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I think for me, after that first company experience, I focused so much in that company around the technology and product and design of it, and I didn't really think through the business model itself. Like, I had thought about it some, but not really down to the core, down to the first principles, and how it would engag... |
And so I really just became a pretty deep student of SaaS, and sales, and I talked a lot of different people. I've probably talked to thousands of people on the go-to-market side, to figure out what are the underlying truths, and what is my version of sales. I remember I was hanging out with a friend of mine, who's a b... |
\[56:20\] And for me, that's been an experience of learning from a lot of different people around how they do it, and then honestly, a lot of trial and error. I'm very thankful to all of our early customers that bared with me as I figured out how to structure contracts, and work with them, and very thankful that they t... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's phenomenal advice right there, man... Be curious, and be willing to be wrong, and to learn. That right there is like -- print it on a T-shirt and wear it all day long, man. That's good stuff right there. |
**Michael Grinich:** It's funny, those are actually -- I'm just rattling those off -- those are actually a few of the culture pillars we have at WorkOS as a company. One of the things we look for when we look for people to hire is like people that are curious. Because I think when companies are changing, and evolving r... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Because I said so, man...!" |
**Michael Grinich:** "Because I said so", you know, but they just keep asking it, and they're not satisfied. They're like "I need to know why." And it's like "Oh, it's Rayleigh scattering in the upper atmostphere And they're like "What's that?" And then you start telling him about physics. But I think it's a really imp... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, okay... So would you consider -- I'm not trying to ask you to say that you're an expert by any means, but at what level do you feel like you sell? Do you feel like you're amazing at it? And what do you think -- do you just approach new conversations as... I guess what's your style? Do you go i... |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. I think sales is mostly asking questions. I had a couple of people from my team shadow a couple of calls I did, and one of them -- it was like half an hour call, and he was like "You spent 27 minutes asking questions. You didn't say anything about our product. What's up?!" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Michael Grinich:** But the questions I'm asking are around why are they going to find the product useful? If you have a customer reach out, a potential customer get on a call, you can be like -- I literally say to them, "Why are we here today? What do you guys want? What do you guys need? What problem are you having ... |
And I've had sales calls like that, where at the end of it, I'm like "Hey, man, I don't think this is for you." \[laughter\] It's like, "I'm just gonna tell you -- I'm not going to try to force you into something that's the wrong thing, or pull a fast one on you. If I don't think it's gonna be a good fit... It's like, ... |
\[01:00:04.02\] But I think if you don't come into sales with that curiosity, really wanting to understand what they're trying to achieve, and what they're trying to do, and you just kind of do your talk track - for me, that kind of sales would drive me nuts. I wouldn't be able to do it. And I think a lot of developers... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** They do. They do. And that's all good qualifying, too. You understood urgency, you qualify whether you can actually even help them, which is totally the battle, right? ...in that first call. Like "Can I actually even help you?" is my first concern. Do you value podcasts? Can I even help you? Do you ... |
**Michael Grinich:** What's the impact you want to have on this right now? What would success look like to you? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, exactly. |
**Michael Grinich:** It's all questions, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And it's also, like, if you understand what they actually think about success, versus just like not; some people, they can't imagine what a successful engagement might even be. And if you can't have somebody -- if you're working with somebody who doesn't have that foresight, or just curiosity or ima... |
**Michael Grinich:** Totally. Guillermo was texting me this morning; we talk about all different stuff. But I think it is that understanding that questions. And for us, at least for me, building a product - I only want to sell to people where they're gonna love the product and experience; they're gonna be really happy ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Can we buy more?" |
**Michael Grinich:** I think that's the right way to do this. Yeah, exactly. Like, "Let's help you get to the next stage." And I don't know, I think if you frame sales like that, I would suspect there's a lot of people that think that they can't -- like me a few years ago, four or five years ago, that think that they c... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. You have to want to help people. You can't be a taker. |
**Michael Grinich:** It's true. It's not about making money. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Not necessarily. I mean, there has to be incentives in a sales role. |
**Michael Grinich:** Sure, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I don't want to disagree fully, but I think the best part about being in sales is the potential zero ceiling. To some degree there is a ceiling, because there's only so much you can actually sell... But if you give me maybe no base salary whatsoever; just give me the opportunity to sell my butt off ... |
**Michael Grinich:** Absolutely. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...because you get to be an entrepreneur within a confine, so to speak, or within a framework. And having that zero ceiling opportunity - like, it's up to me to go as high as I can. I've been blessed with this opportunity, I've been hired to do this job, and I can just go as high as I want. Yeah. Gi... |
**Michael Grinich:** I love when the incentives are aligned. It's one of the most beautiful things about sales. It's so hard to measure this stuff in other areas. You can't really have a designer and pay them based on revenue. It's really hard in most other -- like, engineering is also very creative, and it's very hard... |
\[01:04:05.26\] And so when I said it's not about money, I didn't mean in the sense that you can't make a lot in sales. I heard this joke once, that in a well-performing sales organization you have two types of people. You have new salespeople, and you have rich salespeople. And that's it. \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay... |
**Michael Grinich:** Like, if you're not performing, you don't stick around. Or if you are performing, you do really, really well. And that alignment, I think, is allowed because it's quantified and it's so well structured. But I think if you approach sales from the perspective of just like only "How can I extract the ... |
And I think this is really, really, really hard to do, and that's why really good salespeople are paid up the wazoo. You're like "How is that person--" I guarantee, if you ever need a salesperson, you're like "Man, that guy did like $2 million last year, W-2. He's making more money than anybody in our organization." He... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, I do concur on the direct alignment with the driving the value. Obviously, you wouldn't buy nothing -- there has to be a product; somebody has to make it - engineers, product etc. But the alignment of "Literally this revenue came in as a result of my effort" is directly correlated. And it make... |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. It's a pretty cool job. I don't know, it's funny, I've got like 180 on it. I used to think it was something I would never imagine doing. I was like "Oh, if WorkOS doesn't work out, I could maybe go do sales." \[laughter\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Aaand I do. Aaand I do sales." |
**Michael Grinich:** That's weird, to hear me say that... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's come home to this potentially emotional question... Because we've just been gushing on sales, and you clearly like it. You have an idea for how it should work. You said just last week you hired somebody to, I assume, take over what you've been doing, or at least eventually take over... Right? ... |
**Michael Grinich:** Oh yeah, I'm still gonna be really involved. I think it's -- I don't just hire people and then completely throw them in the deep end and go. It's really a process of growing and scaling the function. Kind of what I've found - the right time to hire someone to come into sales is when you find that t... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, my gosh. |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. And at the end of the week, I was just zonked, and I was like "Oh, yeah, it's about time for this salesperson to start and to kind of help scale part of the organization." But I think it's an evolving process. And one of the hardest things is going to be, as we introduce new products, that'll... |
\[01:08:25.19\] And they'll probably be better than someone that's not an athlete, being able to adapt to it, but they might not have all the intuition or skills yet. And so we're still hiring sales. It's not just this first person; we're building out a whole team. And my goal is to build it in the way that we talked a... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** For sure, yeah. The hard part about -- I was hoping it wasn't emotional. I'm glad it's not, because you seem to have a very calculated direction for it, which is great. It's a spot-on answer, honestly. Me, I may be a little emotional about it, because like "Well, I've gotta leave my thing, I've got ... |
**Michael Grinich:** I think that's what it ends up with at the end. I've been thinking about this... So WorkOS right now, we're recording this - we're like 55 people, -ish; we're like 50 to 60... Which is still relatively small. I kind of know everyone on the team, everyone's names. That's not going to be the case pro... |
I think it actually becomes - tying it back together, leadership is more about the Why. You know, what I talked about earlier around bringing people together who find a lot of satisfaction, and enabling other people to do things. What is the mission for WorkOS? What type of people do we want to hire? How do we behave? ... |
\[01:12:21.11\] And then also people - when certain behaviors emerge, you can be like "No, that's not quite us. We need to tack from that, or change things. That's not quite how we want to treat people", or "Here's something's that really important for us." I think oftentimes it's performance. "We're going to have a re... |
And so I think the leadership thing becomes -- the problems actually get harder and harder as the company goes on and scales; it kind of becomes fractal in that complexity. And that's just another level to build towards, and I think, for me at least, personally, it's why I'm so excited. |
A friend of mine asked me - a friend who has known me for a long time - the other day... I was hanging out with him, and he was like "Yeah, Michael, you've been working on this WorkOS thing for four or five years or something." He's like "Are you getting sick of it? Do you want to just let go?" It's a buddy of mine who... |
And I thought about a little bit, because that is a timeline where people usually get tired, or kind of get burned out... And I was like "Man, I'm more fired up about this than I ever have been, because it's changing so much, and the company is really evolving and growing." I don't have any children, but I was talking ... |
I think for anyone maybe that's listening that's like an entrepreneur in that middle state, when you kind of haven't gotten product-market fit yet and you're grinding - it doesn't end up being worth it on the other side, as things... Like, there was a couple hard years as we were grinding on the initial product for the... |
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