Ryan Burke - SVP, International @InVision (Formerly SVP, Sales @InVision) - The 3 F's to Build Your Sales Team from 1...

Guest:
Ryan Burke - SVP, International @InVision
(Formerly SVP, Sales @InVision, Formerly @Compete)
Guest Background:
Ryan joined InVision in 2014 as the Vice President of Sales. He quickly grew his remote salesforce of 3 to over 100 talented professionals responsible for identifying new market opportunities for collaborative design, developing new revenue streams and managing both enterprise and inside sales. Ryan was eventually promoted to SVP, Sales before taking on his current role as the SVP, International leading their international expansion efforts around the world.
Prior to InVision, Ryan was at Moontoast as a member of the senior management team. He created and managed both enterprise and inside sales functions, selling both SaaS and custom solutions to clients including Toyota, P&G, GM, Microsoft and others.
Prior to Moontoast, Ryan was the SVP of Sales at Compete which was acquired by WPP and later became Millward Brown Digital. He led all sales efforts, including a senior vertical enterprise team as well as an inside team selling the Compete.com SaaS product.
Guest Links:
LinkedIn | Twitter
Episode Summary:
In this episode, we cover:
- The 3 F's to Build Your Sales Team from 1-50 - The InVision Story
- InVision = 1,000 Remote Employees: How to Hire, Onboard, Manage and Communicate w/ Remote Teams
- The Role of Sales in Creating & Cultivating a Global Brand & Community
- Inside Sales vs. Enterprise Sales
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 everybody. Today we have Ryan Burke on the show. Ryan Burke joined InVision back in 2014 as the Vice President of Sales. InVision has a $1.9 billion valuation and $350 million in capital raised. Ryan quickly grew his remote salesforce of three to over 100 talented professionals responsible for identifying new market opportunities for collaborative design, developing new revenue streams, and managing both Enterprise and Inside Sales teams. Ryan was eventually promoted to SVP of Sales before taking on his current role as a Senior Vice President for International @InVision leading their international expansion efforts around the world. Prior to InVision, Ryan was at Moontoast as a member of the Senior management team. He created and managed both Enterprise and Inside Sales functions, selling both SaaS and custom solutions to clients including Toyota, P&G, GM, Microsoft and others. Prior to Moontoast, Ryan was the SVP of Sales at Compete, which was acquired by WPP and later became Millward Brown Digital. He led all Sales efforts at Compete as the SVP of Sales, including a senior vertical Enterprise team as well as an Inside Sales team selling Compete.com SaaS solutions. Here we go.
Naber: Ryan, awesome to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Ryan Burke:     I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Brandon.
Naber: I've seen you with a beard without a beard and a lot of my research I've been doing in the last few hours here. I like the beard and without the beard. It's very rare you can say that about someone you like it equally, and I typically lean towards beard by, I really like both.
Ryan Burke:     And now it's the grey beard. Now it's the grey beard.
Naber: It's like, you go from all bald on the face to some salt and pepper, to a lot of salt, and then you're just, it sinks in. This is just a grey beard. This is just a great, love it. Love it. You and I have gotten to know each other personally over the last few months professionally as well, which is quite cool. I'm happy that we get to, go through a lot of this, as content today with you. What I figured we could do is go through some personal stuff first. So start with Ryan Burke as a kid, what you're interested in. Then ultimately graduate into, pun intended, where are were in school with Baldwin the Eagle up in Boston, and then all the way through your professional jumps into your time at InVision. And in that time we'll just cover a bunch of superpowers as well as things that I know, people have said that you are very good at. And I know that you excel at given a lot of the places you've worked, and roles that you've had. Sound okay?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Cool.
Naber: So Westford, MA. What was it like for Ryan Burke as a kid? What were you like? What were you interested in? What were some of your hobbies? Let's go.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, definitely, definitely. So Westford is about 40 minutes northwest of Boston. Typical New England town with the centre of town, and the old church, and the common, and all of that. And it was great. Kind of prototypical New England childhood riding a bike around the neighbourhood and doing that whole thing. It was funny, my first job actually was, snake busters. So my buddies and I, when we were, I don't know, maybe 12, decided that we were going to rid the neighbourhood of snakes. So we would walk to people's houses, knock on the door, and charge a dollar a snake. It went well, it went well. It went well. We made all these crazy tools and t-shirts. We ended up just grabbing them with our hands, harmless garter snakes. But it went well until my mother came home one day and found a giant trashcan in the garage that had about 40 snakes in it. That was the end of, that was the end of snake busters.
Naber: Did you call it snake busters?
Ryan Burke:     Oh yeah, we did the tee shirts that we hand drew. I mean, it was right around, I mean, I'm dating myself, but it was right around the Ghostbusters days. So, that was, that was my first commercial endeavour. Got me started in, got me started in Sales. But. Westford was great. I was kind of the athlete, whatever, captain of the basketball and soccer teams in high school, it was great. National Honor Society, I got kicked out my junior year, and came back in my Senior year and won the leadership award. So, it was a fun time and nothing but good things to say about Westford. I had a great childhood. I stay in touch with a lot of my friends still from Westford, pretty close to the community. And the Grey Ghosts, which was our mascot, which I still think is a great name, and I was the 200th graduating class of Westford academy. So it was public high school, but 200.
Naber: So, one more question then we'll, we'll talk about your move up to BC. What did your parents do, when you were growing up? And what were some of the hobbies and interests you had outside of sports? Because obviously, you were quite athletic.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, definitely, definitely. So my dad was, that day and age was still the time of the long runs at companies. And so my dad was that a Digital Equipment Corporation. So he was at DEC for shoot, 30 years, I think, a long, long time. He ran manufacturing for a couple of plants there. My mom worked there as well for about 10 years.
Naber: Is that how they met?
Ryan Burke:     No, they met outside of Hartford, Connecticut, in college. But my dad had a great run in Digital. My favourite thing was during his retirement ceremony, they renamed the big board room, the Bill Burke Board Room, and then they did a top 10 Bill Burke famous quotes. The number one quote for Bill Burke that I'm not sure what it says about him for his 30 years. There was f*ck 'em. I mean it was celebrated, and it was a quote on a plaque, and all of that. But for 30 years that was interesting, and it kind of describes my dad, in a nutshell, a little bit.
Naber: It's funny because people that know your dad if you gave him 10 guesses, they'd probably guess it. People not knowing your dad, like myself, if you gave me a hundred guesses, that wouldn't have been it. I'm so glad that that just happened.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. So, and then the hobbies. Like it's interesting, you grew up in Massachusetts, but for whatever reason, my brother and I got really into fishing. And so, that's become a lifelong passion. I actually started and ran a fishing tournament for about 13 years on Cape Cod, kind of post-graduation. The Headhunt. The Harwich Headhunt. And yeah, it just became a passion, and I still fish all the time, and I've gotten my kids involved, and all of that. But that was one of the things that my brother and I would sort of hike through the woods, and find little ponds, and build our little boats or whatever, and float out there, and catch bass and perch and whatever all day. And then we got the bug and started to get closer to the ocean and do some of the offshore fishing, which has been great.
Naber: Wow. Very cool. All right, we're going to get into BC, but I have to go rogue on this one. If you're not heavy into fishing, what's the best part about fishing? Like, why do you love it?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. I mean honestly now that we get out offshore and go out on the ocean, you're just so in such a different environment and a different mindset, and really things just kind of melt away. And just from the stresses of the world being 10-15-20 miles offshore in that type of environment, we go to tuna fishing, there are whales jumping, whatever's going on, it's just a real escape. The phone's half the time don't work, and so, it's just...a lot of times we'll go out for an eight-hour fishing trip and my wife will say, well, you didn't catch anything. What the heck did you guys do out there? You're in this small confined space with like three other friends. She's like, what do you guys talk about the whole time out there, not catching fish. And so, it is a fairly intimate experience as well with your buddies, and there are beers involved, and all of that. Yeah, I just liked the whole like mindset change when you kind of get out on the boat, and you're heading out, like everything else sort of melts away the further you get offshore, and I really enjoy that.
Naber: Wow, that's great. And from your sons perspective, as they're growing up, that's so cool that you're bringing them into your headspace and that world, to truly disconnect like that. That's really special. All right, you're away from the Ghosts, you're moving onto the Eagles - Baldwin The Eagle, your best friend. Why Boston College? And maybe a couple of minutes on what you were looking like in University.
Ryan Burke:     Yes. So, it's funny, BC was the only local school that I applied to. I really want to go to Duke, didn't get in. I almost went to Wake Forest. For whatever reason, I wanted to go and explore another part of the country, but I ended up, going to BC. Obviously great school, a lot of fun. And I'll say I'm really happy with the decision based on what it was able to give back to my family. And so what happened at BC, the football games and the tailgates. And so my dad, my mom would get season tickets and they'd come to every game. And they just developed a great relationship with all of my roommates and friends. Sometimes inappropriately with like, the conversations, they would hear were just crazy. And they get to meet other parents. And so over the four years, like my parents were really involved in my college experience. And for them to be honest writing the checks, like I felt like that was an opportunity for me to give them something back. And I always cherish that, bringing them into that experience. And we still talk about the glory days of the football games and beating another game Notre Dame, or whatever. So it was a great experience, and being in Boston was a lot of fun. Even most of the friends that I had at BC, were actually from outside of Boston. But yeah, BC was great. We were sort of in the heyday of sports when I was there too. We had some good runs, they're obviously terrible now. But I also, all things considered, I liked having a team. Me and my wife went to Holy Cross, and I kind of give her crap all the time because, it was great school as well, but like having a team and a brand that you can sort of follow. And I'd still all way too close to I know every high school recruit that football team is right now and I read it every morning. And it's a little creepy, I know, but I'm pretty involved.
Naber: That's a job because they come from all the country to BC obviously.
Ryan Burke:     And I did it, I did it as a job a little bit. So I got so involved after graduation that I actually started writing for a BC website that was all focused on recruiting. And so I did that for about three years, just on the side for shits and giggles, and go to the game, sit in the press box, interview Matt Ryan after the game on the field, and all of that. And I was when I was still trying to figure out if I was going to get into the sports, as a career. But it was a lot, it was a lot of fun to do that.
Naber: You know, it's really interesting. We're going to get into your professional jumps. That's a really good segue. But what I find when I'm talking to a lot of these, a lot of folks in this podcast and a lot of the folks I really admire professionally with an entrepreneurial spirit, it comes out in so many different ways. And I actually don't think that the person talking about it really knows that it's coming out. So from snake busters all the way through to, like you have side hobbies you've turned into like organized things that you do. Like, getting into BC sports, writing about it, making an organized effort and project around that. Same thing with fishing, 13 years of running that tournament. Like, taking your hobbies and turning them into something organized, structured so that everyone can enjoy and you're the driving force behind it with your effort because effort is the great equalizer within entrepreneurship. I think that that entrepreneurial spirit always comes out in people's hobbies, and I don't think that most of the people talking about it often think about it like that. But it's coming out in your hobbies right now. That's pretty cool.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. And if you want, I can do a quick sidebar into a hobby that turned into somebody that, did you hear about my book club?
Naber: Oh, don't tell me, scorpion something. What is it?
Ryan Burke:     Scorpions.
New Speaker:  Scorpions. Yeah. Tell me about it.
Ryan Burke:     Something I'm proud of and something I will also say is potentially my biggest regret. But my wife was in publishing, and she'd go to these book clubs and she would come home have a couple of glasses of wine and saying, Hey, did you talk about the book? Nah, we just sorta talked, and chatted, and drank wine. And I was like, you know what, this is a bunch of BS. I'm going to go and I'm going to start a book club to spite your book clubs, and just show you that I can build a better book club than any of the book clubs you've been a part of. And she's yeah, yeah, whatever. And so I was all right, I'm going to call it the scorpions. I came up with a tagline that was "Read. Bleed.", and it was all sort of tongue in cheek. So in Boston, it was like the all hard guy book club. And so I got about seven or eight of my friends who were smart, a bunch of entrepreneurial folks as well, a few guys that have been CEOs and sold companies. And we all read. And so what we did was we would go to places like dog racetracks, or shooting ranges, but we would actually talk about the book. So we would actually talk about the book. We would do trivia about the book. And then we would typically end it with a physical challenge to see who could pick the next book. And so what happened was one of the guys that was in the book club worked with my wife in publishing, and he released a press release. Because my whole point was I'm going to create the Anti- Oprah Book Club. I'm going to create, where a woman can walk into a store and know exactly what book she should be buying her husband, boyfriend, or whatever with a scorpion stamp. And so we read a book, and then we released a press release just for fun and games. Scorpions select, I don't remember what the first book was. Scorpions select this book as their official monthly book club, Dah, Dah, Dah. And we did it a couple of times, and the next thing you know it starts getting picked up. And I get a call one day from The New Yorker. And the New Yorker says, Hey, we want to do an interview with you. We do a feature on a book club every month. And we read about the all hard guy book club, the Scorpions. And we're like, all right. And so, called and interviewed me, Dah, Dah, Dah. And they put it on their website. Called back the next day. Hey, this has gotten so, so many hits. We want to go front page tomorrow. we need more pictures. I'm like, I don't have any pictures. Like literally get up that morning with my wife, take my shirt off, put up World War Z, which we're reading the time up in front of me with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and she snaps a picture on her iPhone. And that next thing you know, that's on the front page of TheNewYorker.com next day. And so then it gets picked up, and Gawker picks it up, we had these magazines reaching out. And what happened was it snowballed very quickly where authors, I mean agents were calling me and saying, Hey, we want you to review our author's book. We want you to give it the scorpion seal. We made like a seal and all this stuff. And we're what is going on here? And we had people calling us from all over the country. Can we start a scorpions thing? A reality TV show reached out to us. My buddy called me at one point, my roommate from college, and he's like Hey, what did you start some stupid book club? I'm like yeah, the scorpions. He's like well I'm reading the 50th-anniversary edition of Playboy, and you guys are in here. And I was what? And so we picked up playboy and we're in there. So we almost got a book deal. We almost got a TV deal. And the whole thing sort of faded. It was at that stage, we're all just having kids. A couple of guys were going to sell their company, and so we really give it the attention. But finally I was able to go back to my wife and say, listen, I proved you wrong, I started a better book club. And now there's talk of bringing it back because I still think there's actually an opportunity in the marketplace for that sort of Anti- Oprah Book Club. And we actually read good, compelling books. And so that was my tie into the hobby question.
Naber: You know, it's funny. One of the reasons I love doing the personal side before we jump into all this other stuff is, before you reach out to somebody, before you first have conversations and when you just look up on the pedestal of this person at this company with this title, and your background, your experience, I think it's quite intimidating before you start having conversations and humanize the experience. And that's one of the things I love about, about this section. But that's a perfect example. If you're hey, quick sidebar, I want to tell you about something and the entire Scorpion's book club, love it. It's great. So cool. All right. So that is, that is not a segue, but I'm going to create one, into, you're leaving Boston College. And so Scorpions Book Club, the best thing you ever did, but we'll talk about some of the second and third best things you ever did after, after that. You're leaving BC, and run us through your professional experiences, up through the end of when you're at Compete so we can jump into InVision. So just run us through, the companies you were at, and the roles that you're in, maybe like five to seven minutes so we can, we can get some detail on there as well.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The first job I had out of college...I still get amazed at the jobs and internships that today...I'm really impressed. Like back in my day, it was kind of like, all right, we're going to travel to Europe, we're going to screw around after graduation, whatever. And so when I was midway through my Senior year in college, a buddy called me - this is 1996 the Olympics in Atlanta - and he said, hey, I work for a staffing company, Randstad, I've gotta hire like 20,000 people. Do you want to come work for the Atlanta Olympics for the summer? And I was sure, I got nothing going on. And I became known as the kid on campus that, like, I'd walk into any party and be like, hey Burke, I heard you can give me a job with the Olympics. And I'm like, yeah. So people giving me their resumes to work at the Olympics. So I think I got 40 kids from BC jobs at the Olympics. So we all went down there, and we all rented condos in the same little complex. And this was back in the Buckhead days of Atlanta too, the bars were open till five the morning before Ray Lewis ruined it. So worked for the Olympics. Great experience. I ended up staying there for a year, working for the Olympic Committee for a year. And it was just a really, it was a really cool experience. And then randomly, again, I was still trying to figure things out, and I had a buddy call and say, hey, you want to move to San Francisco? And I said, yeah. And jumped in the car, and we moved to San Francisco and slept on a floor for six months, and tried to figure it out. Did some temp things, and then I ended up getting into finance. So I got into a small kind of Muni Bond Equity House, which was, which was really cool. It was a really small, company. I touched so many different parts of the business. from the trading to the operational side and it was good. Series 7, Series 63 the whole deal. And then I use that as a springboard to get into Goldman Sachs. Worked in the private client services group in San Francisco, with Goldman. This was sort of during the heyday too. So, managing some of the early Amazon folks back in the day, and making some of those trades. I was what am I doing wrong? So it was great, and I had a good experience at, Goldman. And then it just, I got to the point where there were some family pulls back to the East Coast and at the same time I was at that stage where I was, on a pretty good trajectory in finance, but it was just something about finance that wasn't really getting my juices flowing. And I just knew. I mean just the culture of it. It very, obviously, money-oriented, and people are doing very well. And I just don't know, it just wasn't for me. And so I knew, okay, if I didn't get out then like I was just going to double down, sell my soul, and do the finance thing. And so I pulled the plug. I found a job back East at a tech consulting company. So this is the tail end of sort of the internet boom, and I got into a company called Mainspring, which was really interesting. It was a really smart group of folks from BCG, and McKinsey, and Bain that basically wanted to create a digital strategy consulting firm. And this is just at the time when all these companies are trying to figure out a digital strategy, nobody knew what it meant. And it was also interesting, in that they had a Sales function. So I joined as an Inside Salesperson, which was, your typical cold calling bullpen environment, and weird because you're dialling for dollars for high-end strategy consulting. And it actually differentiated us in the market a little bit, but I really cut my teeth in Inside Sales there, and just opening doors, and prospecting, overcoming objections. I really liked it. Mainspring actually had a pretty good run for a little while. We ended up going public. And then, the market sort of tanked. And then IBM ended up acquiring Mainspring. And so, it ended up working out in that, it was kind of offered a package. I could have stayed at IBM. It was another one of those decisions where similar to financial services, it was all right, I can take a job with IBM, but do I want to do that long-term at this stage of my career when I knew I wanted to be in something smaller and entrepreneurial. And I liked the small team environment, even at Mainstream when I started it was only 100 people or whatever it was. And that's when I got into Compete.
Naber: You spent 11 years there. There's a lot of learnings here. So if you want to take your time and go through the next few minutes to talk about some of the things you learned as you're jumping through each individual step that you had, that's all right because that's probably helpful.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, definitely, definitely. And so Compete was interesting because that was back in the incubator model days. So basically Compete was an incubated business. David Cancel, who's the CEO of Drift, was kind of the first employee founder there. And I journal joined early on. It was basically, we had a web-based panel that we aggregated data and sold back competitive intelligence to companies. So, Hey, my website traffic is this, how does this compare to my peers? My conversion rate is x on my site, how does that compare? And you know, there were some dark days early on. There was your typical start-up, really young management team, screaming matches in the glass-encased conference room that was like raised four feet above, so everybody could see it, you know. And there were a few turnovers of Senior Leadership early on. A few turnovers of the entire Sales team that I survived twice early days. And we did that for the first probably two to three years. I was kind of the top Salesperson. And worked with some really smart people. And again, that entrepreneurial environment that I like, we had trouble figuring it out. And then for us at that point, the inflexion point was really when we decided to go vertical. And obviously not something that I think every business needs to necessarily do, but from a competitive standpoint...I helped found a kind of the wireless practice, and this was back in the Nextel, Singular, AT&T days, and they were all so hyper-competitive. And so we had this really rich data set to show like, how much online traffic are each one of these sides getting. What is their conversion rate to get people to sign up for bill pay? What was their conversion rate for e-commerce? And really valuable data. And so we built some dashboards, we layered on a consulting component on top of that. And it was really, it was really interesting. And that started what was a pretty big catalyst. Wireless became the biggest vertical at the company. I sold the biggest deal with Sprint, which is $500k, when our ASP was like $30k. And it was interesting in the fact that as a Salesperson, what kept me there as well, is when I started that vertical, I was able to position myself as more than just a Salesperson. And I became a wireless expert. And I would go speak at conferences, I would write white papers because that always gave me the credibility when I wanted to go and sit in a room with Senior folks. I mean we would do crazy stuff like I had business cards made, different business cards for like the big wireless conferences, the CTIA's or even the CES's, and I'd get invited as press because I would write white papers, and so they would put me in as pressed. So like here I go to these things I get to sit down for 10 minutes with the CMO of Verizon and the CTO of AT&T to do briefings. And inevitably you share some data. And the other thing that we did at the time was we partnered with Bear Stearns, who was a big analyst in the Wireless space. And we created this really nice white paper that they distributed - a glossy cover, Bear Stearns, and it was all our data. And free data for Bear Sterns, whatever. But that became a little bit of every meeting we would walk into that was on somebody's desk. And so it was very easy to point to that and say, oh, that's our data in there. And they're like, oh really? We didn't know that. Tell us what you did. And so, building a brand beyond just being a Salesperson was really valuable to me from a career perspective. And partnering with somebody like Bear Stearns at the time was really powerful in the space from a wireless analyst perspective. And using that as a vehicle for content was just so big in building our brand at the time. And so, that was the kind of the earlier part of my career at Compete. And there are always times that thought about leaving, but every time it was sort of thinking about it, there was a new opportunity that would arise. And so then I moved into more kind of Sales leadership, and that was a new challenge. And building out sort of an Inside Sales and an Enterprise Sales team. Then `we were required. So the company was acquired by TNS, a big research firm. And then six months later by WPP, so essentially acquired by WPP, became part of that world. And that opened up a whole new world of opportunity and challenges, and that kind of put me into a new role. And then I became Head of Global Sales, SVP of Sales, across Compete. And that was within sort of the WPP, umbrella organization. So that was fun. So yeah, I was there a long time but worked with some really sharp people. My old boss Scott Earnst, I sort of followed him up as well, and he became CEO, and one of my mentors to this day. And so it was a really interesting ride. Definitely a really interesting ride.
Naber: Very cool. And that brings, does that bring us to your jump into InVision at this point?
Ryan Burke:     I did have a quick move, between there, I went to a company called Moontoast.
Naber: Oh, that's right. Yeah, Moontoast. So, hey, before you do that, I want to talk about, you mentioned managing Enterprise and Inside Sales Teams. You've done this at three different organizations if not more if you've done some advisory work on this. But you've done Inside and Enterprise Sales at the same time. A lot of the people listening will either start a business, have started businesses, will be the VP of Sales, VP of marketing, whatever. And they'll either inherit Inside Sales or inherit Enterprise Sales. And usually, they kind of tack one onto the other or they graduate from Inside Sales Leader into Enterprise Sales. You've managed both at three different businesses. Let's talk about that for a few minutes here. What are the main best practices or tips that you have in managing Inside Sales as a contrast to managing Enterprise Sales? And we'll get into the top tips and best practices for that, but Inside Sales first. Inside Sales, what are the biggest differences between managing Enterprise and Inside Sales teams? When you're talking about Inside Sales, what are the best practices and tips for doing that?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, that's a good question. And I think the end of the day it's still, Inside Sales is obviously a lot more transactional and so it's a lot more around kind of that process. And Enterprises is around the process as well, but obviously very different motion, trajectory, timing, all of that. And so, with Inside Sales I would say one thing that's probably most important is figuring out what that customer journey is upfront, and really defining that path, and finding those friction points, and then building a process around what are the activities and behaviors that..like to me, everything kind of boils down to behaviors and activities when it comes to Sales. And that's relatable to Inside and Enterprise. And so performance in numbers is one thing, but you just need to figure out what the right activities are for Inside Sales. So break apart that funnel, figure out what those metrics are, and then really measure on those activity metrics. And that's been probably the most important thing. The other thing is, even when I started at InVision, we'll talk about it, making sure you have the operational infrastructure to define that for Inside Sales, whether it's hiring an operations person, like to me, you can never hire operations too early. I probably waited, I probably waited too long at InVision, and getting that in there early for Inside Sales, and building out, we even call them the leading indicators of what will drive you to a particular transaction. And so I think those behaviours and activities are incredibly important for Inside Sales. And then you just have to evolve it for Enterprise because that's a different motion, different ASP, whatever it is. And so same concept around leading indicators, behaviours and activities, it's just a different framework. And the hardest part is obviously, you sort of view Inside Sales as a stepping stone to Enterprise. And that's not really the case from a mindset standpoint. And that's, you almost have to break bad habits and rebuild them because the Inside Sales folks, currently really good at transactional, driving acquisition, boom, boom, boom. And then you move into Enterprise, you're like, whoa, slow down, let's talk. Now we're value selling, where before it's much more of a product sell. Inside Sales is much more of a product sell. Enterprise Sales is a value sell. And that's a big transition from a mindset standpoint where, step back, make sure you're asking these questions, figuring out obvious things like pain or whatever it is. And again, when we promote Inside Salespeople, sometimes there's that period where the onboarding for Enterprise is just as important as when you're onboarding them as a new employee for Inside Sales because it's a totally new framework and mindset. And if you're using the methodology like MEDDIC or Sandler or whatever it is, you've got to kind of break them down and rebuild them again.
Naber: Yup. Yup. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So moving from Compete to Moontoast, let's hop into why you moved to Moontoast, and then give us a summary of that, and then we'll hop into InVision and I've got a few questions on some of the superpowers that you have, some of the things you've done really well, and a couple that InVision has as well.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. And so Moontoast was a social advertising, kind of rich media, social advertising - rich media within the Facebook feed predominantly, or any social feed. Part of it was at the time I was looking to get out of Compete. Moontoast came along, social was obviously very sexy, they just raised some money. Kind of wanted an opportunity to go in and be the guy from day one, and build it up. And you know, everybody's got a miss on their resume, and this was a miss. I came in, and we had some good momentum, really enjoyed the product team and sort of the position we had in the market. But we also existed within the Facebook ecosystem, which I don't care what you say, they just own everything. It's really hard to do exist. They make one change in their technology and like 20 companies go out of business. So I built a really strong team. I've hired my top guy from Compete, brought him over. Hired some really good Salespeople, a few who I've actually taken to InVision. But the product, we had to re-pivot product, and we ultimately had to re-platform it to try to fill the gap with services while we got the platform, then Facebook changes. We missed it. We just missed the window and things got a little ugly. It was one of those startup things where it was a little messy. And so I ended up leaving. I ended up just saying, you know what, and Moontoast not seeing their Future, we'll leave it at that. But I left. It was a good learning experience, met some really good people there. Social space was interesting, I'll never go back. Then I left there and then that was when I had the opportunity at InVision. And I can tell you kind of how that's how that started as well.
Naber: Yeah. So this is good. So people are gonna want to hear the story. You joined really early. You're employee number 35, I believe at InVision, you've got upwards of almost if not above, around the thousand employees or so, shed load of them remote if not all of them remote. Exactly, all of them remote. Like the largest, that I know of, tech workforce in the entire world that is remote - it's unbelievable. So, tell us about the story. Run us through the journey that you've been on so far, and then I've got a question around building your Sales teams from one to 50 that we'll cover, after you kind of tell us what the journey is up until now.
Ryan Burke:     Sure, sure. And so the quick story of how I ended up at InVision was, I quit Moontoast so I was out of a job. I was in sort of this panic mode and got some opportunities right away. And I was I don't want to act, move too quick. And then, just really stressful at that time in life, couple kids, like the whole deal. I was like, what am I doing? And was really close, I had paper in hand to an offer as the CRO of another company in Boston. Ended up being out on a boat with a few folks for my old boss, Scott Earnst, goodbye from Compete, and was sitting with Dave Cancel, we're having a beer on this boat, and tell them about my situation.
Naber: I've heard so many good things about Dave, by the way. So many good things through the grapevine. I'll meet him sooner than later. But as far as he's such a good guy.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, he is. And just sitting on the boat, and he was like, Hey, don't sign that paper. I was like, why? He's like, you need to talk to Clark at InVision. And I was I don't know anything about InVision. And he's like, design prototyping software. I'm like, I don't know anything about it. Just talk to him. So I didn't sign the paper. We had a couple of conversations, he introduced me to Clark the next day. Had a couple of conversations with Clark, Clark Valberg, the Founder & CEO of InVision, who is just an incredibly interesting, inspiring person. And so the way it went down was, it was like a Wednesday night at probably 9:00 PM in Boston. And Clark, who was in New York, calls me and he's like, alright, I want you to come down tomorrow and meet with the board and meet with me. I'm like, alright, what time? He said, eight o'clock tomorrow morning in New York. And it's like nine o'clock at night in Boston. I'm alright, I'll make it work. And so I go down there, meet with a board member. Clark comes in, and I've never him met in person or anything, and he just sits down and he said, all right, I'm going to spend the next two hours convincing you that this is the wrong job for you. I'm like, interesting. And so we ended up having about a four-hour session on design space, and how Enterprise might not work for design, all of these things. I remember at one point he was like, oh wait, when is your flight? I was well, I missed, it was like an hour ago. He's like, why didn't you tell me? And I was like, well, I want the job, this is super interesting. And so it was great. So we hit it off. Quick background, InVision before me had two VP's of Sales - one lasted a week, one lasted a month. And so I was pretty intimidated, and they were clearly a rocket ship. Even from the early days, you could just see the momentum. And that transactional business, like I had done some the Inside Sales stuff, but like not to that scale before, and build on it from a freemium model. So it was a pretty big leap for both sides and forever grateful for, for Clark taking the chance. And obviously it's been a successful path so far, and a lot of fun. But that's kind of how the whole thing kinda started, which was interesting.
Naber: Great. Great Story. And so tell us, tell us about how many people were there when you got there. Like, what the Sales team can seem consisted of, which I'm pretty sure was like two people plus you. And then give us maybe a couple of stats on where you are right now as a company, so we can understand that growth trajectory. And then I'll hop into how you did a lot of those things. Okay?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So when I joined those 35 people, I think there were three people on the Sales team, that I inherited. And the Enterprise business really didn't exist at that point. It was kind of formally launched a few months beforehand, but really there wasn't, there wasn't much revenue there. But what we were doing is we were getting about a thousand people signing up for the product every day to the free service or the self serve plan .So just incredible product-market alignment, and that momentum, and those signals for the business. And so I came on, now we are about 900 employees globally. We work with 100% of the fortune 100. We are fully remote. Raised $350 million total. So it's been, it's been a ride, that's for sure. And it's been a lot of fun.
Naber: Man. Unbelievable. You've got almost a $2 billion valuation on that $350 raised. You've been there for about five years now. Is that right?
Ryan Burke:     Yup.
Naber: Wow. Amazing. First of all, congratulations on all the success you guys have had. I just think it's an iconic company, an iconic story. And I think you guys are can't miss, can't lose, badass product company who is, building so fast, doing it the right way, which is great...From the outside looking in, and that's even before you and I started having conversations, I'm so impressed. So let's talk about a couple of things. One, you have, you talk a little bit, in the past around building your Sales Team from one to 50. And you talk about it using the story of InVision, so let's use that story. But you talk about, building your Sales team from one to 50, you got to think about the three F's - the First Five, the Foundation, and the Future. Let's walk through each one of those bullets if you don't mind. Why don't we talk about the First Five, first? Actually, you know what, if you want to tee this up at all, that's fine. But I want to hear about the three F's for building your Sales team from one to 50 because it's an excellent framework.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. And so, the way I was thinking about it when I kind of looked back and break it apart is really, figuring out the right people for each stage. Because it evolves and it changes. And then the customer journey changes as you mature, and the deals get bigger, and you move more into the Enterprise. And so you kind of have to chunk it up and hire the right people at each stage, address the customer life cycle at each stage, remove friction points. And so, the biggest thing for me early on was getting the right people in the boat early. And fortunately for me, my first two hires, two Salespeople, that one is now a manager for me in Amsterdam, the other one's the top rep in the US, still here. Which is good because right before I took the job, Mark Roberge from HubSpot, a buddy of mine, called me and he was like, on speed dial who are your two best Salespeople? And I gave him these two names because I have a job. And they both got offers from HubSpot. And they both turned them down. And thankfully...Roberge was like, what the hell? I'm like, I don't know man. And so then I got the job with InVision a month later, and it just worked out like, I called both of them, and I was like you guys are on the team, and it ended up working out really well. And I think, back to the First Five, I think some of the important traits for those folks early on is, they weren't necessarily just Salespeople. Like they were product managers almost at that stage and they just, they knew the product inside and out. And without having, proper Sales Engineer support, or any of that product support on calls, like it was a little bit of the wild west and we had to do our own thing. And InVision couldn't be further at that point, especially couldn't have been further from a Sales culture. Like it was a free product, free value to everybody, designers, it wasn't a push market, it was fully pull-motion, it was all bottoms up. And so we were definitely a little bit out there trying to figure it out. And so, hired these folks early on, that really could talk to the customer, understand their concerns, and their process, and their journey. And then ultimately we built the Sales process around that. And the other key thing about those first people are, you've got to get the people that are on the boat that want to join a company at that stage for the right reasons. If you want to make a lot of money as a Salesperson startup, like InVision at that stage and start, that's not the right place. It's just not, go work at Salesforce. And so, you need to find people that are there because of the opportunity. They want the career opportunity. They want to be co-owners and building something. And that's what the early folks on the sales team, I actually think to this day we still hire people with those profiles...with the trajectory of InVision, like it's still early. And um, that was really critical to find people that wanted to join for the right reasons and not just purely on the financial side. And so getting those builders in early, the ones that can have those product conversations, that was really important for us early on.
Naber: Very cool. Yeah, I think in one of the talks that you do, you talk about focusing on key traits - resilience, adaptability and fighters; and then focusing on key motivations - opportunity, vision and ownership. Those six things I think are so important. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. And I would say resilience is probably the biggest one because, at any startup, you're gonna have so many challenges. And so, I mean, I've even made some decisions where we've hired people that have had really good runs at really big companies and their resumes are great, and you hire them to a place like InVision, and it doesn't work out, and they're not ready for it. We probably hired them at the wrong time, the people that are better off, like I even tell our recruiters like, go find people that had a big run at a company, at a really successful company. Then went to a startup that ran out of money or a startup that went out of business. And they've gotten their nose bloodied, and they know what it feels like because your nose is going to get bloodied at a startup inevitably at some point. And so you need the people that can take the punches and be resilient and battle through that. Not only can do it, but want to do it. And some of the folks we hired, like they just didn't want to do it at that stage in their career. I don't blame them either. So, you just gotta figure out that profile and make sure that things like resilience that is so important for those early hires.
Naber: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's incumbent upon the person hiring them to help those Salespeople to make that decision. Like oftentimes you don't know that you need to go get your nose bloodied, or you need to go have a failure somewhere else after your first jump from an organization or you've had a really good run or a long run. Like you have to go get that, that that failure, you have to go learn and have that learning experience. Like it is incumbent upon the person hiring those individuals to help those individuals realize whether or not it's the right time in their career to make the jump into that startup or not.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, yeah, that was really important early on. And then in, the only other thing was that I talked about is finding all of those friction points early. So, mapping out that customer journey and figuring out why aren't people buying your product. Is it the price? Did they not trust you? Not know who you are? They do not want to sign up for a longterm commitment? Is it particular features? Like, whatever it is, you've got a map that out, and then start to figure out how do you remove each one of those and address each one of those. And that's really important early on. And that will evolve once you move into the Enterprise, you're gonna have different friction points and you have to readdress them. Security and things like that all start to come in a little bit more, overtly. But early on, like just why don't people have the product in their hands? And do everything you can to remove those friction points to get the product in their hands.
Naber: Yeah. Awesome. So there's a couple of examples that you use and some of your past content. Like, if the price is a friction point, using free trials and freemium, you are getting the product into their hands with free trials. Seeing the product in action, doing group Demos. You talk about understanding how they use it, pre-populating the assets and pre-populating the product. Lack of trust in your brand, building customer testimonials. Longterm commitments to a product, offer an opt-out, just get them on board. And then lack of features, sharing the roadmap for the product team, from the product team, getting them involved with that journey, and setting them up, setting the customers up with the product team to help evolve that journey. And I thought the examples you used and the solutions to them, I think those are extremely valuable as you're thinking about each one as different friction points, both as you get started and sometimes you don't solve those problem points with those solutions that you just talked about until mid-stage, late-stage and building Sales teams. So sorry to kind of steal some of that thunder. But I thought you've talked about this a bunch of times in the past and using those examples, I think that that's really valuable for people and it's just great content.
Ryan Burke:     You did your homework. You did your homework, Brandon.
Naber: Hell yeah, brother. I'm always doing my homework. It's all about the prep in my world. So that's First Five. Now let's talk about Foundation.
Ryan Burke:     Yup. Yeah. And so the Foundation is sort of when really want to start building out the process, and that's when, like I said before, like that's when it's really important to hire operations because you're going to start to build out those leading indicators that I talked about - what are those activities that you want to measure? Because again, at this stage it's less about the results. I know that the results are important, but you really need to figure out like all of the specific activities and that'll lead to potential success. You can start to understand like what are the points, even in the Sales process, that you need to, that you're struggling with. And these aren't, these aren't things that are meant to beat the team upon. There's always like this head trash, and people are like, ah, I don't you to measure how many meetings I have a week, and I don't want you to measure many prospecting calls I'm doing, whatever. And it's like, that's not the point. The point is not to like manage you out if you're doing it. The point is to help identify the coaching opportunities for the managers to say, okay, you're not able to get people to respond to your emails. Like, let's go through those and evaluate. You're not getting enough meetings. Like, let's look at some of your other outreach. You're not converting meetings opportunities. Let's go through your talk track in those meetings. Their guidelines and they're really coaching opportunities is what they essentially are.
Naber: Diagnostics. Exactly.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, building that Foundation. The other thing, for a specifically for a company like InVision early on, is, how do you offer value beyond the product? And I'm really sort of incredibly lucky and proud of what we do at InVision because we offer so much more beyond the product. But that's really important early because to some extent you need to build the trust and the credibility with your customers when your product doesn't always fulfil every promise. And that buys you time, especially early on. That's really important. So even when the Sales team, I never want somebody to prospect and try to set up a meeting to just talking about the product, it's like, offer something of value - a piece of content, whatever it is, but like offer value to somebody all the time. And you can, there are opportunities to do that beyond on the product. I mean, just a quick, a quick thing. I mean, our CEO is a brilliant marketer. And one of the things that we did is we made a movie. And so, even when I first started, Clark was Hey, we're making a movie. I was like, what are you talking about? And he's like we're making a feature-length film on design. It's like, you're crazy. And we hired this production company out of New York and flew around the country, and we made a feature-length movie called design disruptors. And it was an intimate look at companies that were using product design to disrupt entire industries. Google, Airbnb, Netflix, all of these, all of these companies. And we made this awesome movie, and we weren't in it. InVision wasn't in it, but it was brought to you by InVision. And so what we did was, we did a world premiere in San Francisco, Castro Theater, red carpet, press, the whole deal, VIP dinner after. Then we did one in New York, and we did one in London, and they were huge. And then what happened was, we were like alright, we're going to release the movie. But then people started emailing us and saying, hey, how can we do a screening here? I want my executive team at Uber or NBC or at Salesforce to see this. And so we sort of weaponized. And we didn't release it to the public. And we said, all right, if you want to do a screening or at your community, you know, wherever, we will host it. And I think we've probably done 500 screenings across the globe at this point. You name a company, we're doing...we're doing one next week in Europe with a company, and what an opportunity to one, reach out to somebody and say, Hey, we've got this incredible story that will help your management team understand the value of a design-centric approach. It's super entertaining. Why don't we come on, have some drinks, get a couple of hundred people in the room, whatever it is. Sometimes we'll even do a panel, we'll get people and product leads. We'll do a panel discussion after the movie. And it's been such a great a vehicle for us. I mean, now we have a full, we have a whole film team now at InVision, we did a documentary with IBM or called The Loop on their process, celebrated and evangelize their process, which, sort of strengthened our relationship with IBM. But again, offered value to the community, which the movie then ultimately did. Like it was a free offering from us to the community. Here's some really good content, best practices, examples, in an entertaining format that we are going to deliver to you as part of what our brand represents. Now we've got a new movie that we're releasing this fall. And it's been incredibly successful. It's just another example of how do you go ahead...And not everybody can make a movie, I get it. But although I've seen some good copycats over the last six months or the last year, it's coming. It's getting out there. But, Clark Valberg, this is yours. Valberg this is yours. It was a really powerful vehicle for us.
Naber: Nice. Very good. And so you talked about adding value beyond your product. You talked about focusing on behaviours and activities. You talked about some of the activities. And you talk about hiring your first layer of management. You talk about hiring coaches, and not managers. Can you explain a little bit about that?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, I just feel like early, early days you just, you need folks that are, they're not about coming in as a manager for title reasons. And you get people in there that are really good at coaching because that's what is so critical. Using those leading indicators, using those behaviours and activities, finding those opportunities to help coach the team. And that's why your first Sales Director, or whatever it might be, they've gotta be a really good coach. Because it's gonna be all about the failures, and the misses early on, and the objections, there's going to be so many objections you're gonna face, whether it's product, price, competitors, whatever it is. Like you really need to figure out how do you coach the team on overcoming those. And so that's why it's really important from a profile perspective that you really dig in when you're interviewing in terms of, talk me through, talk me through an example of where you identified something with a rep, and coached them through it to an improvement. What was the result? Those types of things are really important when you're building that Foundational team.
Naber: Nice. Awesome. Okay. So that's that's the First Five, then we just talked about Foundation. Now let's talk about Future.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, and the only other thing that I'll mention on the Foundation, now that you're kind of bringing up the topic, which is just one of the things that we did that was interesting at InVision, was it's so important to understand your customer and like everything about their customer. This evolves at every stage. And so, early on, like I hired one. And so I hired a designer onto our team instead of a Sales Engineer. I hired a designer, this person came on boards, still with the company, he's great, but just gave that credibility to the Sales team in terms of the day in the life of what a designer deals with. And could hop on calls and give us some credibility in terms of talking to designers, which is a very unique persona to sell to. They don't like to be sold to. They want to touch and feel the product, learn about it, and then use it, and if they like it they'll tell their friends about it. So, figuring out who your customer is and then hiring them was really important. The other thing that we do now, which is an interesting kind of nuance is around understanding the customer. We now have a program called delicious empathy. And every person at InVision anywhere, again, fully distributed company, we have people all over the world, and anybody at the company from Operations, to Sales, to Finance, has the ability to take a designer out to dinner once a month and expense it. And the only rule is you're not allowed to talk about InVision. And so it's just about, again, building those relationships, understanding the motivations, the personal motivations even of your customers. And that just feeds into everything that we believe in and do as a company. And so that's been another kind of interesting thing for us to do across the company to help people build empathy with our customers.
Naber: Yeah. Yeah. It's great. You call it, I think you call it relentless focus on the customer. It's a pretty cool example. Delicious empathy. I love the Pun. Delicious, as in, take you out to dinner, that's good. I'm not usually a laggard on the jokes, that was a good one. Le's talk about Future. so you talk about a Foundation for building the Future. Go ahead.
Ryan Burke:     Yeah. So the Future is, I feel like, at this point, this is where, you built the Foundational team, you've got some infrastructure in place, you're moving into the Enterprise. Like this is when things will break. Like things are gonna start to break. And you've got to kind of revisit the overall customer journey. You've got to revisit the friction points as you move into the Enterprise, things like legal process, security, all of those are going to be new friction points that you're going to have to learn how to address. And this is also, in a lot of cases, this is also when you make that shift from a transactional product-focused sale to the value-based one. And that's when you've got to hire a different profile of Salesperson at this stage. You've got to have all your motion at this stage. And so, now is kind of when you're, when you're really selling, and you've got to get people that are, again, stewards of your brand. Along all of this, your brand is so important these days that just, I think people sometimes underestimate the impact of hiring the wrong Salesperson on their brand. And like, you gotta think about is this somebody that you would want in a room with 15 of your prospects, your customers? Would the be someone you would want presenting at a community event on behalf of your brand? And if the answer is no, they're probably not the right person. Even if they're the best seller in the world because they are representative of your brand. And you've got to create that value through your Salespeople and that represents the value that you want to project in your brand. That's really important. And the other part about this stage is you've got to find people that are really good storytellers. And that's so important. Can they tell a story? Because at this point, people don't really care about your product. Like this is when the transition switches on the customer side as well. They don't care about your product. They care about what the promise of your product can deliver. They care about the results, they care about the examples of what other customers have done to drive tangible business value from the product. And so there's that shift, and this is where you don't need the product experts in the Sales team. And this is where you can introduce things like Sales Engineers, or Product Specialists, or whatever it is to fill some of those technical gaps. But this is where you need people that can actually tell that story and sell the dream of what your products and more importantly what your brand represents. And that's really important at this stage as you kind of build out the team.
Naber: Nice. Okay, so I want to hop onto a different topic or anything else you want to talk about before we conclude on that?
Ryan Burke:     No, I think that's good.
Naber: Okay, cool. I've got two more topics I want to talk about and then we'll wrap. First one is, hiring, onboarding, and managing, remote Sales teams, and really remote workforces are what you guys have to manage as an entire business. But specifically hiring, onboarding and managing remote Sales teams. So there are a few different things that I'd like to cover. I think there's five in total. First one is hiring profile and hiring execution. How do you search for the right person that is a great person to hire as a remote employee. What are some of the things you look for in making sure that they can do that? And then what's your execution process look like considering you're hiring people all over the world, you're not necessarily sourcing them in one city or one industry. You're looking for them all over the place. So what's the hiring profile and how do you execute on the hiring process?
Ryan Burke:     Yeah, and I think we are the single largest fully remote company in the world now. It's a little crazy. There's definitely cracks at times and things. And just a little, a little bit of context. It started where our CEO wanted to hire the best engineering talent. So we started to hire folks in different places. Even when I started, he was like, Hey, if you want us to open up a Boston Sales office, you can. And I did the whole tour of real estate in Boston, and almost pulled the trigger, but then it just in part of our culture. And so we started to hire some people from all over, and you could kind of place people strategically in these maybe lower-tier markets, or whatever. And so it became really, really, valuable for us. And it's a big asset. On the hiring, you've got to find people, not everybody is ready for it. The last person you want is the person that found you on a remote job site, and you ask them what they like about InVision, and they say, oh, I want to work from home. Like, they're out. You do need to find people that are proactive. Like you need to find people who seek help because sometimes it's hard, and you can get lost or and you can hide. And you've got to find those folks that are very proactive in their approach and sort of ask questions around that in in the interview process. That's really important. But the biggest thing in one of the biggest lessons we have learned here is onboarding. Onboarding is so critical because it can be very intimidating your first day sitting there and not having anybody to talk to. And so we've evolved our onboarding process, pretty dramatically over the last couple of years to, we kind of map out everybody's first 90 days now. And they need to know exactly who they're talking to, exactly what they should be focused on, exactly what the expectations are. And we can still improve that. But even from things like time management, like I think there are still opportunities for us to improve there, especially for some of the younger folks that come in. And they're living with four other buddies in San Francisco, or they're off on their own somewhere, wherever, and they get up in the morning like, how do I spend my day? And so we're getting a lot more prescriptive in terms of just even time management training. And what percentage of the time per week should they be focused on these types of things? What percentage of the times did we focus on these things? Even like learning and development. And so the onboarding process is something that it's just so critically important for a remote team, and there are still opportunities to improve, but I think we're doing a pretty good job now.
Naber: Nice one. So you just talked about hiring profile and some of the things that you need to assess to make sure someone's ready for that. You've talked about time management. And you also just talked about o