Great sales people know how to team - Herve Renault - Vice President Cloud Sales at VMware EMEA

Herve Renault Vice President  of Cloud Sales for VMware EMEA joins Vic and Sam for as Sam delightfully wraps it up as 'a canter through the role of the sales specialist, value selling and the transition to the cloud. Herve talks from the heart on subjects he is clearly passionate about, and his passion is infectious! 

He also moves us on from recommending a book to recommending a film - Glengarry Glen Ross -A film which he assures us is about how not to sell!

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we did recording it!

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn! 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

Sam 0:12

Podcast, technical industry leaders, and as memory leaders who want to help their companies execute faster. As always, we're virtual. Ricky's up with the biggest money company today.

Vic 0:23

I am Sam. I have been working with an absolute fantastic team today. It's the first time they've come together. So I am in London today.

Sam 0:33

Camping out in someone's meeting room. I am indeed. Happy days. And our guest has from overseas.

Vic 0:40

Yes, so I think this might be a first for us. It's the first time we've had a guest from France on the podcast. So I'm absolutely thrilled that we have Herve Renault with us. And Herve is head of cloud sales for VMware in EMIA. And Herve and I worked together at VMware, and it was such a pleasure to work with him. So Herve's moved into a different role since we first worked together. And when we were talking about what would be a good topic to cover, I'm absolutely thrilled that Hervey has agreed to cover the topic for us of the role of the sales specialist and the overlay sales team into the software organization, which for me is a super hot topic, particularly with all the scale tech organizations that we're working with because they're introducing these roles. And Herve, having been around the industry for such a long time, sorry, that wasn't meant to make you sound old. Um you've just got such a uh wealth of experience. I'm absolutely delighted that you're joining us on the podcast today. Thank you.

Sam 1:53

Perhaps you could start by giving us a bit of your your background, your career history, how you got to where you are today, please.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yes, so uh yes, as Vicky said, I am an old man now. I'm 30 years in uh in uh you know tenure in the in the software industry. I've always worked uh you know for in software companies, starting in uh cymantec or in uh in a small companies. In fact, that was a reseller of Symantec at the time, that was funny. And we were an exclusive uh uh reseller of uh you know uh facts on the network and uh and workflow. Uh so it looks like uh you know uh prehistorical time, and then I joined uh business objects that was uh uh at the time a small companies in France and growing super fast in the BI industry, uh and that grew uh very, very significantly. What's one of the most successful uh you know startup and scale up and IT company, one of the rare French uh one, by the way, French American. Um then I spent here 15 years before we were acquired by uh SAP. Uh and then I moved to uh to VMware where you know I am uh acting since now 12 years. And uh the characteristic I did relatively small number of companies in my long careers, uh also because I did lots of different jobs, in fact, within the within those companies. Fantastic. Was it always your plan to do lots of different things and try and get as much experience as possible? No, it was not a plan to be to be very transparent. Uh my only plan, what I was quite you know uh certain of and uh that I wanted to achieve is to become a manager. Since I was you know starting my career, I wanted to become a manager, um, maybe not for the good reasons at the beginning, but uh at least I felt that I could bring you know things here, uh being a leader, helping people to to develop and to support businesses. But I've never put myself into a specific uh role or a specific you know segment or uh business unit. I just wanted to help and support. And then you know, um realizing that being a leader is a job, in fact, is is really uh and not just a way to progress on the in the career uh or in the on the you know social ladder, but it's uh it's really uh a true you know work to help people, to help business, to uh to bring them to the next level. And uh and I had a lot of opportunities, you know, I was quite still quite versatile in my uh you know approach and uh and way to uh to manage. And I had lots of opportunities within these companies to to change teams and to uh help either you know developing a business or fixing a business or uh bringing a business to the next level, and that's why I was very fortunate in fact to be able to touch into very different you know teams and businesses within the software world, but it was not intentional at the beginning of my uh my career.

Vic 5:00

So Herbert, when when you started at VMware, am I remembering right? Were you in a technical role?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I was yes, uh leading precelles uh for South Europe. But again, uh not not not being uh you know a typical technical leader, because uh at that time the my boss that hired me uh for this job uh gave me you know the mandate to transform the team. So it's what it's it's all always about transformation. This is what motivates me uh all the time. At that time, if I want to caricature a bit, this team was uh a group of very senior expert technical expert geeks, we would say here, you know, VMware has always been a very technical company, but we needed to change and to move from you know the pure vSphere hypervisor approach to something much more you know ambitious and to uh especially you know tackle the enterprise world and to start you know driving large opportunities and uh multiple solutions and product opportunities. And my mission for this role was really to transform this team from again a group of gigs to an architecture team, but also uh you know, business consulting and uh what we call as that time advisory services that was at the beginning of uh this journey. So uh had the pleasure to uh to recruit new people, to transform, to enable, uh, you know, and to to really change this team uh from a pure technical one to something uh much more uh driven to the large uh opportunities in an architecture approach, but also in a in a business consulting approach.

Vic 6:41

Then you moved to uh into a partner role, because that's when we worked together, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yes, because anyway, my background was has always been more on the sales uh uh side historically, and uh I was excited to join VMware in this uh pre-sales organization because of the transformational challenge, but uh I was uh clear at that time that I wanted also to come back to uh to a more sales-oriented role um when the occasion will uh will happen. And this is uh what I had the opportunity to do also after this first experience. And again, here also in uh with uh you know the objective to transform the team and to to change uh you know what what the partners' uh roles uh you know were really to uh partners at that time were perceived a little bit as a transactional engine and just you know way to do fulfillment. Uh so we we develop also the ability for partners to have their you know specific focus on what we call at that time you know smaller business, where the partners were really entitled to to drive uh by themselves uh the business on top of supporting the large opportunities driven by our core organization. So it was uh an interesting uh way to try to have uh a way to measure the true incremental value of partners, and also at that time to start you know moving and shifting to a SaaS and subscription approach already, because uh you know we are talking cloud now uh all the time and it's a natural thing, but it was uh quite a pioneer thing at that time, and we had this uh service provider business that uh was already very healthy uh 10 years ago, and that is now a fantastic you know engine of uh success for VMware, and it's all partner driven. This also, uh, you know, how they are providing managed services to uh their end customers. So a lot of again transformation and changes uh that I was happy to uh to support and to help uh happen.

Sam 8:45

Fantastic. So I also had at some point responsibility for bits of pre-sales and sales bestness and so on. Um and it's always been something we not wrestled with as such in SoftCat. You know, it was a really, really important part of our business, as you say, broadening it out. But it's still a hot topic, I'm sure, even today.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

You agree? Yeah, no, it is, and it's a complex one, by the way, because um, when you are running today, maybe I'm just to to close the loop, um the VP sales for uh what we call the business unit that is a cloud sales organization. So it's um sales specialists, but also pre-sales specialists, because I'm responsible for both, and this is very important in uh in uh in a sales specialist organization to have to have the sales and the pre-sales together. Um, but um this type of organizations is uh very often a struggle because they need to find their position and to find an added value between you know the what we call in VMware, but the core sales organizations who are you know the generalist sellers that are responsible either for uh a portfolio of customers or a territory and that are responsible to sell everything, and these uh different sales specialist units that are here to support and to bring you know unique value. So, in fact, you have you have two ways to see it. Either they are really responsible for a niche product that they are almost the only one to know and to to master, and their uh their added value is uh is obvious, but this is very often more on the uh pre-sales or technical organization that you are seeing this type of uh specialization. Or, and this is the case for the organization I am running, they are responsible for a transition, and this is what we are seeing uh you know in uh in VMware. We are moving and shifting, you know, step by step and now very fast from an on-prem business to a SaaS and subscription organization, which is a very different way to tackle the customers, to tackle you know, also different types of persona at customer, but also the economical models that have nothing to do with uh you know the uh the regular uh on-prem business that uh the core sales are used to do. So here you bring, and you as as a um specialist organization, you bring true value, you know, helping really the core cells to scale and to accelerate this transformation. And ultimately, if you do a good job, normally you should fed out because the new you know uh cell specialist should be the core. And this is where you can measure, you know, again, the value of a cell specialist is how fast you can help an overall regular core organization to change, to transform, to uh to accelerate a pace to a big you know uh shift, which is the case uh you know at VMware, moving from on-prem to SaaS and subscription. So we're in this in the middle of this transformation today. But again, if we do a good job, probably my team as it is today will not exist anymore because the core sets will have taken the lead and will drive uh you know, by themselves, hopefully, this new type of model and we become the new multi-cloud uh sellers as a de facto standard, if you want.

Sam 12:10

That makes sense. Or maybe your guys become the lead sellers. Yeah, it can good could go one way or the other, couldn't it?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh it can be one way or the other, but normally, you know, my team is much smaller than the overall co-organization. So they are here will be to be special. The specialists are special and to uh to really again as I said, either really run by themselves uh a full niche program or niche uh type of solution.

Vic 12:40

Is that like an in an incubation program?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Is that what you just yes, it can be an incubation. You can you can take it. So incubation can last you know three, five years sometimes. Because it's a big shift. And uh I'm running this uh this team since uh now four years, and I can tell you uh we were just uh a bunch of uh trail blazers four years ago, with also new solutions that we needed to put on the market and to show that they were relevant, and it was a little bit science fiction four years ago. Today, this is becoming step by step the norm, both in terms of model, you know, so meaning OPEX versus CapEx in my case, but also in terms of uh solutions, so meaning VMware to be simple, VMware in the cloud, in the public cloud, whatever the cloud it is. It can be Amazon, it can be Microsoft, can be Oracle, can be Google, or it can be any of the 2500 service providers that we are, you know, contract with, you know, reselling managed services to their own customers. So we are in the middle of this uh again, a massive, uh massive shift. And my team is really helping to have this becoming the de facto standard, and I think we will be there in a couple of uh probably two, three years because the growth is uh tremendous, and uh the customers are really willing to keep VMware but to get the benefit of uh the cloud at the same time. So the best upgrade solution is VMware Cloud.

Sam 14:07

Makes sense. Is it also about changing the conversation a little bit, being less of a technology cell and more of a business cell? How do you manage that transition?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah, you're right. Even if uh I think um this is not only a cloud topic, this uh we are working on that a couple of years at VMware, also for the core organizations, and uh, this is in their uh you know responsibility to change and to shift completely from a product or uh you know a very uh technical discussion to a much business outcome-driven uh discussion. What the cloud is bringing on top of that is again a new type of model. So they need to uh to change the way they are selling, also uh you know in the past, and still today, when we are selling on-prem, you are signing an enterprise license agreement with a customer for three years and uh and then I caricature a bit, but you come back three years later and you try to upsell. Uh today, when you are selling an uh a cloud service, you know, it's uh it's a very different type of approach because if the customer is not consuming, he stops the service. So it means uh he can just stop using uh VMware if he's not you know consuming what you uh you sell. So it's a very, very different uh and much more demanding approach that we have to do in this uh you know customer success, customer for life type of approach, where you need to be on top of the customers all the time and not, and again, I'm just caricaturing here, but not one once every three years when you have to renew your AI. You have to be permanently, you know, supporting your customers, finding new use cases, being sure that they are consuming, being sure that they're happy with the technology and so on and so forth. And this is what we try, yes, to uh to help all uh our courts sellers also to uh to be able to do.

Sam 15:59

So that's a massive team effort, isn't it? You you've got to have uh a thread of teamwork running all the way through that, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, yeah, teamwork is uh is essential. And uh, you know, when you think a little bit uh um I would say uh simply about what a salesperson is, you have the image sometime of a selfish guy that is you know doing his job uh on his own. But the best salesperson are those who are leveraging the whole bunch of resources that they have at their disposal, and there is a lot, you know, sales specialist is one example, but you have you know the management, the pre-sales, the provisional services, customer success. You have many, many resources at your disposal that you can leverage or not. And if you are a really good sales person, uh and you will leverage all of these people, you know, the best way that you can for their unique value that they can bring to you. It's like an orchestra director, you know, that are trying to harmonize the whole thing and make something that is really relevant for the customer at the end of the day. And uh sales specialists are one of these uh very uh specific resources that are available for uh a very good salesperson if uh if he really wants to be successful and to make his customer successful, because this is uh the most important.

Vic 17:18

I loved your description of the salesperson as in that lone salesperson that is out there on their own and they're the they're the greedy person that's going after all the customers' dollars or pounds or euros or and and really, as you just said, the the power of teamwork, and they are if you think about the best salespeople you've come across in your career, they are the ones that that have a whole team of people that are helping them win that customer and the power of that, and I don't think we shout about that enough. I think we just we see people doing it, but we don't talk about it in best practice enough, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

No, I agree, and uh and again, as I said, uh the the best sellers are those who are able to leverage all these talents and recognize also uh their you know uh added value and contribution and you know give you know the appetite for all these resources to work for them and to work for their customers, yeah. And um, and we all know you know uh some very very good uh uh salesperson that are very very talented to do that, and uh and and and that will find and pick a unique resource to help them on a specific deal or to construct something quite ambitious and difficult, and to to be also in the long-lasting run with the customers. And and again, uh talking about now cloud and uh SaaS and subscription, you can only be in this type of mindset. You cannot just do, oh, you can do a one deal, but I can tell you to do it selfishly and uh a little bit, you know, uh without any value in it, you will not do a second one. You know, the customer will just again switch up the service. So it's it's an extra reason for uh for the sales uh persons now to uh to embed all the resources that they have to be sure that uh we are understanding what the customer is wanting and willing and where he wants to go, and to you know, helping focusing on his business and forgetting about all you know the IT uh burden to make it transparent, to make it light, and to for him to be really focused on his business outcome. And this is the beauty of IT today is to really uh help customers to to refocus on what is important for them, meaning their business, not it, not a goal, it's uh it's a mean, it's an accelerator, it's an enabler, but it's certainly not you know an ambition or journey or a destination.

Vic 19:55

Yeah, and and you know the the change from selling shelfware, you can't get away with that anymore, can you?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

You've got to be selling the value to yeah, no, but you shouldn't have been on this uh on this in the in the LDL and again the the good sellers, even in the on-prem world, are those who are selling value and the customer is using it, deploying it anywhere and taking benefit of it. Um but today, you know, uh if I I can put it this way, you you cannot afford to have bad sellers because you know the bad sellers that would sell and uh and escape or sell without being sure that the service will be consumed, uh, again, it's a short-term uh approach, and this uh this will never fly because uh the customers have the ability just to switch. And uh and you need to be with them on a you know on a day-to-day basis and to be sure that uh what you position to them as a service is something that they will use every day and that they will use as an iterative approach. So adding more users, adding more use case, accelerating the consumption at the at the end of the day, having a you know a customer that is uh seeing the benefit of every dollar that he's spending on uh on a cloud service.

Vic 21:11

Yeah, yeah, we we recorded a podcast last week and um talked about the importance of uh customer success and how that role is really. I mean, when I was in VMware five years ago, customer success didn't even exist. It's it's really has been a new role, but we also talked about the importance of customers for life. And so you can see with the role that you're doing, um, and I can relate to it so much in you know, you were talking about how your team actually needs what you're doing needs to become the new core bit of business for VMware. So when I started at VMware, I was the only person in Europe who didn't care about the core tech, and I was on the non-core technology. And it was like that was I was the only person in Europe that cared about it. And yet when I left seven years later, everybody. Cared about non-core, it was that transition, but that was very much from a product perspective. You're clearly with your team driving value in a very different level because you are looking for customers for life, but in that role, do you have you know if you had a magic wand, what would you what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

That's uh that's a trick. Maybe I would have uh accelerated this transition even faster. And I know it's very easy to say, and um, and I hate redoing history or whatever, but uh we we are we we are trying at VMware, and I think it's uh it's it's a great approach is to to have the right balance and to help customers really transitioning, you know, step by step and uh and protecting them, protecting also the company. But probably I would have put you know the the accelerator on the transition to the SaaS and subscription because again uh uh for the sake of our customers also and to help them, you know, shifting and again focusing on what is important for them, meaning their specific business, uh having an industry, an IT that is agile, that is you know um able to leverage a lot of the new stuff that IT is proposing, like uh machine learning, AI, uh, you know, all the new ways to develop new type of application and so on and so forth. All of that uh can be done only if you are in a cloud you know approach and on an OPEX model that is the one that gives you the more flexibility and the more agility in all what you so probably uh if it would have been my company, I would have maybe accelerated even this transition. I'm very optimistic in the way we are getting there, and that the customers are also pushing us to to help them accelerating the pace, but uh I would have probably uh um go uh even faster in this in this transition, uh pushing maybe it uh a little bit uh a little bit faster.

Vic 24:09

I think we we've um we had Scott Heron, who is the CFO of Autodesk, and then he's he's now CFO of Cisco helping them on the their journey to SaaS. But he talked about the transition that Autodesk made and how their CEO put a stake in the ground and said in three years everything will be SaaS. That's the model, and that took some real courage to do that, and Autodesk's a smaller organization than VMware at the time.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, yeah. Um and that's true that it's uh again, it's easy to say it's uh it's very, very difficult to implement. It was a magic wand, yeah. Uh but uh you know this transformation is also something that is very interesting, you know, in intellectually uh to uh when you are a leader to help your team transforming, to help your customers uh, you know, changing and to to bring unique value to them and to to accompany them on this uh journey is also something that uh is very uh you know, yeah uh bringing a lot of uh goodness and lots of uh uh rewards uh to see this transformation happening step by step and all the benefit that customer can get from it. So it's rewarding also to be in a transformation uh journey. It's exhausting, but it's uh as you are always you know put at stake, transforming yourself, changing organization, evolving, trying things, failing, retrying. Um it's exhausting, but it's it's also so uh exciting to be part of uh of something big big happening and uh and something uh where you will never come back, you know, uh to yes. So it's a major shift when you think about it. You know, uh since IT is there, there was a data center or uh you know uh big IT stuff at the customer side, and step by step all of this is uh now uh somehow disappearing and uh uh um and and and the cloud is is becoming the new norm, the new norm, and uh and and customers can really focus on on their business because not a single customer is an IT company by itself, they were obliged to be an IT company somehow. Yes, now they can come back.

Vic 26:32

It's funny you say that because we have only been focused on tech companies, as as you know, we're predominantly scale-up tech companies, but we're now working with other organizations but the tech organization inside of them.

Sam 26:47

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it I also found it more rewarding, I think, the the further up the value chain, as it were, we went, you know, the further we moved away from the origins of transactional selling into a more increasingly consultative approach. I found that that much more rewarding. I do find myself wondering, you know, with was it the car or was it the horse? As in, does the shift to cloud and a consumption model enable more of a conversation to be had about business value, or is more interesting interest in business value rather than pure tech driving the transition to cloud? I guess the answer is a little bit of both, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think it's uh the two are kind of hand in hand in lockstep.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah, but I think that the maturity of technology today is uh definitely what really enables this digital transformation. And probably you remember because you uh we have we have some experience in this uh in this podcast, you know, when we had this first revolution uh in uh the early 2000 with this uh dot-com revolution, whatever. This was great. It was lots of you know energy ideas and uh way to companies that wanted to transform their business, but it failed because of the lack of maturity of technology at that time. It couldn't scale. And uh a couple of years after, thanks to the cloud, especially you know, maturity, we can every company now can really scale, and you can have you know billion of users using the same type of uh application all over the the world, it's not an issue anymore. So, truly, technology is the enabler of the business, but the more you enable, the more the creativity you know happens at the customer side, and and there is no limit somehow. And we are just at the beginning of this exponential curve, as you as you may know, and probably we didn't see anything yet, and still, despite all this uh you know uh transformation I was talking about and uh never-ending changes, I think it's just the beginning of uh of a fantastic story. And uh the uh imagination and the possibilities are uh really uh um immense now because technology is really mature and and brings all these uh possibilities uh on the table of the customers. And the way we are seeing it helping, you know, I'm a big, big fan of uh tech for good and how we're really making sense when we are in an IT company uh helping customers to uh to do great things. Uh, I think today there is really no limit for customers to improve uh hopefully for good, you know, what they are doing for their own customers. And uh and this is also very, very rewarding to see uh how we can uh leverage and uh help uh customers to be more efficient and to to better serve uh humanity, or also to protect you know all what we are doing with uh the ESG today and and all the rest of it, you know, how IT can be a definitely a big contributor to all of that is also something that we we have to keep in mind and uh that should always drive all what we are doing and the companies we are choosing uh to work for.

Vic 30:11

But it's a long time since I felt enthused about technology in the way that I have to sing to you talk. It's really lovely.

Sam 30:21

It's because it's not really the technology that everybody's enthused about, it's the possibilities conferred by that technology and the way in which it's consumed.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah, it is technology for technology is just useless, you know. And I've always been surprised when people were just uh you know thrilled about a piece of technology just for for it. It's uh what do we do with that and how can we uh what can we leverage? How which customers can we help to uh improve uh either their business, but also again being better? Uh and uh I just can share with you an example today and the and the Ukrainian you know front, where we have helped you know, uh one of the biggest banks here to escape from uh their data center from Ukraine and to uh in a couple of weeks, literally in a couple of weeks, to migrate 4,500 you know applications with no disruption and to protect at the same time, you know, million, millions of Ukrainian people not to have their uh financial data just vanished uh because they were afraid to have a you know bomb on their data center. They get hacked by Russia or something. And uh and when you do that, uh not only you are um you are happy to see technology working, but you you are proud because you you really see the direct benefit for um somebody you know in the street that you you don't know, but you know that is suffering already a lot, and at least you can you know help them a little bit uh with technology and uh and and it gives sense, it gives meaning to what you are doing. And uh and this is really a strong message to convey also to the youngest generation. You know, uh choosing IT today can be really uh a force for good and uh and a way to contribute to get to uh to to better uh better things and to uh and to to to be rewarded uh on on the day-to-day basis.

Sam 32:23

I I remember and it really struck me and stuck with me. Um and I it was a line that I used to use, but I remember Pat Gelsinger, no longer your CEO, but uh you know he was for a good a good period of time, and I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions. He he used, I mean, this is probably 10 years ago, maybe even 12 years ago, he used the line tech is breaking out of tech. And and you know, what what you've expounded upon there is is exactly that, you know, it's not just a data center full of servers doing things, it's applications running banking service for a country in trouble, and getting it out enables those people to keep control of their financial assets. Yeah, and you know, we we always used to say, oh, it's only IT, it's not a matter matter of life or death. Well, for some of those people, it probably is a matter of life or death because you know if they're running, running fleeing the Russians into France, Germany, Belgium, Poland, UK, US, wherever Yeah, but they need to be able to survive, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

So you know it's another topic, you know, the way how IT is helping, you know, accelerating the research again, cancer or again whatever things, you know, the new possibilities that uh AI is bringing, for instance, it's just it's just tremendous.

Sam 33:42

And uh would we have got the coke would we have got the COVID vaccines out so quickly without the state of technology today?

Vic 33:48

I'm hoping that we're gonna have a professor on from pathology uh from Oxford University. And actually, we worked with her team. Her team was the first team that Amplify worked with when we were learning, learning what we were doing, and she is now leading the UK in terms of AI and research in terms of what she does, and so that is real, the translation, um, because she works very closely with cancer research and such like, yeah. So that that is tech breaking out with tech on the front line, isn't it? That's amazing. Yeah, I'm sure we'll have her on the podcast.

Sam 34:26

I shall look forward to interviewing somebody from the second best university in the UK.

Vic 34:30

Oh yeah, sorry, sir.

Sam 34:35

You can cut that bit out.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Yeah.

Sam 34:38

Fantastic. So Eva, if you were starting over with all your years of experience, what what would you tell your younger self?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Well, you know, I'm not a man of regrets, so I'm never really um regretting things or saying, okay, I should have done that this way, or what you ne regrette rien. Exactly. But um, but what I do, and I think what uh uh what we should all do is really to uh to learn uh by experience and to try to always you know assess in what uh what we are doing, the good things and uh the less good things, and try to not to replicate you know the mistakes and uh and learn from that. And um and I know that this is a very US thing to uh to fail and to be able to come back. And in France, for instance, we are very, very critical with people that are failing. Failure is not an option, and it's uh it's dramatic because uh you know you you can progress only by failing somehow. Uh the important thing is that you are not stubborn and that you are learning again and progressing and uh capitalizing on the all the piece of experiences that uh you can have to uh to improve and to always you know be better, because uh this is also one of the lessons of my uh long career. And how is that you can always progress, you can always be better, and you can always uh share experience also with uh this is also something that is very important when you start. Of course, you don't have a lot of experience. When you have a little bit more, at least it's it's true for me. I I'm very eager to to uh transfer this and to to share and to help uh the youngest one and to to grow and to and and and to learn a little bit about uh the experience of the others. I've been through a couple of mentors in my uh careers and in my life, by the way, and uh I've always been uh you know such uh a gem that uh it's our duty to all of us when we are uh getting older to share and to have this uh again teamwork somehow, yes, uh, and uh and two-way sharing because it it's also working in both ways. We are talking a lot about you know reverse uh mentoring and whatever, but I was skeptical about that at the beginning. But in fact, it's great because it's uh it's refreshing also yourself and it brings brand new uh ideas or way to think perspective and also uh kills your uh your preconceived idea that you may have, or to say, hey, I'm a senior guy, I know better than everyone. So it puts you back into something a little bit more humble and and and modest. And uh so I would yeah, I would put it this way I wouldn't I would not uh regret anything, but uh I'm I'm always learning and trying not to replicate my uh my mistakes.

Vic 37:31

I like um Adam Grant and the way he sums it up. He says there's no such thing as best practice, always better practice. Yeah, and that's what we practice at the Amplified Group is, and that was okay. How can we make it even better?

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Yeah, least worse so far, practice but not fine as uh somebody uh saying.

Sam 37:54

So, what would your three key takeaways be for our listeners, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Well, again, we we we alluded to that, but I think um for me uh working in IT uh is probably one of the most uh you know uh rewarding and promising uh environments. Uh as I said, we are at the beginning of uh of uh something much bigger. We don't know what will come probably in five, ten years. So I would really encourage especially the younger people that are asking themselves where you want they want to go to to invest in uh in IT, not only because they are pretty certain to have a job for all their life, but also as we already discussed, they have the opportunity to really support any business to uh to be better and to progress. So I think it's uh it's very, very uh promising and uh and uh and rewarding. And the last thing is uh again, in whatever you do, you have to be customer uh obsessed. And uh never forget that again, you are not here in your uh silo to work for a piece of shiny thing that uh you know excites you, but to to you are working to help uh your customers to uh to improve and to uh and to um yeah foster. So um this would be my my three uh uh takeaway. Go to IT, uh take for good and be customer obsessed. Sounds good.

Sam 39:24

And uh our last question to our guests is always whether you can recommend a book to us for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

That's interesting because I am a very big reader, but nothing about it. You know, I'm I'm reading I'm reading novels and reading uh literature, but I'm not a big fan of uh IT books. So I will uh tweak a little bit the um the question to a movie because I'm also a big, big movie fan. And uh and there is a one movie that I think every seller should see in his life just to see what not to do, in fact, by being a big it's a movie called Glen Gary from uh James Forey. I don't know if you you have seen this movie, it's from the 90s, it's uh an adaptation of David Mammoth play, and um it's a bunch of you know real estate uh agents that are very unsuccessful and ready to do any stupid things to be uh to fit their target and to uh and to overachieve. So it's a fantastic you know uh lessons for uh for young settler, uh again to see what really not to do today to be to be successful. And uh there was fantastic cast with Al Pacino, Jack Lemon, and uh Kevin Spacey and uh and some others. It was uh a movie that's it's a bit old, but that you can uh you can really watch uh with uh always the same pleasure, and that is uh that has uh you know some very, very great lesson learnings. Alec Baldwin, who is the the sales manager that has amazing part in his uh in the nasty uh uh stupid um you know boss, uh, it's is just uh a very, very nice uh story uh and and movie to to watch again, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

That actually sounds like a lot of fun. I thought you were gonna say Wolf of Wall Street for a minute now. Could have been another one.

Vic 41:13

Yeah, I've not heard of that, Cave.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

So uh I think I have, I think I have heard of it, but I don't think I know what's watch it, watch it so you will never watch it and tell you.

Vic 41:27

Yeah, I also love the fact that you have transformed us from what book do you recommend to what film do you recommend? I think that could be our next series. I think that's what we should do. That's fantastic. My one is Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks. Um I when I um was leading the team at the MWER, I asked the team to watch it, and it was about not doing the easy thing, doing the right thing.

unknown 41:56

Yeah.

Vic 41:57

And having that as our team motto.

Sam 42:00

Very good.

Vic 42:01

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you.

Sam 42:04

Cool. Great. Well, that's uh that's changed the direction of the podcast. One fell swoop. Fantastic. Thank you, Emily. Really enjoyed that. That was a magnificent canter through salesbestices and selling and value selling and the shift to cloud and consumption and all of that good stuff. So really appreciate your time. Thank just remains for me to say thanks for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. As always, your comments and your subscriptions are gratefully received.