Masters of MEDDICC: John McMahon

00:03 Andy Whyte: 3, 2, 1. All right. Welcome to Masters of MEDDICC. This is episode number five. And you can probably tell by the smile on my face — I am incredibly excited today, because we have the one, the only, the legend, the greatest of all time: Mr John McMahon. Welcome to the show, John. 00:03 John McMahon: Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I don't know if I'm as excited as you. 00:23 Andy Whyte: You're definitely not as excited as I am. And as regular listeners and viewers will know, this is the point where I hand over to the guest to introduce themselves. But there's an old saying: this person needs no introduction. And in our industry, if there's anybody who doesn't need one, it's you, Mr John McMahon. But for those who've stumbled across the podcast or YouTube channel and are maybe new to enterprise sales — five-time CRO of a public company. Let's see if I can remember them all: PTC, iGo, Ariba, BladeLogic, and BMC. That's five. 00:43 John McMahon: Pass that test. 00:43 Andy Whyte: And then going on to work on the boards and advising some of, if not the greatest companies in our industry. I definitely remember all of these because there are loads of them — but just a few of the cool ones: Cybereason, Sumo Logic, Puppet, Sprinklr, HubSpot, Glassdoor, AppDynamics. And then more recently, Lacework, MongoDB — I could never forget MongoDB — Snowflake. Have I missed any? 01:32 John McMahon: You're doing great. 01:32 Andy Whyte: All right, cool. Well, I've done my homework. I've done my homework. And it's a really exciting time to have you on the show, because — and anyone on LinkedIn couldn't have missed this — you've put out a book: The Qualified Sales Leader. Thank you so much for doing that. Well, you must have had years — maybe decades — of people asking you to write a book. What was the idea that finally made you want to do it? 01:54 John McMahon: Yeah, it's interesting. On average, probably every month, someone would ask me why I didn't write a book. It was typically after a meeting — a board meeting, a consulting meeting, a meeting with VCs or something. And I'd say, why do you say that? And they'd say, well, because you said this — I've never heard that before. Sometimes they'd ask, well, where can I find that in a book? And I'd say, I don't know if you can, because I've never read a book that has this stuff in it. It's real-world scars. And people like Bob Jones, CEO of BMC, even said to me: "John, you have got to find time to write a book." So that was reason number one. And number two: whenever I'd go in as a consultant or board member, I kept seeing the same common mistakes. I figured if I'm helping these companies, I should try to help them get past these mistakes. But how many other software, hardware, or tech companies are out there making the same mistakes? They're burning money. They actually have a good product but don't know how to go to market with it. They don't know how to sell it. And they end up going out of business or selling for assets. 02:58 John McMahon: So why not bottle some of this up into a book and try to help people? That's what I did. 03:19 Andy Whyte: And I have to say — mission accomplished. This is an absolutely brilliant book. A triumph, I have to say. And it's no surprise, given your background and the success you've had. But what I really liked about it — and I haven't seen it done quite like this before — is the way it's written almost like a story. It walks through your engagement with a company — which I imagine is a real company with a fictional name. Is it Fargo? Is that the name? Oh God. You had to find a name that wasn't copyrighted. 03:58 John McMahon: Yes, right. 03:58 Andy Whyte: And so you follow the engagement with Fargo, starting with the QBR and then working with the sales leaders and sales teams to take them from a point of struggling to finding all the right ingredients to get on the path to success. That's really cool. And one of the things I was curious about was the actual craft of writing a book in that format. It's one thing to take your knowledge and put it into a book, but how did you work out the right way to shape it? 04:15 John McMahon: Yeah, well, I really didn't want to write what I'd consider a boring sales textbook — and there are plenty of those. What I wanted was something more conversational and narrative. I wanted to take people on a journey. Because when it comes to writing — and I had to do a bunch of homework first because I'm not really a writer — if people are going to read a non-fiction business book, they typically want to be transformed. You've got to take them from where they are today to a different place. So I tried to take this group — in a forecast session, a QBR, which many people can relate to — and use that as a burning platform. From there, I tried to show them a lot of the things they were doing wrong in the forecast session, and also wrong as leaders, walk them through the basics, and take them to a different place by the end. And to do that — because I'm not a good writer — that's what took the longest. When I first wrote the book, I sat down in a condo in Boston for four days, locked the door, and just wrote everything that came out of my mind. I could have just dumped all of that into a book. 05:37 John McMahon: But then I thought: OK, how do I shape that into a story? And so the first fifteen chapters or so — I probably wrote them twenty times. 05:57 Andy Whyte: Yeah. That's fascinating. And one of the things that really comes across in the book is that you clearly have what's sometimes called a creative visual mind. Is that something you've recognised in yourself? 06:15 John McMahon: When you say that, what do you mean? 06:15 Andy Whyte: In its most basic form, it's the desire to convey information through story — but it's also, so often in the book, the use of analogies. One minute we're talking about one thing, the next you bring up peas and carrots on a plate. And it's brilliant, because everyone reading it goes, "Oh yeah" — when you split the pipeline like that and put it back together, it makes so much more sense. That kind of thing really comes through. And for visual learners, that would be right up their street. Is that something you've recognised in yourself? 06:38 John McMahon: Well, I recognised it more because any time I'd go in as a consultant or board member to something like a QBR and I'd start to tell a little story — the Greyboy story, the peas and carrots story, the Boxup story — many of the analogies that are in the book. And then when I came back maybe a quarter later, with new people in the room because it's a growing business, one of the first things people would say is: "Tell the Greyboy story again" or "Tell the peas and carrots story again" or "Tell Boxup again." And I thought: really, you want me to tell it again? And they did. And I realised — that's what resonates with people. It's not just words on paper. You have to make it come alive through stories. Things they can relate to. Now, if it's pain or pleasure, it's Greyboy — you have an image in your mind right away. 07:44 Andy Whyte: Yeah. Good old Greyboy. Absolutely — stuck with me. I won't spoil it for people who haven't read the book yet, but that's a good one. I'm also known among my peers for doing something similar — using sporting analogies, because I think there's so much similarity between sports and the profession of sales. And a great example in the book is where you talk about different types of salespeople for different types of roles, and you use the American football example: a quarterback can't just play any position on the field. That really resonated with me. Was there a moment where those kinds of things crystallised in your mind? And the second question — do you think people can evolve and change position in sales, or do you think people have almost fixed positions they naturally inhabit? 08:46 John McMahon: I'll answer the second one first. Yes, people can evolve — if they want to be students of the game. If they want to learn the knowledge and playbook, and if they're willing to put in the time — which is the hardest part — to practice the skills. They can absolutely do it. As for the analogies — in my consulting and board work, I often had to get points across to sales leaders who didn't understand why I was saying what I was saying, and to tech CEOs and even VCs, as to why any of it mattered. So I started drawing analogies. The one you're referring to: Tom Brady, who played quarterback for the Patriots and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — won six or seven Super Bowls, will probably go down as the greatest quarterback of all time. People can debate that, but one thing's for sure: he'll go down as one of the most knowledgeable players on the field. And my point was: if we take Tom Brady from quarterback and move him to any other position on the field, he'll fail immediately — not because of his knowledge of the game, but because he doesn't have the physical skills for that position. And the analogy I'm trying to make is: just because you hired a sales rep who's knowledgeable about the game of sales doesn't mean they have the skills to be put into certain accounts that require a completely different skill set to execute in. 10:43 John McMahon: And I see it all the time — people just recruit sales reps and stick them in all these positions without taking the time to ask, like a good coach would: do they have the skill set to actually play that position? That's the analogy I'm trying to get across. 11:04 Andy Whyte: Right. Is there — when you're setting aside the experience element, which is kind of what you're talking about there — going back a step further to just hiring sales reps in the first place: you've probably more than anyone else in our industry built a track record of finding talent early, talent that then follows you and proliferates across the entire industry. That's been well documented. I forget how many of the BladeLogic team are now CROs or at C-level, which is incredible. When you think about those people you brought into your teams, were there any raw attributes you looked for in salespeople early in their careers? 11:58 John McMahon: I'm really looking for mainly two things. I'm looking for intelligence — because then they can pick up the knowledge and playbook of the game. And I'm looking for persistence, heart, desire, competitiveness — whatever you want to call it — so I know they have the willingness to practice over and over and over to gain new skills. So if you really think about it: what you have to do is the playbook, and how you execute those plays are the skills. If somebody's highly intelligent, they should be able to pick up the knowledge of the game. If they're highly competitive and motivated, they should be able to practice their way to the skills. And actually, if they're highly competitive and motivated, they won't just pick up the skills you're teaching them — they'll also find a way to learn other things, because they self-motivate. Without those two characteristics, those two behavioural traits, it's going to be difficult to really train and develop people over time. And then what happens in a lot of the high-growth companies I've been in and associated with is the company might be one thing for two years, and then the next year they're almost a different company. What does that mean? 13:18 John McMahon: New products. New competition. Different buyers to call on. The skill sets change. Now it's more complex cost justification, more complex proof of value. A whole bunch of things change. And if you can't find salespeople who are coachable and adaptable — because some people are coachable, they'll actually listen to what you say, but they never change — that's not coachable. You need people who are coachable and adaptable. Over time, those people stay with you as you grow. I've also seen the reverse — the company changes, products change, competitors change, customers change — and I look at someone I used to admire two years ago and think: oh my God, they're a dinosaur. What are they doing? 14:26 Andy Whyte: Yeah. That adaptability piece is genius. Because as you're saying it, I'm thinking about instances I've had with people who appear coachable but aren't adaptable. And I'd actually rather have someone who's coachable and not adaptable than someone who's nodding their head, appearing to be coachable, but not actually changing. 14:47 John McMahon: Exactly. That's the worst. And I think — just as you said "dinosaur" — we've all worked with that person who was at the top and then just... stopped. But the beautiful thing about our industry is you've never completed it. You've never finished. You never stop learning because it's always changing and evolving. There are still many times where somebody does something or says something and I think: oh my God, that's brilliant. I'm going to take that and incorporate it. For sure. But you've seen salespeople — I see them all the time — who think they know everything and are unwilling to learn, unwilling to develop new skills. Those people will be left behind. Maybe that's fine for them and they don't want anything more. That's their choice. But they're not going much further. 15:34 Andy Whyte: Exactly right. You talked about PHD — Persistence, Heart, and Desire — which I think is brilliant. And something I was reflecting on recently: I've had a really, really good track record of hiring former recruiters who've come in as SDRs and then grabbed hold of that role, smashed their numbers, and gone on to do the same in the field. It's interesting — that tough role of recruitment teaches you persistence, desire, and heart in a very particular way. I have a bit of a chicken-and-egg question for you. I know your background came from grafting roles, working crazy hours outside of college and all that. Do you think PHD is something you can learn by being put in a tough role? Or do you think people with those attributes naturally gravitate towards those roles — and people without them stay well away? 18:05 John McMahon: I think it's something in your background that has to motivate you — you have that fight, that desire to succeed, a willingness to do whatever it takes to develop new skills and to win. It comes in different forms for different people. A lot of times people say, well, if someone didn't come from a tough background, didn't have to fight their way through, didn't have to earn their way through college — then I don't want to hire them because they don't have enough desire. And then I think, well, that may not always be true. Because I've run into people whose father owned a business and was very successful — maybe overshadowing the son. And then the son decided: I'm going to go be a sales rep. The father was furious. But the son was also highly motivated to prove the dad wrong. Like: I can make it as a salesperson. I am motivated to do it. So it's different motivations for different people. I can't tell you exactly where it comes from — I'm no psychologist. But I'm trying to find that when I'm recruiting. So I will ask: what is the toughest situation you've ever been in? And then I turn my ears on and ask a lot of questions. 19:05 John McMahon: I want to get inside the person. What is the most competitive thing you ever did in your life? I'm going to get inside their head. When I'm recruiting, I'm not asking superficial questions. I'm not looking at the resume thinking: oh, you used to work for XYZ Corporation and you "synergistically build relationships." I'm not interested in any of that. I'm interested in the person. That's what I'm hiring. And I'm interested in their character more than anything. So I'll spend the first half of the interview going after their character. 19:52 Andy Whyte: I love that. And it's clear you're looking for the right things and finding the right people, judging by the track record. Do you think — looking back at interviews where you've met some of the great people who've followed you through their careers — do you ever say at the final interview stage: "Hang on, this person reminds me a bit of so-and-so when I hired them"? 20:35 John McMahon: I can't say specifically, but I can tell you that you always have to focus on the character and the behavioural traits of the person first. And I can give you an example. The greatest salesperson I ever hired was a guy named Carlo Carpenter, out of Bologna, Italy. And he's no longer with us — God bless his soul. When I was interviewing him in the Milan office, everyone was expected to wear suits. And if you go to Italy, they all had their Canali suits — the hair slicked back with a lot of product, clean-shaven. So Carlo walks into my office and he's got a purple jacket, a black turtleneck. He has a three-day-old beard. His hair looks like he cut it himself. He's got brown corduroy pants with wide ribs. He's got smart shoes. And he has two chipped front teeth — just chopped right down the middle. And I first think: I wonder who sent this guy in. Are they sure he's the right candidate? 21:57 Andy Whyte: It sounds really out of place given how everyone else looked. 21:57 John McMahon: But then when I started to speak to Carlo and go after his character — in his broken English — I started to realise: this guy is really special. He's got a lot of the right characteristics. And even when I would throw out a challenge — like, "Carlo, I'm not so sure you could do the job" — he would look me in the eyes, genuinely and authentically, and say: "But... why?" He was genuinely blown away that I thought he couldn't do the job. And I wasn't even saying it as a test. I wound up hiring Carlo, and he was perennially the top salesperson in the world, year in and year out. Any time you made calls with him — guess where Carlo was calling? He was calling on the CEOs of the biggest companies in his territory. You know — Ferrari, and CEOs of similar-calibre companies, all the time. 22:49 Andy Whyte: Is this the story — I think you mentioned going to a meeting at Ferrari with him, a full day of meetings, and coming out at the end? 23:11 John McMahon: So we came out after almost a full day of sales calls — it was getting dark, people were leaving work in their Ferrari cars, some beautiful cars. I was admiring them and talking to Carlo. He said: "How do you think it went?" And I said: "Really well. Here are the things we now know that we didn't know before. But because of that, here are still some question marks." And I turned around — and Carlo was already heading back towards the front door. I said: "Where are you going?" And he said: "I'm going back into Ferrari." I said: "Why?" He said: "Because I'm going to get the answers to those questions now. And I'm going to do it in Italian, so I can do it a lot quicker." Now, most salespeople wouldn't do what Carlo did, because they weren't curious like Carlo. What they would do is get back in the car, then ask me those questions, I'd outline what we still didn't know, they'd drop me at the hotel or we'd have dinner, and then over the next two weeks they'd be scheduling meetings with Ferrari to get those answers. Carlo, I don't think, could have driven home without knowing. 24:17 John McMahon: It would have literally driven him crazy. But more importantly — and what I put in the book — Carlo didn't just have curiosity. He had an urgent curiosity. An urgency to find out now. And then an urgency rooted in the understanding that as a salesperson, you don't really have 90 days in a quarter. If you take out weekends and an average of three or four days of holidays, you're down to about 61 days. Time is your enemy. So you have to have urgent curiosity to be a great salesperson. 25:10 Andy Whyte: Right. And not everybody has it. I love that — that was the one trait. He was smart, he was driven. But that was the one thing I thought really separated him from all the other salespeople. And you can't fake it. You either have it or you don't. It's either genuine and authentic, or it's not — there's no middle ground, because people can feel it. If you're genuinely curious, people know. 25:32 John McMahon: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that feeling — we've all had it, regardless of where we think we sit on the curiosity spectrum. That feeling when you really need to know something: "I have to ask this person right now." If you can imagine Carlo walking around like that every single day, especially on his deals — it's like a superpower. 25:55 Andy Whyte: Yes. Absolutely. That's a real separator. What do you think motivated him, year after year? Here's a guy who sounds like quite a character — the corduroys, the purple jacket. I have a very vivid picture of him from the book. Someone who went on to work in your organisation and at top elite companies as a top seller. To be in the top 1% of the profession and earning serious money as a result. What do you think drove him year after year? Was it the number one spot, or was it something else? Was it just him, just having to be the best? 26:18 John McMahon: Well, it's interesting — I think he was always curious, always wanted to learn. And I think what makes great salespeople and great sales leaders is their ability to be students of the game, always wanting to learn. Carlo's curiosity continued to drive him. He was the top salesperson three or four years in a row. And then what I did was call him one day and say: "I want you to become a sales leader." He said he didn't really want to be a sales leader. He wanted to stay as a seller. And I said: "Well, you have 24 hours to think about it. Here's what we're going to do — you get to think about it, you get to become a sales leader, or you get to leave." And then I hung up on him — because I knew exactly who he was. And he decided: "OK, I'm going to do it." He took on that new challenge, and again it was his curiosity that allowed him to become one of the top sales managers as well. The guy who grew up underneath Carlo is now the CRO of a company called MongoDB. One of the reps who worked for him. 27:41 John McMahon: So it just keeps going. 27:58 Andy Whyte: Yeah, the network effect of good people doing good things — it's incredible. Awesome. Yeah. That's a beautiful thing. And on the topic of motivation — I'm really curious about you as well. You've had tremendous success as a CRO, as we've already discussed. And then after BMC, you moved into advising and boards. What is it about what you're doing now that motivates you? 28:39 John McMahon: It's not entirely new, but it's different from being a CRO. I think it's actually pretty much the same — because in the book, and this happens all the time: when someone says, "I'm a sales rep, but I want to be a sales leader," I usually ask them: "How many kids do you have?" And they might say, "Three." And I say: "Well, that's interesting. Why do you want five more?" What do I mean by that? When you were single, you got up when you wanted to get up, went to bed when you wanted, ate what you wanted, had your own schedule, worked when you wanted — it was all about you. And then you became a manager. Or you had a family. And now it wasn't about you anymore. It was about those kids. What they were going to eat, when they were going to eat, what their school activities were, their out-of-school activities, when they went to bed — all of that. And you started to realise that those children are all completely different. They came from the same parents in the same household, but each one is completely different — different strengths, weaknesses, insecurities, fears, goals. 30:35 John McMahon: So the point I'm trying to get across is: are you sure you're prepared to make that shift — from being single to being married with kids? From being a rep to it no longer being about you? Because if you can understand that everyone on your team is different, and you can work to coach and develop those people to be highly successful, then you will be successful. But if you think it's still about you once you become a manager, you're the wrong leader. 31:08 Andy Whyte: Right. Absolutely. And you see it so often. The classic case: top rep, year after year at President's Club, number one. By nature they're aspirational — they want to keep bettering themselves. So they look at management as the next step up. And it's not necessarily the right one. 31:28 John McMahon: There are all kinds of reasons it might not work — maybe they're selfish, maybe they can't put themselves in other people's shoes, maybe they're a megalomaniac. There's a whole bunch of things I've run into where people are exceptional salespeople who would make terrible sales leaders. Maybe they're mercenaries, maybe they're mercurial. There's a whole bunch of things. And one or two times that I've tried it, it typically just doesn't work out. 31:52 Andy Whyte: Right. What about yourself? You've had tons of success, your portfolio of people and companies you've been advising is second to none. Is there any scenario where somebody could get you back on the tools — back into a C-level position at a company? 32:15 John McMahon: If there's anyone out there about to raise a serious round with a really hot product who wants the greatest of all time to come lead their sales org — I have to say no. My phone's been ringing off the hook, but the answer is no. 32:38 Andy Whyte: OK, fair enough. I'll take that. But you didn't specifically say no — you said you'd have to say no. So anyone out there with the right opportunity... yeah, that's brilliant. But hypothetically — do you ever miss it? You miss the camaraderie. You miss watching people develop that you recruited, trained, and invested in. 32:55 John McMahon: Like I've always said to my sales leaders: you have to be intimate with your people — know their strengths, weaknesses, insecurities, fears, doubts, goals, all of that. When you really get close to people, understand where they are in their career and what they really want, and you're helping them get there and you're watching them develop — there's a lot to be said for that. I really, really enjoyed that. And it's evidenced by the numbers. Someone counted recently that there are around 150 guys who are now CROs who used to work for me — whether at PTC, iGo, BladeLogic, or one of those companies. So yes, I do miss the camaraderie. I don't think I miss the quarterly pressure, and I definitely don't miss the non-stop travel. If I showed you my old diary, you'd be blown away by how many different countries I was in every week. 33:44 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I can absolutely imagine. And one of the things I always find interesting is that you've had a knack for picking some of the greatest organisations to work with — and there's a case to be made that some of them became great partly because you helped them get there. But there'll be a lot of people listening to this thinking about their next move. There'll be a lot of similarities, I think, in what you recognise as a good opportunity. What are some of the things you look for in these organisations you choose to share your wisdom with? 33:44 John McMahon: Well, the first thing is the three whys. Any time I'm going to join a company, consult for a company, or sit on its board, I want them to answer the three whys. Why does the customer have to buy? Why do they have to buy from you? And why do they have to buy now? Because at the end of the day, we're salespeople. So let's break these down. Why do they have to buy? That means there's a major pain that needs to be solved. Not a minor pain — something what I call "above the noise." Because most companies can deal with hundreds and hundreds of pain points. It's almost like slicing your finger — put a plaster on it, you're going to be fine. But if you fall and break your shoulder and a couple of ribs, that requires third-party attention. You can't just live with it. Companies are the same. They can live with hundreds of pain points. But can you rise above the noise to address pains that require third-party attention? So: why do they have to buy? Are you addressing a major problem? And then who does that problem really affect in the company? Does it affect someone at the highest levels of the organisation? 36:49 John McMahon: Who's the persona most affected? Because whenever there's a pain and a negative consequence, there's an attachment to a job measure — and whoever owns that job measure is essentially the person we're going to be calling. So that one question of "why do they have to buy?" — if you unfold it properly, it tells you a lot. Then: why do they have to buy from us? I want to know what makes your product different from any other product. Tell me which specific capability in your product solves the pain you just described. And then the big one: why do they have to buy now? Why can't they wait? What other options do they have to get around buying your product — or any product? If I don't understand the negative consequences, the implications of the pain, and why they have to act now — I'm really not that interested. After that, if you get through those three, you can start to look at the size of the market, the growth of the market, how many competitors. Because at the end of the day, these companies are either going to get acquired or go public. Those are the only two ways to go liquid. So if you have 20 competitors, but you think about who actually acquires tech or software companies — it's really not many more than a handful or two handfuls of companies. 38:09 John McMahon: My analogy is: we have a house on this block in this neighbourhood — but how many real buyers are there for this house? I want to know that. Because if we're not going public and we're going to get acquired, I want to know who the buyers are. 38:34 Andy Whyte: Right. Yeah. Interestingly, I — we both worked with Ragy Thomas at Sprinklr, you much more closely than I did. And he used to have the saying that everyone is a Sprinklr customer, they just don't know it yet. And I think if I look at some of the great companies you've worked with — like AppDynamics — I remember a time when every customer I spoke to was either already a customer of AppDynamics, in the process of becoming one, or knew they needed to get there. And I can think of many of the companies you've worked with where it's been similar. Snowflake is a great recent example — it just took off. But I myself worked at an organisation — I won't say which for obvious reasons — where I felt like they had those three whys. In fact, we had an acronym to describe what our product was, and the CEO had us chanting: "Every company needs ABC, every company needs ABC." And I believed it — it was a good proposition. But every company didn't quite execute on it. They didn't quite meet what I thought was their potential. And I remember thinking: this organisation needs Force Management. 39:28 Andy Whyte: I used to say it at the time. You need Force Management to come in and do what I saw happen at Sprinklr — they came in, got everyone talking the same language, got the proposition right. Which, when I hear you talk, is all about the language — the negative consequences, all that good stuff. I know John Kaplan is part of Force Management — and I think he came through BladeLogic as well? 39:50 John McMahon: He worked with me at PTC. 39:50 Andy Whyte: OK, right. So my question is: what is it — when was the right time to change gears like that in an organisation? What was it about when you were advising Sprinklr that made you say, now's the time? 40:10 John McMahon: So I think a lot of companies fail because in the beginning, most companies are founded by tech CEOs, and they believe everyone is going to buy their product — just like the CEO you talked about. And maybe someday that'll be true. But in the beginning, when you're a young company, you have to be very smart about who you target. In the book, I ask the question: what did Jesse James, the famous bank robber in the 1840s, say when someone asked him why he robs banks? Because that's where the money is, right? He could have robbed stagecoaches, schools, hospitals. He chose banks because that was the biggest return on his investment. And the point I'm making is: in the early days of PTC, we could only sell to medical device manufacturers and consumer electronics companies. In the early days of Snowflake, we could only sell to tech and ad tech companies. But we were smart enough to know: this is our product's differentiation, and it solves these specific pain points. These pain points map to these use cases. These use cases point to this persona, in these companies, in these industries. 41:24 John McMahon: So where are we going to spend our time — not selling outside the target market, but selling directly into it? That's where a lot of young tech companies make a huge mistake, because the founder convinces everyone that everybody is going to buy their product. And yes — to your point — eventually everyone is going to buy the Snowflake product. But in the early days, they weren't, because the product wasn't fully capable of being sold to everyone. So we would have wasted a lot of time and burned a lot of money trying to sell to organisations that weren't prepared to buy our product, because we weren't yet solving big enough problems for them. The product wasn't ready yet. 42:10 Andy Whyte: And that brings everything back to the qualification side of things — because what you're really talking about is that qualification isn't just about qualifying the deal in play. It's qualifying your proposition, qualifying your approach. And actually, my question was going to be: why, with all your expertise, did you choose to make the book about qualification? You could have talked about any number of topics as a former sales leader. 42:38 John McMahon: Well, because as you say — the "qualified" part: it should be our middle name. John "Qualify" McMahon. Andy "Qualify" White. Because no matter what situation you're in, you're always qualifying. You're qualifying when you're recruiting people — qualifying whether everything on their CV is true, qualifying whether they're the right fit. When your reps come to you about a situation, you're qualifying why you should spend time on it, qualifying whether or not they're going to get that deal. When you're talking to customers, you're qualifying them. When you're talking to your CEO and he's asking questions, you're qualifying why he's asking. Your middle name should be "Qualify." That's why it's The Qualified Sales Leader. 43:18 Andy Whyte: Yeah. I'm hoping to see lots of LinkedIn profile name changes to "John Qualifier Smith." And if anyone's doing their research and they're interviewing for any kind of role you're associated with — they'd better be this far into this podcast before they even show up. 43:18 John McMahon: It's interesting — I was interviewing a guy just last week. I started to ask him questions and he said: "John, I already have the answers to your questions." I said: "What do you mean?" He held up the book. 43:42 Andy Whyte: Well, that's true. 43:42 John McMahon: And it's like this — I would interview maybe 80 candidates and before each one, I'd load up their LinkedIn just to remind myself. I always made a point of doing a good amount of prep when I'm interviewing someone, because they should have put some time in themselves. And the number of times I'd load up LinkedIn and look at who's viewed my profile — and they'd viewed it five minutes before the interview. Come on. That's the first time you've checked me out? So the tip is: if you're interviewing with someone, turn on profile visibility and be looking at them every day. Every day. Make them feel like they're being watched. Make it feel like you're stalking them. 44:30 Andy Whyte: So you're absolutely right. Likewise — yes, the candidate did a good thing reading the book before the interview. But that's table stakes now. Anything less is unforgivable in the hyper-information world we live in. 44:47 John McMahon: So in the scenario I was working through with a colleague, he said: "John, you're making it difficult to interview people." I said: "Why's that?" He said: "Because you're giving people the answers." 44:47 Andy Whyte: I thought you were going to say I was selling our secrets — like it's the Magic Circle or something. 44:47 John McMahon: A little bit of that too, yeah. 45:22 Andy Whyte: Very, very true. Well, John, thank you for this. This has been epic. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do this series was to learn myself — getting to talk to people like you on a weekly basis. And even though I'd read the book very recently, I feel like I've just learned a whole ton more. So thank you so, so much for this. 45:22 John McMahon: And get the book on Amazon — it's easy to find there right now. I'm trying to find a book aggregator to get it into different stores and countries it's not currently in, because I'm already getting requests from Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, everywhere. They can't get the book, so I'm trying to find other ways to get it to them. 47:22 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I can quite imagine the demand is there. I think it had one of the fastest-growing review counts of any book on Amazon — really quite something to see. And quite right too. So yeah — brilliant book. Thank you so much.