Andy Sadler on Building True Champions | Masters of MEDDICC

00:00 Andy Whyte: Hey Andy Sadler. Welcome to Masters of MEDDICC. It is incredible to have you on the show. This has been a long time coming — you were actually the very first person I approached about coming on the show, back when it was just an idea, before I knew where it was going, before the book was out, before any of this was real. And I've been playing cat and mouse with your calendar — busy guy — ever since then. So I am very, very, very excited to have you on the show. Welcome. 00:22 Andy Sadler: Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks, buddy. 00:22 Andy Whyte: So for those that don't know you — those who've maybe been living under a rock, or are new to our industry — perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself, your background, and how you came into this wonderful industry of ours? 00:41 Andy Sadler: Yeah, sure. That's a very flattering statement, but I think many people have no idea who I am. I've been in enterprise sales now for — oh gosh — 25 years, actually. Originally found myself as a very young guy at PTC in the late '90s. And that's a long time ago. I was speaking to one of my very junior reps this morning — a junior rep at PTC selling CAD/CAM software in a very industrialised part of northern England. They taught us two things: they taught us MEDDIC, and they taught us competitive battle cards. And that was it. We had to go out and sell a product based on that. That's probably the biggest learning curve you're ever going to have. And then from there — from enterprise sales at PTC, Essential Software, BladeLogic — a couple of CRO jobs in the UK — and then SignalFx and now Imply, predominantly all built around MEDDIC. 02:05 Andy Whyte: Yeah. That's super interesting. I think it's funny to see the pathway you've taken there, which a lot of people earlier in their career — certainly those on this side of the pond in Europe — will be trying to emulate. You know, generally, although it's diversifying now, a lot of the major MEDDIC companies and major tech companies have started and been founded in the US, or have moved their headquarters there. So to have had a career like yours and taken some CRO roles along the way is interesting and different to what a lot of people listening will have experienced. 02:41 Andy Sadler: Yeah. It's kind of interesting. I hope it's not too contentious to say that so many companies treat MEDDIC as a qualification process — not a company ethos. But it is a way of, honestly, how we used it at PTC, and how I've subsequently used it: as a way of communicating very quickly between commercial teams. And we brought that over from the US. Because PTC was one of the first — it was the fastest-growing software company in the history of the software industry. And I was a rep, and then I was a manager. But in terms of Europe, I think there was always enough curiosity, and there are now enough organisations that want to emulate those scaling growth models. So I think if listeners are wondering: do I have to move to Silicon Valley? No. What's changed over time is the investor and VC landscape. You're increasingly getting European organisations and software companies starting and scaling in Europe — which you never really saw, maybe 20 years ago. But now you've got plenty of unicorns and decacorns starting over here in Europe. 03:58 Andy Whyte: Yeah, it's great to see. And I think it's representative of something that's such a big part of why — you know, the second C in MEDDIC, Competition — that ability we've had since the PTC days where you knew your competitors, probably on less than one hand, and the customers weren't going to build it themselves. But now, with the proliferation of the cloud, no-code tools, and all those capabilities — suddenly the ability to start a technology company is in almost anyone's hands. And that means you don't have to be in Silicon Valley, you don't have to hire developers who are geographically close. You can do it from anywhere. Particularly with the acceleration through remote work that Covid brought. So I think we're going to see much more of this — distributed companies and teams across the world. 04:55 Andy Sadler: Which is pretty interesting. 04:55 Andy Whyte: Yeah. I think it's interesting. Let's talk about the second C in MEDDIC, actually. 04:55 Andy Sadler: I spoke about battle cards earlier, and you can see the importance of competition right there in the DNA of PTC — because that's who we were competing against. And one thing you'll learn about me if you don't know Andy Sadler well — I'm a plagiarist. I bring in other people's work wherever I can. Authors, researchers. So the second C in MEDDIC for me is The Art of War. It's in the C, right? If you look at what battle cards were at PTC — we were a direct sales force, so we had a structural advantage over everyone. So the second C at PTC, a battle card was: get them into a fight, because we're going to win. Now, what's subsequently changed over time — you look at The Art of War — you have to know your competitor as well as you know yourself. And you just mentioned competition. The proliferation of competition becomes harder, but with access to data and social media, it's only the lazy who don't take that approach — understanding your strengths, your competitive strengths, your ability to decide what your competitive strategy will be. Will it be direct? Will it be indirect? Will it be divisional — where you're going to win the national contract? Or will it be a delay strategy? We could talk all day about that. I've spent a lot of time reading military history and strategy. 06:24 Andy Whyte: Well, you and I share this — I'm kind of famous among my peers and friends for turning everything into an analogy. And I have two favourite subjects for analogies. One of which you've just touched on: the battle and warfare analogy. Because I think about sales as being so similar. You mentioned battle cards, frontline sellers — all the terminology is there. And when you're doing those beginning-of-year planning sessions with your CMO, CRO, and all the stakeholders — you almost imagine it as a battlefield map, moving battalions and forces. But in go-to-market terms, you're moving budget and resources around. And what I really like about how you describe the battle analogy is you're referencing Sun Tzu and The Art of War from ancient times — but as warfare has evolved and as competition has evolved, you've had to evolve with it. So while it's become more complex to compete — there are more competitors, more ways you can face competition — it's gone from just knowing your rivals, to competing against solutions with vast overlap, things that do a subset of what you do, self-build options, and a whole host of other initiatives vying for the same executive decision-making budget. Just like a general who no longer just has archers and cavalry, but has a whole array of other forces to manage and counter. 08:08 Andy Sadler: Absolutely. And it's not a shallow analogy — because, and I don't want to talk about warfare specifically because it can divide audiences — but Winston Churchill was an amazing champion builder. Getting the Americans to participate in the Second World War — he had a champion-building strategy. He understood what was in it for his potential champion. He identified that champion in the US President. He understood what was in it for him. He started to understand the negative consequences if America didn't put its force behind the battle — specifically around trade. And then he got him to participate. So we're really talking about human behaviour. Whether it's doing a $10 million deal with a global bank, or anything else — it's human behaviour. And the first element of champion building is about understanding personal wins and aligning that win to your win. That's the real heart of champion building. 09:04 Andy Whyte: Yeah, absolutely. We used to have this stat at Sprinklr — I've been saying it for years — that something like 85% of the salespeople who sold Sprinklr to a customer got promoted within their first six months of doing so. I recently found an old notebook from back then and it was actually 65%. I think I just added another 5% every time I mentioned it. But to your point, that statistic was pound-for-pound probably the best line you could use in a meeting with a potential champion — because it aligned them with what could be one of the most powerful motivators. Not defensively, because not everyone is motivated the same way. But for those who were — at a time when social media management was new and growing fast — you could say: "You might be the first person in this organisation in this role. But if you play this right, you could be the one running this department in six months or a year's time, leading a whole team." I don't think without that line I would have seen what you're talking about — the vested interest — as clearly as I did. 10:24 Andy Sadler: What's really interesting, Andy, is — bringing in different processes and structured approaches rather than just an acronym — in the mind of that potential champion, I would argue the fear of not doing it first, rather than the ego of doing it first, is actually the driver. Fear, in the neural system, outweighs greed. If you could be as hungry as a wild animal, you could be as hungry as you like — but if a lion comes around the corner, you're going to run. So understanding how we make decisions is critically important in champion building. 12:35 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And what you're touching on there is fascinating to me, because I often — as many people do — split sales into a science and an art. MEDDIC is often associated with the science because it's a qualification framework. But what you're really touching on is the differentiation that comes with having high EQ — and for me, that's more the art. It's the ability to read that person, to recognise they're actually more driven by fear than by opportunity. Having the EQ to spot that in someone, and then react to it, empower the opportunity that comes from it — for me, that's a rare skill. And you've probably recruited more salespeople, pound for pound, than most sales leaders out there. It's one of the things that I don't think gets discussed enough — that real EQ piece. Is that something you agree with? 13:07 Andy Sadler: Yeah, absolutely. And it's no secret: my recruitment criteria, the first element, is intelligence. Intelligence broken down into three components. IQ: can you learn and retain information? EQ: can you control your emotions under pressure? Your natural reaction to the unknown is to react with the right side of your brain — emotionally. Your left side — logic — controls it, because you know intellectually that it's a man in a bear suit and not an actual bear. And then the third one, which the SAS call Rapid Intuitive Experience — RIE — is basically how you make decisions. You make a decision, and if your IQ is high you make an intelligent decision. If your EQ is low you make an emotional decision. So you might shoot the wrong person. The way you overcome that is by developing RIE — which is knowledge. Learning, and learning, and learning. Therefore you make more good decisions than poor ones. So in the recruitment process, you're absolutely right — the first thing we look at is intelligence. Because ultimately, the acronym behind your head is both a deal qualification process and a communication methodology. And you need to be pretty smart to execute it well. 14:54 Andy Sadler: And to bring in the science-versus-art point — it is a scientific approach, the way we implement it. But here's the thing: I can ask you outright, "Hey Andy, what's your personal win?" And you don't necessarily have to tell me directly. But if I've got to know you personally — if we've shared some things, you've shown some vulnerability and I've responded to it — and then I say, "Hey, why are you doing this?" and you tell me, you've told me in a different way. Now we can write down all the questions, and we could get a 24-year-old to ask exactly those questions — and they're not going to get the same answers. So it's about both science and art coming together. 15:44 Andy Whyte: I love the way you articulated that. And I think people listening to this — I can just imagine people nodding along. It's very rarely articulated so eloquently. And I genuinely believe this deeply. And there are so many different bits of psychology that go into building that rapport, that relationship, that credibility — earning the right to allow that person to open up to you. And it comes back to what we were saying a moment ago: having the ability to know that you've earned the right to engage in that kind of emotional exchange. 15:44 Andy Sadler: And I actually lecture on this at Imperial College. So funny — I'm in this lecture theatre at Imperial College, maybe 150 or 200 MBA students. I say: "Quick question — how many of you want to go into sales?" Nobody puts their hand up. Cool. "How many of you want to go into business?" Everyone puts their hand up. "Interesting. Can you define business?" "Well, we offer this service..." "Great. Who do you offer it to?" "Clients." "Great. How are you going to interact with them?" Let me demystify this for you: you're going to generate pipeline — through marketing or whatever it is — and eventually you'll sit down and agree a contract. "Yeah, yeah, that's right." "That's selling." "Wow." "So how many of you want to go into sales now?" — and 150 people put their hands up. And the acronym behind you is the secret sauce to what they don't teach at university, what they don't teach at business school. Although I actually believe they should. In America, they do teach sales at business school. But in England, you go to a dinner party and someone asks what you do: "I'm in sales." — oh. "I'm in, er, what do you do?" -- "I'm a sales guy." -- I'll talk to him later. So it's kind of strange, the psychology behind it. And in my opinion it's all wrong. 18:29 Andy Whyte: Yeah, it's one of my pet subjects. It does have a certain stigma — which I think is on us to fix, by the way. But there is an upside to that dinner party dynamic: if you just say you're a salesperson, people leave you alone. Good tactic. But seriously — when you spoke about earning the right to ask the question — a lot of junior people you see on LinkedIn with their job titles shy away from what they're actually there for. 19:17 Andy Sadler: And I — look, if I get brought in on a deal, partly because I've got a bit of grey hair — I will genuinely say: "Hey, I'm trying to sell you some software. But I'm only going to sell you the software if there's something in it for you." And that transparency, I think, earns the right to continue at that level. Whereas sometimes people try to present themselves as something else — and it doesn't help them when it comes to champion building, because that lack of transparency will hurt them. They've not been clear and direct. 20:02 Andy Whyte: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I always take the mickey out of people who have those "Industry Insight Consultant" type titles on LinkedIn, because I always say: what are you actually expecting to happen? That you're going to provide some free consultancy and then slip in an order form, and the customer is going to say: "You're a salesperson! Oh, well — you got me. I'd better sign." What's actually going to happen — and we know this — is the customer says: "Thank you very much, that was really useful. We'll consider it." And you're standing there going: "Wait — what? Where's my order form?" 20:43 Andy Sadler: Yeah, yeah. Let me bring a real-life example into that. I was on a call again this morning with a gentleman I've recently promoted from an SDR role. It's his first role as a quota-carrying salesperson — he's very excited. And the driver, as with all people in that position, is: he doesn't want to be embarrassed. So he's gone from being an amazing qualifier — where in SPIN terms, and in the I of MEDDIC — the identification of pain — he was situationally excellent and was taking pain through a process. He was brilliant at it. And now he's a sales person. And what's happened is: he's identifying pain in the situation and immediately solving it with answers. And he's wondering why his pipeline is drying up. It's the ego of "I'm not just a salesperson, I'm a consultant — therefore I've got the answers." As opposed to: your job in the I of MEDDIC is to understand why is that important to you, and is that a pain, is that a problem? Why is that a problem? You know, I've been asked really simple questions before — which means this line is closed, these are open — and you're talking and giving data that gets lost. In my opinion that's one part of MEDDIC that isn't complete enough: just the identification of pain. And I'll be honest — I've pulled in many different processes for each of the stages in the I. I've spent a long time on that piece. 22:38 Andy Whyte: And I think if you look at the reason why people are hiding the fact that they're a salesperson — in their LinkedIn profile, in their persona and their behaviour — it's because they're not confident enough in themselves, in their proposition, in the value they bring. So they're putting themselves on the back foot, into defence mode. And your point about the gentleman you've promoted — what I like about that example is it shows a scenario where he's engaged in an opportunity, and because he hasn't yet been through enough cycles of winning deals and seeing the value he delivers, his persona instantly goes to: "I need to keep this customer interested. They've got a problem. I need to show I can solve it." Whereas you and I know — when you dig deeper, the problems compound. That's why I go from the I — identify — to the implication of pain. Because that's where the customer shifts from "Yeah, I have this problem, and it would be nice to solve it" to "Oh. That's how much it's costing me. That's more than I ever thought" to "OK, please just stop talking. Put the proposal in front of me. I need to solve this immediately, if not sooner." 23:38 Andy Whyte: And I think that really comes back to confidence — just being confident enough to sit there a little bit longer, dig a bit deeper, and just... lean in a little more. And I always use this analogy to set the mindset. Have you seen the film Limitless with Bradley Cooper? 23:38 Andy Sadler: Don't think so. 23:38 Andy Whyte: OK. It's one of my favourite films. Without spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it — briefly: Bradley Cooper plays an author in New York who's completely down and out. He's missed his book deadline, his girlfriend leaves him. He meets an old friend who's gone from drug dealer to something more polished. And this friend gives him a pill called NZT, which basically takes your brain from operating at 4% of its capacity to 100%. You can learn a language in an hour. You can learn kung fu. You can learn to play classical piano. You can master the stock market. And I always say to people: as a salesperson, in the role you're in, you should feel the same way about your product as someone selling NZT would feel. Because if you're selling a product and you don't genuinely believe it's the best out there, and don't feel it delivers huge value to your customers — you're in the wrong company, and potentially the wrong job. You shouldn't be selling something you don't believe in. 25:34 Andy Whyte: So put yourself in the position of someone selling a pill with no side effects that takes someone's brain from 4% to 100%. If I was selling that to you and you started going, "Yeah, I'm not really sure — it's £100 a pill, and I can get a kick from a £4 coffee" — I'd be like: see you later. I'm moving on to people who value my time and are qualified. And I think if everyone had that mindset in sales, we wouldn't feel the need to hide what we are. We'd be much more credible, much more confident, and much less of everyone's time — customers' and salespeople's alike — would be wasted. 26:23 Andy Sadler: You've cast yourself as the drug dealer in that analogy. 26:23 Andy Whyte: Ha — I'll use the term dealer! Yeah. I mean it's not the most... yeah. But I think it's a fun analogy because it just puts you in the mindset of: if I had something like that — just black and white, no question about it, supremely valuable — you'd behave completely differently to how we sometimes behave as salespeople. 26:46 Andy Sadler: And we've got behind us all of these case studies, proof points, and metrics that really show we deliver value. So we should just lean into that. Be a bit more confident with it. 26:46 Andy Whyte: Yeah, agreed. Cool. So my other favourite type of analogy — and I think it's one that'll be right up your street as a former professional footballer — and when I say football, I mean the game the world calls football, except for one continent that refers to it by a different name — the game you play with the ball at your feet. You were a former professional player, a long time ago. And what I love about the opportunity to talk to you about this is: I'm kind of famous for my analogies, and the one right at the top of my list is the football analogy. For me it fits so beautifully with our craft, our industry — how we go to market, how we act, how we recruit. Is there anything from that background that you specifically look for in potential hires? 27:43 Andy Sadler: Yeah. Two points on that. First, I'll shout out a good mate of mine, Bruce. He was my first manager at PTC — he was my AVP when I was about 25 or 26, and Bruce is only a couple of years older. We were recruiting, and I kept trying to recruit number nines and number sevens. And he said: "Sometimes every team needs a Gary Neville." I've just never forgotten that. And whether I've been a first, second, or third-line manager, I've always kept that analogy in mind: you do need to build a team. If you build a team of all number nines, you'll probably fail — they'll eat each other. I mentioned recruitment earlier, and I gave you the number one criterion: intelligence. The second is coachability. And you're right — my sporting background was hugely valuable in my professional career. Because when you're playing sport, you spend 99% of the time on the training pitch and 1% in competition. And another great mentor of mine, Mark Cranney, always says: if you've got eight hours to chop down a tree and you've got an axe, what do you do? You spend seven and a half hours sharpening the axe and half an hour chopping. Not eight hours chopping. 29:49 Andy Sadler: So to the simple analogy: spend the time in the classroom, the strategy room, the boardroom, at the whiteboard. And that's where that battlefield analogy comes in. But to do that, you have to have discipline. When you're coaching seven-year-old footballers, they just want to run on the pitch and you can't stop them. Let them run. But if you've got a group of 17-year-olds, they'll sit down, listen, strategise, and understand what it means. And that's the analogy you're referring to — we have to have the mentality of: stop, learn, then go forward. And part of that is being ready to answer. If somebody says: "Why wouldn't I use this?" and you don't know the answer, the default question should always be: "Why is that important to you?" But ultimately, you're going to need to know your Metrics. And a metric isn't just a number — it needs to be a number that matters to the customer, anchored to a reference case study you can point to. Otherwise it's just a hollow statement. 31:10 Andy Sadler: And if you take that further: how did that customer achieve that outcome? Now we're into Decision Criteria, the technical element. You need an example of it in action. Now we're into Champions — and we're hoping our champions aren't just defending the original justification for the purchase, but actively defending the metrics and the economic value in the deal on our behalf. So learning MEDDIC isn't just learning a qualification checklist. As I keep saying, it's a communication methodology. And it takes a long time to master. When I was at BMC — when BladeLogic was acquired — we weren't necessarily finding the right salespeople through the standard recruitment process. So we decided to build them. I built a postgraduate programme. Literally three months in a classroom. Three months in a classroom, roughly 85 assessments across that process. Then three months in the field. And then a final exam, a qualification, and a promotion. And that was testing the very theory we're both discussing — is it a learned trait, or is it an art? My argument: it can be taught. Therefore it can be learned. Therefore it can be broken down. 33:09 Andy Sadler: I can't remember how many modules we had across those three months, but the maths works out. And we successfully did it. We ran it for three years, ten people a year. These people had no commercial background whatsoever — they were recruited straight out of Imperial or London Business School. And they were taught MEDDIC, Power Base Selling, everything. Some of them have gone on to have amazing careers. So that's a long answer to: what did I take from my background as a structured athlete into a structured business context? 33:57 Andy Whyte: Yeah. But there's so much in that — because the fundamentals, over time, remain the same. If we're talking about football, we're talking about movement, touch — those things remain constant. What changes around them might be formations, maybe wingers become a huge part of the game and then it swings back to the centre. And to me that's the same thing we see in our industry. Things like social media arrive. The internet means customers arrive much more informed than they were before. But the fundamentals always remain the same. And what's fascinating is you mentioned MEDDIC, but you also mentioned Power Base Selling and SPIN Selling — two frameworks that I think have been around longer than I've been selling, certainly in the case of Power Base Selling or SPIN. 34:54 Andy Sadler: Absolutely. And here's how I use them: I'll take 30% of SPIN and inject it into the I — the pain identification part of MEDDIC. I'll take 40% of Power Base and put it into the Champion element. And into the competitive differentiation part as well. And a bit of Power Base goes into the Economic Buyer too, because Power Base was very much about job titles and formal authority. But authority has changed. You can have influence without authority. You can have influence with no authority whatsoever — and an influencer with no formal authority could have the influence to shape the economic buyer. So when we talk about the EB, the thing that has genuinely changed over time is this: the Economic Buyer used to be: who has final discretion? Who has the ability to say yes or no? Not necessarily the person who writes the cheque — the person who has ultimate decision-making authority. And then at PTC we'd say we had to meet them. And in a structured, concentrated organisation — manufacturing company in Blackburn, say — the engineers are on this floor, the manager on this one, the CEO in the next building — that was relatively straightforward. 36:39 Andy Sadler: But with digitalisation and globalisation, the economic buyer could be in China. We're not flying to meet every EB. So in my implementation of MEDDIC, I modified that to: who is the EB, and can we access them via direct contact or via influence? So we build an influence map on all of our deals. We need the EB named. We need to have triangulated that that person genuinely is the economic buyer. And then: can we establish an influence line to the EB? And influence lines are often invisible. The influence line could be inside or outside the organisation, and inside or outside the deal you're working on. We have a deal at the moment — I won't mention it — but we're using a technology partner company to access the EB via that company. We're essentially leveraging their influence line. Because in Power Base terms, influence means value plus recognition. Value was delivered by this partner. The EB recognises that the value came from this partner. That's the influence line. So: in pure science terms — we get to the partner, we leverage their influence line. How? We deliver value to the partner. They recognise it, they're happy. And they take us straight to the EB. So we cut through all the internal politics of the organisation, and the EB receives us directly. The best salespeople in the world, in my opinion, are using influence to navigate organisations — not necessarily the formal org chart. 38:22 Andy Whyte: And the thing you nailed there, which I think so many people miss, is: what you've just described is elite-level selling. It's a zoomed-out, collaborative approach. That person working on that deal is involving you, maybe others in the team, to get different perspectives and viewpoints. And you're going outside the organisation too. You're leaving no stone unturned — in what is, as you said a moment ago, quite a difficult process: getting access to or engagement with the economic buyer. But your approach shows you recognise how critically important it is, and so you're willing to do the work. It's like the extra mile in customer service — there's less traffic there. People often say to me: "It's really hard to get to my EB." And I say: "Good. You wouldn't want it to be easy — because then all that additional great work would be devalued." And it's not just about beating your rival to the EB — the economic buyer by nature will have a number of initiatives and a finite budget. So it's about bringing that value credibly enough that you're more likely to have a successful outcome. 39:36 Andy Sadler: Let me give you a really simple example of influence. Let's say someone — let me use a real name — Luca is a good friend of mine. I've known him for a very long time. Luca is interviewing someone called Johnny for a role at Sprinklr. Luca calls me up and says, "Hey, I'm interviewing Johnny tomorrow — I see you're connected. How do you know him?" And I don't know Johnny that well, but I trust someone who does, and I call them. They tell me: "Oh God — Johnny is really bad for these specific reasons." I feed that back to Luca. Luca trusts me. I trust him. Value, recognition — there's the influence line. And Johnny is sitting there going: "What happened? I covered all Luca's direct reports. They all think I'm great." That's a real-life example of influence happening all the time, in both directions. And I've been in the industry long enough now that a lot of the people who were engineering managers when I started are now CTOs or CEOs. It becomes a pretty narrow market eventually. No more than two or three steps away from anyone if you use your network. 42:00 Andy Sadler: And part of that is understanding the decision process inside the deal. You have to map it out — because if you've got the wrong economic buyer, you're already lost. And if you don't know who the EB is — that's lazy selling. You're not the first organisation to sell to that company. Go and find the friend who sold to them before. That learning is probably very quick to obtain, and it will save you a world of pain. 42:54 Andy Whyte: Exactly. And likewise — bringing it back to the Johnny example — if Johnny had a good champion in that process, at least there's a chance they'd have heard about the third-party reference check in advance and been able to get ahead of it. We've probably all had a situation in our careers where things didn't work out somewhere, and there's a less-than-glowing reference available from that place. And the same applies to sales: there might be one customer where implementation didn't go perfectly, or a product didn't perform as hoped. Understanding that pool of references — and using your champions to stay on top of where buyers are looking and who they're talking to — is equally important. 43:56 Andy Sadler: Absolutely. And one of the key parts of champion development — the second step, building — is: you need to teach your champion objection prevention. Not just how to handle objections that might come up — how to prevent them from arising in the first place. Whether it's "This is going to be too expensive" — rather than being ready to handle that objection yourself, put it in the hands of the champion so it never becomes an objection at all. "You're probably thinking this is expensive. Let me tell you why it's not." A champion isn't just a champion — they're a salesperson who works for you on the inside. They defend your cause. Which means you've recruited them. And that means your responsibility to develop them is every bit as real as a formal team member — just without the paycheck. So there's nothing more important than champions. But you'd be surprised how many people go from thinking they've identified a champion, to using the champion, to the champion failing — and then move on. What they missed was developing the champion. That's no different to recruiting a new salesperson, skipping their product training, putting them straight in the field, watching them fail every discovery meeting, and then firing them. It's actually your fault as the manager — you never developed them. 45:07 Andy Whyte: I could not agree more. And there are so many parallels there with how we enable our teams to go to market. And I know you're a fan of Command of the Message from the Force Management side of things — stemming from those PTC days. Although — and this is the first time I've heard this — 45:07 Andy Sadler: I don't believe in the word "command." Some guy changed it at BMC to "Lead the Message." 45:07 Andy Whyte: "Lead the Message" — I like that, actually! 45:44 Andy Sadler: Yeah. "Command" was a PTC term — we did have command and control back then. And look, me and John Kaplan can argue all day long about that. 45:44 Andy Whyte: But I think, you know, I would pay to see that. With all this white-collar boxing content floating around, I'd love to see two of the greatest sales leaders of all time square off — "Command of the Message" versus "Lead the Message", Andy Sadler versus John Kaplan. Maybe people can hit up the LinkedIn comments if they want to see that.46:14 Andy Sadler: Ha! Although — he's a bit bigger than me. 46:14 Andy Whyte: You've got your athletic background though. 46:14 Andy Sadler: That's true, that's true. Good point. I think it'd have to be an MMA fight rather than boxing. Yeah. Look, he's been an incredible inspiration to me throughout my career — that's no secret. Big shout-out to Mr John Kaplan — Mr "Uncommon," as his catchphrase goes. Love it. 46:33 Andy Whyte: Indeed. Well, Andy, thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure. Like I always say with these things — for me it's just a great chance to learn from the best. And no doubt about it, today my deal qualification ability — or whatever you want to call it — has grown. So thank you so much for your time. 47:26 Andy Sadler: Thank you very much. And yeah — if there's anyone listening who's earlier in their career and wants to join a great company — I'm always recruiting. 47:26 Andy Whyte: You must do hundreds of interviews a year. 47:26 Andy Sadler: Yeah, yeah. Thousands of applicants. Absolutely. And one of the things I hope is coming across is: I believe it's about development and learning. And the best role in sales is the Sales Development Rep. Why? Because it's the safest place to learn. People have a lot of stigma attached to it — "all they're doing is inbound qualification" — and I'm like: no, no, no. The average SDR at Imply starts at 27. The average length of stay as an SDR in the industry is six months before they get promoted. Because I believe in sales development — they are being developed. That's the point. 48:19 Andy Whyte: Brilliant. I love that. So yeah — if this show has made you want to apply, go for it. 48:19 Andy Sadler: We're recruiting. But I want to build from within. Right? All the best teams in the world — if you go back to those debates about football — go back to Alex Ferguson, or go back to Liverpool and talk about Bob Paisley — they all built from within. That's what I want to do. That's what I've done in my career and what we do at Imply. 49:05 Andy Whyte: And I know one thing from having known you for as long as I have, Andy — if you're successful in this industry, you earn very good money. And so it becomes a point where it's about more than that. And I can tell by the way you conduct yourself and build these great teams that it's about legacy over currency. And if you think back on everything we've touched on today — from the PTC days through to BladeLogic and that whole network of success that proliferated from it — I always say to young, enthusiastic people getting into this industry: you want to attach yourself to the next BladeLogic. That kind of role is an apprenticeship. And an SDR role at Imply must be one of the best apprenticeships out there right now. 49:51 Andy Sadler: I know you can. I've got a lot of LinkedIn recommendations and you can speak to anyone who's worked with me. But: don't go into leadership unless you genuinely want to develop people. If you go into leadership for the income — you'll get equity, yes, you'll get stock. If that's what you want, that's fine. But if you had a choice of working under a manager like Alex Ferguson versus being a number nine for a manager at a League Two club — you'd take the apprenticeship every day of the week. Not just because of the platform, but because of the pure process around personal development. As opposed to an organisation that might just be about execution. The legacy — I genuinely believe the only legacy, in the end, is the people. That sounds very high-minded, but I mean it sincerely. If you've done a good job, you'll have a number of people who worked for you who've gone on to do extraordinary things. And that's the only meaningful thing you can leave behind. 51:03 Andy Whyte: Yeah. Absolutely. And the other thing I'll add — working for even a year as an SDR at Imply is going to give you ten times the enterprise sales exposure you'd get from being at an expense management software company or a document management company, because the level of selling you're exposed to is going to be so much richer. All right. 51:31 Andy Sadler: Take me out of the equation. Pick the right leader. That's the right call. And if you're going to get into this, you need to pick the right team. Salaries are just the entry fee. To be a student of the game — and I mean genuinely: it means you continue. And I've got these books on my desk because I was literally saying to someone earlier — you need to know. And this is why I don't like people treating MEDDIC as just a company thing. It isn't. It's a personal thing. It's what you do. It's how you behave. It's how you communicate, how you use your language, how you use your time and your words, how effective you are at delivering value. It's not a company thing. And there are too many companies, genuinely, that have coined it and adopted it just as a company-level label. And yeah — that's probably my closing statement.52:21 Andy Whyte: I like it. You finished how you started — consistent. That's a good place to wrap up. Thank you so much, Andy. It's been an absolute pleasure. I can already hear people hammering my inbox wanting to get you back on. So I'm sure we can dig into more of these topics again in the future. 52:21 Andy Sadler: Would be great. Alright. 52:21 Andy Whyte: Cheers. Thanks, buddy. 52:21 Andy Sadler: Thank you sir. Cheers.