The One Sales Tool Keeping You From Closing The Deal | Andy Zambito

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Before we even get started I want you to start thinking about three people that you’re going to share this episode with right now, because hopefully you’ve downloaded at least the past three episodes. We don’t promote, we don’t take sponsors, this is just bringing value to people and the only way that we grow to help more people is with your help, so please share this out with three people today. Today you’re going to be excited because we’re going to talk about sales, we’re going to talk about sales processes, we’re going to talk about some technology and low code and no code tech, because my guest is a killer at this. Driving continued growth on two continents, held various leadership positions and pinpoint in Vera as VP of worldwide sales and a CRO, this guy is just a freaking rock star when it comes to this, Andy  Zambito. Welcome to the show, brother. 

Hey, thank you so much. What a great intro, I really appreciate it.

Thanks, my man. I mean you’ve got the creds you know and I’m excited to talk about you today or talk with you today about you today because of all the amazing things that you’ve done. I want to hear insight from you. 

Okay. 

I was just reading this morning man, that around travel going into the fourth quarter of this year. I think this was in the Wall Street Journal. By the way, the best subscription I ever got years ago was to the journal, it’s so amazing. This is a squirrel but I’ve got to hit this, again because all my listeners, I talked about this maybe a little while but if you don’t have that subscription that’s like the one right? Because it seems so unbiased. How do you feel?

It’s funny you mentioned that, I hadn’t thought about this in tears, but I remember when I was interning; I’m dating myself here because I was starting my career doing a little bit of Investment Finance work and I was at a company called Paine Webber, but working for a senior vice president. I was reading the journal every day, and I found it in my closet the other day. I was clipping articles on some things that grabbed my attention. There’s this little sidebar article on the on the right hand side, I clipped it and I wrote on an envelope to send to my good friend of mine like, hey I think this is going to be something, and I opened it up and I looked at it, and it was literally an article about this guy from New York who hopped in his car and drove to Seattle and he was gonna start this online business. This was about Jeff Bezos and Amazon, pre-amazon, to your point, you pick up some really interesting things if you dig in. If only it was a different lifetime ago.

For sure, man. What I really love about it too. I’ve never talked about this in depth before. Thanks for indulging me here for a second. Years ago, I was thinking I wish I could have curated news that really really speaks to and then Google News came about and there’s Apple news that came after that. There’s a couple other apps that I looked into over time but all of them seemed so far right leaning or so far left leaning in, all I wanted was the straight truth, unbiased, and I feel that’s what the journal really offers. I love it because I’ve got the digital and the print edition. The print edition is nice, because sometimes I still like to hold the paper, the physical piece of paper. But most of the time, what I really get out of it is, I get my daily journal in the morning, which is like their top 10 things it’s curated based upon my interests; tech, sales, business all of that, it’s beautiful. 

Yeah a lot easier than I guess I also dated myself when I said I clipped an article for those who don’t know what that is.

Now to be fair, I don’t really touch the paper version that often, it’s just nice to have this journal. Traveling a lot, as I do, this will come full circle to what I started on before we got on this tangent. That’s always something staying in the hotels that I’ve stayed at, they’ve always had there for me. If you’re talking about the Ritz or higher end four and five star hotels, they will have the journal ready there for you and it’s something I always appreciated, just being able to stay on. This is years ago when I started reading this, but going into travel this was the article and this comes back to sales here, I was reading going into quarter four that, the only business travel that’s really going to be happening that a lot of corporations and all the way down to small businesses are really going to advocate for has to do with sales, meaning client relations or closing the deal. There’s not going to be any travel whatsoever, they’re going to stick virtual as the travel season dies down here a little bit coming out of the summer, just to save costs, and also because of the ongoing pandemic they don’t really care about the travel around training or internal team building activities. It’s to generate revenue is what they’re going to have to travel for, it’s nice to see. How are you feeling about this going into Q4?

I’m an anomaly in this, I agree with a number of those things that I would certainly hate to be in the commercial real estate business right now. Take my scenario though right now, so one of my charters joining Creatio was actually a year ago today, and it’s about building out a team and a whole go to market function.I’ve actually been actively hiring all over the past year, and none of these folks have actually met each other so this week we’re finally bringing everybody together and they’re meeting. Think about the challenges of building a team culture and unity, when it’s all new people to a company and none of those people have met each other, let alone other people in the company, so there’s some new challenges that are gonna pop up. But when it comes to selling, absolutely. We’re at our executive staff meetings, we’re talking about the big deals we want to do. One of the questions that comes up is can you get on site like can you go meet with them? I think the days for now of people like doing the entertainment side of sales, let’s go to dinners, those do all that have probably sailed for a while, but the desire to be in the room, have those face to face meetings, develop that that trust and connection that and make these transactions, they’re not about transactions, you’re making a commitment, especially in the enterprise software world. It’s not something they replace. So you’re committing, they’re voting with their careers with their resources, their checks, their people, their time, and that’s a lot to ask of somebody to do on a group of people that they haven’t interacted with. I’m encouraging it obviously in a safe way, safe environment. But the moment that a customer is open to it, we want to jump on that opportunity.

I appreciate that. There’s two things that I picked out that really stood out to me on what you just said and I started sort of predicting this like six to eight months ago. You can go back and listen to past episodes, I’ve been saying this now because I’ve even had sales experts on and talked about how to close the deal over zoom and I always play devil’s advocate because there’s this thing in sales, nothing closes like in person, and I’m sure we’re gonna see this transition. We are now, it was with this article this morning, it’s like, I kept saying, six, eight months it’s like it’s gonna go back and people are going to start to appreciate and the one who’s going to get the deal is the one who actually shows up.

Just like the first person to respond to a lead in the organization is usually the one who wins, it’s the same thing. What’s your commitment and involvement? I will say it has developed this idea of the Zoom culture and if you don’t develop the ability to build rapport over that, if you’re not somebody who’s still you know wants to turn on your video. Culturally for us, the way I run sales teams is we’re completely transparent. I want everybody’s calendars open, everybody’s meetings are open. Anybody can join and when you’re in a meeting you’re on video because you have to establish this. I used to explain to people before these days of Zoom and the rest, it’s a lot easier to treat somebody arm’s length, when you haven’t had an interaction with them, but it’s very hard now once I’ve seen you I’ve talked to you or I’ve shared a meal with your broken bread, whatever it is for me to kind of hang up on you or just kind of dismiss you. I’m much more willing to take this meeting I have, it’s a different psychological relationship that you form. When you’ve shaken hands or met somebody face to face, or sat down at a meal than if they are just somebody. Think about how you interact with a telemarketer versus the person who comes to your front door. You’re more willing to hang up the phone than you are to slam the door even if it’s a half second, you still want to close that door. If it’s somebody that you’ve actually had a dialogue with and seen face to face, you know their name, then you’re more engaged and I absolutely agree and encourage the team’s to do it. 

That’s awesome and you also talked about the entertainment side too and you reference it there a little bit again too, broken bread with them, handshakes, there were days of box seats at the baseball game, or right off the glass for a hockey game, we’re a skybox or something like that. I’ve been treated and I have been treated with these things, many times that I started teaching a while back, everyone that sells for me is saying what, save that stuff. This was a flip flop that I made.

A few years ago, save that stuff until the end of the conversation, start putting out and once we start doing business together we’re gonna celebrate too because people value their time and what you’re saying is it brought this concept more to the forefront that I’ve been coaching on for years, even just in an email. Make your ask first, have the conversation and then keep the pleasantries towards the end because in my personal opinion, it shows that you’re respecting that person’s time from a professional perspective, and showing them you’re ready to get down to business because the only reason why we’re talking in the first place is for business. I’m not looking for a friend. It’d be awesome if that came out of it, after we got our business done to where we develop this close relationship personally that’s cool, but the only reason we’re talking to begin with is to make freaking things happen.

This was discovered, it came out in a big way probably about 10-15 years ago with the evolution of a lot of folks started talking about the Challenger sale and things of that nature, which is really looking at classifying different sales tactics and patterns of, are you that relationship person and all the rest. I completely agree with you that the pace of business has changed and so people’s personal lives, their dinner hour and all the rest is much more sacred because they’re jammed through their day. While it’s important to know people still need to be likeable and engaged, and people do want to spend more time with those who they like, it’s not that they buy from somebody they like, they want that they’ll engage you to, but it’s really about are you bringing value. To your point, it has to start and end with that. Everything else is secondary. I don’t know if these days of these kinds of FAD expense accounts and going golfing and all the rest are over. I suppose I was blessed early on that I don’t really enjoy golfing, in that sense. As I was out there, focusing on how to bring value to the client. I don’t see that changing. I see there’s going to be less, even if you as a salesperson were willing to do all of that and do all the entertaining. If the customer is not interested, they don’t want to give up their time, as you mentioned, or during the day but let alone after hours. Focus on delivering value and if you’re fortunate enough to have also created a bond, celebrate over that, but only when you’ve actually succeeded on the task.

Save that for the end of it. That’s really cool and there are clients that I’ve had that I’ve formed those relationships with over the years too, to where they’ll even call me and have a real call man. It isn’t, my dad died a few years ago and I don’t have anybody to bounce marketing ideas off of, I know you’re providing cyber and IT services to me, but would you mind just stopping by to have a drink with me just so I can bounce some business ideas off of you? This was somebody that was 30 years my senior at the time too, and I was humbled in that aspect as well, but just thinking back around the relationship that was built, but that relationship was built around trust of me delivering value. My company delivers value, day in and day out, it always started with business.

I’ve even vacationed with customers, we’ve built strong relationships and even visited each other’s homes and I have stayed over and all the rest. That is a byproduct. I think of forming genuine relationships, the number one trait for true sales success is empathy. It’s not something that you can coach, so when I think people used to say somebody is a natural born salesperson, I think that was more of what they were aligning with is realizing and sensing, an empathy of that. If you combine that with the ability to add and deliver value, it comes across as genuine and if you’re not genuine people will pick up on that as well. Therefore you have these foundational relationships that carry the test of time and being a trusted advisor that folks are always focused on, that’s what it’s really about,

Let’s unpack that a little bit because I like where you’re going with this around the empathetic side of things, and even my voice just changed. How I got a little bit slower in my rhythm and everything because you’re starting to pull up my heart now. I appreciate that, because when I walk into a room in an initial conversation, now it’s shifted because I don’t sell our services anymore. I might get involved here and there but now it’s more selling myself, because I’m in an acquisition mode since my company is going public, and it’s walking in and saying I want to be able to provide a good home for your people, for your customers and maybe even for you if it’s something you want to stick on board with for a while too. In the acquisition space, I started really looking at this and it’s no different than what you’re saying about empathy in a sales transaction too. It is really kind of meeting that person where they’re at. There’s a reason and I always hated this question, but it was what any sales coach would ask, it’s like the first thing you go into… Why’d you take this meeting today? Shouldn’t you already know that before you’re even walking through the door. If you did some homework, if you ask some initial questions like really caring, empathetic questions you should know the answer to that right away. I’m sure you train similarly to this right, but you’re saying you certainly can’t coach empathy. Right?

Yes, there’s a couple parts to this. Empathy, you can certainly help somebody work on how they communicate their empathy for better, but if you’re not, I can’t coach you to be intellectually curious or introspective or a couple of these things. So, therefore I have to interview and I make those prime characteristics on the soft skill side that I look for. To your point, I think a lot of sales trainers they’ve focused lately on this concept of starting with why, but there are different “why” questions.

I’m so done with that question.

You have to refocus. Obviously it was important that you sit down to take this meeting, but the empathetic side is this; let’s understand what was driving that and get behind it. It’s like my first interview question when I’m interviewing a candidate, obviously they want to be in this meeting or they wouldn’t have taken the meeting. My reason for that is why was now the right time for you to consider making a change? Look, I’m happy that we’re having a chance to talk today and I’m really excited and we want to hire, but why is it here you wanted to spend your time? Now it is getting them to reveal much more of their inner thought process, which is super important. On the sales side in that meeting I would coach the person. Why was it important? You want to get behind that, because it is interesting. Why is this of all the priorities you could be dealing with? Why is this top of mind? What does it mean to you to resolve this and you really start unpacking by doing it that way. The other one was just being able to be confrontational with you and now you’re already setting you up emotionally, and if they weren’t empathetic they don’t pick up on the fact that they’ve just frustrated the hell out of you. If they are, they quickly recover if they read the room at all.

That’s awesome. I love how you’re dancing around this too because you’re empathetic. Questions are tapping into the emotions of this individual, because any sort of major shift, even if it’s enterprise software that someone’s using, that’s something that’s a pretty major shift in any corporation. As you’re looking to move from one system to another, I know because my firm’s going through it right now, and I’ve got good people that are managing this project, but it’s a big shift. It’s unpacking all the processes and procedures you’ve done over years and then the immense effort that’s involved in this undertaking. There’s got to be a reason in order to make that shift and know what it could even be, it doesn’t even have to be a negative reason and that’s a lot of reasons why sales meetings and prospects can come. A lot of times, maybe even the majority of times I would argue because they’re frustrated right now, in the moment. There’s something wrong. Imagine it’s like empathy, you’re able to flip that around and say “What do you want to create? Is this the right time, what does it look like going forward for you in a rather than focusing on the stupid?” I hate negativity solely.

You’re on to it though. With an interview question, one of the things I’m looking for in those early questions is, I want somebody who’s running towards something and not running away from something because if they’re running away from a bad situation, they’ll take any job, they’ll take any safe ground as opposed to somebody who actually is passionate about what you’re doing when you’re dealing with the company situation. I think the other side of this is even if you’re empathetic, that reps tend to be in their own heads a lot emotionally too. They want to hear that self affirmation throughout the meeting and they’re going to be asking you all these yes-type questions. They want to get a yes from you, did you like what you saw? Did this solve your needs? They don’t understand though. Then they walk away hearing all these yeses and they think we’ve got this, as opposed to realizing that you could have said yes to the next guy in the room as well. We all can solve your challenges. We all liked everything we saw and that’s not how you’re going to base your decision. You have to not only take that empathic questioning, but flip it around and actually be looking for the no, not the yeses. Given what we’ve shown you, why wouldn’t you? What would stop you from selecting us as your solution of choice for whatever that problem you were solving was? That will force them to think through why I would say no, and then actually tell you something that’s real. It’s not selling until they say no, otherwise it’s order taking. You can stand behind a register and do that, the idea is to find the objections and manage that the worst place for a salesperson to be in is when they’re hearing yes to everything with no objections. They have no strategy, no play, and they just hope. Hopes not the strategy.

Right! You have no information, you don’t even have pain points if all you’re getting is yes.

You don’t even have to be doing this, why aren’t you, why wouldn’t you become what would stop? When you get into that, now all of a sudden you’ve opened up and you’ve learned more than anybody else will learn to.

I’ve never really liked the typical presentation phase of a sales process either. I feel you and I are of like minds here a little bit, because it’s like the presentation phase of your walk and it’s like saying, here’s the picture that I’m painting for you. Rather than saying here’s the brush, I’m going to give you the brush, can you paint me what the picture looks like and then I’m just going to sit back and watch. I’m going to watch the different strokes that you make, how your timing is, I’m going to watch where you go from one color to the next on this canvas. I know this is a huge metaphor but you have to sell, you have to hand the brush of that painting over to your prospect and let them paint that picture for you.

There’s another aspect of this, which I think probably causes some of your frustration, which is that one of the biggest challenges that I have to try to train folks on is when you’ve walked in the room, you’re going to give that presentation. In today’s buying age, you as the buyer have already done a ton of education for yourself, you may have done mis-education, you may have gotten bad data. You’ve created a set of biases and perceptions and your kind of worldview. If the rep comes in and there’s all these coat hooks on the wall and each new coat is my big argument, I’m hanging it on the hook one after another. Isn’t this beautiful at the end? You as the buyer are looking at me like “No, and all the coats are laying on the floor.” It’s because those hooks weren’t there. I imagined that you and I were on the same page, and had the same understanding of the problem of the universe and worldview, and then I came in and just hung them up. The first thing I have to do is understand where your hooks are, unblock those biases, get agreement on the universe that we’re playing in before I can even make my argument, they’ll have it land. Otherwise, I’m going to walk out and deliver my perfect pitch as you said, every time as if it’s routine and written, and I’m going to walk away and understand why you kind of looked at me sideways at the end and nothing landed. My punches are missing because you’re not standing in front of me. Whether it’s having you paint first, or getting an understanding if we don’t agree on what the problem is even about, and we’re agreeing on a sort of baseline set of the universe, it won’t matter if I come in and deliver my pitch perfectly. It’s not about the pitch, it isn’t about me getting through the slides or anything else, it’s supposed to be aligning to where you are. I think too many people just come in and think it’s about if they deliver this message perfectly every time. It has really nothing to do with it. At the end of day I can fumble all over it but if I’m on target with you and we’re on the same playing ground, now all of a sudden it’s a totally different conversation. I dare to bet you if you look back at those sessions where you’re super frustrated with the pitch, it’s because it’s just going right by you, it’s not aligned.

Yes, I am with you. How do you train your salespeople to get out of their own heads when they walk in the door? I don’t know if you’ve ever watched The Office, but I remember this one where Jim and Dwight are going to make the sale. Dwight has this thing he does. Dwight has this thing and Jim looks over and says, go on in and I’ll be there in five minutes and it’s the first time they’ve done this sales thing in a while together sales call while together he looks up. Dwight goes, “Just go Jim,” and he gets out and he turns on classic rock music, he’s like banging on the steering wheel and doing all these headbangs, and that was him getting himself psyched up for the sale. 

I think that’s good, every time before I go on TV, before I go on any global media appearance, I’m always doing something before I go on stage. I’m jumping 10 times to get everything flowing. I mean look at Tony Robbins  for what he does, frickin’ gorilla roars, that’s all intentional and purposeful. From sales though, how do you coach or insert a part of that to be like, “Okay, let’s get out of my own head, so I don’t walk in here with any preconceptions.”

I’m not a believer that a salesperson is transferable across all products, all things, meaning the skills are but what comes through is his passion. What you’re doing when you’re getting that energy pump and you’re doing the rest is getting up your confidence and you feel like you’re coming in. One way to do that also is just by default, only hire people who are passionate about the value you bring. I try to encourage the folks to do that. There’s really two things you have to evaluate a company on when you’re gonna join us on this, besides all these other tangential things but do I believe in the value in mission of this organization? Once the first shots are fired, all plans go away and do we have a rallying point that we all believe in, and then do I believe that I’m surrounded by people who can execute on that vision right? Because you have a great vision and mission, but be surrounded by clouds right and so do I believe and I can do that? Now if you do that, there’s an innate passion about what you’re bringing, and what I try to explain to the reps is to gather in our own heads that if you already believe in what we’re doing, you are holding on to something extremely valuable. This client is not doing you a favor by taking the call and then you take a non confident mealy mouth of “Can I please have five minutes of your time?” You’ve already lost. You’ve now seated the ground that says they’re doing you a favor by letting you come and present this. You have to be in the mindset that says, I have the greatest secret, I have the greatest thing that you don’t know about, and you need to, and I’m gonna come in. I’m going to explain to you why you’re gonna thank me for it. Don’t have a big ego about doing that, but if I can’t be passionate about it then I can’t expect you to be passionate about it. I’m educating you about what it is. If you get that kind of mindset, then you come roaring in every meeting. I can’t wait to tell you about this thing and what it’s going to do transformatively for you, and get more and more excited and they will. I think it doesn’t matter how much music or anything else you’ve played before that, if I don’t believe that what I’m carrying is valuable. You can’t fake the genuine nature of it. The fact that you’re empathetic, you’ll see through me. You will see that this guy doesn’t even believe what he’s saying.  I can be super pumped and fake about it but that genuine nature of adding value is what I really like to focus on.

I appreciate that. Before we shift to some low code stuff, I don’t know if there’s a reason for this, but there has been an uptick in myself receiving cold calls lately for capital. It’s hilarious to me because there is no building of value right away, and there’s no transparency in the sales process either. Some of it depending on what mood I’m in, I’ll indulgent for a little bit, but most of the time if I pick up the phone it goes, “Rick speaking” and they answer “Hey Rick it’s Frank, how you doing?” and I respond with “Frank, I don’t know.” or they’ll just  say “Hey Rick, It’s Joe” and I respond with “Joe? I’m not expecting a call from Joe? So, Joe, where are you from?” Then I start asking the questions to them and it throws them off base. It’s pretty hilarious because you’re just going through this blind script, this blind presentation from the get go on this cold call. I know where they’re going with it, you don’t know that I train on this stuff. This is not the approach. This is similar to the Wolf of Wall Street 30 years ago. Which those scripts still work, they really do, but it’s not the type of close empathetic selling that we’re talking about.

No, it’s not. I came from a one of my high school summer jobs where I was a telemarketer and I was calling the angriest people on the planet, not to date myself, but it was I was calling people during the long distance telco wars, who had just left AT&T to go to some other provider. Trying to call and win them back over. They left because they were pissed for a reason and I had the binder full of complaints. See if they hit a certain one I had to flip to that page and the computer dialing and all the rest. I do a similar thing by the way though, if I’m in the mood, I’ll give them a coach on their script, or they’ll hit me with it and I’ll tell you, no that is terrible. You can’t do that. Then see where they take it. That familiarity is just their trick to try to disarm you, and buy themselves in 10 seconds they say, “Joe who” and then they’ll try to run right.

Another part of this too, is I always say that quotes and proposals are where sales go to die. I’ve gotten to these points with other vendors too, when I’ve been the prospect and they’ll start talking and ask, “How can I send you a quote?” and I respond with, “no, we’re not there yet. We didn’t even have a money conversation and I’m still not bought into whether this is the right choice for me yet.” Then I start coaching them. Give me 10 minutes with you, then I start a sales process. Then at the end of the sales pitch, the end of that 10 minutes of coaching, I state I am still interested as your prospect but what I need is to go through XY and Z first, and feel if that is right for me. The money’s not going to really even be a thing because I’m already bought into the value. This is going to give me out of the conversation we’ve had so far if you can give me a ballpark range. Money is an important part of any decision, of course, but when it comes to sales, if you can give me a ballpark range and then not break my trust by falling outside of the range to where I think that it might be too cheap and it’s a poor quality solution. You’re undervaluing yourself or you blow past it because you just tried to underquote me to get the deal to begin with, then I’m good. Just give me a ballpark estimate. Then that becomes the money conversation. Step me through how this is going to change my life and my business because you know my needs at this point. Don’t send me a quote. “ Yeah, send you a quote, yeah like I’m gonna freakin sign that!”

Let’s get you on the sales coaching. 

It was great, I told the guy like we’re not there yet. Why do you want to just send me a quote?

That’s what he believed was the next step. Going for the close is what they’re told,but they haven’t earned it. There’s a difference between budgetary guidance and trying to get a signed order. I think that part of this is only getting worse because SaaS has unpacked a lot of greatness for you, but it’s taken some areas to more transactional based, it’s cutting down all of those conversations that you used to have to really get that back and forth and dig into a solution.

Let’s dive into that real quick, SaaS because you’re in low code and no code, what’s your passion with that? You talk a lot about believing what you’re doing, why do you believe so much in low code, no code?

When I joined an organization I looked for a couple things. I want to be a part of big technological wave movements, and I want a message that cuts across the grain of what the herd is doing. If you think about low code, no code, this is for your audience who may not be familiar, you use it all the time in your daily life. If during the pandemic you got let go and you say to yourself “Okay, I’m going to start my own website and drop ship and do all the rest.” You don’t have to be a coder, you could have gone online and downloaded all sorts of tools. I’m going to have a website, I’m going to configure it, I’m going to put ecommerce into it, I’m going to do all this and you never have to be a developer. That’s an example of low code or your kids were building games in Roblox or worlds in Minecraft, but in the business world, if you think about the technological shifts that we’ve done over the years. When I started sailing it was custom solutions and you got everything for a high cost and a lot of change was painful. I don’t want that anymore, so we went to off the shelf software. Saying I’m going to sacrifice, I don’t get everything I want, maybe 70% but I get this industrial strength of enterprise platforms that is not going to break on me, but now I got to align with you. There haven’t been a big transformation or shift right we went to SaaS, that just took your off the shelf and put it in the cloud made it more transferable or we went to managed services, same concepts. We haven’t done anything to change the software delivery model in a while. Think about this, we have 1.7 billion knowledge workers on the planet now, they’re creating a demand for over 500 million applications, and there’s only 25 million software developers in the world. The demand and supply do not match, and so the delivery model is broken and has to change and that’s where low code or no code demand is. These are two markets that are essentially converging but the concept being is there’s no way for developers to keep up with that demand. To build in that fashion. It’s creating a world where you get all the benefits of the prior pieces right. I get all the benefits of being able to build and evolve what I need and want from a business user standpoint. I don’t need to be a developer to do that. I get all that custom built stuff, but it’s built on an industrial strength platform, so therefore you have all the enterprise class things and oh by the way, you can do it faster and less expensive, because I’m not getting in the queue for this stuff. It doesn’t have to do all this change management. As a delivery model for software in the world, a Gartner is projected 65% of all business applications will be built in this fashion, just in the next 2-3 years, which is tomorrow in technology.

Yes, right on.

That is one of the things that gets me super passionate about it, this is the future of technology period. It’s why you’re gonna hear more and more buzz phrases and the question is do they actually do it or are they just now catching on to the latest thing like blockchain? I’ve got AI on low code, no code. That’ll be the challenge I think, to now cut through that noise. Then the other part that we really focused on that gets me super passionate, is on business processes. If you think about how companies differentiate themselves from banks to insurance companies to airlines, why are they worth different values? Why do they have different brand loyalty and all the rest? It’s not because of what they offer, those are commoditized products to a degree right. It’s a seat from A to B, it’s a checking account, it’s an insurance thing, how they operate their processes internally and externally, make all the difference. Do I have lower cost structure is do I have,  faster turnaround of my planes do I have, are my employees empowered to do things with you and have a better interaction with you, would you rather have an app to take a picture of your dented car and never talk to an insurance adjuster or have to wait for them to come out to your house and do all this? These are processes, and the ability, I think the pandemic showed this. The ability to digitally transform. We’ve talked about that for years and the pandemic finally has shown people what it meant. It’s not taking paper and putting it electronically or taking my server and putting it in the cloud, it’s me saying to you I want you to hit your bank new client acquisition targets but by the way you can’t open your branch. Okay, what do I do right now? You have to transport well-suited business processes. The ability to do that quickly and effectively is what is going to allow companies to either be competitive and stay ahead of everyone else or crumble and die. Who wouldn’t want to be at the heart of that? I mean those things coming together that had me sold.

That’s incredible, you’re speaking to me very deeply right now too because I was looking at whether to go with my roll up play right 50-70 companies in the next two years. There’s an application that I need right now, a differentiator because I’m in a world of commoditized services. I can charge a premium for what I do because of the people and the processes that are in place, and it makes all the difference in the world because everybody can use the same tools, everybody can use the same applications but it’s the way that we deliver it in the process and how we bring the customer along for that ride, is all the difference in the world. Now just looking at it over the past couple months, to make the integration strategy go a lot easier, it’d be really cool if we had an application platform that helped us along these processes to integrate the people, the team members that we’re going to inherit from these acquisitions, get them on a platform that guides them through the entire process and procedures that we have and that’s what I’m looking at the same thing low code and no code, because it’s not rocket science type stuff, it’s pulling data points, and it’s putting them into steps 1-27 on how to guide someone along this journey. That’s something that can completely apply to this you look at spending a half a million dollars to develop this thing. Or wait two years, I’ll be done with the rollout by that point.

In fact, your 27 steps will have changed by then too. Once you’ve done that so well we should talk after this Rick, we can set you up. 

I love it. 

That’s exactly the point, is how do you evolve quickly to if the answer is to try to tell business leaders when I sit down with them, how often has it happened you’re driving on the way to work yet this brilliant idea pops aup, you call ahead to have everybody at the boardroom, I’ve got this great idea, you get on the whiteboard, you map it all, and all the hands go up with all the reasons why you can’t. It’s going to take too long or we don’t have the developers or it’s going to cost too much or we have to shift priorities. The world now says no, we have smart business people in the room, that’s what I paid for, we should be able to do this, we have the idea, that’s the key and that’s the value, we should be able to deploy that and get it. Changing that dynamic is part of it is the local side and part of it is the business process side. If you bring those together and you do it in a fashion that allows the people who are close to the challenge, without having to translate to develop. Developers can be a part of this too, they’re not excluded from it, but they shouldn’t be the gating factor, they’ve got other things that they need to prioritize then every change that somebody in the business needs or wants to make life better and get agreement.

I’m hoping that my industry goes this way too, because my industry heavily, heavily relies on software tools, and the challenge right now from delivering cybersecurity is that there’s all these tools and we call it a stack in this industry. All these tools are also very much siloed. They don’t talk to each other and it’s almost impossible to have this single pane of glass to get the job done, which is why there’s processes that need to be in place in order to make this more efficient, and it’s not like the secret sauce isn’t the secret sauce around your technology tools, are the SaaS platform that you’re on anymore, your secret sauce is your people in your processes, that’s what differentiates you.

Actually, I spent many years in your universe as well, with InfoSec and security and cyber and all the rest, and I’m completely familiar with this and, frankly, in different companies have different channels they don’t all have the same bandwidth to have one of every tool, and they need tools they’re going to do more than one thing and that is such an evolving, rapid landscape because wherever you know they’re just plugging holes in the you know in the water that keeps leaking. I completely agree with you, that’s a complex world and challenge but it’s an example of a universe that has rapid change, it hasn’t adapted to how best to deal with it, they just throw another keep throwing another thing at it keep throwing another thing at it.

It’s almost like the police, when Glock comes out with a brand new pistol, a brand new firearm, saying, “Oh we got to use this!” on the forum. That’s the state of this industry right now too, because these tools that are coming out, it’s like those firearms. I had a private security agency, high value asset protection, physical people as the high value asset protection. I know a Glock 19 is what everyone would carry, because you can interchange the magazines and everything but now it is turned to, what about a Glock 17? It carries two more rounds. I think everybody should shift that way, or then it came to a private carrier concealed carry thing that added three more rounds instead of the seven. It’s a firearm, it’s a sidearm, they’re all meant to do the same thing, but everybody who was on my 130 person roster felt that we had to use this. That’s the nature of this industry too, with cybersecurity there’s all these different tools that are coming out. It’s cool, but they’re coming up with the solutions, and they’re searching for the problem. They’re not asking the right questions.

That’s the risk of just general low code, no code. It is the same thing, if I say I can do everything, and I’m a solution in search of a problem, then I’m really above all things to all people and I’m nothing to nobody at the same time, and we’re just kind of dumping it on the desk. I think in cyber, you have the additional challenge though. There’s this added pressure to buy the thing because when the new thing comes out, if you don’t do it. Now you have to justify why you don’t have that new thing. Could you have had that too and would that have stopped it? There’s a whole fear, uncertainty and doubt world of selling in the cyber world that, to your point of why you don’t like negative selling that’s a huge part of thatworld right have you justify to me why you’re not going to have this thing, and then when you don’t and something bad happens. I’ve got the signature right here that says I showed you this and you said no, which is a totally different world. If you’re if your protection folks are firing off the extra two rounds they went through the whole clip, and two more, you’ve probably done something wrong, more rounds or not.

Or whether you had five more software tools in your belt as a cybersecurity provider, you don’t even have to get to that point to begin with, there’s probably things you could have done from a human standpoint, a process and procedure standpoint.

That’s the biggest gap.

Yeah, it is. This has been an amazing conversation brother. I appreciate you. Go to creatio.com, this is something that Andy is amazingly passionate about, you can look up Andy Zambtio on LinkedIn. I enjoyed this morning. 

Yes, me as well, I really appreciate the time and then the audience participation here so let’s do it again. 

Bingo.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Paine Webber 
• Jeff Bezos
• Ritz
• The Office
• Tony Robbins
• Wolf of Wall Street
• SaaS
• Glock