Daniel Sanchez-Grant - Director, Strategic Sales @InVision (Formerly @LinkedIn, @CEB) - A Fully Remote Workforce - Methodically Hiring and Onboarding Teams for Success, Great Culture @InVision and @LinkedIn, Strategic Sales and Executive Meeting Prep

Guest:

Daniel Sanchez-Grant - Director, Strategic Sales @InVision

(Formerly @LinkedIn, @Rungway, @CEB)

Guest Background:

Daniel Sanchez-Grant leads Strategic Sales at InVision ($350M Raised, $1.9B Valuation), the digital product design platform used to make the world's best customer experiences. He’s part of the International Leadership Team responsible for growing InVision’s business outside of North America, and leads a group of senior sales professionals who are fully distributed across Europe.

Previous leadership experience includes launching a cloud technology business in the HR/Culture space called Rungway, as well as several years at LinkedIn (IPO, $27B Acquisition) from pre-IPO startup stage to the acquisition by Microsoft.

Guest Links:

LinkedIn | Twitter

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we cover:

 

- A Fully Remote Workforce - How to Recruit, Hire, Manage and Onboard Teams for Success

- Building Great Cultures @InVision and @LinkedIn

- Strategic Sales and Executive-level Meetings - Preparation and Execution

Full Interview Transcript:

Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to the Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy!

Naber:  Hey, hey, hey everybody. Today we've got Daniel Sanchez-Grant on the show, affectionately known as DSG. He leads strategic sales at InVision. InVision's raised $350 million in capital, worth $1.9 billion valuation - a Unicorn. They're a digital product design platform used to make the world's best customer experiences. He's part of the international leadership team there, responsible for growing InVision's business outside of North America, and he leads a group of senior sales pros, who are fully distributed across Europe. Previous leadership experience includes launching a cloud technology business and the HR/Culture space called Rungway as well as several years at LinkedIn, six years to be precise, where the IPO'd and were acquired by Microsoft for $27 billion in the acquisition. He was there for pre-IPO startup stage to the acquisition by Microsoft. Here we go.!

Naber:  DSG! Awesome to have you on the show, man. Thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out with me for a little while.

DSG:     Naber, always a pleasure. Looking forward to the conversation.

Naber:  Cheers, buddy. You're coming from London today, is that correct?

DSG:     That is correct, yeah, based out of the WeWork on Chauncery Lane.

Naber:  Chauncery Lane - write it down, everybody. Put it on your Google Map.

Naber:  it's hard to know with you. You are, you're everywhere. You are all over the place. When I'm looking at your Instagram or any of your social feeds, you're everywhere. So we'll talk about that in a little bit here. What I want to do is go into a little bit of your background, probably personally first, and then we'll jump into professional, and then we'll hop into some of your super powers and some of the things you've observed as well as lived and executed over multiple businesses and multiple roles. I think people really lucky to hear from you today, which is great.

DSG:     Awesome.

Naber:  Why don't we start with you growing up a little bit personally. So I know that you've been mostly London through and through, which is a bit ironic considering how much you are all over the world for snowboarding, traveling with family, traveling with the partner, traveling by yourself, traveling with friends, and with all the global businesses and roles you've had. It's pretty amazing that you've been almost always in London. Give us maybe five minutes or so on DSG, Daniel Sanchez-Grant was growing up, and what your childhood was like.

DSG:     Sure. So, I guess come from an entrepreneurial background. My mum was very successful business woman. She setup a company in the recruitment industry, and went to build that during a time where recruitment, and particularly the agency market in the UK was a really successful industry. And so I grew up in an environment where a high work ethic, a successful achieving kind of environment. Two older sisters, who in their own right very successful individuals, doing different careers. And so grew up in-and-around London, actually from a place called Staines. It's probably most famous for Ali G, of all things.

Naber:  A-mazing, a-mazing. Nothing could come out of your mouth that would make you more proud than that. He's unbelievable, unbelievable. He's an amazing set of characters, and he's an absolute genius for what he's been able to do. And the people he's able to get on this show - what's the email look like, or the message look like, that comes to get that level of success rate and conversion rate for getting those people in your show? It's unbelievable.

DSG:     Yeah. He's he's definitely become synonymous with the place that I grew up, so, that's quite funny. But, so look, spent a bunch of time there. Left school, relatively young, and joined the family business and spent four years in that business. joined with the idea of being there for a couple of weeks to help out during the summer, and fell in love with the whole environment. And four years later was still there and going strong. And so I think that was a huge part of shaping my professional perspective, and work ethic, and just loved being in a entrepreneurial environment and building companies. And so yeah, that was a lot of fun.

Naber:  And what were your set of responsibilities in that business?

DSG:     I think, to be honest, there wasn't anything, there wasn't...when you're building a company of that stage, when I joined it was four people in a branch environment in a place called Teddington. So, you don't really have a set of responsibilities, right? whether it's fixing the printer, or going and covering a temporary assignment on reception for one of your clients. The role was so varied from that point of view and therefore it just gives you a flavor of all aspects of business - from payroll, to customer service, to candidate management, business development. From that point of view, it was super fun. So in the early favor I was 17, totally clueless, probably more of a hindrance than a help to a lot of the talented people I worked with during my time. But, I got exposure to different ways of working. And that was just a small group, but such a talented, diverse group within that environment. Such different styles amongst the three or four consultants that we started with that, as an early career professional, just really inspiring and energizing exposure at a young age. So, how to run a business, how to service as costumers, how to think about building teams and a great culture. It was a lot of fun. So yeah, that was the early parts of my four years there. And I look back with nothing but fond memories of that experience. And I think also, it being a family thing, I think it brings a different level of purpose to the feeling that you get from building stuff and accomplishing things on a day-to-day basis. I think that's hard to replicate in other types of environments.

Naber:  Yup. And that was LPR, correct?

DSG:     Yeah, it was a Litchfield's Personnel and Recruitment, it was called. It started in Teddington, and then grew to be multiple branches, and 20 to 30 full time staff at one point, and hundreds of people working on a temporary basis. So yeah, that was a fun ride.

Naber:  And you went through the roles and ranks to General Manager that business, is that correct?

DSG:     Yeah. My mum, at the time, got to the point where she'd stepped back from the business. It was doing really well and had gone into an early retirement, and me and a bunch of people were running and different branches, different customers at that time. And so yeah, it was exciting...Got to a point where I was fairly integral into the running of that company, and obviously at 20, 21 years old, that's a lot of really good experiences quite early into how to drive a company, how to make sure that people are happy, and all of that good stuff.

Naber:  I want to go off the script from some of these tech businesses that you've worked for, to talk about this just for a minute. So as a young professional...there's a lot of young managers in tech companies and a lot of young leaders in tech companies because, oftentimes, they'll promote internally, or for a lot of reasons. Sometimes that's just what they've always done. Sometimes it's because of speed. Sometimes it's because they have brilliant people, and they're just the best people for that role. But there's a lot of young leaders and young managers. For someone that is a young manager, a young leader, that is either managing or leading people that are older than them, or more experienced than them - that sounds something you had to do when you're relatively young. Is there any sort of mindset, or way that you think about, or set of advice that you've given to other people that are in the same scenario so that they can alleviate confidence concerns or not overthink it? Any advice or mindset that you can deliver to folks that are in that same scenario?

DSG:     Yeah, so I think the first thing is that it's totally okay not to have all the answers, right? If I think about all of the teams that I have and have managed, the best teams, I'm surrounded by people even today who are much better than me at a whole bunch of things, and I love that. And so I think, just firstly, acknowledging that you're always going to be running teams where there's people who have a different point of view, more experience, a better skillset. And I think it's really about embracing that and not being afraid of it. And so, I guess that first thing is like, that's okay, and think about what it is that you do really well and play to those strengths. And then think about what, how do you harness the skills of others around you to make sure that you're benefiting from that collective experience. So yeah, I'd say that would be one of the core things for me. And also just embracing the fact that you're always, if you're going to build great teams, you're going to be surrounded by people that all the time. And that's something to be excited about, not afraid of.

Naber:  Yeah, good point. I mean, you're just constantly working with inspiring people that you'd love to learn from - on the left of you and on the right of you - that's a really good thing to keep in mind. Especially the fastest growing businesses in the world, the people working at those businesses the people listening on this podcast, people that aspire to go to those businesses. It's just going to continue to happen. It's not slowing down, no matter how old or experienced you get. You're exactly right. That makes sense.

DSG:     Totally. And I also think just because someone's on your team, be vulnerable, right? If there's something that they do really, really well, it doesn't mean you can't go and talk to them about how they do it and what they've done to improve that skill. And showing that interest, and recognizing what someone is really strong at, then using that as a conversation to help me improve on this thing, I think can be a really great experience when you're managing people, and definitely brings those two individuals having that type of engagement much closer together.

Naber:  Yeah, totally. I've got a bunch of things I wanted to get to, so we can get into CEB, but one more question on that. Is there any way that you found that you've been able to facilitate one person learning really well from another, either as they come onboard into the organization, or so that your team is learning from each other, or teams that you're managing are learning from other teams you're not managing. Is there any way you found to be able to facilitate that, or processes you've been able to put in place in order to make sure happens?

DSG:     Yeah, sure. So I guess, if you think about InVision at the moment, we're growing really fast, right? So in the last two years in our international business, we've added 60 people across a whole range of different roles and levels as we've grown. That's a really exciting environment to be in when you're bringing on great people. And then you try to think about how, particularly in a fully distributed, remote environment - how do you ensure every individual that starts that they're setup for success. And so, we've learned a whole bunch of things over the last two years, definitely made some mistakes on that journey, but one of the things that we've really focused on is that onboarding experience. What are the steps in a remote environment that are required for someone to get up to speed in their role as quickly as possible? What are the tools they need? What are the skills and knowledge that we need to be able to provide them with? How do we, in this distributed, unique environment, how do, we get that to them as quickly as possible. And so, we spent a whole bunch of time talking to people that had gone through the process, and we built a fairly comprehensive 30-60-90 day checklist - where we detail out in week one, here's all the people that you need to speak to. Here are your buddies across different functions. Here are the tools that you need to embrace. And really tried to create a framework, so that in that first 90 days there's real transparency around the people that you need to have relationships with, the tools, and then the processes. And we found with a tool like that, where the manager and whomever it is that is joining are working through it in a fairly systematic way, we can just ensure that people have connections in to the things that can help them be successful in their role.

Naber:  And obviously we're tweaking and changing this all the time because the business is just so rapidly changing. But that's probably been one way - create transparency around the leading indicators that are going to make someone successful, and then the relationships that people need within that. So that would be one example. Then I'd say one other example - how do you drive collaboration amongst a remote team? Just because we're remote doesn't mean that we don't care about things culture, and learning, and self improvement, and development. So we're really heavily invested in ways in which we can continuously bring the teams together, not just remotely, but in person, and what do those engagements look, and how do we orientate those agendas around specific things going on in the business that are going to enable these people to be more successful. So it's an ongoing process, but fascinating to do it in an organization that one, is so rapidly growing, but two, doing it, in a fully distributed and remote all over the world.

Naber:  Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean, you guys are the largest distributed remote workforce on the planet - at least for fast growing tech businesses, if not for almost everybody. It's pretty unbelievable what you guys have been able to build. I love the gold that just came out of your mouth for the prescriptive-ness or the prescript-ivity, if you will. I don't even know if that's a word, but I made it up. But the prescriptiveness, that you get down to the details on the first 30 days, first week, you know, who to talk to, conversations to be having, relationships to be having, tools, process, etc. I think that's great for a lot of people to hear, especially those listening on these conversations, because, I think too many people overlook the onboarding experience as an opportunity to not just check boxes and get them access to tools, and email, and hardware, and maybe a buddy here, or a conversation, or a mentor there. It just got to be extremely prescriptive, especially in remote or decentralize environments, like tech businesses are always in. And I think that gold just came out of your mouth is really valuable for all these tech businesses that are out there. It's great. Thanks so much DSG. Let's move on to CEB. So you went from, you went from LPR to CEB. Tell us about that jump and tell us about what you're up to there.

DSG:     Yeah, sure. So, CEB was actually SHL at the time, which were a talent management, technology services provider. They specialized in psychometric assessments. So, ability tests, metric tests, and they were actually one of my customers at LPR at the time. And so we were recruiting for salespeople, who, interestingly had a psychology background. This was an organization that was a leading...a market leader in occupational psychology, and how to really get the best of your talent across the entire lifecycle of an employee. I was really fascinated by them at the time because I'd spent four years in this recruitment market place trying to find companies, just great people at great companies. And what SHL really specialized in is how do you bring science to that process, and give companies the tools that enable you to identify behavioral traits, and preferences, and strengths and weaknesses. And as I got to know them as a customer, I was at this interesting crossroads in my career where I've been working with the family business for four years. I was 17 when I started, four years later, do I want to be running this forever? Or are other things that I need to go and do to test myself, expand my skills. As you can imagine, my mom is still one of my closest friends and mentors, but tough conversations have with someone who I can imagine on a selfish level, it's like, "I don't want you to go". But then obviously as her son was super supportive in me progressing and exploring my career. And so joined SHL in an inside sales role and progressed fairly quickly into Enterprise, field-based sales for them working with large, FTSE 100 companies and helping them with things leadership development, and employee development, talent management, recruitment and how they used assessments and services as part of that mix. Really great experience, and one thing I really took from there is value-based selling. How to really orientate your conversation around the customer and the challenges that they face, and how to build more solution orientated-type agreements. So yeah, it was an awesome experience with some really good people that I'm still in touch with today. And yeah, it was a super tough decision to leave that to be honest.

Naber:  Yeah, I bet. SHL is an awesome business, and becoming part of CEB made them even stronger as well. You have so many good experiences it sounds within that particular role, when you move to LinkedIn, tell us about that jump.

DSG:     Yeah, it was interesting. So I was, let's see, at Wembley Football Stadium for an event that I think an applicant tracking system provider was running. I was there in an SHL capacity with clients. Great day. I was actually sent there as a development opportunity, and I just remember the overall content of the speakers was great. But at the end of the day, a chap called Ariel Eckstein did a keynote at the time - I think it was 2010 - on this platform called LinkedIn.

Naber:  That's so early, so early.

DSG:     Yeah, it was,. It was new at the time, and I think social media, still back then, was a that little bit misunderstood, particularly in businesses. Everyone was like, how do we understand social media? And so, Ariel did this talk and what they were doing, and I think they've hit 50 million Members maybe at that point in time. And just this rocket ship growth, and how they were thinking about the role of something like LinkedIn in the talent marketplaces. It orientates it's professionals and networking. And I just left, totally inspired. It was a 40-minute talk. I was like, this is incredible. And just started hitting up everyone on LinkedIn I could find that worked at LinkedIn, and met a guy called Pat Traynor. And yeah, the rest is history to be honest. So I wasn't, it was one of these things where I wasn't looking to leave SHL, but the LinkedIn message was so compelling that I wanted to find out more. And again, when the offer came, it was a tough decision to make because I had so many good relationships at that company, and everyone was like, yeah, social media and LinkedIn, it's a fad. We're not sure. And it sends shivers down my spine to think that I may not have taken that role when I did, given the the experience I had there over six years and how many great people that I met. And so yeah, just one of these things I want to take a punt on. And yeah, thankfully it turned out in a really good way.

Naber:  So you moved into, that's a great story, you moved into the Senior Enterprise Relationship Manager role looking after a bunch of customers around Europe, Middle East and Africa. Is that correct?

DSG:     Yeah, back then the London hub was the EMEA presence, and I moved into a Relationship Manager role, and it was a new role. LinkedIn had just started to specialize away from these hybrid-type, customer-sales professionals to a more new business, relationship management, customer success type motion. And I went in at a relationship management level, and we were still trying to figure out the playbook for it and what that looked like. And it was fun, but it was chaos at the time, right. Hundreds of customers, no real process, but just a great environment to be in as we figured that stuff out, and new products coming to market, and working through some of those challenges. Yeah, it was fun.

Naber:  Awesome. So I'm going to look at LinkedIn as a whole experience before you jump into the Manager, Global Accounts & Head of Relationship Management scope that you had. Because there's a link between, no pun intended, but there's a link between the businesses that you've been across at LPR, CEB, LinkedIn, Rungway and InVision. The businesses you've been across to been at extraordinarily different phases of the development & growth of that particular business. I want to separate two things right now and ask you about them, because I think these are two of your superpowers, and you've had a ton of exposure that other people can learn from. I want to separate two things - building great cultures, and building & retaining world-class talent and great teams.

Naber:  So let's talk about building great cultures. How do you think about building...because when you moved to LinkedIn, that exposure you had to those cultures, same thing at InVision - I don't know about Rungway culture,, but I do know about CEB's culture - you've had exposure now to so many great high performing cultures of some of the fastest growing businesses in the world. How do you think about building culture? Maybe a set of principles, or a framework that you use, or at least what's your mindset and then I can dive into that a little bit.

DSG:     Sure. I guess, if I think about LinkedIn, Rungway, and InVision - the common theme across all of them is just the purpose in those businesses, right? LinkedIn - connecting professionals to opportunity. I think 600 million people on that platform. The mission that they're sort of living every day, it's great. Rungway's mission - really powerful around, leveling the playing field for people in enterprises and giving people a voice on sensitive topics and access to mentorship, irrespective of what you look or sound, in quite hierarchical cultures. And then InVision - just this really powerful platform that's disrupting the way companies think about digital experiences, right? Every company in the world today is arguably a digital product company. Whether you're in pharmaceutical or automotive, or finance. The user experience now via screens is a huge differentiator for businesses and how they think about reorientating what they're doing, given the competitive landscape.

DSG:     All of these companies had great missions, but I think about the culture in these different phases and really tying that to what you're trying to understand or achieve as a business. So if you think about InVision at the moment, we've got this really exciting products used by 5 million designers around the world, from some of the biggest companies - 100% of the fortune 100 - but we're still building in international, right? That's a lot of great things. But there's also challenging things that come with growing a team at breakneck speed, and adding people and changing process constantly. And so, I think when you think about culture, you've got to pull in the context of where you're at as a company. And really think about defining that with clear vocabulary, so that people can understand what it is the culture represents and the types of behaviors that are going to help you succeed as a business.

DSG:     At InVision we've gone through a company-wide exercise of codifying the values and making sure that that's integrated into how we define what it means to be at InVision and the types of things that are gonna help you be great. And we've gone as far as building that into how we do employee engagement, and how we coach people and how we celebrate people. And so I would say like, creating a vocabulary around the culture and the values is huge. Engage your teams, talk to your business stakeholders, find out what it is you're trying to achieve as a company, and then use that context to define a set of language that people can really internalize and understand. And then think of ways in which you can bring that into everything you do. This can't happen in a vacuum. Too many companies stick values up on the wall, and they're great, but no one remembers what they are. And so I think these businesses, like LinkedIn, like Rungway, like InVision, in my experience, have all done a really good job of understanding the power of culture and creating an environment where people can understand it, and thrive in it, and contribute to it. I think that's an important part. Obviously lots of learnings through those, like InVision, we've grown so quickly, we haven't gotten it all right over the last couple of years. But as you go through these mistakes, you learn, and you try and improve. And we've just got some great people here trying to figure this stuff out.

Naber:  That's great. So when you're thinking about...you mentioned defining, put together a set of language that's common across the organization and applying that to everything that you do. That sounds, both intuitive and maybe not intuitive at the same time, but those are the steps in the elements that you think are very important within building that culture. Do you have any foundational things that managers and leaders need to do in order to proliferate that language and proliferate the documentation, or the definitions you've put together for what the culture is, and how to bring that to the people within their teams?

DSG:     100%. Yes. I think the documentation is really clear, like clear definitions and as many examples that you can bring to what it means, that that are real life examples of people who are living certain behaviors all the time, right? And so how then you bring that into all aspects of when you're recruiting people. Are you identifying those types of behavioral policies in the people that you're interviewing, and how are you doing that, and how can you make sure that that's consistent right through your hiring. Because again, InVision's a great business and we're growing quickly, but it's not great for everyone, right? As sales professionals, we're at a stage where we're growing a pace where things break all the time, and you've got to embrace and love fixing that, and building process, and establishing the fundamentals of the company, not just the selling part. And so how we make sure that as part of our values and how we interview, we identify people who perhaps have got brilliant talent and skill on the sales process, but perhaps aren't quite ready for the stage that we're at as a company where there's a build component too. That's really important. We need to set clear expectations with people coming into this company that there's so much that's good, but there's also some challenging stuff. And if you're not the type of person that wants to thrive in an environment where you're having to build things as you go, and develop process, and help contribute to the sort of foundational things that are going to help InVision grow in international - it's not going to be a great fit, and you're not going to enjoy our culture. But people that look at it and say like, that's exactly where I want to be and I want to have an impact beyond simply the sale, that can obviously be quite exciting for some types of people. So yeah, document it, define it, integrate it into the types of people that you're looking to recruit, and then also set a standard for what great looks in your company too. How are people developing themselves against those examples? How do we celebrate them in one-to-ones...it's got to be throughout everything, right? And if there are people living certain characteristics everyday, as a leadership team and as peers, we've got to create environments for them to celebrate and recognize each other for those because it's those types of things, I think, that just add to the quality of what we're doing culturally, everyday.

Naber:  So you've inched into, thank you for doing my job for me, inched into the land of the other two things. Remember I said I want to separate two things, one culture building. And that was an excellent answer with a bunch of specifics around steps and different pieces that people can use within the organization to then build up a great culture. Let's move over to team building. You mentioned, all the way down to interviewing, evaluating talent based on the different language and specific pieces of your culture you want to bring into the organization as well as develop. So when you're thinking about building great teams, what fundamental common things have you seen or executed - because I know you've executed these at both LinkedIn and InVision - what common things have you seen between LinkedIn and InVision that they do extremely well with building great teams and building high performing teams?

DSG:     So I'd say, both organizations do a really strong job of standing, what it is that they're offering, right? What's the value proposition to an employee joining LinkedIn? And in the same vein, what is it at InVision? Obviously their two distinctly different organizations, and those things will look different, but you've got to understand what is it that you're offering. All of the great things, but also then you've got to be super clear on all of the challenges too, and make sure that as you're taking someone through a hiring process, if they arrive on day one, what they get in the hiring process is exactly what they feel and expected and in that one experience. So I think both companies do a really good job of understanding that a little bit in the context of where they are. And again, we've made mistakes, over the last couple of years, built the team really quick. There's definitely things that we've learned over that process, but we've got to make sure that when we're looking for people, the types of people that we hire are going to thrive and love what it is that we have to offer, and that people that understand it and choose to opt out, that's completely cool as well. And so I think definitely, some pieces there. And then I think InVision, and to a certain extent, I think LinkedIn did this well, how do you bring your teams into that process too, and give people a feel beyond, say a hiring manager, of the different types of individuals? InVision's got some really strong individuals in our teams and they play a big part in our hiring process. if I think about the last few hires that I've made, part of the feedback that we got from them, is they loved the sessions they got with people on my team. And that was a real opportunity for them to dig in on what it's really like. I think bringing your employees into that experience and giving candidates that perspective through someone on the team's experiences is another powerful tool for telling that story.

Naber:  Yeah. Let's actually pause on that for a minute in drill into a little bit more. How does that work? How are you bringing the team in, what's the process, or how are you bringing your teammates into that mutual two-way evaluation process as they're evaluating the candidate and the candidate evaluating what it's actually to be in that role as well as the culture of the business. How are you actually doing that in the candidate experience?

DSG:     Yeah, definitely. So I guess, we have set criteria through the process that we're interviewing people against. So let's say a candidate gets to a stage where I've had a couple of conversations and they're doing really strong, but there's an area that I'd love us to continue to dig in on. I'd provide that framework to someone on my team - give them all of the notes, the context - and they would then be equipped to go and have that conversation. But there would also be a flavor of like, this is a two way process, and I'm always pushing on candidates to own this experience a little bit too. Like, we can do what we can to share our perspectives, but they should be interviewing us as well. And I want candidates coming in eyes wide open to all of the great things and all of the challenges that we face. And I think setting those expectations and creating a framework for people to have them is a great way just to be transparent, and give the team access to the types of people I'm speaking to. And there's nothing better than an individual in the team coming back and saying - this person was absolute an rockstar, and having that cultural validation from other people too.

Naber:  I love how you bring your team into it so explicitly. You've mentioned multiple times something around the candidate choosing just as much as the company's choosing. And I've seen a couple of the things that you've written about, and you're talking about that two way experience and the choices on both sides - the candidates have the power, the company has the power. Reminding themselves that mutual evaluation process is extremely important. You write about that, I think in one of your LinkedIn articles as well. When you're going through that process, what explicit questions or types of examples are you using or asking for to help the candidate evaluate whether or not they are right for the stage of business? Like you said, InVision's of kickass set of products, company, great people, great culture, really fast growing, raised a bunch of cash, high valuation. On paper, it's a badass opportunity. At the same time, it's just not right for people, you said at the, at different phases of a business because some people just aren't ready for that, or they wouldn't thrive in that environment. How are you asking questions or what types of questions or examples you trying to get to make sure the candidate can make that evaluation themselves?

DSG:     Great question. I guess just speaking openly about some of the specific challenges, right? If I think about our sales process here, the designer is so important in our company. The role of design in businesses, we want to elevate that voice, and we see the role of design and having more and more strategic influence in an organization, in terms of when an organization gets it right it's driving true business outcomes. And so the designer is everything for us. But that's just one stakeholder and several that we have to work through. And our process, beyond simply a champion in design, also we'll have a security component, and a data privacy component, and the legal components, the sales process can be long and complex. And then there are some of the cultural norms. In Germany for example, cloud is still in new and challenging technology for a lot of big businesses. And so some of our sales cycles in those markets take a lot longer, and therefore the resilience to work through that time, but also the discipline to manage the process and the stakeholders step by step and do all of those leading indicators up until the point that we're able to work on a partnership with the customer and sign that off - those are certain qualities that not every cell's environment will have. And I think the more that you can be specific about those types of things and look for evidence and examples of someone being able to work through that in what they've done historically, but also thrive and enjoy that type of thing versus other sales cycles that might have fewer stakeholders and the less complicated paper process. And so I think the more that you can be specific on examples in your process and bring that to life for an individual...I'm always looking for people to opt in, sell them a little bit against it where the fight is, like, this sounds exactly what I'm looking for rather than overselling too much, and finding that some of this stuff becomes a shock to people.

Naber:  Great tactic. I love that. When you were at Rungway and and when you were at LPR, when you don't have a brand behind you, and you're still a small business or even if you're really high growth business that's really great at what they do in tech, you are still an unknown quantity or an unknown entity to so many people, that you don't have the brand out there that says, come to us. We're going to attract people right away. So I think it's extremely important to remember when you don't have a brand that you still need...because your conversion rates at the back end and the middle end of the funnel for companies that have great employment value propositions and great employment brands like InVision or LinkedIn, those conversion rates are so much higher than a startup or or a midsize tech business. So I think that small and midsize tech businesses find it extremely hard to play the devil's advocate you just mentioned within the candidate interviewing and recruitment process to make sure that they're telling them transparently - these are the things that aren't rosy all the time, or these are the things that are really challenging that you may find difficult. I think it's even more important in those small midsize businesses when you don't have that brand equity, when it's really scary to do it, because you want to attract the best people and you're scared of someone looking in and seeing all those blemishes, if you will. I think it's even more important to do that. So I think that using that at InVision, using that at LinkedIn as a way to get candidates to, self identify the right opportunity, is is amazing that you guys do it, number one. Number two, I love the examples you used. Especially in different environments, different stages of disruption in the adoption for cloud based technology, as an example. And Germany versus the UK, as an example. I think those are great, nice examples. Solid. Thanks man.

Naber:  Last couple things here, then we'll hop into some rapid fire questions. There's two more things that I want to specifically discuss. One is around building and reengineering a sales process so that it matches a customer facing, customer focus versus an internal focus. I think that you've gone through, in all likelihood in two different businesses both at LinkedIn and then maybe even more explicitly at InVision, where you've gone through a process of reevaluating and reengineering some of that sales process. What would you say to people that are trying to build a customer focused sales process and experience you've had engineering one towards that versus, focusing on yourself and your own internal process?

DSG:     I think, if I take the InVision experience...InVision, has this really powerful brand in design, we love the designe. We spend a huge amount of time going beyond our product to thinking about how do we drive value in the community and the elevate this new growing community in businesses where designers now are differentiators for them. And so, if I think about that community piece, and we do things design leadership forum, which is a community for design leaders where we've got a thousand people around the world that we bring together for these intimate dinners. And it's about networking and it's completely tool agnostic, but it's like how do we create a platform for people that are going through rapid change in their organization where there's not a playbook for the type of growth that they're experiencing, the number of products they're having to design for, the number of stakeholders that are having to collaborate with. And so I guess the first piece is, how as a company do you recognize that you've got to drive value into the community that you serve beyond the products. To help just elevate the overall category and create best practice sharing and knowledge. So there's a piece around just making sure that you're heavily invested in that. And it's really inspiring to work at InVision because the content that we produce and the investment that we make into helping these individuals, and develop these new playbooks, and scale their design teams, and share that best practice - that helps. And I think from a sales process point of view, because the product is so strong and that we started as this self service business where, 5 million people sign up to InVision and now I use it to collaborate design ideas and stake holders, a lot of the conversations sometimes in the earlier phase would start at that product and feature level. And so one thing that we did to help in that early phase of the process was we've developed something called, we call it a value pyramid. Essentially it's just a research framework that starts at the company's most strategic goal, breaks down what their strategic objectives are and challenges, and then ways in which we can create value for that. It's an executive summary slide, and it's really just a framework for researching what's this company talking about online that relates to digital and trends impacting their company, and how can we start every single conversation with a customer around those types of topics as part of the agenda, so that we're not being pulled straight into the products and features piece, but more into how what we do impacts real strategic business outcomes.

DSG:     And so that's one thing that's really helped us elevate our conversations beyond the products, which is important and we want to do, but connects us more to what a company is actually facing in their organization. And how does design play a role in fixing some of those things? That would be one example. Another is how do you then design processes outside of the design persona for us also to create value, right? We have more engineers on the InVision platform now than designers because so much of what's getting created in companies is this design idea that needs to be socialized across so many different business functions. Engineering being one, business stakeholders, legal, compliance, marketing. How do you get as many people involved around the design idea as early in the process so the end outcome is that much better. So for us, it's how do we go to different types of personas and have that value based conversation as well, outside of design, so that we can speak to the value of this operating system for all of that digital product, design, etc. And so lots of work around that. And the final thing, we've developed a customer business review framework, which is really a template for ensuring that in our existing customers we're sitting down at least once a quarter and having a conversation about what's new in their organization, what challenges they're facing as a function, and how we can bring value through the different things that we do. And so, I think these types of tools just give our customer teams, more ammunition to spend more time on the customer than they do on features and our products, etc.

Naber:  Hey, one quick question to dive into a bit of detail on your review documents that you have with the customer. You've done so many of these with executives both at LinkedIn and at InVision, as an individual you have done so many, I know your team has too. Can you talk a little bit about what that document looks like? Either the length of it or the summary of what's in it, just so people get a sense for what you're including in that presentation or that document.

DSG:     Sure. Yeah. I guess, before even getting to the documents, so much of it is about what it is you're trying to achieve as the outcome of the meeting and who needs to be there. So before you even get to the document component, what stakeholders do I need to have in this conversation to ensure that we truly move the conversation forward and are as connected as possible to the challenges of this business faces. So the preparation that goes into defining the stakeholders, selling the value of why bringing those different types of people together in a meeting. You win and lose in the prep and all of that piece. So just make sure that this isn't a tick box exercise, but a truly strategic tool to figure out who needs to be there, why do they need to be there, and how do I communicate the value of these different functional leaders coming together to have a conversation around their company?

DSG:     And if you can get that piece right, selling the value and getting the right stakeholders, prepping to ensure that the outcome that you're trying to design for is the one that you've reach - that's a huge part of it. The framework itself, I think orientate it around a clear agenda that's aligned to the outcome. Make sure that the lion share of the meeting is spent on the stakeholders and the individual challenges that they face, and how those are barriers to the outcomes that they're trying to achieve as a company. If you can leave every single customer business review having understood the three core challenges that a company spicing and why, and what are those barriers to them being successful - To be honest, that's a huge part of it. The rest feels downhill. Obviously the more insight you can bring to those conversations, insights driven from what the industry are doing, perhaps benchmark companies that they look to and see as really inspiring, whether that's in their industry peer group or outside of it, ensuring that you gathered that insight as part of your prep and that you lead with that - particularly when you've get executives who are a key part of making sure all those types of engagements successful.

Naber:  Awesome. Great Segue too. So the last thing I want to talk about is selling to power and selling to executives. You just gave me a great segue. One of your superpowers that I think a lot of people admire is your ability to have really smooth, easy, fluid conversations that are very substantive, while at the same time, hugely impactful. Ha, I'm giving you the feedback that other people have both told me and that I've observed myself. But the point is, those characteristics as well as your structure and your science behind it make you very good at selling to executives and selling to power. Do you have a framework that you use or a set of principles that you use when you talk to executives in executive meetings? You've just done that so much at CEB, at Rungway, at InVision, at LinkedIn, you've done extremely well. What sort of framework or set of principles or using while you're setting up the agenda and having that conversation?

DSG:     Yeah, I would say the first thing that always goes through my mind is to try and look at the meeting from their perspective to try and put myself in as much as what I think is going on in their company. Again, from the research I've done from the conversations I've had. A recent example of someone on my team, they're working with a large financial services organization, and over the last six months I would say the conversations they've had across that organization with all types of stakeholders across the business, and the time they spent just listening and gathering insight and understanding - nothing to do with communicating what InVision does, but really what this business is trying to achieve and the barriers that are stopping them, maybe reaching those things in the context of an annual report or anything else that you can find out about what they're doing strategically - all of that enabled us to, when we sat down with the CMO, in 30 minutes communicate more insight to that individual than perhaps he had been exposed to in a little while. And so I guess for me, you've got to do the groundwork. There's no point turning up to these executive meetings with some sort of discovery conversation framework. You get short amount of time, they want to be educated, you've got to have some type of insight. And you've gotta be super clear on the outcome that you want from that individual. And so for us in that specific example, we wanted his sponsorship on something and we were super clear about that and had earned the right to ask for it because we had turned up with a very clear vocabulary, framework, ask and the insight based on a ton of ground work we've done in that business. And so, for me it's just do the research, do the prep, look at it from that perspective. Know that they've got a short amount of time where they could be talking to any type of vendor, and therefore if they can't leave that room feeling they've learned something or got something clear that they can action, I would say go back to the drawing board.

Naber:  Nice. That's great. One quick follow-up to that. You mentioned prep and doing the pre work multiple times in this conversation. How important is it to have, or do you need to have specific examples within their company on what's going on, or a strategic insights from their business - from an annual report, or inside conversations you've had, or things you can find online? Or do you feel you can go in with some sort of, either your competitor does this this, or other types of organizations you have said x, y and z? How important is it to have something company-specific versus more general but that applies to their industry or their competitors?

DSG:     Yes. It's a great question

Naber:  One quick insert in here. The reason I ask that is because that is a product of a lot of time that someone spends doing the pre-work, whether it's hours, or whether it's an hour. And I know that they evaluate the time that they're going to spend as to whether or not they do it or not. And that's why I'm asking that question, because I know that comes up on a daily basis people sitting down doing that pre-work.

DSG:     Yeah. Çompletely. I would say firstly, it's about the stage in the process & the ask. In the example that I gave to you, the ask was quite clear about how we can help them with a recommendation about their organization. Right? So it wasn't necessarily the start of the conversation where we we're looking to build a relationship. We had done a lot of stakeholder engagement across lots of functions at a quite senior level, C- minus one or two in some cases. And in this example it was like, here's our recommendation, here's how it's been validated across all of these people with all of this business case. Will you support it? So that, I would say in that stage is a different type of executive engagement, where you need to have done the ground work. In an earlier stage where perhaps the executive engagement is more at the beginning of a process, where you're looking to start top down and go straight in at that level. I think any type of insight that is anchored in what you know about the company, what you know about the industry, what you know about their benchmark peers - is really strong. If you're at the beginning of something and your ask is maybe introductions to more people on their team, or them to work with you on a specific problem that you solve really well as a company. I think that's a different type of ask, but equally requires the same amount of prep, right? And I go back to what's the size of prize and what is it you're trying to achieve in the context of the goals that you have? And if this is something that you genuinely believe with this person is going to move your business forward. There's no amount of timeframe on the prep that, in my mind, is not worth doing. If you truly want to meet the outcome and you've decided that that's a key priority for you.

Naber:  Great answer. DSG, you've been excellent with your time. Let me run through some rapid fire questions and then we'll wrap up, that okay?

DSG:     Go for it. Yeah.

Naber:  Your favorite place to snowboard in the world? What is it?

DSG:     Tahoe, dude. Easy.

Naber:  Tahoe, nice! That was so fast! Why Tahoe?

Naber:  I've just got so many great memories there. I learned to board in Tahoe. It became for me and just the group of group of friends, somewhere that we would try and go at least once a year as part of kickoffs that we did and stuff that. And so I've just got so many great memories of learning to board there, great days on the slopes, hanging out with friends. Yeah, it's absolutely awesome.

Naber:  Oh, love it. Okay - second question. Best food city in the world?

DSG:     Ooh. I'll say London.

Naber:  That is such a cheating answer. That's so cheeky that you would say that. So I just saw that you were in Italy not too long ago and I thought to myself, you've been a lot of places with a lot of good food, especially in the last few years. So London is, London is still your answer.

DSG:     Amalfi coast was incredible. Obviously loved the food and Italy, but London's just so international, so diverse, so many great restaurants. Yeah it's it's a pleasure for me. Best city in the world. Love living here.

Naber:  Love it. Love it. Okay, your best one or two interview tips for someone that is going into an interview for a role soon? I know you've written about this, and you've done a shed load of interviews. You've also advised people and companies on this type of stuff. Any interview, one or two interview tips that you would deliver?

DSG:     I would say, research the person that you're interviewing with. Look at the company, there's so much available online now to individuals, there's no excuse for it, right? So Glassdoor reviews, LinkedIn, people that work there, people with similar job titles, who invest in the company, what sort of portfolio do they have? Who's on the board? To be honest, there's so much available to everyone now, and so I would say all aspects of those things would be, would be really important.

Naber:  Awesome. Do the prep. And then last question is around overcoming age in senior roles. You've had a lot of large responsibility at a young age, even in your teens and early twenties. Any advice for making that an asset versus a liability? A lot of people are...I know I asked a question similar to this...but any either general advice or advice to those that are younger with a lot of responsibility?

DSG:     I would just say be yourself. Acknowledged gaps. From my point of view, again, there's still so much that I have to learn and improve on, and I think just be comfortable with that, right? Whether you are managing people that have more experience than you or not, whether you work in environment where your peer group, find common ground with people and just embrace who you are and take a level of enjoyment in what others brings to the conversation too. So I think as long as you're not trying to be something that you're not, then you'll be absolutely fine in my opinion.

Naber:  Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening. If you appreciated and enjoyed the episode, go ahead and make a comment on the post for the episode on LinkedIn. If you love the Naberhood podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate and give us a five star review on iTunes. Until next time - go get it.