Inside Clay's Sales Playbook | Becca Lindquist

How do you read a LinkedIn profile? Oh

wow. Which pulled up people's LinkedIns.

We pulled up yours. It was actually

really weird. We're like, don't hire

this guy. No, I'm kidding.

>> Today we have Becca Linquist, head of

sales at Clay, one of the fastest

growing companies to scale to $100

million in ARR. Our quota to OT ratio is

like 7 12. It should be heavily weighted

for overperformance. If I'm giving you a

big quota and you're hitting 110% of

that, I want you to be making good

money. This was an exceptional deep dive

that goes very granular into how to

scale a sales or when you have 60% of

people over 100% 80% over 80% I think is

best you're building a winning culture

people are successful get your pen and

paper out you'll be taking a lot of

notes in this one hire two at a time

because you hire one you're like is it

good is it not good I don't know if you

hire two it's pretty clear outbound will

never be dead

>> ready to

Be back. It is so good to have you in

the studio. It's so nice to do it in

person. I went for a walk around High

Park with Verun and he said so many

wonderful things. So, thank you so much

for joining me today.

>> Thanks for having me. It's fun.

>> Now, I think a lot of sales leaders and

sales people are looking at themselves

today going, "Am I in the right place?"

you're in a SAS company and you're like

that's not an AI company and you're

seeing a load of friends make a lot of

money at AI companies. How should people

actually think about the decision of

should I leave my SAS company and join a

hot AI company or should I actually just

stay? So, I have a lot of these types of

conversations both with like peers and

and with uh folks that are having this

like kind of evaluation. And I think

there's there's two ways to approach it,

right? A lot of folks that I talk to are

at software companies. They've been

there for like four years, 5 years. The

learning curve is kind of flattened out.

And like the the phrase that I use to

describe how they might feel is like,

"Hey, do you feel like you're kind of

like rotting, right? Like you're you're

not you're not learning a ton more. The

the the learning curve is flattened for

you. You're not in an AI space, which

like I think is like the next uh the

next phase of things to learn." And

actually almost every time they're like,

"Yeah, that's exactly how I feel." And

I'm like, "Okay, let's let's fix that

then." Because that once you stop

learning, like you actually as as a

person, I think, start to settle and

then it's just a like a process of

settling all the way down to the bottom.

>> So what do you do when you feel as a

sales rep or leader?

>> Yeah.

>> That you are rotting. What do you do?

>> You got to go you got to go find

something else, right?

>> You can't reinvigorate it. I mean maybe

you can move maybe you can move into

like a different role or like a

different sub sector of the company but

usually like if you've been there for

four or five years the company's pretty

big there's a lot of structure there's a

lot of process like there's there's not

much more for you to like innovate

meaningfully I mean maybe you could um I

don't know maybe you could go run the

company's like VC fund or something

right like but but but at the end of the

day like if you leave a company like

that and you move to this is like

partially why I joined Clay, right? Like

if you leave a company like that and you

go to a nextgen AI startup, like you're

going to learn way more. The surface

area of of what you can actually go and

impact is much much higher. And I think

that's what those types of people are

excited about, right? Like if you've

been at Salesforce for 12, 13, 14 years,

like you've probably had an incredible

run, you probably really enjoy that and

you're probably going to stay there. But

like most people are at companies for

like four or five years.

>> Dick comment. If you've been at

Salesforce for 12, 13, 14 years, I

automatically think you're not great.

I'm like, you got stuck in your ways.

You've been there for way too long.

Seriously, you were happy just in this

kind of malay of mediocrity for 12, 13,

14 years. Is that a bad read?

>> I don't think it's a bad read. I

actually So, we're we're recruiting a

lot right now at Clay and uh you know, I

see a lot I see a lot of profiles. I

actually ran a training for my team on

on recruiting last last week, the week

before. And one of the things that we

talked about is like how do you read a

LinkedIn profile? Oh wow. Right. And I

we just pulled up people's LinkedIn. We

pulled up yours. It was actually really

weird. We're like don't hire this guy.

No, I'm kidding.

>> Terrible. Look at that. Egotistical,

arrogant. Why would I? He's a ter.

>> Um so we pull up LinkedIn profile and

and I'd be like, "Okay, what do you

like? What do you see that you like?

What do you see that you don't like?"

And it's actually there's a certain

amount of time that if you spend at any

company, it's like kind of a red flag

because it's like can you can you do

something new? Can you operate outside

of the bounds of what you've what you've

built and what you've done? Right.

>> What is that amount of time? Because I

also hate the bouncer. And the biggest

red flag for me is 13 months here, 15

months.

>> That's that that there's there's a lower

bound too. And like I think I think it's

two years, right? Like

>> I always think four to five years is

like optimal. Yeah. I mean that's I I've

spent the last decade at two companies.

Yeah. Right. And like I've built

something. I've learned a ton. And when

that learning curve starts to cap off

like okay, you start to think about

what's next and what's new. I think it's

probably like

>> 7 years, 6 to 7 years. After that, if

you've been in a company for 8 n 10

years, it's like

>> the company's kind of built around you

probably. And you you've built so much

of it to like uh I don't know the best

way to describe it is like maybe like

putting on someone else's shoes right

now. Now I'm giving you you're giving me

your shoes now like I got to like I

don't know redo the laces and the

insoles all you know screwed up. Like I

think it's really tough for someone

who's been at a company that long to

like adjust and and prove me wrong,

right? Like I I have a friend who was at

at heap which I was at two companies

ago, right? He was there for like eight

or nine years and I'd actually like

every time that you know the LinkedIn

anniversary he's like oh my god your

friend has been there for this many I

just like one year I I screenshotted it

I sent it to him I was like yo blink

twice if you need me to save you

>> because like but he was like look I'm

learning and like yes there is an end

date there is an expiration date but

like when I see something like that

especially at a company like Salesforce

I'm like okay you you have your thing

you know what you're doing you probably

have great hobbies outside of

that just so denigrative. I love that.

That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. Um

training, recruiting. Take me to that

day on on the LinkedIn specifically. Is

there anything else like we watch out

for? Don't laugh. One of my big red

flags is someone who has like a picture

of them speaking at an event. It just

tells me that they have great

self-importance.

>> You're just a dick. Well, well, well,

actually, actually, I when I see that, I

look at it and I'm like, okay, either