Adam Quartermaine: Selling to the CFO | Masters of MEDDICC

00:00 Adam Quartermaine: I think what a lot of people — ourselves included, at different times — have benefited from is money being very cheap. Organisations have been able to invest in projects and programmes of work without a lot of internal scrutiny. And I think for many people coming into sales, they don't really know what role technology plays in business from the outside looking in, and what substantial opportunities there are to grow their careers and do really, really meaningful things. But you have to be in that space of: where do I want to get to? How am I going to measure how I'm getting there? And how quickly is it realistic to get there? We tend to live in a world now where everything is accelerated — rightly or wrongly — and you see a lot of people in roles they're probably not qualified for yet. So the tactics and strategy that we call playbook and process — the company is there, and a culture is there to develop you to be great and to live in the outcomes they want to deliver. But you've got to be great at developing yourself as well. And good salespeople ask for the next step. Great salespeople describe the next step. 01:01 Adam Quartermaine: A lot of what we talk about with the teams today is: it's not how you close the deal. It's how you set it up. 01:11 Andy Whyte: Welcome to Masters of MEDDICC. I'm here with Adam Quatermaine, GVP EMEA at Sprinklr. Hey Adam. 01:11 Adam Quartermaine: How are you doing, Andy? 01:11 Andy Whyte: I'm very well, thank you — great to see you. 01:11 Adam Quartermaine: Yeah, thank you very much. 01:11 Andy Whyte: So for those who don't know you — how about you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into this wonderful world of sales? 01:33 Adam Quartermaine: Sure. So I didn't land here by design, which I think is common for a lot of people. I started my early career in an investment bank in Canary Wharf — which was something I did want to do, until I got there. I realised I had to be up really early, stare at spreadsheets all day, and work really late. I'm sure if I'd pushed through, it would have been a fantastic path. But at 21 or 22 years old, there were other priorities in my life at that time. So I left banking — not by design, but by choice. Their choice. Not my choice. And I went to Oracle for a couple of years — I think I've heard of them, kind of in the technology space. It was just after Y2K, so a long time ago now. The guys and gals there were making a lot of money and driving a lot of success. It got me excited about the industry. And I think for many people coming into it, what technology actually does inside a business isn't entirely obvious from the outside — it's a little opaque. But the opportunities to grow your career and do really meaningful things are substantial. So that got me excited. 02:42 Adam Quartermaine: Then I had a wonderful five years at EMC, which was really at the stage of its massive growth — pivoting from an infrastructure company through to a software and hybrid infrastructure company, acquiring companies like Documentum, Legato, VMware, and other infrastructure management software businesses on that journey. Companies like that are very good for young salespeople because they have a velocity to them. By the time I left at 28, I'd probably done 200 deals. You're in front of people very, very often — talking about ideas, creating demand, talking about their plans, going on a journey together — and it gets you an enormous number of miles on the clock very early. 03:44 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I agree. And that's something we don't talk about very much in sales — but so much of it, I think, is pattern recognition. My first ever job in sales was double glazing, so I was doing two or three presentations a day. And I honestly think that gave me more learning about emotional intelligence — and the "if I do this, what reaction do I get? " dynamic — than anything else. Because you're building a relationship on the day, completing the entire sales process in one, two, or three hours. You're going through the whole notion of building value, discovery, the demo, the proposal, asking for the order. Such a valuable process. But we don't talk about it much, do we? 04:29 Adam Quartermaine: We don't. And there are things we look for when we hire people — I'm sure we'll touch on that today. We often take the position that experience is a nice-to-have. But the less experience someone has, the more you're going to do to compensate for that in different ways over time. Whether it's pattern recognition, getting the nerves out of your system, or failing in a relatively safe and transactional environment and having to come back to it — it serves many purposes. I worked with some incredible people at EMC through that journey who've gone on to lead great companies and have huge success. And getting those companies on your CV early, from organisations that invest heavily in people development, really does set you up well for the future. 05:14 Andy Whyte: Yeah, we see that a lot in our industry. So what was after EMC? 05:14 Adam Quartermaine: Interestingly — leaving EMC, being relatively young and relatively successful — you think you're at a certain point in life. And I came into contact — not for the first time, actually, but for the second time — with Jeremy Duggan and Steve McCluskey. So Jeremy and Steve at BladeLogic, and we worked towards joining that business just at the time that BMC acquired them. And I think that was one of those pivotal moments in your career — when you're on a racetrack and you think you're going flat out, working to a standard of excellence that feels as high as it can go. And then you meet this cohort of people and they're completely different. And you know, a lot has been said about those people — from John McMahon, from Luca, later on from people like Carlos Delatorre, Jeremy himself, Steve, Don Darcy, Paul — they've all gone on to do great things. But it was an assembly of people committed to excellence at a different level. And that was probably one of, if not the most, pivotal moments in my career. Back in 2008, you go in, join this company, and you're right at the bottom of the pecking order. 06:53 Adam Quartermaine: And it's a real test of your resolve at that point, because you've really got to look at the opportunity in front of you and think about how you're going to build credibility with a group of people who are so capable. But also be genuinely excited about the opportunity to learn from them. That lasted about five years of my career. And there was so much to learn from it. 06:53 Andy Whyte: It's funny — I could tell you were going to go there just by looking at your resume. And I had a kind of similar experience. Not exactly the same — I was at Oracle — and the way I'd describe it: you're driving flat out, and then you meet people who are going faster. I describe it for myself as: I thought I was pretty coachable, taking advice, reading books, doing all the right things. But I was actually a B-player version of my own potential. And then it was Sprinklr for me where I saw the horizon of what's actually possible — that there are higher levels I didn't even know existed. 08:08 Adam Quartermaine: And that's still that BladeLogic alumni effect, even four or five generations removed. I can totally relate. 08:08 Andy Whyte: And I think the interesting question for people listening to this is: if you haven't had that moment yet, is it still ahead of you? Or can you gradually elevate to the top level without ever experiencing that "oh wow, there are levels to this I didn't know existed"? It's a big question. 08:08 Adam Quartermaine: It is. So I'll answer by exploring two topics, if that's OK. One is self-development. You interview people over the years, and at Sprinklr we've interviewed an enormous number of people over the last six years — we started with a team of seven and we're now approaching 250 people across the region. And you meet a lot of people on that journey. You're in the fortunate position of being able to say no to people, and when you're in the blessed position of having a great product, strong product-market fit, and a great culture that reinforces itself, you do have to say no more often than you say yes. But it does attract incredibly talented people. And if you look at the best performers in your teams, they always bring something different — and that difference is their own development journey. They're actively participating in that journey themselves. There's plenty of great information available today through companies, content creators, different channels. And I think you can get to a certain level yourself. But the other part is researching the companies that will take you to the next level. And you can follow the BladeLogic alumni tree from John and others — Luca, Cédric and the rest — and find those companies pretty easily. If you choose to go and participate in that world, you can probably get the training and development to get there. 10:28 Adam Quartermaine: There are other software companies doing just as well with different approaches. So it's not a universal, one-size-fits-all. I think it's about finding organisations that have clarity of purpose, clarity of the culture they're going to build, and clarity of how they're going to execute. If you can find that type of organisation, the right people are very capable of honing the finer parts of a process and a playbook. But you have to be in that space of: where do I want to get to? How am I going to measure how I'm getting there? And how quickly is it realistic to get there? We tend to live in a world now where everything is accelerated. And rightly or wrongly, you see a lot of people in roles they're probably not qualified for yet — in terms of tenure, experience, knowledge, and the ability to deal with difficult situations that are going to confront them over time. 11:31 Adam Quartermaine: And you've got to be patient. That's one thing I would say. If I look at my most rounded leaders, my most rounded sellers, my most consistently successful people — not just once, but consistently — they've patiently invested in themselves. Not waiting for the next promotion or hanging back, but sticking it out in organisations when it's been good and also when it's been harder. Because you're invariably going to learn more when it's hard than when it's easy. When we win, we slap each other on the back and celebrate. But when it's hard, it forces you to pause and think: how do we become more relevant? How do we compete better? How do we pick ourselves and our teams up from a failure? 12:18 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And it's interesting what you said about learning more when times are tough — because it has been tough for a lot of companies in the last 18 to 24 months. One of the things I don't know the answer to, but have a suspicion about, is whether the challenges of the last year or two have actually been net positive for our business — because what we've seen from some of our biggest customers is them saying: "The fish aren't jumping in the boat anymore. " We didn't love that phrase because it's a bit disrespectful to the art of sales. But it does paint a picture of what people thought was happening. And because it's now harder, there's more focus on best practice and doing the basics. But it does really seem to me that when times are tough, you learn more. I've never had a sales leadership role at a company that wasn't genuinely difficult. One I had didn't have product-market fit — but that was a gift, because I learned more in that struggle than anywhere else. 14:14 Adam Quartermaine: It's interesting — you mentioned learning when times are tough, and it kind of comes back to the fundamentals of enterprise software. If enterprise software is going to be good software, it's got to do a couple of things really well: make you work faster, and probably cheaper. Otherwise it doesn't really serve a purpose, unless it enables something the business has never been able to do before. But the majority of software automates human processes to make you more effective and more efficient. With the "fish jumping in the boat" dynamic — I think what a lot of people, ourselves included at different times, have benefited from is money being very cheap. Organisations have been able to invest in projects and programmes without much internal scrutiny. Now the public markets reward growth, profitability, and free cash flow. That's changed. Growth at any cost is out — for multinationals, for mid-sized caps, for smaller cap companies. So as a seller, you have to address the fundamentals of why that software is being bought in the first place: what are their priorities, how are you relevant, and how quickly is it going to pay back? 15:50 Adam Quartermaine: Because fundamentally, when it gets to the CFO — who is probably the ultimate economic buyer in most scenarios — the real question is: is this investment better than alternatives A, B, and C? And A, B, C may not even be competing software. They might be completely different budget priorities. So you're in a battle for budget where you've got to show a decent return. We adjusted our business very quickly to make sure every project, every prospect, every customer conversation has what we call a CFO-ready business case — capturing the current state and future state, the positive business outcomes, the timescales for realising that benefit, and also the risks and dependencies on the customer side. Because if you really peel it back, software investment is an opportunity for gain that's fraught with risk. Once you've bought the software — the subscription, the capacity, whatever it is — a lot of the obligation now sits on you as the customer to realise that value. And companies do more and more to help customers with success management and value realisation. But you've got to have a path to unlocking that value. That's how we've adjusted. Our growth didn't slow down significantly — in some markets it massively accelerated. But it comes back to doing the fundamentals really well. The little things that make a big difference every single time. 17:16 Andy Whyte: Yeah, they do. And it's fascinating that you mentioned the CFO as the ultimate economic buyer. We're seeing that more and more ourselves and with our customers. And I think that's one of the strengths of MEDDIC — using the economic buyer element as a profile rather than a fixed individual persona. It's a profiling tool. 17:39 Adam Quartermaine: We had a deal recently where we thought the co-founder and CFO was the economic buyer — and we're talking about a public company of thousands of people, so it's quite cool that a co-founder is still that engaged. We realised — probably just about in time, not too late, but we could have been sharper — that actually she, the CFO, was the economic buyer. And what we managed to do was evolve the CFO into a champion. Looking back, if we hadn't had MEDDIC — even with the same experience and the same skill as a team — we probably wouldn't have spotted that. Would we have gotten the deal done? I think so, yes. But would it have taken longer? Yes. And would we have faced more negotiation? For sure. Because we wouldn't have been building the economic decision criteria — making sure that even when we weren't in direct conversation with the CFO, or when we weren't in the room, other people could cater to her interests. 19:01 Andy Whyte: So it's really interesting. And something else we were touching on earlier — about patience and evolving yourself — one of the things I think we get wrong in sales is measuring success in a very binary way. Is it a closed-won? Success. Is it a closed-lost? Failure. Whereas when you reflect on the really excellent people in your team, the measure of their success isn't whether they won or lost — it's did they win faster, for more revenue, with a better landing for the team to come in after? Because those people, by nature, involve others, they focus on the future state, and they set up the account well as the deal comes in. So — back to the CFO thing. How are you as a team taking note of the CFO being the economic buyer? And within that deal — I was nervous for you, by the way. 20:09 Adam Quartermaine: I think there's a reality that when financial markets change, even if you have a budget, the ability to use that budget is still determined by the CFO. You might start the year with a marketing budget of $50 million, but your ability to spend it at any given point is not always your decision. So over the last 24 months, to make sure we've been super robust on this — what you have to focus on is the quality of the champion. And by that I mean: when we go and develop a champion and look for change agents in the organisation, one or two things are quite often — though not always — true. They're new into the organisation to bring about change. They've probably come in with a board member or senior executive as part of a team to deliver change. So you go through the passage of identifying the problems you're going to solve or the opportunities you're going to realise. You substantiate that those value opportunities are real by wrapping them with metrics and other evidence. You go through the process of aligning with the EB to make sure the champion is real and that the priorities of those two stakeholders are tightly aligned. Then you move into a set of actions to quantify the business value. Now you would hope the EB truly understands the outcomes they could deliver. But quite possibly the true EB isn't the CMO, the CIO, or the CTO — quite possibly the true EB is the CFO. [QA: check word count — approx 254 words]22:09 Adam Quartermaine: And what you have to figure out is how well that team — the champion, the CTO, the CIO — are articulating why they want to make the spend. And ultimately: have they done it before? Have they spent a million, five million dollars at this company on technology before? And do they know the process you have to go through? So understanding the decision criteria, understanding the process, making sure that the champion can articulate well and get you access to the EB or the EB-minus-one — that's where most people spend most of their time in reality, whether consciously aware of it or not. And the ultimate EB they may or may not ever meet, depending on the size and scale of the organisation. But your work is going to go in front of that ultimate EB — may not be delivered by you directly, but someone else is going to do it for you. And we spend a lot of time making sure that the business case we prepare with them is in their language, so they can articulate the fundamentals of why do anything, why do it now, and why do it with Sprinklr — or insert your company's name. And that we can satisfy the decision criteria, the return on investment criteria, clearly articulate the dependencies that exist to unlock that value, and have a mature conversation about the risks on that journey and how we're going to support each other through it. 23:42 Adam Quartermaine: So the EB landscape has changed. The access to funds has changed. I think fundamentally — and that will ease off when inflation drops, interest rates drop, and confidence returns. And it is returning, in my eyes, from what I see day to day. 23:42 Andy Whyte: I love that. So I want to play some of this back and dig into it. The CFO — the ultimate owner of the budget, or more precisely, the person who creates the budget for the budget owner — still has that ultimate veto power, especially as times are as they are. And you were talking about potentially not engaging with that economic buyer directly, but building the pathway for your champion or the EB-minus-one to engage on your behalf. So let's make it real. You've got a tier-one consumer brand, the CFO is identified as the economic buyer, Sprinklr's proposition fits really well. Talk me through how one of your salespeople would prepare their champion for the interrogation by the CFO that may lie ahead. What are the tactics and strategies — what does your playbook look like? 24:46 Adam Quartermaine: So — playbook and process. How we think about the business and the team is: people, playbook, and process. You need to go and hire great people — we'll touch on that. But let's answer your exact question. The sales process we run interlocks very tightly with MEDDIC as a qualification methodology. How it appears internally is different from how it appears to the customer — you almost have two versions of that. To get to a point where you have a CFO-ready, robust business case, there's a set of very discrete — and arguably sequential — milestones we go through. Once we've done the initial discovery of the organisation, its priorities, its stakeholders, its change agents, we're going to build a point of view of the value we can create. And that value is going to attach to growth initiatives, agility initiatives, customer experience initiatives, and transformational agendas within that organisation. Rarely is it purely about cost — sometimes it is, but that's probably the difference between a CMO and a CIO landscape. You're talking about how the business goes forward with its current products and with its future innovation, because what's making them successful in 2023 probably won't in 2024 or 2025 — the automotive industry being a great example. 26:01 Adam Quartermaine: So you've got to understand your customer, understand the stakeholders in that business, and have a simple and robust point of view of the value you're going to create. Starting there, you're on a path to identifying what I'd call stakeholders with power and influence — potential champions. And you've got a scale of benefit you can deliver to them that's worth them backing. So you're establishing that value exists. If you abstract the process we really go through, it's: establish that value exists; establish that there are stakeholders who care about it — potential champions; and then look at how you mitigate your risk as a seller. Which really comes down to: does the champion have access to the EB? And are those people aligned on what's important and the prioritisation of what's important? If they are, you're in a good place. And what you should be asking for is the meeting with that EB. 28:12 Adam Quartermaine: And to have that understanding — to have the opportunity to put in front of them a very simple reason — going back to Simon Sinek on why: I don't need to know what you do or how you do it, I need to know why I should pay attention. What are you going to impact in my business, and how quickly? If that meeting goes well, you then have the opportunity to move from establishing that value exists to verifying it exists. Now let's go and quantify it. Getting that sponsorship to go and quantify it is the unlock moment — you can then go and build a business case based on the EB's decision criteria, sponsored by them. You're going to get privileged access to an organisation that probably reduces your competition's opportunity to do the same thing. 28:55 Adam Quartermaine: And you're going to build something with a champion that's in the customer's language for what they care about. Once you've been through that way of selling and building, you're not going to go backwards — because one: it gives you a lot more control in the sales process. And second: it gives you the opportunity to meet so many more stakeholders in their organisation. When you meet those people, you meet potential future champions. You also meet the enemy — the people who don't want things to change, who are perfectly happy with the status quo. We don't talk enough about those people and how to neutralise them. And you get a view across an organisation that a lot of senior stakeholders don't have. So you almost become a domain expert in their business, and you can start to advise from a horizon and platform that gives you credibility and trust. So once the value's been quantified, you've really only got two steps left. The first is mitigating their risk — how do you prove that value can be realised? Surely that comes from customer references, especially when you're working with great brands in their industry or adjacent industries. Or you prove it through a proof of concept. 29:41 Adam Quartermaine: And if you're running a process that robust — and then you think about placing MEDDIC alongside it as a compass and a map — the establish phase is really: is there a potential champion? Are there metrics that would give me a business case worth building? Is there a problem worth solving for this organisation? And am I on a path to getting further access? At the moment you've done a demonstration, some deep-dive discovery, and you've got something robust as a professional business case — then you're going to go and get access to the EB. And what's beautiful about pulling that early in a sales process — and this was really a lot of the advantage the team had at BladeLogic when you watched someone like Andy Sadler or Don Darcy or Paul at the time, all working under Steve McCluskey's guidance — we were pulling that EB meeting early. As soon as we could get it. Because: I want the time back. If these people aren't aligned, if this champion can't get access, if the EB doesn't care about the things you can do — you want to be clear about what you can do and clear about what you can't. 31:35 Adam Quartermaine: It built a robust process from the start. And a lot of what we talk about with the teams today is: it's not how you close the deal — it's how you set it up. If you set it up at the beginning by being respectful of your time, by talking about delivering outcomes from the get-go, and by discussing the go/no-go moments on the journey together — if we can't establish that value really exists, or you can't see it being a priority for your organisation, that's fine — it sets up a completely different tempo than just trying to get a product on the table. 31:35 Andy Whyte: There's a quote I always use — completely out of context, but I think it captures how we behave in sales. It's Charlie Munger: "I want to know where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. " And as salespeople, we tend to do the opposite. We don't want to have that EB meeting early, because if we find out the economic buyer isn't into this, we'll have to qualify out. And I think that's just so wrong. If you take the opposite mindset — you know you have genuine value to offer, because look at the customers we have. I saw that slide Roger put out — it's the same slide we had in 2015, but now with nine of the top ten banks, 80 of the top 100 companies on the planet. So: if you're interested, great. If not, that's fine — I get it, you have other priorities. But I'm also busy. I've got other customers who want to buy from us. And that mindset — that's why when you're at 100% of target, you don't finish at 105%. You finish at 200%, 250%. Because your mindset is different. 33:10 Andy Whyte: I wish I could sell a potion that made people feel, in every sales conversation, the way they feel when they're at 100% of target. I could do a deal with every salesperson: give me half your commission, because it would make you so much more successful. I just wish we as an industry would embody that mindset more. There are a couple of things I want to dig into. First — as a quick one — you mentioned the person who doesn't want to change in the customer's business, the detractor or the anti-person. If you could pick one, in a deal — who would you rather have one of your teams working on? 34:20 Adam Quartermaine: The detractor. Every single time. Because they're probably a champion for something else and someone else. And I can think of many examples where we've found that individual, turned them, and they became the best champion ever. Not only because by nature they're outspoken — but they've got more credibility than anyone else, because a moment ago they were against it. They're actually admitting they're wrong by backing it. And if you ignore that individual — going back to the previous point about getting to "no" early — it's the difference between being task-orientated and outcome-orientated. And the same with the enemy or detractor. The detractor is probably a detractor because they don't know enough about what you do and how you create value for their organisation. It's not their idea — they can't champion something they didn't initiate. So when we find those people, what we try to do is build a bridge to them — through a direct route and an indirect one. Maybe through partners, maybe through other stakeholders in our own organisation: the success team, the solution consultants, value consultants, leadership team. It doesn't matter who. But Chris Wood, who has been my leader for a number of years, and I would always look at how quickly can we get to understand them and get to yes. 35:01 Adam Quartermaine: And it may not be yes in that opportunity — it might be somewhere else. But if you go through a cycle sitting on inherent risk without asking difficult questions, you can never buy back that time. So getting to it early is really important. And when it comes to those detractors, there's a lovely saying: the obstacle is the way. Getting through that obstacle — the individual who's sceptical about your business and your value — is super important because they can often become your strongest champion. 36:38 Andy Whyte: Beautiful. Stoicism. 36:38 Adam Quartermaine: Absolutely, yes. 36:38 Andy Whyte: Another thing you mentioned was building the decision criteria for the economic buyer — and in this scenario, where that's potentially the CFO. Typically at enterprise level, CFOs are hard to reach. So how, from a tactical perspective, do you go about building decision criteria that's going to be relevant and resonant for that individual? 36:38 Adam Quartermaine: So if you look at our portfolio — the first thing you have to understand is what you can actually affect, because your credibility hangs off that at some point in the journey. The second thing is: what do they care about? And you've got to join those dots together. There's so much information available about companies — not just historical annual reports, but LinkedIn, where you can often see a statement about why that individual joined the company. Podcasts, YouTube broadcasts, industry events — there's no shortage of events in retail, CPG, finance, telco, media, entertainment, travel, automotive, and on and on. And these senior leaders are talking at those events about their career journey, their business priorities, the challenges in unlocking those priorities. As a seller, there's never been an easier way to understand what's important — and there's never been an easier way, with LinkedIn and other platforms, to understand who's important in those organisations. 37:50 Adam Quartermaine: So if you do that research well, and take the time to look at what we've already done in those verticals, you can build a pretty strong outside-in view of the value you can create. It needs to be realistic, timely, impactful, and hitting the top initiatives of the business. And it has to be at a level that's interesting to those people. If you don't sound like these people, you're not going to those people. If you want to solve a £500,000 problem, you're not going to the CFO. You've got to be solving a £5, £10, £15, or £20 million problem or opportunity — maybe even more. Getting in the right frame of reference and being very prescriptive about how you unlock that opportunity has bought us a lot of time with those stakeholders. And on top of that, we have a responsibility and a duty of care to be thought leaders at the table as well. People — including very senior people at the best companies on the planet — want to be led to a successful outcome. There's a brilliant saying I picked up from one of my team last week at a sales excellence workshop: "Good salespeople ask for the next step. Great salespeople describe the next step. "40:05 Adam Quartermaine: And my point there is: if you're going to take someone on a journey, you need to be able to tell them that you have a point of view, an early-stage view of the value you can create. If it's important to them — and you believe it is — and it's exciting for you to go and explore it together. You know — if it's not good, you'll walk away. But if you're not selling that way in today's world, you're probably not competing for the size of budget you could go after. And you're probably not going to be relevant for very long either. 40:05 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I like that — because it's saying: here's the destination. We've been here before. We can show you where we've taken people just like you. We're going that way. Do you want to come? I'm not waiting. And if you're not coming, that's fine — I've got other people I'm going to talk to. So one thing I think is interesting: we've been talking about the CFO as the economic buyer, and it's not just because you're in the marketing space. I'm seeing it in security, in HR, everywhere — for the reasons we know. So what's interesting is that typically, in more normal times, the economic buyer is the CMO or the CSO — someone with domain expertise. So it's a harder person to convince not just because they have broader interests, but also because they have less domain expertise. And I guess that comes back to what you're saying about attaching to that top business priority — when talking about your EB-minus-one: in your case, that might be the Chief Customer Officer, the CMO, or the Chief Digital Officer. Is that right? 41:03 Adam Quartermaine: Yeah. And that cohort of people — they're really smart. The only thing that's changed is they've got to go and ask someone else to spend the money that's been assigned to their priorities. And they're looking to be able to give very quick, predictable returns to the business today. And that hasn't changed — our duty is to make sure that we turn up and are really clear about the value that can be realised, the timescale in which it can be realised, and also the human element: what's in it for them? I mean, if you've ever been to Dreamforce or any of these other events, what you've largely got is a very big career fair. A lot of people telling a story about how they've transformed some of the biggest companies on the planet. And that storytelling opportunity is probably a very good window to the world for their next career move. 42:47 Andy Whyte: Good point. Yeah, I love that. 42:47 Adam Quartermaine: And software companies like ours — and others — have a duty of care to look after those EBs, those champions. Because if you do well for them, and we see this with Sprinklr and with companies like Salesforce and others that really go and build a category — when these change agents finish their work at Brand A or Brand B, typically a three-to-five-year stint, they're going to land somewhere else. And they're going to take the people they trust and the partners they trust, and they're going to deploy it all again. You look at what's now ubiquitous for HR teams, for CRM, for infrastructure — AWS, Sprinklr is on that journey as well. So you have to make sure not only that you're building a strong case for change, but that you deliver on it. 43:51 Andy Whyte: How have you found selling to the Chief Digital Officer or CMO versus when you were at BladeLogic and BMC where it's more the technical CIO landscape? 43:51 Adam Quartermaine: So — first of all, you've got to remember what to wear to those meetings. You show up in a suit and tie and you very quickly look a little out of place. But joking aside, there is a difference. A lot of IT buying is with the head — the logic of it. It's often about offsetting operational cost that's built up over time and about offsetting risk to the operation of the business. When you're selling to the front office, you're selling to people who make decisions with both their head and their heart. And you're selling to people who are looking to realise gains — often abstract gains. New growth, customer intimacy, understanding the customer, understanding the competition, being on a digital transformation journey, launching the next generation of products. The automotive industry moving to electric vehicles would be a great example. Or consumption-based models — you can buy a car by the hour now. So there are big changes in those companies, and much more speculative budgets available to take the business forward and create shareholder value. 45:56 Adam Quartermaine: It does require the ability to inspire people more about the opportunity over the horizon — not future promises, but where you can get them to, and how you're going to get them there. As opposed to what I saw more in the IT landscape: "We're going to take out cost in an absolute way. We're going to minimise risk in an absolute way. " You can't sit in front of a CMO and say "I've got this wonderful platform — deploy it and your business will grow 20%. " What you can say is: the best companies in your vertical use our technology and they're doing marketing, advertising, and customer engagement at a very high-performing level and outperforming their peer group. So there may be a causal effect. You have to be able to pivot the narrative. But the fundamentals of selling don't change. 45:56 Andy Whyte: I love that. The pain-versus-gain dynamic — flipping it to find the gain, and then attributing the pain associated with not achieving that gain. And it's quite fun that you're in a fairly creative industry, and you have to be most creative in how you sell — versus being quite process-driven when you're selling process-driven technology. I'm not sure if that's coincidence or just how it should be. 47:18 Adam Quartermaine: The robust process of how we go about establishing, quantifying, proving, and delivering value — that's as robust as it's ever been. But at the front end, you have to be able to deliver a point of view very quickly, very simply, and very crisply on the problems you're going to solve. And if you can't learn to land it quickly — which is what I saw early on — you're leaving it to the customer to figure out. They're busy people. If you can't articulate in the first five minutes why they should listen — they won't. 47:18 Andy Whyte: And I feel like this is something I've been saying for a while: I've learned more about sales as a buyer in the last two years — buying technology for our business — than at any other time in my career combined. And the thing that constantly blows my mind is how salespeople approach selling to us. They assume that I have a decision criteria — and that I'm qualified to have one. Like me: a former sales guy turned sales leader turned business operator. What do I know about HR software? About financial planning software? About pretty much anything except social media software and a few other things where I actually have domain expertise. I'm frankly an idiot in most of those spaces. But I get treated as if what I think and know really matters as a qualified buyer. And I'm really not. 49:08 Andy Whyte: So one thing I'm really keen to talk about: we've covered how you and your team are operating at the sharp end of execution. And what I've really picked up is the level of discipline in how you go about it. There will be people listening to this thinking: I want a bit of that. I'd love to work in an organisation like that. And as someone who has been at Sprinklr — I know the culture, the product, the whole picture — I can totally see why people would want that. So what are the things that those types of people do to get your attention? 49:08 Adam Quartermaine: Let me start with where they're coming from. 49:08 Andy Whyte: Yes, please. 49:43 Adam Quartermaine: When you look at an individual, when you look at a CV — and that's sadly how most of us encapsulate information about people — what I'm looking for from the outset is a journey of continuous improvement. And that's often about objective reasoning too. Where did you start? I told my own story of where I started, got ejected from, and got going — it's always a bit clumsy for a lot of people. But the choices you make after that, the steps you take towards building decent tenure and experience — that's really important. And then I'm always looking at people who make moves that show growth in their career: more responsibility, more diversity in what they're doing. That's normally a pretty good indicator they have a growth mindset and are actively participating in their own development. I keep saying that phrase, so let me explain what I really mean: a lot of people want to be developed. They say: "Adam, I want to be developed. I want to earn a lot of money. I want to work at Sprinklr. " Great. And my first question — I probably shouldn't say this now that people know to prepare for it, but if they're 50 minutes into a podcast, maybe they deserve to know — is: "What are you doing to develop yourself? " "I read books. " "What are you reading right now? " And they can very, very rarely answer that question. 51:10 Adam Quartermaine: And the reason I touch on that is: you don't have to be reading constantly. But you've got to be on your own development journey, as well as the company being there to develop you and the culture being there to help you live in the outcomes they want to deliver. You've got to be great at developing yourself as well. Those really intelligent and curious individuals who are looking at the signals in the world that can help them get better — those are the people who light up a room. You put them in a room with customers, with prospects, with colleagues — and they've just got a spark about them. Not only are they curious about you and Sprinklr, but they're naturally curious about the environment, about what's going on in people's lives. The best sellers I've ever worked with have the ability to build relationships with people that go beyond work. Doesn't mean they're spending time with them outside of work — but they know about their families, their professional goals, why they joined a company, what they think about it, how they're going to make things happen together. You can't fake that natural curiosity. You might bluff it in an interview — but if you ask the right questions, you can get through it pretty quickly. 53:08 Andy Whyte: Yeah. You're obviously right that you can't bluff curiosity. And one of the things that makes it so clear when someone's genuinely curious is that it's multi-layered. If the person is genuinely curious, they're not going to stop at the first question. They're not asking the first question to get an answer — they're asking it because they've got five layers they're trying to get to. And that's how they end up with this extra depth of knowledge. It's probably not that they were trying to find out what your hobbies are — it's that they wanted to know what keeps you awake at night. And who else cares about that. And what you'd do about it. 53:08 Adam Quartermaine: Yeah. And I tell you something else that I think is super true on this topic — I remember a conversation with Don Darcy when he was at MongoDB, and he was talking to me about my development at the time. He said: "You've got to be more vulnerable, and more accessible as a consequence of that. " It stuck with me. I drove home that night thinking: what does he mean? And then I started to think: if you're going to be curious and ask someone to tell you more about their professional career and more about themselves — you've got to be open to the same. You've got to be able to mirror that. You've got to be willing to be vulnerable, to share the things you're failing at as well as the things you're doing well. So curiosity and vulnerability pair up quite tightly. 54:28 Andy Whyte: I love that. And I think vulnerability in sales is something that's not celebrated enough. If I picture the best salespeople I've ever worked with, they are always vulnerable — and the way it shows is that they're the first to say: "I've got nothing this quarter" or "I've got a few things, but nothing solid. " It comes from a place of confidence, not arrogance — confidence from the perspective of: I'm so knowledgeable about sales, I understand it's not a linear process. Even with the best product in the space and customers who clearly need the solution — and just by nature of being at Sprinklr you're going to be a very good salesperson — it's still not going to be a linear process. There are going to be bumps in the road, things that go wrong regardless of how good you are. The best salespeople in the world are the ones who spot it straight away and say: "We've got a problem here. I need to get Adam on the phone. Chris and my boss — let's figure this out. " The worst are the ones who don't want to fess up because they think it reflects badly on them. 55:45 Adam Quartermaine: That vulnerability shines through — as you say with curiosity, it shows through in the best salespeople. But the culture has to enable it as well. When Luca came in as our CRO, one of the first things he really did was foster a safe environment where you could share good news or bad news, raise your hand for help. You have to have an environment that celebrates transparency and facilitates it well. Because it's hard to be vulnerable in a fear-based culture. But in an impossible one? You just can't. It's impossible. Full stop. So as a leadership team, you have to be in it with the team — genuinely in it. Hunting for risk, hunting for opportunity. When you find it: confront it, brainstorm it, solve it, and go forward. So the environment is super important for making sure people can operate that way. And rewarding it is important. Celebrating success is one part of it, but actually — celebrate the little wins every single day. Because often you can turn those moments of friction into a positive situation and still advance the sales campaign. But if you're running a culture of "you owe me a number, pal" — that doesn't foster openness. 56:48 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And those little wins — the nuggets like "well done, Sarah just did a great job qualifying the champion," or "we've got engagement with the economic buyer, they replied to us — how do we capture their attention? " — those little wins build qualified pipeline. If you really think about it. 57:55 Adam Quartermaine: And many people at companies on a journey of establishing product-market fit, or establishing where they fit in the market — as a leader on that type of journey, you've got to be inspiring people every single day. You'll keep them inspired if they're winning — and I don't just mean getting orders through the door. They're getting pipeline generation done, they're getting meetings booked and booked and booked, they're working towards deals. And when the deals start to happen, the belief is real. It doesn't matter if you're Sprinklr at seven or eight years old, or opening an office in Iberia or the Nordics — those teams are going to go through a period where their belief is shaky. The culture has to be built around those little wins every day. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy over time. 57:55 Andy Whyte: I love that. We are right up on time. I have three questions — not exactly quickfire, but shorter ones. The first: what element of MEDDIC do you think is most important? 57:55 Adam Quartermaine: No champion, no deal. The champion gives you access to the EB, the champion is established through the pain existing, and everything else — Decision Process, Decision Criteria — all flows from there. 59:35 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I agree. The only thing I always think about is the chicken-and-egg with pain — because you might not get a champion if you haven't found the pain. But that's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, isn't it? OK. And do you have a favourite element — the one where if you wrap your arms around it and get it right, it's a game-changer? 59:35 Adam Quartermaine: I do. But it's also the one I think is most misunderstood. So — we talk a lot about Metrics. People go and find the metrics, put them in the CRM. And they come back and they've found a percentage saving, an average handling time, a budget resolution rate. But it's often a metric so small it's inconsequential in the room that actually matters. If you get the right type of metrics — how much faster can a business go? How many more customers can they win in a year? How much more revenue can they capture, and how much faster? Then you're going to use that metric to develop a champion, magnify the gain or the pain or the opportunity, and get access to the EB. So for me, Metrics is a big focus in today's market — with the CFO-ready business case, you know. We spend a lot of time on the I, we spend a lot of time on the C, we spend a lot of time on the Decision Process. And then "yeah, we've got some metrics as well, at the end. " That for me is just wrong. 61:00 Andy Whyte: I love how you put that. We like to say metrics should be the bullet points of the business case — the TL;DR. If you're not going to read the rest of this, here's the headline. And they should be — they can be personalised to a role, but they're best when they're also universal. Even if something doesn't directly affect you, if you look at it and can clearly see why this organisation is going to invest — that's what you're after. And the last question — I'm putting you on the spot a little — do you have any lines, hacks, tactics that you think: "when I found this, I started using it all the time and I wish everyone else knew about it"? 61:42 Adam Quartermaine: Yes — and a lot of it goes back to the way sellers are trained. When you join a company, go to boot camp, you learn about product, features, functions, and their applicability. That's really "what you do and how you do it. " And most of the people you're selling to don't care that much about that. They care about why they should pay attention and what impact you can have. So yes, you need to know those things. But if you don't know what positive outcomes you can create with your product — and if you can't tell the stories of where your company has done it before, like your own deals, where you know the champion's name, their mission, the journey they were on — that is a massive unlock in your career. 62:45 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And that — we'd call that an M1. That's how we encapsulate those customer stories. And like we say — you're not calling a customer's baby ugly by talking about somebody else's story. You're storytelling. You're referencing something. 62:45 Adam Quartermaine: It's brilliant. I love how you put it. Beautiful thing. 62:45 Andy Whyte: Oh — the clock, wasn't it? It did go fast. I've really enjoyed this. My stomach's starting to rumble. Oh! And this is exciting — we're going from here over to Sushi Samba, to spend the evening with some of the sharpest minds in our industry, talking about the upcoming book on female sales leadership. 62:45 Adam Quartermaine: Really great to be part of that. Yeah, super excited. It's going to be perfect. 63:41 Andy Whyte: So — thank you so, so much. It's been awesome to talk to you. And I'm going to put you on the spot and say I'd love to do this again sometime, because I just said we've run out of time — and I wish we had more to dig into. 63:41 Adam Quartermaine: It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. 63:41 Andy Whyte: Yeah. Thanks.