Daniel Bartels: 0:06

Welcome to the growth pulse podcast, where we take a deep dive in the world of business business sales. Your hosts, Daniel Bartels and Simon Peterson. Talk to some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders, experts in sales technology, and thought leaders in today's best sales skills and techniques. In this episode, we're talking to Sarah Harkness. Sarah is the CEO of catalogue digital, one of Australia's leading revenue operations consultancies. She's also the CEO of project lotus, not for profit centre and the prevention of workplace harassment, and the creation of equality in the workplace. Prior to starting catalogue, digital, Sarah was one of the leading account execs at Salesforce Marketo, Dropbox and GitLab. From the growth pulse team, please welcome your hosts, Daniel Bartels and Simon Peterson. Hey, Simon,

Simon Peterson: 1:05

Hey, Dan, how you doing? Really good. So how about that cartoon? That was very good. I think it's interesting, your your character was probably not as nicely dealt with his mind, but it's a winner. So

Daniel Bartels: 1:25

we've got to have a bit of fun. So who are we talking to today? So talking to Sarah Hawkins, you know, obviously, long, long friend of both, both you and I. Yeah, sometimes some exciting things. And I'm actually just come back from overseas, which is very exciting, seeing some some fabulously fabulously famous people. So, you know, that's, that's all interesting. But looking for one of our early podcasts, I think this is a real coup for us.

Simon Peterson: 1:54

It's a great stuff, and I'm looking for what you're talking about journey. I mean, obviously, she's a CEO right now, but she's certainly done a lot in her career, a lot of b2b sales, a lot of learnings. And I think she's really an exemplar to people that are selling software in Australia to see what's possible what they can do. It's awesome.

Daniel Bartels: 2:18

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's bring it in. So hold on, let me make sure I can work on this. Sarah, welcome to podcast.

Sarah Harkness: 2:27

Nice to be here. Good to see you again.

Daniel Bartels: 2:30

Absolutely, absolutely. So man, it's been you've had some exciting times recently doing doing lots of travel and bits and pieces around the world.

Sarah Harkness: 2:39

I have been all over the place. Very, very exciting. I was in DC last week, I attended a conference and and before that I had a little bit of a stint on Necker Island. So lucky. Very lucky. I did

Daniel Bartels: 2:55

see that. Where

Sarah Harkness: 2:59

Virgin Islands, middle of the ocean. Fantastic. Wonderful.

Daniel Bartels: 3:06

So that was dinner Dinner with Branson. Was that right?

Sarah Harkness: 3:09

Yes, yes. I went with 40 other entrepreneurs and the CEO magazine as part of collaboration with Virgin Unite, which is Richards non for profit and philanthropic part of his business. And yeah, we we spent four days hearing from people like Zephyr Gurashi, from Afghanistan, and a number of professor from Yale about empathy and being 100% Human at work. So it was an incredible opportunity to not only hear from these in amazing people, but yeah, spend a little bit of time with Richard paying some tennis and having some ice baths and, and really just enjoying his paradise that he's created out there in the middle of the the ocean.

Simon Peterson: 4:00

That's amazing. So you had people from all over the world? It wasn't just technology.

Sarah Harkness: 4:08

That's right, a friend from the Ukraine who fought alongside Zelinsky. Good friend Bill who is from France, and then another good friend, Yasser, who's a really, really good friend of mine. He is he's from Dubai.

Simon Peterson: 4:29

Right? It's nice to have a mix of different cultures and credit people. I mentioned. You know, the topic of empathy. That's, that's something I always talk to salespeople about. What did you learn?

Sarah Harkness: 4:42

Well, empathy was kind of front and centre for the whole trip actually. And at one point, we had a session in in one of the venues that was called the the temple of the elders and was my favourite place on the whole island. Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu had been in there. And so I felt incredibly grateful to have that opportunity. And we heard from rich Sheridan who talked about empathy in the workplace, and obviously, you know, through Project letters and the work that we've been doing that empathy and being yourself at work, or bringing yourself to work has been top of mind for me for the last 10 years as a business owner, but also as a salesperson, when you're selling, how important it is to have that quality of empathy to sell, and to be able to understand why what you're selling, and how that impacts another organisation or, or what kind of impact that can have in having your product implemented. So I think it really kind of combines all of these beautiful forces into one. And so it was, yeah, that there was a, like I said, a professor from Yale Mark, he had written a book called permission to feel. And that book was an incredible insight into how you could also teach empathy. So empathy is innate for some people, but it can also be taught.

Simon Peterson: 6:21

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, having worked with American sales companies, European sales companies and Australian ones, I find empathy is far too shallow on the ground and a lot of sales cultures. You know, I see it every day and it's amazing. When you meet a decent salesperson, and they can put themselves in your shoes as a as a client, and surely empathise with the journey you're going on? It's a really amazing way to differentiate yourself. And I think it's a it's an undervalued skill.

Sarah Harkness: 6:56

Exactly. Absolutely. It's something

Daniel Bartels: 6:58

you can you can learn as well. So I mean, I know when, when you and I have worked together in the past that there'd be definitely times in my career where people would look back and say, I'm not gonna haven't been the most empathetic person. But that's definitely something you can learn over time as well. And I think that's why it's interesting to me, Sarah, hearing sort of the, the journey you've kind of been on and like in your career, but also, you know, personal learning at the moment. It says, it's sort of you can build on time. So I wanted, I wanted to ask you, right, so you've been from an AE to running a business and going from working in Salesforce as a as a larger organisation into businesses that are kind of establishing themselves in region and then building your own? What's been the what's been the hardest thing about that? Like, what are the things you've learned along the way?

Sarah Harkness: 7:55

Gosh, have you got all day now? Well, you can read about that in my new book coming out in September. But that aside,

Daniel Bartels: 8:04

I won't plug it. I will give it a plug go.

Sarah Harkness: 8:07

Okay, so yes, I do have a book coming out in September called Guided by giants. Because, you know, as as you know, you two have been to my giants along the way. And we've done some incredible things together, I think we've built collaboratively millions of dollars of business power in the years that we work together. And I think, you know, I've probably come up with at least 10 things that would be in the book. So the books called Guided by giants coming out September. But in the book, I talk about the fact that really, success doesn't come from the the things that you do, it's, it's the people that help you along the way. So that's the kind of key key takeaway, and I guess, even just to the point of empathy, I have had so many incredible giants in my career that have helped me along the way, whether that's through sponsorship, or through really just believing in me or hearing me out or allowing me space to, to run with my ideas. So as a Salesforce, I have to thank Mike Matt Cameron, you know, you guys worked with him and had we had some incredible opportunities. He's, he's mind taught me all about the Taz sales methodology and how we can, you know, really be influences in the sales cycle, but we're not in control. And the reality is if you can implement in your own sales cycle that thought that is a superpower for a salesperson because it allows space for the customer to take their own path, whilst you are kindly nurturing them through to ultimately the same goal that you're both working towards which is to purchase your product or service, which is going to help them If you're selling somebody something that they don't need, or that they don't want, and and it's just about the money, then it's never gonna be a great relationship from the beginning. So, Matt? Yeah,

Simon Peterson: 10:12

no, I think it's interesting. I'm seeing a bit a bit of that recently. There, I know that certainly the tech industry is going through a bit of turmoil at the moment, and I'm seeing certainly a lot of pressure on sales people to sell, sell, sell. And I think the danger there is they forget putting the customer actually at the centre of the conversation. And, you know, they're pushing really hard to close a deal this month or this week, etc, without really thinking about the company, they're selling to what what impact it's going to have on them, and why would they spend money and I think, you know, I hear organisations saying that decisions are taking longer than usual, I wonder if some of that isn't part of the sales culture, saying, just buy my software because I need to sell it.

Sarah Harkness: 11:01

That's right. And I think as sales leaders, naturally, we, we, we have to go towards our numbers. So we're given numbers that we and and coders that we have to feel. But if that is our only lighthouse, or if that is our only barometer for success, then that creates a really dysfunctional relationship with the customer. And a lot of organisations I think, are starting to experience the dysfunction and disharmony within their sales funnels. Because of this, because the customer is now demanding that that is not the way anymore, they're the customer is demanding and buying only what they need. Because we're you know that cash flow is tight for everyone. So there is no room for this behaviour anymore. So the necessity for empathy, and the necessity for that insight or awareness in a sales cycle has never actually been more imperative than now. And it's not new, new ways of selling. It's actually the way we were taught at Salesforce. When we first started as AES or when we first started in our career, this was the beginning of somewhere along the line. However, I think, you know, people learn the language of money and money speaks. And that's the only language they listen to, as opposed to the language of human interaction and connection and the power that that can have. And no, to Dan's question earlier about, you know, now, from coming from being an aide to now running a business. One of the things and one of the Levers I've had to pull as a business owner, you know, you run into some really hairy scenarios, and you have to keep digging into this resilience. And one of the things that I've learned along the way is actually vulnerability, if I can go and speak to a customer and be vulnerable, and say, I understand that we've got 30 day terms, but right now, it means the world to me, and would change our life, if you could actually pay us today, and have that conversation openly and vulnerably. Whilst Yes, that's embarrassing and hurts the ego a little bit, you've got to set that aside, and you've got to go through that battle within yourself. That can be the difference between life and death and business. So I'm, I spend a lot of my time now being incredibly authentic and vulnerable. And I think that probably wasn't taught to me. Well, throughout my career, it's something that's something I've brought to the table and chosen to lay.

Simon Peterson: 13:42

Yeah, right. I put that under the heading. Isn't it nice to do business with another human being? Yeah, and that's, that's where that's where trust comes from? Yeah. And

Daniel Bartels: 13:53

I think to that point, Sarah, I guess it's so interesting, having an I, I was a business owner before I joined the tech industry and, and I was in Channel Sales before that. But you know, unless you get you've seen people experience making payroll on a Friday. And it doesn't matter if you're, I mean, how many large businesses have gone under even in recent times. I mean, if you look in Australia, the you know, the building market, you've seen some multi multi million dollar organisations, if not close to billion other organisations, going out going out of business overnight, supposedly overnight, but their pressures at a CEO level and CFO level of big organisations are the same as a small business which is I've got to have the cash flow to make payroll on Friday and pay my staff and front up and talk to people. And I think as as sales, people selling product service, whatever it is, is in your box that we forget that was our deal is just not at the often at the top level priority of whatever this company is talking about today. And we also forget which is and you learn this the hard way, when you're a business owner signing off other people's deals, which you don't have as an AE, that the actual sale is done, when you're not in the room

Sarah Harkness: 15:12

100%, you have nothing to do with it you the most you the best chance you've got is that you show up and you've shown enough value, and you've proven enough that there is enough of an exchange made in the beginning that Vince is then that you are worth betting on. And if you've done your job, right, and you have not single threaded, you've you've created an abundance of, of, of will within the organisation to really believe in what it is that you have brought to the table, because both of you symbiotically have believed, then you're gonna get a deal every single time that deal will close 100% of the time. And we've proven that in our business in our rev ops methodologies, we actually, you know, for us rev Ops is revenue optimization. And so at any point where we can tighten that it is, have we done enough, have we proven enough value and it's become a methodology. So the very first thing we do is, you improve it early. And then the next thing we do is, then we have the right to ask for the deal. But we asked for the deal, just because we've got a sexy service, or we're cool people and fun to work with or like we're really like, squad, we have to actually prove the value. And sometimes that cost money, sometimes that cost time. And sometimes it means that you've actually got a pun on the fact that, you know, this might not work out and you might be losing money to you know, actually put your skin in the game. But you got to be in a winner. And I I think there's probably about three deals where that's failed on me in the History. In 10 years, we're talking millions, $12 million worth of opportunity has been won on the basis of that. And so you can get a conversion rate as high as 80%. Because the deals are so qualified, because you are actually doing the right deals for you and the customer. It's not

Simon Peterson: 17:23

rocket science. So absolutely. So Sarah, I might do a little roleplay you're the sales rep. And you've got a fantastic engagement, as you've just described. With your client, you've built some trust, you're not single threaded, I'm gonna I'm gonna play you're a sales manager. Sarah, it's you gave me a great update on that deal. You said that you know, your customer, they're really fans of of what you're doing there. I need you to close that deal on on Friday, not next month as you originally planned.

Sarah Harkness: 18:01

Well, Simon, what are your thoughts about the understand why that why what what is that timing about? And who's that timing for? Because that timing sounds to me like that's our timing, not the customers timing.

Simon Peterson: 18:16

It's very much our timing, my my, my boss in the US has given me an ultimatum that I need to close these deals or that the world's going to end. So I just need you to go put some pressure on your prospect to get this deal closed this week close.

Sarah Harkness: 18:31

And look, historically, I would have absolutely jumped at that. But I think we have a thing that we hoped we could have done. We have access to power. We have spent a number of hours workshopping the outcomes. They have all the documentation they have. They even have the case studies. And I've even gone one further and had my customer reach out to the CEO to tell them exactly their experience with us. I think all of our ducks are in a row. This is now purely down to a basis of whether or not they want to do that in this financial year, or next financial year. And we have absolutely no control over that. So I'm happy to have that conversation with your boss, if you like. But I would suggest that if we put pressure on this customer, we're going to lose the deal.

Simon Peterson: 19:18

That's great. Well jump out of the roleplay. Now. I love that conversation. I love it. It was you could probably you could probably you could probably see that question coming a mile away, sir. But that's I think that's indicative of what's changing. Yeah, certainly in the market and in Australia or New Zealand around how you go about selling, whether it's software, hardware, whatever you're selling, if you've got to really be attuned to the customer's buying cycle, not just your sales cycle. And I think what you described there is someone that's been in the game for a while, you know, your, you know, your plays, etc. But I think about young salespeople that are starting their career that had that sort of pressure put on them. What their businesses are effectively telling him and salespeople to do is burn relationships.

Sarah Harkness: 20:07

And what we're trying, it's gonna backfire. I mean, I hate to say it, but you know, we all know, some really big organisations that are experiencing some really big turmoil because of this right now. And, you know, I think that that it is not because there isn't a wheel, within the sales team to deliver for a customer, it's that the pressure has been put on them so hard to care only about themselves instead of the customer, that the actual very thing that that outcome that there is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. So you're gonna see churn rates increasing, you're gonna see customers leaving in droves, because ultimately, the very thing that they were sold on in the beginning is now not being delivered. And as soon as you lose that trust, it's very, very hard to get that back.

Daniel Bartels: 20:59

And I think within that as well, absolutely. There's a misunderstanding for lots of AES on why a customer gets to the end of a decision making process. But also, like, what are the levers underneath that, so when when, when you're asking, um, bring a deal forward, or, you know, you want to get to the end of the cycle? You know, Simon, and I've talked about this on hundreds of times, you know, and I frame it in terms of the three currencies that anybody makes any purchase with time, effort and money. And money's the cheapest one, right? Because it doesn't matter whether you're buying, I just bought a house a couple of months ago, there's a lot of effort in buying a house, it's not just the fact that it's you got to move, you have to reorganise your furniture, and some of it doesn't work. And there's the stress of doing all that. That's time and effort. There's no cash in that. But that just because I even then selling my old house, that's a whole bunch of effort to clean the garden, I've got, like, there's all these things that go into that transaction, right? So when you ask somebody on the other side to move a deal forward, okay, bring it forward a quarter for me. Okay? If this is not in the order of priority, what that business wants to do in this next quarter, you're asking them to spend time and effort early or additional to what they plan to do. Okay, so in order to do that, I can I can put a better price up. Okay. Does that price now mitigate for me? The expenditure that time and effort? Does that discount or better pricing? Or potentially it's paying the cash early? does is that now better for me or not better for me?

Sarah Harkness: 22:42

Management, it's a disincentive for the customer. I think if you start pulling levers of, of I'm going to put my price up, that sends a very distinct, nefarious message to a customer saying you're not worth

Daniel Bartels: 22:57

Sure, but but let's let's think about it in a different mindset, which is it might be rather than rather than you being a product company or a services company, hey, listen, I've got my my top team available this quarter. But I've got three projects that they're going to be assigned to in next 30 days, if you don't move early, and you want the top team. So hey, you need to come early. Right? So now,

Sarah Harkness: 23:19

you've got

Daniel Bartels: 23:22

now you got the other component of time, effort and money in terms of getting the outcome. That's right, and what you want you want to go to or if you're if you're a product company, I've only I've only got so much stock coming in? How do I think about that, or maybe your customer you're selling software, but your customers a product company, and if your big sale transaction comes through into Christmas, so if you don't deploy in the first half of the year, you won't have it in place in order to drive what's going on. So all these things come into the conversation. But when your boss comes to you and says, Hey, listen, we need to bring this deal in because we're behind in our numbers and look in b2b sales. Everybody gets the conversation on the other side. Everybody understands what's going on. But understanding inside the conversation, where is this conversation that has has has your contact your coach, your this team even put it before the board yet? Does anybody ever know that this conversation is happening?

Sarah Harkness: 24:24

Or even an imperative?

Daniel Bartels: 24:27

Yeah, like all those things are in Exactly. Like these are the tricks armour for young players where it's, you know, and I think this kind of sort of segues into sort of partly I think we wanted to talk about like, organisation spends so much money on sales technology, CRMs and rev up systems CPQ and marketing automation systems. And I look at the you know, the CRM is the lifeblood of any sales team and it's garbage in garbage out. Totally. And if and if your CEO your CRO or Whoever your your, your VPS get your data and it's not real. And they're saying, Can you bring this deal forward? And it's because your data is not real. Yeah. I mean, as a, as a business owner and running, tell us about that experience?

Sarah Harkness: 25:15

Well, this is partly why we exist to begin with, you know, I'm a data scientist and a bit of a amateur quantum physicist, and we look for pattern recognition in every single thing that we do. And with the emergence of things like tattoo beauty, and being able to augment our team with delivery, having an augmented approach with these technologies, we've taken a bit of a different approach, which is to be symbiotic with the tech. Now, I guess that that isn't necessarily where everybody's at in the world. You know, but that's the choice that we've made to have a competitive differentiation. For us, that means that we have a basically a palm pilot to or palm co pilot to help us

Daniel Bartels: 26:05

on pilot showing.

Sarah Harkness: 26:08

Pilot. Very, oh, Lord. And to be honest, I think when I think about chat GBT and how we actually adore her, and I'm using, I'm using her as a her on purpose for you know, whatever reason, she, I think, what you put into these tech, you get out. So for us, we've actually taught our whole team to go and spend time teaching the learning model about you, like Teach it the kind of ways you like to work, because it learns based on your user input. So we've ended up kind of almost having double our team size, that can produce twice as fast. It creates code, it co creates code for us that we can deploy that code is in 10 times out of 10 has been more gotten through sandbox quicker than any other code that we've ever written in person, and 50% of the world. More than I think now, the 50, more than 50% of the world's code base right now has been AI generated that lives in GitLab. And or GitHub, and I think we're going to start to see this code creation with AI happen more and more, the more that people start to embrace it. What we've got, however, is this. It's funny, you say that we joke about Palm Pilot, but the same thing happened with the mobile phone. So you know, when the when we first had the mobile phone, it was like, what what is this thing in my hand, and we carry around a break, and we couldn't text and we had a snake and it was very easily, we felt silly, kind of engaging with this other thing. And now I don't know anybody that doesn't walk around with one of these and use it as their second in charge. It tells them where to go, what to do, what time they need to do it. If they need to pick up the kids from school, it's the conversation mechanism. It tells we can work from it. I mean, really, in reality, this technology has totally transformed our lives. And AI really is just that second phase of that new revolution, where we can embrace that tech to help us do anything. But it is all about how you use it and what you put into it. So if I'm a salesperson, one of the ways in which I've been, I am a salesperson, constantly, I actually use it for everything. I ask it, how to help me put business plans together, I've done tam analysis and with the plugins that you can actually say you can use plugins with chat GPT that connects with other systems. And that's something that we're working on, particularly with boost in our product at the moment, but it's really looking for those patterns. So I'm I'm leveraging it as an assistant in my business to help me do delivery for my customers. But I'm also building an assistant for my customers to use in their own delivery for their own revenue. So that's the most exciting thing about it is that you can create these incredible opportunities for the future by working with technology as opposed to seeing it as the salvation or, or the enemy in our business.

Simon Peterson: 29:33

So Terry used an interesting word. Sorry, he's an interesting word before when you were sort of introducing the idea of working with technology and GPT in particular, you said symbiotic. There are a lot of people listening that are probably thinking their their jobs are in jeopardy, right? Because you just talked about the code that generates being so efficient, etc. But what was interesting about your point of view, it was working with the technology to get an outcome rather than getting the technology to go and do it all for you. It's very interesting.

Sarah Harkness: 30:10

And to be fair, I think this is where a lot of the world is right now. And there's a bit of an existential dilemma that the human race is facing with this technology, you don't have to go far you can go on Twitter every day and see, in fact, about a month ago, there were, there were a whole lot of leading AI heads, getting together to try and put a pause on the development because we've also got the convergence of quantum computing happening at the exact same time as AI being developed. So we're, we're at a real crossroads, everybody. However, my I always come at this with a point of view of an abundant mindset. And that is that we have this incredible opportunity right now, to instead of seeing this thing as separate, because we created it, by the way, we need to take responsibility for that. It's not a separate thing. And it is not a sentient thing, yet, it is not something that's just going to turn on, like, you know, we live from this place of fear about about AI, but it's also really from this place of fear about people like we're the same way about people, it goes back to this conversation we're having about empathy. If we actually came from a place of how do we collaborate? How do we, if I come to an opportunity with AI with a question, and then we co create together by asking more questions, and that's me providing and massaging that through AI. It's really almost like having a conversation with yourself, you end up having this really lovely kind of output, and you get the answer that you're looking for. But if you go to it expecting that it's going to give you this like immediate answer, you don't put anything in. And it's the same with relationships, if you don't actually go to a relationship and put anything in, then you likely going to get crap out exactly like you said, Dan, garbage in, garbage out. It's that methodology, we've just got to shift that mindset to what if we came to AI with curiosity, with an openness and and this embracing the opportunity that it brings, actually ended up with a totally different bias, which is kind of what led me to create little algorithm that is on my LinkedIn, because I realised that if we actually just had that embedded in the algorithm, then you could almost convince it to have that bias. And we don't have an existential crisis, because we're not, there's no fear to be created, it's going to disrupt it already has it already is we need to take stock and actually understand that there are going to going to be significant changes that happen because of this technology. But it was the same with the mobile phone. It's how we then adapt and not place blame on the tech because the tech is not to blame. People created the tech.

Daniel Bartels: 33:20

Yeah, I like I like that frame of reference. Which is, which is yeah, having a relationship with the technology. So I think, you know, we've we've all sold tech, you know, some of you've been in tech for longer than Sarah, right? But like, it's, we've sold tech for so long, yet how many, I reckon 80% of customers, or 80% of organisations out there would don't have a relationship with the technologies they're purchased. Whether it's RP, that CRM, their marketing, whatever it is, they don't value their data warehouse, and then part of the challenge they have is, the individuals working in their teams don't have a relationship with it, either. So I mean, you know, down to the back to the basics, one of the questions I had for you was, if I'm an AE, I'm a salesperson, what are you going to call it in your business? Like, how is this relevant for me? And you know, I turn up to a forecast caller, I don't say a customer, I'm back in my opportunity, typing in my CRM. Do you have a relationship with the CRM? Like, is it is it working for you? Or are you working for it? Or are you working with it to actually find like, the best opportunities are you like what are you working on today, which are the deals that are likely to close for you? And you're only going to know that by the work that you put in 234 weeks earlier? So that you've got the right information in there to know okay, this is where my deals are at, you know, how my support team you know, if you're in technology, you're gonna have solution engineers or, or customer success people or if you're in different different industries, you might have support people or product or whoever it might be distributed distribution teams, like How did they know what's going on. And they can only get to know that by what you've actually use this technology to work with, with the rest of your business. And it's the same way now seeing, I mean, I worked in mobile phones early in my career, I went through the, the analogue to digital transition, most people probably forget Motorola owned analogue analogue mobile phones. And within 18 months, Motorola were almost bankrupt. Nokia had taken over. And then as we transitioned out of 2g, to 3g, 3g to 4g, Nokia almost went bankrupt and got bought by got bought by Google eventually. And basically on the back of, of Apple taking over and owning the space. And we don't realise that it was only, you know, the, to those who are in Australia, on the east coast, they might get this anecdote. There was a period of time where, if you was, if you were born, when the iPhone existed, you hadn't actually seen that the music was blue is when origins. But but the point being you have an entire generation of kids, and who are now entering the workforce, who have always existed, with the power of an iPhone in their pocket, and they're already already always existing with mobile and video on the hip. And these are the same people who are experiencing these other technologies Drive content at them. Yeah. And I'm not sure that we're going to see the same technology leap happen in AI to your point, you have to have a relationship with it. There's so many other technologies, they drive the relationship to social drives relationship to you, which is one of the reasons why there's a whole bunch of emotional issues we've got me we can talk about in a bit in a minute. But like, there's a different experience, when you're running a business, you have to drive you have to drive your engagement

Sarah Harkness: 37:03

tightly. And it's proactive, and I guess it's the same, we were just talking about that with the customer. You know, a lot of these concepts cross over. And I think that it is it is a conscious choice. Yeah. And and it's how you want to show up? And do you want to play full out? And does that customer deserve that? And if that customer deserves that, and by the way, that was the question, the answer should always be yes. And if you if they don't, it's because you're not, you don't have the right ICP, and you're selling to the wrong customer. But that's a whole other conversation we can have on another time. But but it is it is the show up.

Simon Peterson: 37:50

Exactly. I mean, I know as a sales leader over the years, if I've got account executives that actually lean in and use the technology and use it well, they're more likely to get my attention, my help my coaching. And I think that's, that's an example of a salesperson actually using a CRM system to properly engage with the product they're trying to sell with the client. And I think when I see salespeople engaging really well, with the technology, we've given them to be at the best of their game. They go from strength to strength, and I think you spent, you tend to spend more time to get more engaged in the deal. But when like when rates are higher, the customer is happier. It's just, it's one of those things, I think leaning into the technology is fundamental.

Sarah Harkness: 38:42

Absolutely. And working

Simon Peterson: 38:44

with. Yep, yeah.

Daniel Bartels: 38:47

So Sarah, and I wanted to talk about your buffers, but how do you talk to organisations and this kind of leads to how does an AE talk to a to their leadership internally, when they bought all this tech, and the business has no idea how to drive it, they've, they've bought the Ferrari. And it's, it's got scrapes all down the side. And, you know, the welders are all banged up. How do you how do you have that conversation internally about, you know, we need to use this technology properly.

Sarah Harkness: 39:23

It's, you've got to massage it. And it's, I guess, it's all about how you, you almost have to create like a very safe environment for everyone to have a cathodic discussion about it. But some of that means you got to get the crap out first. So a lot of what we focus on is in the beginning, is to start the process of really uncovering or analysing where the problems are to begin with. And that's the like, you've got to bring this stuff to the surface before you can really even understand how it's going to progress going forward. Would and also how you can remediate it. So you've got to identify the problem. And part of that problem identification means often that you have to have some tough discussion. So having that external party like Qatar dog, for example, we come in and we really just listen, we ended up being a bit of a catharsis mechanism for companies to just get out there corporate therapy, give us all your problems, bring us. Let me let me have it because honestly, none of its new and we've seen it 1000 times, and it's okay. And so giving them that, actually just get it out. That's the beginning of a process of transformation. Once they've done that, that's what really sets the scene for how you can create a roadmap, a backlog, and really an entire map for how that they can move forward out of that situation. And we've seen the data points, this is the beautiful, amazing, incredible way in which technology drives a lot of that transformation is that we will let's take JD for example. Like we worked with them three and a half years run their DevOps with with Bretton Linda, we you guys, you know, and we saw the transformation we were able to create. Now, that didn't happen overnight, there was a three and a half year period where they went from 300 to 900 mil. But in that process, it was through reducing things like these tiny, I call them qualia are quantum data points. They're very small. But it's the combination of many, many small data points that then create the overall transformation. So if you like how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time? Well, we looked at, for example, their whole, we went from the beginning of the marketing funnel all the way through to the end, the middle of the funnel, we had 25 touch points, or a contract and a quote, remember, and finance was in a mess, and we had absolute pain, and they're coming to us like, I can't do this anymore. And they're in that desperate place. Because you've got funnel leakage happening, you've literally got actual money being left on the table. And we've got surely between the three of us, we not only sell them software that resolve the issue, because that's fine. The software is not the answer. It was through the application, aligning the people and the process to the technology that we then created the output, which reduced that 25 touch points down to seven. And I think within three months, we were talking about $60 million, that they recovered and reduced all credit card fraud, all credit card fraud, their credit card.

Simon Peterson: 42:54

I had some friends have been well, you made some good friends.

Sarah Harkness: 43:01

One of them now works for me.

Daniel Bartels: 43:05

But I think that I think the interesting bit about that is Cantona.

Simon Peterson: 43:13

No. I

Daniel Bartels: 43:15

think that you think the a bit busy about that is where you start. Because so many times I've seen either as we've worked for me or people with a new product, and they're out thinking the door on let me sell you my product, let me sell you my specific service. Rather than saying, you know, we know that you've got, we've seen you in the market we've seen in the industry, or we know this industry relatively well, we know you're going to have problems in these areas. Just tell us about them. I'm not here to try and you know, everyone's looking for these magic ways to open the door or find new pipeline, and there's no magic pill, there's no magic pill, there's no, there's no magic AI tool that will will give you a pipeline, right. But every one of those names have problems that you can help solve whether they're ready to buy them, we said it's tough to disrupt is a different story. Yeah. Tell me the challenges are, some of them will be great. We don't do that. But I've got a guy. I know, I know, a company I know. And I know this amazing girl, and she will go and solve this problem for you. Right. And, and out of that. So but some of them will be actually Hey, I think there's a I think there's a thing you can help us with. But we're going to have to foster and work out what it looks like. But everyone's looking for this magic way that I'm going to. And that goes back to the question of how do you get your return on investment yourself systems? Those are all the conversations, right? They're all the ways that you track what we're talking about what we're doing and where do I fit spend my time and effort? So, anyway, so um, and you had a question

Simon Peterson: 44:52

I was gonna sort of segue into some of the next question. So we had for you I think, you know, We've we've kind of gone through the sales cycle, I think, you know, the key takeaway for me is there are three things, you know, curiosity and empathy with your prospect in order to really understand the problem you're trying to solve. And that's, that's at its core, right? And the technology that we've got to sell or the services that we got to sell, now help enable that for your client, but you just never forget that the price is the client achieving an outcome. And I think, quite nicely described that with your relationship with JB Hi, Fi. So that's, that's awesome. But I think I know, we're sort of getting further on in the hour, I'd love to hear a little bit about what you're doing. Outside of being CEO of cattle, doctors, you know, you're, you've got something called Project Lotus going on, I'd love to hear a little bit about that.

Sarah Harkness: 45:49

Yes. So as you guys well know, cattle dog was the first project later certified organisation where we set up temporary calls within the business to become really human at work. So it made it safe for our employees to fail. And we would, you know, it's actually one of the protocols. So it's just a set of 10 values that we live by. And I'm not 10 commandments, no, not quite, not values that we we work together to, to really establish as a culture and a way of doing business within our business. And it's simple, it's super simple. If we go back to does this align to Lotus, then yes or no dictates the outcome of the decision. So we've said no to hundreds of 1000s of dollars of deals that you guys have heard me say no, some sometimes in in our dealings where I'm like, No, that doesn't align to the latest protocols. So it's not a good deal for us. And what that does is kind of help protect us from one probably doing the wrong deals with the wrong customers that are going to ultimately end badly anyway. But also, to help us really make sure that we are delivering the value that we want to. So what we thought was given that we had so much success in working as a lotus business, in cadaver dog, we would create a nonprofit that was specialising in establishing those protocols or establishing a set of protocols for other organisations to operate within. So project Lotus is a non for profit, offshoot business of cattle dog. We provide robots and also nonprofit services, technology, people in process, but very much at the heart centre. So we're working with hopefully partnering with Virginia and I just spent, you know, a week on Necker and they have a programme called 100%. Human at work. I'm working with the Coalition for change on gender equity, working with XPrize in the US. And so a lot of what what we're doing with Project Veritas is about helping to empower and provide the same services we have been as kind of a dog for a long, long time, but for these nonprofits, so that they can have the most impact. One woman in particular as a reefer girl, Rafi, she's an author and an incredible spokesperson for the women of Afghanistan, I met her on Necker, and spent some incredible time with her. And, you know, I'm hoping that we can help her and her organisation with some of the work that they're doing. And so it might be as simple as providing our services from a Reb ops perspective or technology and getting technology donated, but it really is about ultimately establishing these impact based organisations as also Lotus organisations so that they have that quality and culture within them, as well. And they're safe places to work.

Simon Peterson: 48:59

So, Sarah, that's something that's amazing. Tell me a little bit about, you know, a company that doesn't have something like a lotus goal. What are some of the problems that you're saying, what are the main things that you're trying to solve with Lotus? Look,

Sarah Harkness: 49:17

I think we you kind of often see this chief culture officer or the it's like an HR function. And but I see organisations with incredible dysfunction. You know, people are people and where we've got people, sometimes people are dysfunctional to one another. So I've seen organisations with extreme versions of harassment, or I've seen organisations that have, you know, some subversive culture that perhaps doesn't necessarily value equality or diversity as a forefront. So this is really about helping to educate how important those things are. Because it goes back to the very thing that we started this conversation with. And that is that when you come to work, you need to understand that you're working with people. And if you are working with people, then you need to come with, you know, not a suitcase full of your history and an offload that onto the people that you work with, you need to come in a professional way. And there's ways and means of behaving towards other humans. And unfortunately, we still live in a world where one in three women will be sexually harassed at work, even in a, you know, scenario, where a lot of what we're doing is virtual. It happens all the time. And that's not a world that I want my daughter to grow up in, or go to work in, particularly if she wants to go to space, or do anything incredible, or go be Miley Cyrus, which is a current employer. So you know, those industries really rise, we need to actually work on really making sure that we're breaking down some of these things. And I think, ironically, AI is going to level the playing field, whether we like it or not, because there is no gender. And there is no bias. It's a piece of technology. So if we can actually start to maybe educate ourselves in that way. Now, then, we're not going to have as big a shock to the system when AI eventually does take over.

Daniel Bartels: 51:31

Yeah, yeah. Net a quality basis. Interesting, sir. I mean, we're, we've, we've we've seen a quality of location really been driven over the last couple of years. You know, I was only reading this morning that the work from home versus returned to Office battle is just, it is ongoing. And how do organisations find that middle ground, but it's the point of, you know, if we went back even in our careers three and a half years ago, it was a big issue to go to a leader and say, This isn't, Hey, can I work four days from home? Now it's back the other way, where the business is saying, Hey, listen, can you please all work one day? And and can you can you all do it on the same day? So there's this

Sarah Harkness: 52:20

real estate, oh, my goodness, yeah.

Daniel Bartels: 52:21

So that's just that's just a quality of location and how people work together. But then if you think how these technologies are now, again, going back to the basics of just what's in your CRM doesn't care on the agenda, doesn't care on your age doesn't care on your, on your sexuality, or your your gender, or your race. So all these things kind of come into output has got nothing to do with the things that people used to expect. You know, I mean, I know, I went to a private school in Sydney. And there used to be a whole conversation about old school, old school tires, and the fact that you were able to talk about which school you went to none of that matters anymore. Just doesn't. Yes, kids get great, great education. So we weren't weren't wanting to that conversation about sort of good education versus poor. But once you're in the workplace, I haven't had anyone asked me for 25 years, what's, what school I went to? And I think

Simon Peterson: 53:19

look, I think there's also another aspect to that, I think, cultural differences, because I think, you know, the three of us, we've all worked for big American software companies. And they by definition, culturally, people are different in Australia than they are in the US. It doesn't make it any better or worse. But I think you talk about working from home or remote workers in a US context. It's radically different to remote workers down here. And I think, for the vast majority of my career, remote workers just didn't exist in Australia. And I think it's something relatively new here. That remote workers in the US have been going for years. So very different issues to tackle. But I think as a, you know, a young person coming through the ranks, if I'm a salesperson, I want to be in the office, I want to be mixing with people that have done before. So there is an element of getting your education face to face versus over a Zoom meeting or something. I think it's people need to value that human interaction and kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier, sorry. You've got to turn up to the office as a human. You've got to you've got to have a place to collaborate, face to face because I think you know, we live in a podcast right now. The three of us are not in the same room together. If we were sitting in the same room together. It just added another dimension to the conversation. So you've got to think about that as well.

Sarah Harkness: 54:47

Totally. And I think we we as leaders have a responsibility to create safe spaces. I think that particularly as sales leaders and CEOs or anyone in a leadership position, you know that I'm going to use this line from a movie, but with with great power comes great responsibility. And I think that that's one thing that I've never, not for one second in any capacity as I've kind of done these various roles over the last 20 years stopped understanding is that the accountability lies solely with me. And if I'm at the top of the food chain here, then it is how I behave and the things that I do that ultimately dictate what is okay within my organisation. And I think that we're still living in a time where some leaders may or may not remember that. And I think I remember what our up and coming salespeople to think about as you go into leadership positions that it's now that really lies on your shoulders to do the right thing and show the weight to your team.

Simon Peterson: 56:13

I mean, I can remember back in my early days, early career, probably you two were in high school at that time, but I remember the weekly forecast is a shouting match.

Sarah Harkness: 56:25

Right. And I believe

Simon Peterson: 56:28

this is midnight, this is mid 1990s. So a while ago, but not the norm back then.

Sarah Harkness: 56:36

Yeah, that wasn't

Simon Peterson: 56:39

you know, there was a Monday. Yeah, Monday morning forecast call was they had to change it to Friday, because everybody had such a crappy weekend. They were dreading what happened on Monday morning. So rather than change the the approach or forecast, they moved it to a Friday, so you didn't ruin your weekend? I mean, it's that existed. Very, very different. Yeah.

Sarah Harkness: 57:02

It still exists. I mean, as early as 10 years ago, I remember being in it in a meeting in a forecast meeting where we were definitely not going to hit the forecast. And we were all told that none of us were going to get paid. And it wasn't in any authority for that person to for that leader to say that to us. And that, but the emotional toll that that takes on people that you can't you just kind of behave that way. So it's it's really interesting, I think, as we as we continue on with Project loaders, I think what's going to come out of it is more and more opportunities for us to collaborate with these incredible minds that are writing these books about empathy at work. So my, my good friend, Dr. Natalie, she wrote a book called empathy in action. And she's at Salesforce as well. And her book is really all about how do you apply these concepts of applied intuition, understanding and empathy in the workplace. And I think that there's actually likely to be a whole industry emerging, which I'm quite excited about, because I've been on it this for 10 years now. And it's nice to see that we might actually get some revenue out of out of being good, good humans. But the reality is, you know, we've lived in a world for so long where we have been not the norm, we've been the outlier. credibly, like disheartening, you know, statement, but I think things are changing. And I think that the necessity now that everyone's suffering, owe everyone everyone's suffering. Everyone's been in a situation where they might have lost a job or they've been let go, you know, there's, there's, there's the suffering scenarios, where all are equal, well, things level, again, I levelled the playing field, we all just start to work together and collaborate. And if we just did that, from the beginning, we'd have a lot more harmony in our businesses. And we have a lot more revenue flow. Like this is not rocket science, but it does three extra revenue. So maybe if we just so

Simon Peterson: 59:12

yeah, hopefully. Hopefully the area of the narcissist is, is behind us. Please

Sarah Harkness: 59:21

do me a favour because I'm so done with it. And I'm like, I think I'm just hitting a point, you know, coming into 40 where I'm like, You know what? I'm taking names now. I'm just gonna start a list. And if they just no access, it's just no access. Sorry. No, it's not a lotus protocol yet, but it might very well be in the future.

Simon Peterson: 59:47

Yeah, absolutely. Love Well,

Daniel Bartels: 59:52

we've just hit the hour mark. So we might we might let our listeners go. But before we wrap up, Sarah just you know what's what's your One parting message. If you're in a your business leader, you've got techy Boy, you've got tech, you're about to buy this stuff you can use for free now or what's what's one, what's one piece of parting advice,

Sarah Harkness: 1:00:12

I'm going to give you to, number one, sign up and get yourself a chat JpT accounts like that's just a given and then ask it nicely and say thank you. And then the second piece of advice is just know you are not alone. The pain you're experiencing is not unusual. Everybody is having some level of frustration we or dysfunction in their tech stack. The reason why you're experiencing pain is because you're growing. So if you can actually identify the problem source, start there. Look at the look for where and as I said, you know, what is the problem? Just identify the problem and then find someone to help you with it. Come and talk to me. I'm happy to listen.

Simon Peterson: 1:01:05

salutely Great, great words of advice rock you need to you need a couch for us to come in. Wise words of counsel.

Sarah Harkness: 1:01:21

No worries. Absolutely. Thank

Simon Peterson: 1:01:25

you so much. Podcast.

Daniel Bartels: 1:01:28

Absolutely. We'll wrap up there. So wherever you've watched his podcasts, whether it be YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Look, please follow, like a share if you can. We've got some more more exciting conversations coming up with a bunch of other leaders. Thanks so much for your time, everybody. Thank you