[00:58:47] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, no, I mean for no 

[00:58:48] Marc Gonyea: ’cause all these companies,

[00:58:50] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah.

[00:58:50] Marc Gonyea: we’re real funded, we got, particularly in fed ’cause Chris and I used to say about fed, we still say it, a lot of times in fed you don’t wanna be the first guy either. 

[00:58:57] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, that’s true. 

[00:58:58] Marc Gonyea: Right, that’s true, so talk 

[00:58:59] Yacine Allaoua: It’s tough, yeah.

[00:59:00] Marc Gonyea: But talk about that, how of all these companies that have made it ’cause a lot of companies don’t, 

[00:59:03] Yacine Allaoua: Mm-hmm. 

[00:59:04] Marc Gonyea: what do you look for? 

[00:59:05] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, I mean, for me first, the technology, the technology, can I sound passionate selling it, right, and talking to it because, again, right, you, you hear if somebody’s pissed or if somebody’s excited over the phone,

[00:59:16] and now in our world with Zoom and video conference, right, you see these people. So, for me, it’s “Hey, do I believe in that technology?” That, that’s probably the number one thing. I also think, again, like looking at to your point, like how many people are on the team, how much did you guys close last year?

[00:59:30] What is my quota gonna look like, right? Because if you guys closed a million dollars last year, my quote is 4 mil, well, I’m probably not gonna be successful. And I, no, but I say this because you know, 

[00:59:38] Marc Gonyea: It happens.

[00:59:38] Yacine Allaoua: and I’ve, I’ve seen like, to your point, the first fed folks, right? I’ve seen people get super excited when I was in the reseller world.

[00:59:44] They’d come, and they’d be like, “Yeah, we’re so excited, uh, this is the best thing since slice bread.” And we’d ask ’em like, “What’s your number for the year, 10 mil? Well, next year, they were at different companies because they had never closed a deal in fed, and suddenly they had a 10 mil number, right, and so, for me, there’s the realities,

[00:59:58] am I actually going to have what I need to be successful? Are the goals even realistic, right? And then, you know, I, I always talk to some folks before I commit to anything, so I, I’ll try to talk to another AE, I’ll, of course, you know, through my interview process, talk to the sales leader, et cetera, but I’ll try to talk to other people in other cross-functional teams just to get a better idea because, again, when you go through an interview process that can do nothing wrong,

[01:00:20] right. Well, I wanna know from the people actually that have been there two, three years, like, “Hey, are you, you just as excited to be there, right?” So, this company, Chainanalysis, I mean, I, that is what I saw across the board. I was reached out to on LinkedIn and, you know, I wasn’t looking. 

[01:00:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[01:00:33] Yacine Allaoua: So, you know, I wasn’t looking, but I, I heard, and got into kind of crypto blockchain as a hobby, really in late 2017.

[01:00:42] And so, I’ve got the head recruiter reaching out to me for the crypto blockchain analysis market, Peter. And I sat there, and I said, “There is no way I can at least give her some time to see what this is all about.” Right, and she hooked me, right, she knew what she was doing. She hooked me. She had a great messaging,

[01:00:57] right. I thought I was speaking to somebody else. So, I was on the call, like, “Hey, where, where’s Chris, like, you know?” And, and she’s like, “Yeah, that’s the next step, buddy, right?” Yeah, like then.

[01:01:07] Marc Gonyea: She, she blew Chris away basically. 

[01:01:08] Yacine Allaoua: No. Yeah, yeah. But, but she, she used him to get the hook, we had a great conversation. And even then, to your point, right, she kind of was like, “Hey, just step, why you, like, you’d be the youngest guy on the team.” And for me, I’d seen so many, um, and I don’t, I don’t like to make it like an age thing, right, ’cause I’ve seen so many different folks from different walks of life, at different points in their life, be successful.

[01:01:26] But my, my response to that was just like, “Listen, like, I am a hunter, I’m hungry.” And, you know, like, for example, where I was at, I’ve seen a few folks that have come in, and, you know, “Hey, I know everybody, na na na,” and then, like a year later, they’re gone because it was just all fluff, right.

[01:01:40] Marc Gonyea: Right, yeah.

[01:01:40] And so, I just kind of said like, “Yeah, do I have a, a massive Rolodex? No.” But, you know, here’s what I’ve done throughout my trajectory, and, you know, I, I had to sell myself too, and for this opportunity, I really wanted it. 

[01:01:51] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. They didn’t know that till the end, right, I had to play hard to get, but like, yeah, I really wanted it.

[01:01:55] And so, when I got hit with like that question, or two, from left field, you know, I answered in the right way, which was just, “Hey, I don’t even care about that because what I’m gonna bring is a hunter’s mentality, outbound prospecting that I was taught here, and the work ethic,” right, the hunger to succeed. So, I mean, that’s, kind of how, how I got to Chainanalysis. 

[01:02:13] Marc Gonyea: What, what did you just say, about you, you kind of played hard to get to the end?

[01:02:18] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, I mean, you know, and there was, there was a

[01:02:20] Marc Gonyea: Few people listen, don’t know what you mean by

[01:02:22] Yacine Allaoua: There was, there was a few different, uh, reasons, right, I mean, I had, had this massive deal that was closing. 

[01:02:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah?

[01:02:27] Yacine Allaoua: And so, I was also trying to slow play it, so I could close that deal and then go over, right? 

[01:02:31] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[01:02:31] And, of course, you know, they needed the resource, so they kind of pushed back, and we’re just like, “Hey, now we need you on this day, tonight.” Ended up going, right, but, you know, you don’t wanna show that you were just absolutely like, I want this job, and so, you know, like I was, of course, not looking, but then I very quickly had to find another interview or two, because if I’m just interviewing at this one spot, I don’t know what I’m comparing against, I haven’t interviewed in three years.

[01:02:52] Marc Gonyea: Right.

[01:02:52] Yacine Allaoua: Right, if the salary you’re offering me, is that fair? 

[01:02:55] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:02:55] Yacine Allaoua: The comp you’re offering me, is that fair? Like, you know, if I don’t have anything to compare it to, then it’s just how I feel. Well, you can gimme a number I feel great about, but then if I had the comparison and that number was higher, I probably wouldn’t feel as good.

[01:03:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:03:07] Yacine Allaoua: And so, because of that, you know, I’d found a few other technology companies that were also super exciting that I started an interview process with, and then quickly ended it right up front. Like, “Hey, I’ve accepted the software of employment, let’s not continue moving forward.” But, you know, with Chainanalysis and the recruitment process, I had to be kind of, “Hey, I, I am inter, because now I’ve got this ongoing, I am kind of, you know, exploring the waters to see what else is out there.”

[01:03:32] And it allow me to get the best offer for myself, yeah, for myself, my family, right, et cetera. 

[01:03:36] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:03:37] Chris Corcoran: So, a couple things I want, I want you to unpack and for the listeners exist is important, and you’ve got the perspective of doing it, so you talked a little bit about market working for or selling for the market share leader versus selling for the Challenger.

[01:03:50] Talk about that. Which do you prefer? Which one’s easier, which one’s more challenging? Just what. 

[01:03:54] Yacine Allaoua: I mean, I think everybody should be on both sides.

[01:03:56] Chris Corcoran: Yeah?

[01:03:57] Yacine Allaoua: I do think like you learn so much being on both sides. I think from the market leader perspective, you always have a target on your back. And so, everything you do, if you think of things in that manner, you can’t be complacent.

[01:04:08] You gotta keep pushing the envelope. You gotta keep innovating. You gotta listen. Like, that is probably the most important thing, you have to listen. I literally, we, this is a home project, right, but like we literally had a, a scenario, you know, where we just kind of needed a small thing done, and we had done 80% of it with a terrible vendor, but we were fine with 80%.

[01:04:28] We wanted the final 20% done, this new vendor wanted to sell us a new 100% solution. They were like, “We don’t wanna inherit this.” They didn’t listen, right, and so they didn’t get our business. 

[01:04:36] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[01:04:36] Yacine Allaoua: At end of the day. For me, it’s listening. If my customers tell me that these three things are going to allow them to, you know, have more greater positive outcomes, then I am hounding my internal teams to provide me those three things, whether it’s product innovation, whether it’s more resources, whether it’s subject matter experts around a certain field, whatever it is,

[01:04:56] right, when I get a new quote and a, a bigger number, well, I say, well, you can gimme that bigger number I need, I need these three things though, right? To be successful. I think listening is the number one thing because if you don’t listen, your competitor is going to listen. 

[01:05:07] Chris Corcoran: So, working for a market share leader, you, you can’t be complacent.

[01:05:10] Yacine Allaoua: Can’t be complacent. 

[01:05:11] Chris Corcoran: Everyone’s gun it for you. 

[01:05:12] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:05:13] Chris Corcoran: So, what’s the good thing about working for a market leader?

[01:05:15] Yacine Allaoua: Well, it’s proven, right? So, it’s proven. 

[01:05:17] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:05:17] Yacine Allaoua: So, there are gonna be some times where, you know, folks are just gonna come directly to you. You’re gonna have a lot more inbound opportunities.

[01:05:23] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[01:05:24] But also, you know, folks are gonna talk about you, right? 

[01:05:26] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[01:05:26] Yacine Allaoua: And so, you’re gonna have that word of mouth that goes around. And so, if you do things in a, in a good manner, and you constantly exceed expectations, that word gets around, right, so, that part is super exciting because a lot of times you don’t need to introduce as much the company, as much as what the company can do, forthright.

[01:05:42] Chris Corcoran: The old, no one ever got fired for going with IBM.

[01:05:46] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, exactly. 

[01:05:47] Chris Corcoran: That’s, that’s the market share leader. What about what was great about selling for a Challenger? 

[01:05:51] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. So, selling for a Challenger, it’s, it’s super fun, as well, right? Because, again, like the wins are fewer and far between, but when you get the wins, they’re that much just funner to celebrate, right.

[01:06:00] I think it’s scale at what I learned is that you might be in one out of every 10 deals your competitive counterpart is, yeah. So, if I’m selling, I’m just gonna take a random example for like, the Department of Justice, well, he might have 10 deals with the Department of Justice, whereas I’m just competing with him, again, on the one.

[01:06:16] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[01:06:17] Yacine Allaoua: And so, you know what I mean? Like, you have less at bats to make a mark, and understanding that it’s also like, I’m the kind of guy I wanna go after everything. 

[01:06:24] Chris Corcoran: Yep.

[01:06:25] Yacine Allaoua: And you have to understand where you have more chances of winning if you don’t have the right resources to go after everything. 

[01:06:31] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[01:06:31] Yacine Allaoua: That being said, it’s a lot of times just also working late nights and kind of piecing together RQ, RFI responses, and at least just trying to get my name in as many hats as possible. But from the Challenger perspective, I would say it’s probably the biggest thing, right, is that you have less opportunities than the people you are fighting against,

[01:06:48] Yep. to win the customer’s business. 

[01:06:50] Chris Corcoran: I see. Okay. So, good. What about, you’ve worked with technology manufacturers

[01:06:55] Yacine Allaoua: Yep.

[01:06:56] Chris Corcoran: versus for resellers. 

[01:06:57] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:06:58] Chris Corcoran: Talk about that.

[01:06:59] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. I mean the, and, and, you know, memoryBlue reseller to OEM, right? Yeah. That’s like kind of the progression. And so, I got exposure to the reseller world first.

[01:07:07] Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, like the reseller I was at, was not your classic reseller, right? They were very much also, like, almost a mom-and-pop shop federal systems integrator. 

[01:07:16] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[01:07:17] A ton of cleared and badged engineers that could really go in do, help support the work, and also be boots on the ground for us, within the customer’s environment, that being said,

[01:07:25] Yacine Allaoua: right, I think like the main thing that kind of then made me say like, “Alright, I’m ready for my next move” is that I was, I knew a little bit about a lot, to be dangerous, and I wasn’t an expert in anything.

[01:07:36] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[01:07:36] Yacine Allaoua: And for me, I wanted to be able to kind of attach my name to what I was doing and be an expert at that, right?

[01:07:43] Marc Gonyea: Right.

[01:07:43] And you’re never an expert three months in, six months in, I think, like, a lot of times we want to be an expert, like it, it’s a constant progression of, you gotta put in the work and the time to become an expert. Like, I feel like, with where I’m at now, it probably took a year and a half to actually really feel like, all right, you got everything down, right? 

[01:07:59] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:00] Yacine Allaoua: That being said, within the first three months, I mean, I got a lot of the main stuff down, but there’s so much you can figure out, and then there’s always pushing the envelope where you can also help shape where we go because you’re listening to customers, you’re on the front lines. And so, if, if you bring those, those challenges to your, your team to try to find solutions, you can also help shape where we’re going.

[01:08:22] And then, you’re almost, you know, you’re involved with that idea, and you’re, you’re already an expert on day one, or as you progress from that, right? And so, I think for me, it was just being able to actually kind of represent a technology products and a company as an expert, rather than just knowing a little bit enough about many technologies, to be dangerous.

[01:08:43] Chris Corcoran: So, let’s see. You see, I made a prediction about what you were eventually gonna do. 

[01:08:47] Yacine Allaoua: Okay. 

[01:08:47] Chris Corcoran: Do you remember this? This is me, this is me remembering. 

[01:08:51] Yacine Allaoua: Now this is, we come full circle. 

[01:08:53] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, come full circle, so, I mean,is there a better EMEA rep? So, for the listeners that don’t know EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa.

[01:09:04] Yacine Allaoua: Yep. 

[01:09:04] Chris Corcoran: Yacine speaks English, French, Spanish, Arabic, right?

[01:09:11] Yacine Allaoua: Right. 

[01:09:11] Chris Corcoran: Understands technology. 

[01:09:12] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:09:13] Chris Corcoran: He understands how to sell. 

[01:09:14] Marc Gonyea: He can hire a Philippe.

[01:09:15] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, understands 

[01:09:17] Yacine Allaoua: Philippe might not, might not come work for me. 

[01:09:19] Chris Corcoran: Understand, understands how to sell for a Challenger, 

[01:09:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[01:09:22] Chris Corcoran: as a market share leader, understands direct sales, and understands the channel.

[01:09:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[01:09:28] Chris Corcoran: And he’s selling to federal government, but I, my prediction is one day EMEA. 

[01:09:31] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, and, and, you know, I wanna make it happen. You know, for my, you know, we were super lucky, like for our wedding back in 2019, we got married in Malaga, Spain, fell in love with the city. It is also, like, when you look at the cost of living here in Washington, DC versus there, it’s absolutely insane, right?

[01:09:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:09:46] Yacine Allaoua: So, like, I could, we could see ourselves moving there. 

[01:09:49] Yeah. And she’s, you know, she’s Venezuelan, but Venezuelan Paraguayan, but, you know, the roots come from Spain. 

[01:09:54] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:09:54] Yacine Allaoua: And so, you know, we, we’ve kind of seen that, the UK is definitely a possibility with my, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew living there, Algeria being that much closer to extended family.

[01:10:03] So, I will say it’ll, it’ll probably happen. I think the prediction is will I last?

[01:10:07] Chris Corcoran: You know, so, Yacine, you gotta look at all the people who are self-government. 

[01:10:12] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:10:12] Chris Corcoran: Right, you can do what they can do, right, but the AMEA thing, there’s so few people that can do everything that you have.

[01:10:20] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:20] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[01:10:21] Fluency, all those languages, that, that’s like

[01:10:23] Marc Gonyea: It’s the app on shops. 

[01:10:24] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, it’s unbelievable. 

[01:10:25] Yes. 

[01:10:26] Marc Gonyea: You know, sometimes people kind of resting their laurels.

[01:10:28] Chris Corcoran: Right. 

[01:10:28] Marc Gonyea: That Level of just sophistication. 

[01:10:31] Chris Corcoran: So, that’s my, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m sticking to that prediction. We’ll see if it ever happens, and then we’ll have to have you back.

[01:10:35] Yacine Allaoua: Knocking on wood here.

[01:10:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[01:10:37] Chris Corcoran: We gotta get him to come back 

[01:10:38] Yacine Allaoua: I’ll, I’ll invite you guys to Europe for that. 

[01:10:40] Chris Corcoran: There you go. 

[01:10:41] Yacine Allaoua: The, the episode two, right. 

[01:10:42] Chris Corcoran: Roadshow.

[01:10:43] Marc Gonyea: That’d be awesome. 

[01:10:44] Yacine Allaoua: What, what about you guys? I mean, is that, is that a market? You guys are 

[01:10:47] Chris Corcoran: Oh yeah, well, 

[01:10:48] Yacine Allaoua: Right, I imagine. 

[01:10:49] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. We, we want to, we wanna take our game to the international stage.

[01:10:52] Yacine Allaoua: Imagine Germany is definitely a first stop for you, Gonyea. 

[01:10:56] Marc Gonyea: We have, we have cli, we have clients that ask us all the time, “Hey, can you guys do something overseas?”

[01:11:01] Yacine Allaoua: Nice. 

[01:11:02] Marc Gonyea: And we refer the work typically. 

[01:11:03] Yacine Allaoua: Okay. 

[01:11:04] Marc Gonyea: But we could, there’s a demand for it. 

[01:11:06] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah?

[01:11:07] Marc Gonyea: There’s a need, it’s a little bit different, so I don’t know when you get over there, we can be one of your customers.

[01:11:12] Chris Corcoran: Right, bring us, bring us in, Yacine, Yacine.

[01:11:15] Yacine Allaoua: Would love to.

[01:11:16] Marc Gonyea: All right, man, so between, between now and then, we have to get a bunch of those people in the podcast that he mentioned. 

[01:11:20] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:11:20] Marc Gonyea: And then we can do that, we’ll circle back with you, and we’ll see where you are. 

[01:11:23] Yacine Allaoua: Oh yeah, no, absolutely, um, you know, and again, some of the people, like I mentioned, right, that I worked alongside of here, wedding, stuff like that,

[01:11:32] I mean, you know, my wife’s friends with their significant other, et cetera. I mean, it’s you build lifelong relationships here at memoryBlue, I mean, I even, Deema Abu-Baker, right, I mean, I saw her, Deema, yeah, like a great, great friend, right, and I saw her come to memoryBlue many years after I left,

[01:11:47] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:11:47] Yacine Allaoua: and exchanged messages, right, and I think the network is awesome, right, because I think there’s a willingness to want to help others succeed,

[01:11:54] yeah. You know, as I had mentioned Nelson, Philippe, these are all people way before my time, right, so Hail, the first alumni of the year, ‘cause I was, I was here at the first one, right.

[01:12:03] That, that was 2015. And so, you know, we’ve had a couple of conversations over the years. 

[01:12:08] Chris Corcoran: Sure. 

[01:12:08] So, it’s just, it’s a great network, especially public sector, or there’s probably, there’s only a few of us, although I see now that there’s a whole public sector team here, we’ll be able to welcome a lot more folks into the public sector, memoryBlue, but it’s, you know, I thank you guys because these are some of the lifelong friends that I’ve got, and that, you know, we, we stay close with, and, you know, there’s, I wouldn’t have met him if I didn’t get cold called by Chris,

[01:12:31] Yacine Allaoua: um, and come join you guys memoryBlue network, and so, um, yeah. 

[01:12:35] Marc Gonyea: It’s wow. 

[01:12:35] Chris Corcoran: Very good. 

[01:12:36] Marc Gonyea: All right, so before we close it out, knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself the night before you started at the company? So, your 22-year-old self, 23-year-old self. 

[01:12:44] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, that’s a woof, that’s a great question, man, wow.

[01:12:51] Chris Corcoran: Are you married? You have a beautiful child. 

[01:12:54] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah. 

[01:12:55] Marc Gonyea: You got these big dreams, and hope you’re starting to take out, you know, but what would you have told yourself? 

[01:13:00] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I probably would’ve told myself this is absolutely going to be a fun experience, but that’s gonna absolutely change your life and probably, you know, hey, come in every day with, with that much more of the hunger to learn, right, I think, like, I, I did well, and then kind of, you know, there’s great amenities here at memoryBlue and whatnot. And so, I’d have fun with, of course, I was in the wild, wild boom, wild west, right? But I would say yeah, for, for me, right, and I, I super build, so I worked 60 hours a week, like I, I wasn’t somebody who shied away from doing the work. 

[01:13:33] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:13:34] Yacine Allaoua: I think for me it was just, you know, like for example, I would’ve learned, tried to learn that much more. I didn’t know where I was going, right, so I would’ve tried to learn that much more public sector, so that as I really got into that closing role, I would’ve been, you know, a bit more successful, right, I mean, I, I will say if, if you make that growth right that leap up towards closing, you need to be ready for some growing pains. And it, it hits you hard, right? 

[01:13:57] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[01:13:57] Yacine Allaoua: Because you wanna be successful. You’re putting in the work, and, again, I think that’s the biggest thing is, you know, soak in as much as you can here without the added pressures of a number hanging above your head,

[01:14:07] you know, I love to be a startup guy because I don’t want to be number 1,846, I wanna be Yacine, that guy who works hard. 

[01:14:13] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[01:14:14] Yacine Allaoua: And so, for me, it’s understanding that, hey, this is an area where you can have fun, but you also, it’s like your training ground before you go onto the, the stage,

[01:14:23] right, or onto the pitch, or onto the field, right. And so, for me, it’s yeah, apply yourself here as much as you can because you’re not gonna have as much time when you have all of these things. You gotta do forecasting. You gotta let your, your leadership know what’s coming in when and how, and what, why do you think that’s happening, right?

[01:14:40] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[01:14:40] Yacine Allaoua: That takes away from the time you have to do your research. 

[01:14:42] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:43] Yacine Allaoua: So, learn as much as you can hear is probably the one thing I would’ve told myself the night before I started here. 

[01:14:47] Marc Gonyea: All right, that’s great. 

[01:14:48] Chris Corcoran: Very good.

[01:14:49] Marc Gonyea: Yacine, thanks for stopping by. 

[01:14:50] Yacine Allaoua: Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. 

[01:14:52] Chris Corcoran: Lots of fun. 

[01:14:52] Yacine Allaoua: No, such a pleasure.

[01:14:53] Chris Corcoran: Very good. Thanks.