Live from Sales HQ with Ari Gardner
We are live from sales HQ. I'm Vince Veasey, your host and the founder here at SalesHQ. And my guest today is Ari Gardner.
Ari Gardner:Howdy, folks.
Vince Beese:Welcome to the show.
Ari Gardner:Thank you. Happy to be here.
Vince Beese:Haven't seen you a while. Well, it's all
Ari Gardner:you had never been in a hot minute. Yeah. Spent a lot
Vince Beese:of time together. So let's first get into what this thing, sales HQ, is that we're we're sitting at right now. It's a first of its kind co selling community for remote sellers and sales teams. Our first location is here in Morrisville, North Carolina. Really, what it is a replication of what a sales force used to be like.
Vince Beese:You know? Love it. A lot of folks are out there working remote and not be able to really get motivated or collaborate, and they miss networking. Yep. Working with people that are like minded.
Vince Beese:So that's what we're creating here at SalesHQ, and it's a membership. So, you come and go as you will. Some people work here, some people just have meetings here, some people just come for these networking events. So if you want more information about SalesHQ, to go to saleshq.co. So, Ari, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Vince Beese:What are you up to these days?
Ari Gardner:I am leading 2 different teams over at a company called Storable. Mhmm. It's a super niche market. We sell into the marine space. So marinas, rental operators, service yards, etcetera, it's a really fun market to sell into.
Ari Gardner:It's it's really, really a hoot.
Vince Beese:Are you a boat owner yourself?
Ari Gardner:I am not. I'm not. But, but it is fun market to sell into.
Vince Beese:That's very cool.
Ari Gardner:Is it company headquartered here, or is it the mothership, as I like to call it, is headquartered out of Austin, but my teams are fully distributed, which is a fancy way of saying work from home, which This is why I think this is such a good community that you're building because, you know, you don't get the roar of a sales floor at the
Vince Beese:end of a month, end
Ari Gardner:of a quarter. I do miss that.
Vince Beese:We do have the bell over there. So if you have I did. That you Yeah. Help yourself to go I
Ari Gardner:do miss a good office prank too. So that's something that I'm
Vince Beese:Interesting. A marina company services Marina in Austin. I think last time I checked, where, Austin was surrounded by land in my
Ari Gardner:Well, there's there's, Lake Travis, which is a pretty big a pretty big betting spot there. There's a lot of marinas there. But it but it's, yeah, it's it's a it's a kind of a narrow market. Right? There's only about 30,000 to TAM.
Ari Gardner:It's not huge, only about 30,000 ish, but it's fiercely competitive, believe
Vince Beese:it or not. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:A lot of competition in in a narrow market.
Vince Beese:Yeah. So you're part of the Citrix mafia.
Ari Gardner:Absolutely.
Vince Beese:Probably my 3rd or 4th guest now. I had some relation to Citrix, which is in this area. You probably can throw a stone at
Ari Gardner:his buddy. Absolutely. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And it appears, this so my first question has to do with I always ask my guest, like, how did you get into sales? And then how did you follow-up that? How did you get into sales leadership? So I don't know if it was Citrix or before that, but tell us your story of how
Ari Gardner:you started.
Vince Beese:I I
Ari Gardner:will give you, bullet points. I try to think in bullet points. I'll give you the bridge version. But I think sales is one of the things that that finds you. Right?
Ari Gardner:Most people don't grow up saying I want to be a salesperson. It's usually an astronaut or the president or rock star or something. I grew up playing music, and I like to joke that my mom was a battle of the band's mom, not a soccer mom. And so, you know, I I sang and played guitar, wrote songs, and, fronted a popular band. We had major label interest when I was in college, so we would play, like, House of Blues sized venues, couple thousand people a night type deal.
Ari Gardner:So there's a period of my life where I might have been a rock star. After that, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I thought about going to law school. I took the LSAT, did okay, and at that kind of at the 0 hour, decided not to go that direction. Ended up studying media and film, at The New School in Manhattan. A lot of people know Parsons, it's the College of Design in New School.
Ari Gardner:Parsons turned out folks like,
Vince Beese:gosh, Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Donna Karan. Small people in the
Ari Gardner:Yeah, just small folks. The this the media school that I went to, the College of Media and Design there, was, folks like like, gosh, Kevin Smith went there, Jonah Hill, right? So I studied, formally studied something I was more interested in. You know, and then kind of did the starving artist thing for a while in the wake of the Great Recession, and, had had kind of a mentor, that that's actually with us in the audience here. My father-in-law said, hey, why don't you try sales?
Ari Gardner:And, ended up selling real estate for a couple of years. And I realized a couple of things. 1, I didn't really love selling real estate. Yeah. But 2, I really like selling
Vince Beese:What year was the real estate?
Ari Gardner:This was, gosh, like 2010.
Vince Beese:Right? So I'm I'm going on 14 years. Real estate market wasn't that great at
Ari Gardner:It was not a good market. Not knowing much about business at the time, I thought it was, you know, probably a good time to but it was a tough it was a tough time, but you just have to adapt like anything else. And did
Vince Beese:you do that here in the north?
Ari Gardner:Down in Florida, actually, so in a in a really tough market, and and did that for a few years, so found success doing it, and then decided that I wanted to do something that was more aligned.
Vince Beese:Wait, wait, what did you like? You said you didn't like
Ari Gardner:real estate sales. Yeah. I didn't love Yeah.
Vince Beese:I What did you take away that told you that you could be good in sales?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Yeah. I think just, you know, I love challenging folks and being persuasive, and and sometimes you're in a real estate sale, a lot of times it's a really emotional sale. People get really emotional about property, and they think it's more than it's worth, and it's really not, or, you know, it's the wrong color, or it doesn't have an island, and you know what, all that at the
Vince Beese:end of the day, doesn't really matter.
Ari Gardner:So I really liked trying to find ways to get, you know, make sure that people understood this is the right place for you. Right? So kind of being persuasive in that element of it. Living down in South Florida at the time, you mentioned Citrix. I would always drive by the Citrix building at the time.
Ari Gardner:That's right.
Vince Beese:Huge Citrix building down there.
Ari Gardner:And I got thinking, well, there's got to be, like, a cool entry level sales gig that I
Vince Beese:can get at this place. Discovered a share file that
Ari Gardner:they had just acquired up
Vince Beese:here in Raleigh, applied for the gig drove up for the interview Got the
Ari Gardner:gig and you know packed up my car and have been here ever since.
Vince Beese:Oh, that's wild.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. So I started on the ShareFile team, within, you know, the 1st year, I was I was running one of our verticals, and, years later Mister Rosar there at
Vince Beese:the time?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. All paths lead back to Rosar,
Vince Beese:of course. Yeah. Last week, our guest was someone you're very familiar with, mister Kitching. Sure.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Very interesting dude. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Vince Beese:So, yeah, Citrix. That's great. So what so so now that you're at Citrix, you're in this entry level sales role. Yeah. Tell us what that's like.
Ari Gardner:It was a grind, you know? It was, I like to say, you know, back in the day, I was kind of, you
Vince Beese:know, go walking uphill both ways
Ari Gardner:in the snow, right, to school. But it was, it was doing a 100 plus styles a day at first,
Vince Beese:right, and grinding it out, and
Ari Gardner:I think that really toughens you. I think that, the kind of the outbound motion kind of hardens you as a salesperson in a very good way, and makes you really quick think on your feet, and stuff like that. And so it was a really awesome experience. What did
Vince Beese:you say? Was that a closing role, or is that a set up role?
Ari Gardner:I started as as smiling and dialing. Right? Like, I think most people should in sales. You've gotta
Vince Beese:But you took it all
Ari Gardner:the way
Vince Beese:through and closed the deal soon?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Then I then I did. I did that for a number of years, and then I ran a team, and then I ran multiple teams there.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Very much a vertical approach there. Right?
Ari Gardner:Absolutely.
Vince Beese:Yeah. I love the vertical approach. Whole I wanna I wanna get to this, but I wanna get to the whole full cycle sales thing because I think we've over the last 10 years, there's been a lot of transformation in sales, not just on the tool tooling side, of course, a lot of stuff with AI, but philosophically of, you know, BDRs, SDRs, whatever you wanna call it, and what's Yep. Where are we gonna go with that. You've been in the game for now probably 14 years or so.
Vince Beese:Long time. What do you think's dramatically changed or really significantly changed over the last 10 years? What's good about it? What's bad about it?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. I think a couple things. So I think number 1, I think buyers are more keen these days. Right? They they they kinda research things before, right, in advance.
Ari Gardner:I think in the early days of SaaS, people maybe didn't really know what they
Vince Beese:want, or you had an opportunity to kind of change their mind and show them
Ari Gardner:a different way of doing things. Nowadays, they kinda know what they're going for. So that challenger mentality still works and still makes sense. Yeah. But you have to now show value in ways and really have really clear value propositions and and kind of fit in and and show them how you can do things that they are already trying to do or know they want to do.
Ari Gardner:The other thing I think that's changed is is the outbound model, is just is just different. Right? I mean, like, there's there's a lot of companies that still prospect, and and, obviously, our my teams are one of them. But a lot of folks are are, again, inbound, kind of raising their hands and saying, hey. I wanna talk to sales, and I need to kind of handle this differently.
Ari Gardner:I think those are a couple of things that I could say. And the other thing I would say is, obviously, like, with the pandemic, that changed the game, obviously, which is why you you exist here. Right? Just to kind of bring back that roar of the sales floor, as I like to phrase it. But folks are are remote, and so you just need to be more prescriptive with how you manage teams and teach folks, especially folks that are new, that are greener, kind of entering Salesforce, that maybe didn't even grow up in in the office environment.
Ari Gardner:Right? They they only know remote work. Yeah. So you gotta be more prescriptive with the training.
Vince Beese:So, are you doing outbound today? Absolutely. Or were your leads coming from outbound or inbound?
Ari Gardner:Vast majority, over 80% outbound.
Vince Beese:Outbound. Really? Mhmm. And, with that split, where are you having more success closing deals, inbound or outbound?
Ari Gardner:It's it's about even. So in my market, there's a tremendous I I mentioned earlier there's, like, fierce competition even though it's a narrow market. So, you know, most sales end in status quo. Right? Sales calls end in status quo.
Ari Gardner:I'm not gonna change. So it's really it's really about even. But if we're able to show folks value, right, and and explain that, like, hey, this is going to be better and different. Here's why. And, oh, here's what you're looking for.
Ari Gardner:Here's how we can do it with our system. It's a win. So it it it's really it's really kind of about even, actually.
Vince Beese:So it sounds like you're having success with Outbound, which a lot of people aren't these days. What's your primary channel that you're doing outreach or getting in touch with folks?
Ari Gardner:It's old school over the phone. Yeah? Picking up the horn, especially in in our market. It's you know, folks are
Vince Beese:These are business owners, your boss?
Ari Gardner:Business owners are re occupancy. Right? But but it's it's a real estate based business. So a lot of them are 2nd, 3rd generation ownership and really kind of been doing the same thing for for a long time. So, a lot of them are not on LinkedIn, for instance.
Ari Gardner:A lot of them, you know, just responded really well to over the phone. So Mobile? Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Because they might have business phones. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. But it's it's still over the phone.
Vince Beese:Yeah. But they're calling their cell phones.
Ari Gardner:Cell phones or business lines, both. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Because they're probably ones that actually do have a business line where Yep. In b two b right now Yeah. Exactly. Office people aren't
Ari Gardner:even back in office. A 100%. Yeah. So so exactly. They need to be there to to, like, take calls from their guests or people that want to reserve spaces and things like that.
Ari Gardner:A lot of them are under a boat. Right? Yeah. You'd be surprised every time you call somebody, and they're like, I gotta call you back. I'm under a boat right now, or a boat's sinking right now.
Ari Gardner:And so a lot of times, they are walking around the property. Hazards of the job. Right? It is. I've heard some crazy stuff.
Ari Gardner:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. It's crazy. Does anything else work besides phone for you guys?
Ari Gardner:Obviously, like most companies, we do nurture campaigns and, you know, you know, obviously, all that stuff. Yeah. But the most effective is the whole the good old phone.
Vince Beese:Yeah. You know? And then let's go back to the full cycle. That's where I started this full cycle sales. I'm a true believer in full cycle sales.
Vince Beese:I think you should have to go out there, curate a list Yep. Do research on a list of the companies you wanna go after, match them to the ICT, all that fun stuff. And I think you need to take it from the introduction to the close, wherever that is. Yep. And I think that creates you that creates a really well rounded salesperson.
Vince Beese:Besides, I think, at the end of the day, that's a better customer experience. Yep. Right? Customer doesn't wanna be handed off 3 or 4 different times. Yep.
Vince Beese:It's it's annoying. And besides, in enterprise sales anyway, it takes a long time to nurture relationships. So if I'm an enterprise rep, the best ones are gonna be there a year, 2, 3, 4, 5 years, because they know their territory, they know their accounts. And so maybe this doesn't translate as well for SMB, but for mid market and enterprise, I really like full cycle sales approach. Is that what you're doing?
Vince Beese:What are your thoughts about that?
Ari Gardner:A huge segment of our market that we sell into is enterprise. Okay. So, we we went from over the last 2 years working with, like, relatively 0 to now over 60% of the enterprises in our market. Okay. So you're you're right.
Ari Gardner:That's not
Vince Beese:an enterprise for you guys.
Ari Gardner:We look at it as 3 or more locations or single, properties. Right? Different, like, a group that maybe is PE backed that owns multiple properties and looking to expand, or, a single location that has just a massive amount of spaces, whether it's wet slips, dry slips, storage, service center, ship store, etcetera. We we kind of do all these different things within within our software rentals and and all that. So we look for folks that just have, you know, growth potential, but also already have a couple of properties under their belt.
Ari Gardner:And we we went from 0 to 60% of them in the last couple of years. The process, you're right, is totally different. Right? It's, we'll zip around the country. Right?
Ari Gardner:I'll zip around with with with my team and and, you know, meet folks and go to their office and stuff like that. Part of it is is is that. Right? You just have to get in front of people, and then it it is obviously a longer sales cycle. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Different way of approaching it? Longer sales cycle, but stickier relationships once you sign them because they're typically more invested in it. And I think that also ties the app. But I I would I don't know this for your business, but outbound versus inbound, to me, the biggest difference is retention. Yep.
Vince Beese:When you go outbound and when you generate the interest and you develop that relationship through that means, they tend to stick around more.
Ari Gardner:Yep. Right? Yeah. We we have over a 91% retention rate, right now, which is great. So, we've got, you know, an awesome post sales team as well.
Ari Gardner:So we've got a really good kinda system structured where we sell something and and, hand it off to
Vince Beese:This obviously is not a vertical play for you here. So how do you bifurcate your sales team? How do you segment or go to market?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. So so, the the TAM is not ginormous. I can't really blow up the team to be, super huge. Like, I've run, you know, 50, 60 size person sales teams in the past. Yes.
Ari Gardner:This market's a little bit different, and it's unique in the sense that you have the mid market in the SMB. You do have this large swath of
Vince Beese:the market that's enterprises, and that actually counts for
Ari Gardner:a huge number of the spaces, like, total spaces that you can that
Vince Beese:we can grab market share in.
Ari Gardner:So I have, you know, kind of my tiger team of of senior, kind of we're seasoned, closers that I work with, and we tackle the enterprise, together. So I co sell alongside them. It's still one of my favorite things to do. Yep. You know, helped wrangle in some of the big ones that we have as well.
Ari Gardner:So the kids still got it. But, but, yeah, it's it's it's just a different process. Yeah. And then the the rest of the reps on the team are are, hitting up, SMB in the market.
Vince Beese:Do you have quota for your reps? Absolutely. Do you? You believe in quota?
Ari Gardner:I do. I think you have to have a goal to hit. Otherwise, you don't really what good is
Vince Beese:or what So you quoted for you is more like a goal?
Ari Gardner:No. They're accountable to the number.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. Why is it important, though?
Ari Gardner:I think they've gotta have a in general, like, I have a quota. Right? And then I my team has to have a quota. They've gotta have everyone has to have a goal to hit. Otherwise, you you don't really know what success looks like.
Vince Beese:Are your quotas fair, realistic?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. I think they are.
Vince Beese:What are they based on?
Ari Gardner:They're based on oh, so couple
Vince Beese:of I'm I'm
Ari Gardner:No. No. It's a good it's a good question.
Vince Beese:Because this is a conversation.
Ari Gardner:We have time, we can pull up a pivot table or something. But, yeah, I I have this whole formula that I use that that starts with the the TAM. Right? And you kinda back it in to what Michael wasn't
Vince Beese:a number your board gave you said, I don't care. Just go do it.
Ari Gardner:It's a data driven. Okay. It's a data driven number. Absolutely. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:K.
Vince Beese:So the team feels the quote is fair. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:And I think that's why it's important. Right? Because, otherwise, then it's just me stressing out about the number, but, you know, everyone has to be kind of in it to win it and and, kind of forging for the same goal.
Vince Beese:At the end of the year, what do you forecast or predict the percent, towards goal will be for your reps specifically?
Ari Gardner:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:It will be very high. They will they will they will attain.
Vince Beese:80% of your team will attain? Probably around there. K. It's better than what's going on.
Ari Gardner:Probably right around. Yeah. Like I said, they're fair. They're it's not like pie in the sky numbers. But you you they've gotta put up the effort, and it still is largely heavily outbound.
Ari Gardner:So you you gotta pick up the phone.
Vince Beese:I also bring up quota because it's it's something that when folks are looking for new sales jobs, right, it's like they're OTE. And then so you have your OTE is predicated based on you hitting 2,500,000 in quote or whatever the number is, and you don't know if that's realistic or not. So on paper, it sounds really, oh, $300,000, that's great, but, like, you ain't getting close to 2,500,000 in the next 24 months, let alone next 6 to 12. Right? So
Ari Gardner:I I literally give them a formula.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Ari Gardner:And so one of the things I do with them is walk through. Okay. Here's your goal. Here's how you can get there. I asked them to kinda prep it in advance, and then I I tweak it with them.
Ari Gardner:And then, basically, all they really gotta do is hold themselves accountable
Vince Beese:to that daily. Yeah. Right?
Ari Gardner:And I hold them accountable to that as well.
Vince Beese:I haven't had this radical, I guess, approach to it. I haven't personally done it yet, which is that you're a salesperson at the company. You're expected to participate. You're supposed to to contribute. Yep.
Vince Beese:Right? Here's kind of our guidelines of what we think you should contribute over a year. Here's what high performers do. Mhmm. Here's what mid performers do.
Vince Beese:Here's what low performers do. If you're a low performer, you're not here anymore, so we don't need to have the conversation. And then I'm just going to pay you a percentage based on what you do and over attainment, and you're going to make a tremendous amount of money. I'm I say that because I wonder if this quarter to quarter or month to month kind of quarter pressure is good or bad on the rep. Forget about the company and look.
Vince Beese:You have to track numbers. You have to guide the numbers and all that stuff, but sales is hard enough as it is. Do you really need to be overpressure on them that reinforcement? Like, the last thing I'll do, and I'll shut up, is, like, at the at the end of each quarter, I'll be talking to to reps for for potential coming in here. Oh, man.
Vince Beese:It's the end of quarter. I can't talk over the next week. I'm like, what did you do the last 3 months? Just play golf every day? Like, why is it over the last 3 days?
Vince Beese:Because it's this drive to hit this number, but you should be always driving to close deals. So why do we put this false kind of deadline of each quarter and each month?
Ari Gardner:Right? I think most people procrastinate. No. I agree with you. Most people procrastinate.
Ari Gardner:Right? And so now they're trying to make up the gap they didn't do or all those days they were playing golf or whatever. You know, you know, they're making it up now and they're stressed. And and so that that's tough though because you also if they're data driven Yeah. They would know their sales cycle Yeah.
Vince Beese:And they may or not they may
Ari Gardner:not be realistic.
Vince Beese:That's my point. If you sell a mid marketer enterprise. And it's 3 days out from
Ari Gardner:the end of quarter, you get to backfill a deal. Yeah. It ain't
Vince Beese:happening. That's why I was gonna say to the camera, like, I honest to god, I've never sweated a quarter to my life because I already knew the last month going into the end of the quarter what it was gonna be, and the forecasting was tremendously accurate in enterprise sales. Yep. Right? Like, I I I'm sure at Salesforce, you never had a problem forecasting end of quarter.
Vince Beese:Right? These big deals. Right? So I don't know. It's it's it's but it's it's this
Ari Gardner:Yeah. So so it's procrastination. It's not understanding the sales cycle. Yeah. And then it's maybe not understanding, the the the buyer.
Ari Gardner:Right? And, like, how realistic that is. So it's, it's it's stress. But I think it's there there's there's bad stress and there's healthy paranoia.
Vince Beese:Right? Yes.
Ari Gardner:And so I think if you if you have a sense of healthy paranoia, about your number, and to your point, if you're acting with a sense of urgency, I think you had a post on LinkedIn recently about acting with urgency, like, that's you should do that.
Vince Beese:And, you know, urgency is I don't think you teach urgency. You either you you either are
Ari Gardner:You learn it. Yeah.
Vince Beese:You could learn it, but
Ari Gardner:it's a badge of honor. It's one of
Vince Beese:those instincts. Either have it or you don't have that instinct. Right?
Ari Gardner:Like You
Vince Beese:know what I mean?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Like a hunter mentality too.
Vince Beese:Like, you know what's surprising about when I've opened the doors here? It's, like, my audience is salespeople and sales teams.
Ari Gardner:Yep.
Vince Beese:What's the number one thing that salespeople complain about? They complain about, I'm not gonna answer it for
Ari Gardner:you too.
Vince Beese:I ask a question.
Ari Gardner:You might have the same answer. I don't know.
Vince Beese:Ghosting. Right? Ghosting. Oh, how do you you see on LinkedIn all the time. How do you stop people from ghosting you?
Vince Beese:I really feel like going on LinkedIn to say, you know how you stop at salespeople? You stop doing it first.
Ari Gardner:You're like
Vince Beese:I get ghosted by salespeople
Ari Gardner:all the time. If ghosting is the concern, right, then, like, they're not building value. That's the issue. They're not giving they're not making that meeting important enough for somebody to come to or buy like, to to purchase.
Vince Beese:I think there's a 1000000000 reasons why people ghost, and they will never have the reason of why they do it. The question becomes, how do you solve, quote, ghosting? One of the things I've found that's worked for me, and, again, I treat this as more like going after SMB or consumer business really than enterprise in this specific area, is you gotta get them to reengage again.
Ari Gardner:Yep.
Vince Beese:Now you can do all the guessing in the world you want, why they're ghosting. You'll never have the right reason. So how do you get them to reengage? I try to think of a very simple question that's relevant
Ari Gardner:Yep.
Vince Beese:To just get them to just yes or no me back because then I can restart the conversation again. Yeah. Yeah. You can't when someone goes you can't act like, you're at the same place you were the last time you had the conversation or email.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. The game has changed at that point. And and a lot of sales reps that have have experienced this over the years, they they approach it as, hey. You missed our meeting. When here when's a better time for you?
Ari Gardner:And it's like, it that also kinda falls on deaf ears, because that's you have a different problem.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. And they wanna know why why why why why why. It's like, okay. Well, again, like, it's important to know why.
Vince Beese:It's important to get
Ari Gardner:a I would urge, folks that are struggling with that to to ask. Right? Ask your prospect.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. But if they're not reengaging with you, like, if you ask that question, why have
Ari Gardner:If you ask enough people that question, they'll probably get an answer, and then that'll be an education in some ways.
Vince Beese:So ghosting is is a big problem. The other one is just getting people to attend meetings. Like, booking a meeting
Ari Gardner:is
Vince Beese:one thing. I mean,
Ari Gardner:we've got
Vince Beese:a 56% share rate. I think
Ari Gardner:we're doing something right.
Vince Beese:What's what's your percent? 56% share rate.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. But but there's a lot of seasonality in in our business right now. So it's it's cyclical, in some ways, but it it it there's sorry. Cyclical. It it it we we dip it sometimes a year, But on average, we're on 50
Vince Beese:What is your busier season?
Ari Gardner:The busiest season is is not right now. It's in fact Summer is over.
Vince Beese:Fall winter. Yeah. Our customers
Ari Gardner:are, like, really busy right now. Yeah. And it's almost like calling an accountant in tax season.
Vince Beese:Right? Yeah. You don't wanna do it. So, wait. Did you say your booked meaning to actually have in a meeting is 57% Yeah.
Vince Beese:Exactly? 56%.
Ari Gardner:I think that's great,
Vince Beese:especially for outbound. So 40 some odd percent don't show up for the meeting? That's correct. Wow. Wait a problem, though.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. For outbound, it's a it's a good that's a good, metric.
Vince Beese:Is it? I
Ari Gardner:think so.
Vince Beese:Industry wise, that's good?
Ari Gardner:I think it is. Man. I've I've made machines that have sold into just about every industry.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Ari Gardner:Financial services, insurance, real estate, architecture, construction, engineering. Right? All all these things. And, I mean, if outbound you're at 50%, that's good. So Does it
Vince Beese:vary for you from your smaller accounts to your bigger your enterprise accounts to your smaller? Is there a higher percentage?
Ari Gardner:You know, I never really looked at it that way, but I, I would say it's probably higher for the enterprises. Right? Because if if they accept a meeting, they have a reason to show up to it. It's it's it's a lot different than and this person just called me out of the blue. Right?
Ari Gardner:They're They're shopping where they have there there's a reason they're coming to it. Yeah. They usually have more of a plan.
Vince Beese:Yeah. That makes sense. Yep. Let's change. Let's go to one I'm less emotional about.
Vince Beese:True. Got
Ari Gardner:a lot of emotions today. A range of emotions.
Vince Beese:I'm half Italian, 51% Italian. Verified on 23 andMe, by the way. What the heck was I gonna say? Now you made me totally oh, your sales stack might not it probably is not that complicated given that phone is your main vehicle. Yeah.
Vince Beese:So talk to me about your sales stack.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Yeah. We we use a couple different tools. We getting the team into Salesforce. Right?
Ari Gardner:Our our mother ship uses Salesforce. We were in HubSpot. Yeah. So we spent a lot of time aligning up the, you know, the fun stuff, aligning fields, and making sure the data is curated and clean and stuff. And so, we we actually just got into Salesforce this week.
Ari Gardner:We have dialed all of
Vince Beese:our dialer. Corporation is all in one platform. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Exactly. So before we had stuff going from HubSpot into the data lake, and it's this is just a lot simpler. It all just flows into one thing, and you can kinda slice it however
Vince Beese:you want
Ari Gardner:now. But but yeah. So it's it's Salesforce, Dialpad. I mean, it's it's pretty lean. Yep.
Ari Gardner:Slack, what
Vince Beese:you use for outbound for marketing for outreach.
Ari Gardner:Still pulling stuff out of HubSpot. I mean, the marketing team has a bunch of different tools.
Vince Beese:Any AI specific tools?
Ari Gardner:There's we we use a lot of AI more internally at this point, for meeting minutes and things like that, right, taking notes.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Ari Gardner:We're not really using it as a customer facing tool to see how we're still kind
Vince Beese:of exploring where that's gonna fit in. Chat GPT at all. We use
Ari Gardner:it internally for for for drafting stuff Yeah. And taking notes.
Vince Beese:Yeah. So is AI gonna replace salespeople or what? Are we getting there?
Ari Gardner:I think I think there is a future.
Vince Beese:I don't have a problem if it does as long as they continue to
Ari Gardner:I mean, one of my favorite movies is Back to the Future. Right? So you look at the space time continuum. Right? There is a parallel universe where it's possible.
Ari Gardner:Are we gonna get there? I I don't know.
Vince Beese:I I think you're literally using Back to the Future. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Yeah. I also just watched it recently, so it's fresh.
Vince Beese:I can use that file again maybe later too?
Ari Gardner:Never watched the X Files,
Vince Beese:believe it or not.
Ari Gardner:But, yeah, I think, there there is there is an alternate universe that we may head towards or we may go the other way where Biff rules the world. Right? That's bad. We don't want that. But but it could be that we do.
Ari Gardner:Right? And I think if if, if it gets a little bit smarter That's what we do. But I use it, and there's still some stuff that I'm like, why is it telling me Yeah. What do we do? We have
Vince Beese:to just get better at our jobs. Right? Is it more irreplaceable. Is it more frustrating getting ignored from a bot
Ari Gardner:or a
Vince Beese:human being is what I wanna know.
Ari Gardner:I don't it's a, it's a good question. Maybe the bot. Because the bot was developed by humans, then you're getting really ghosted by 2 people. Yeah.
Vince Beese:It would be funny to just do a show of listening people scream at bots. You know what I mean? You know, cursing out bots and, hey, new bot.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. I if you ask Siri certain questions, you'll get some interesting responses. Yeah.
Vince Beese:What's the biggest challenge you guys are facing? I think it's and I say that because,
Ari Gardner:you
Vince Beese:know, I've I've been doing sales for a long time, and I think what we're going through specifically in SaaS sales is very interesting. And I don't know if we ever get to the back to the really peak of it, which was the middle of the pandemic where a lot of companies just like, zoom and other just Sure. I think if we get back to a more normal state, that's, like, 2018, 17, so on and so forth. But, like, what do you think about what's currently going on and Yeah. And what the future plays ahead?
Ari Gardner:I mean, I think specifically in the industry that my team's selling to Yeah. It saw a huge boom in in the pandemic and still riding the coattails of that boom right now. Right? And so there's a lot of
Vince Beese:digital transformation. Is that the reason why?
Ari Gardner:No. I think I mean, I think it's actually more simple than that. I think it's just that voting was one of the safe outdoor activities that people could do.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ari Gardner:And so a lot of people bought boats. Right?
Vince Beese:It was
Ari Gardner:one of those things that that was, acceptable everywhere. Right? And so, we saw this huge boom, and then because we're dealing with the storage side of it and and managing it, they need tools and systems to manage it better. And there was a lot of PE groups that got into space, that are trying to consolidate, right, and buy a bunch of it's basically a race to the top. You can buy them as properties as fast as as they can.
Ari Gardner:Right? And so there's there's a need to manage it all through single pane glass, which is what we offer. So I think in our industry we saw this boom. I think in other markets,
Vince Beese:there
Ari Gardner:there could be potentially, like, a little bit of a bus because there it's so flooded. Now I mentioned we have fierce competition too. But I think of other, tools that I've sold and other teams that I've managed, and it I mean, you know, it can go either way depending on on who you're selling too. But it but, again, it comes down to the value at the end of the day. Right?
Ari Gardner:What's the value prop, and
Vince Beese:is that something that resonates with your market or not? That's true. Do you solve a pain? Yep. The problem is there's 10, 20, 30, 40 others that solve that pain some way supposedly.
Vince Beese:Yep. I think that's the biggest challenge is that it's gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to start start up, start technology companies to get well, it was easy to get funding at some point, but
Ari Gardner:it's such a
Vince Beese:flood of different solutions in every if you look at the ecosystem chart. Right? It used to be, like, 5 per category, whatever it is. Now there's, you know, you can't even fit it on one chart or not, right?
Ari Gardner:Yep.
Vince Beese:So, hey, I wanna I don't wanna waste I don't wanna be asking all the questions. We have them so concerned in the audience. Anyone who wants to ask a question, there's a mic here. You gotta flip it on, and Yeah.
Ari Gardner:Give me a tough one. Give me a tough one.
Vince Beese:Oh, stop being so polite. Come on. Just get up there. Linda, one question, Linda. Give me
Ari Gardner:a curveball. Question. Oh, you're from Jersey. Which exit?
Vince Beese:Let on. Nice.
Linda Gutin:Is this thing on? Yes. Okay. So I took a quick look at your LinkedIn, and so far, I loved what I saw. I didn't get a chance to read it, but you talk about being a rock star.
Linda Gutin:And I overheard you saying that you have a degree in, media.
Vince Beese:I do.
Linda Gutin:So what I'm wondering is, are you able to leverage your musicality in any way in your sales and, like, even to the point of maybe writing rhymes and jingles and
Ari Gardner:I I have been known to to bust out a haiku or 2 for the team. Oftentimes, I'll just random I won't even tell them it's a haiku. They have to figure it out. I'll just send a little poem.
Vince Beese:They know what a haiku is?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Some someone will eventually call it out, within within a few minutes. But, yeah. So to was there another part to that?
Linda Gutin:Do you have a YouTube channel and places people can see you singing?
Ari Gardner:I don't. So so I I'm dating myself a little bit here, but it was before I mean, this was before Myspace even. Right? So you you have to come see us live and and get a camcorder out or something. But, yeah, I think I think there's a lot of ways.
Ari Gardner:I think most sales leaders equate running a sales team to running a sports team. And that doesn't resonate with me, because I don't really know anything about that. I played soccer as a kid. I've got a trophy for getting 2nd place in the Mayor's Cup in my hometown, and that's my claim to fame there. But, you know, I really think of sales teams as bands.
Ari Gardner:And, like, when I think of training, I think of rehearsal. Right? And so I I always took being in a band really seriously, and I kind of run this the same way. You've got to have a clear vision, you've got to have the passion, but you also have to have the skill. Right?
Ari Gardner:That's where the rehearsal comes into play. I'm really passionate about training and development. And ultimately, like sales for me, I mean, gosh, I was a broke starving artist. So it helped me get out of a rut and pay off debt and all these things. And so, yeah, I'm still a salesperson at my core.
Ari Gardner:Right? And as a sales leader, I'm really passionate about helping other people experience the same sales that I've experienced. Right? And the same, musicians are typically good with math too. Right?
Ari Gardner:Yeah. I can, I can, I'm okay with math? I need a calculator for certain things, but I can get by for you.
Vince Beese:Great question, Linda, as always. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hello.
Vince Beese:What a familiar face. Who are you, ma'am? I'm Artie Gardner's wife, Michelle.
Linda Gutin:And I have
Vince Beese:a really tough question question here. Really tough question for you. Garbage this morning. No. I put
Ari Gardner:the garbage can away last night.
Vince Beese:Yes. Good job. What's the craziest thing you've ever done to celebrate a sales win?
Ari Gardner:Oh. Oh, this is a
Vince Beese:good one.
Ari Gardner:Okay. So this might be you know, again, this is why I love what you're doing here because you can do this stuff here. Throw over desks. Right? We sold 1.
Ari Gardner:No. But there was one time where we sold a huge deal, and, we me and my team just so happened to have a bunch of banana suits laying around. Don't ask.
Vince Beese:Banana suits? Suits. Oh, suits. Yeah. And so
Ari Gardner:we all put on banana suits, and we called it a banana lap. And we did a lap on the little Razor scooters, like, around the whole office, to celebrate.
Vince Beese:Is that a Citrix thing? That was a
Ari Gardner:Citrix thing. Yeah, people, might have witnessed that. That was a banana lap.
Vince Beese:And he still owns the banana suit.
Ari Gardner:I wear it every Halloween.
Vince Beese:With over a clown costume. I'm glad you're speaking. Ari, this has been great. Before you leave, I think I already know a lot of interesting things with you, but I always like to to to keep it out there. What is one thing very interesting about you?
Vince Beese:We can't use a musician thing. Sure.
Ari Gardner:Sure.
Vince Beese:That is interesting that most people don't know. Michelle would know, but most people
Ari Gardner:don't know. About me? A lot so well, you know about the musician thing, but but, you know, a lot of people play guitar, but believe it or not, I've got silky golden pipes in here. You got what? Silky golden pipes
Vince Beese:in here.
Ari Gardner:I can bust out
Vince Beese:Is that right?
Ari Gardner:Angelic melodies for you. Okay.
Vince Beese:Yep. I like that. Yep. Alright, Ari. Thank you for coming on as a guest.
Vince Beese:This was great.
Ari Gardner:Thanks, man. Yeah. Happy to be here. It's exciting.
Vince Beese:Next time, sales HQ.
Ari Gardner:Yeah. Get out of the house and get in here.