welcome to another episode of Glide chat my name is Mike Lombardo CEO of Glide fast sitting with me is Chad Woods our chief Revenue officer yeah you bet excited to be here Chad welcome to the team man I appreciate it absolutely appreciate it so um man Chad you are a servicenow OG as they like to say how long how long have you been in the servicenow space uh so look I think it was 2012 uh when I joined service now um you know prior to being at servicenows at Microsoft for a long time uh Microsoft was fantastic I had a lot of fun there it really taught me how to operationalize my business yeah I got to a point at Microsoft where uh we were killing it yeah but it wasn't showing up in the earnings announcements right yeah yeah yeah so we're kind of a you know yeah we're a small fish in a really big pond okay I made the decision back in 2012 to join service now uh my wife thought I was going through mid-life crisis she's like who in the hell is serviced now yeah all my friends know who Microsoft is why would you ever leave I said look I want to be a part of something great and I think service now has the opportunity to do that so joint servicenow 2012 and we were Off to the Races after that how did you hear about servicenow yeah yeah you bet so John Akers uh has been a long time friend of mine known John for a couple years uh I ran the commercial sales team at Microsoft uh he ran the overlay team or the product specialist team at Microsoft him and I were business partners fantastic relationship he had heard about servicenow he made the decision to leave Microsoft to join servicenow um and about six months later he convinced me that at least needed to consider the option so wow and what year is that 2012. 2012. that was a that was like right after basically I got I got I was a customer sure but and I got exposed to service now 2011. yeah 2012. so certainly early early like Aspen Berlin released Berlin yeah that's amazing Calgary Dublin oh man yeah Geneva yeah you can name them all oh man that's so wild how and you know I'll tell you every one of those releases are like it felt like night and day from the ones before it was incredible man it was such a velocity yeah I described service now as this perfect convergence between a a world-class uh Product Company in a world-class go to market or sales organization it was literally the perfect convergence of a product that just worked and delivered release after release after release and then a go to market or a sales organization that that really was where the rubber uh met the road on helping customers execute against that that's so I think we sometimes take it for granted yeah right because so I don't know if you know as early days at Glide fast one of my one of my servicenow customers said hey we know you don't do Salesforce but I want you to do it and I was like okay it was like literally yeah one of our first customers so we we dipped our toes in the space and I was like all right I'll give it a shot started looking into it and you know the UI I I think it's improved over the years but the UI was like so outdated and and I I started to try to figure out like why why was service now like because the Aspen Berlin release was was one UI and then they kept upgrading the UI kept getting better and better and I was like why couldn't Salesforce do that and I think it came down to the technology that Salesforce was built on was like you know 15 years older 20 years older and and the service now you know the whole system platform was built just a little bit later where it was able to scale yes yeah so you absolutely nailed it so so Salesforce so being a part of a SAS company like servicenow yeah we we owe a lot of you know credit back to Salesforce they're really the first yeah they paid the way in a lot of ways what what Salesforce should have done before servicenow went public because they should acquire them they should they should acquire them and they should have you know uh quietly re-platted their customers onto the now and onto the now platform you know at the end of the day Salesforce you know uh is it's a good product but it's a relational database that's core and servicenow at its core is a workflow engine exactly that's how they it's scalable yeah it's just scale it's an application development platform where Salesforce was really built in a box that's right yep um did you ever see that leaked document uh it's probably from Salesforce uh yeah so Colin Powell yes yes the DNC right they had the DNC and they they found one slide that that for those who don't know uh had like acquisition targets from Salesforce um and servicenow is one of the main ones yes that's right that's right and there was another one there like I think it was mulesoft that actually ended up being an acquisition you nailed it yeah wow so the irony and all that the person on their board that should know security better than anybody else's is Colin Powell who's you know he's he's a great leader yeah of this great country yeah but he's the one that allowed that to be leaked so yeah wow yeah I remember seeing that come out and that was like that was uh that's what I love about the service now space man it's just like it's just like drama it's action it's like everything you know you want in in in like life and like I'm not one that keeps business and personal separate For Better or Worse it's just everything together like last night I had my daughter at a sales dinner because we went to the Celtics game I love that and I and uh you know people from service now and some customers were going I said hey you want to grab dinner I'll be with my daughter but you know and it so for better or worse I just kind of blend it all together but so so it's for better the the people the people that really excel in this life are the ones that take their personal passions yeah and they're able to they're able to interweave that into their professional career yeah you know I I joke with people from time to time that yeah I got a Natural Curiosity about people I'd love to compete right my spirit is really just energized by by competing uh there's a lot of things I could have done but but you know sales and go to market just really enables me to scratch that itch every single day yeah I mean you you uh kind of set the bar I mean I I've always uh looked up to you but whether you know it or not from from afar you're too kind yeah and and when I'll tell you when I met you at that dinner we just talking about earlier and just to see like your team around you and just just the amount of respect people have for you and and the humbleness you had I was like you know I thought at that dinner I remember thinking like man I love this guy one day to to Lee Glide fast and I just kind of chopped enough to be in a pipe dream but uh look I I I I appreciate that I've been so damn blessed just the people I've been surrounded by you know that God is good yeah he is oh my gosh he is so good he is absolutely so good and uh when I look at the things that we have accomplished as a as a team it was because a team it was the culture that we built yeah and you know something um you know somebody told me a long time ago you you deserve the team that you have yeah and I don't know what I'd I've done to preserve the people I've been surrounded by yeah I'll tell you what I'm so damn grateful well yeah it's like what comes first it's like I just did a little presentation to uh servicenow solution Consultants of like they they like don't talk about service now don't talk about Glide fast just talk about your journey and all that and you know as I'm like talking through it I didn't actually prepare for the presentation it's like I should have but um as I'm talking through it and they're like you know what what was yourselves like I was just fortunate enough that the people I surrounded myself with early on at Glide fast and continuing were just hard workers good people super intelligent experts on the platform and of course I'm going to be successful yeah you know what I mean I surrounded myself with the right people and I think you know the value that I brought to the table was I had the expertise to know who was like good on the platform I didn't have to rely on anyone else you know I was a developer myself I knew how to interview I was on projects I was in a position to be successful but I have nothing without the people around me yeah yeah you being a practitioner yeah gives you immediate street cred right yeah yeah yeah but what you also have you have this intensity this intensity about you right it's that intensity that you have is incredibly infectious yeah people want to match that intensity yeah and when people start matching your intensity and they have that propensity to take action yeah right yeah holy cow the sky's the limit there are so many people that are highly qualified but they don't have that intensity they don't have that propensity to take action and they over analyze and they I know overthink and I just do it and the competitors they Zoom right past them I know yeah I'm addicted to a child like I'm really I'm addicted and it's a good addiction I guess right it's not like it's not drugs or alcohol it's you know I'm addicted to just like I just love Glide fast I like think about where in the and you know you've been in it since 2012. we're at the Forefront of of the world's greatest and largest company companies transforming their entire business it's amazing I mean it's like it's once in a lifetime opportunity because it is like I don't think ever again all these companies you know that have these 20 30 40 year old processes are gonna make these Investments to modernize and digitize and I don't think they'll need to again in the future right it just yeah just yeah so when they make a decision on service now and they they make a decision to partner with cloudfast that really is a 10-year plus decision yeah you know they're not they're not going to go through the effort and energy to transform digitally choose you know servicenow as one of the very few strategic uh platforms to be able to standardize on and then make that decision in three years or five years there's a lot of interesting Technologies out there yeah the devops space has a number of categories but those are those things aren't necessarily commoditized but they're things that are really really easy for people to pull in and plug something else yeah exactly pull in and pull out yeah it doesn't matter what it is in service now it's just been it's just it's just it's a 10-year decision at the very minimum and then servicenows CJ decides the most brilliant product leader in the industry by far shout out to CJ yeah his his ability to continue to come up with interesting and unique applications to build a drive of efficiencies and how people actually get work done it's been brilliant it has been absolutely brilliant it's never ending I mean it's like is there ever going to be an end I don't know I mean that's like what's the next service now I think it's servicenow yes that's the answer because like if you asked me five years ago would we be you know implementing you know all these services for for citizen state governments you know and would we be you know this Montana thing we're doing with livestock management and you know all all the exciting things around the different industry specific Solutions and just all these different use cases you know I just would have never imagined it you know it it started literally as Incident Management tickets and it's just evolved and and I just love that you know servicenow just knows there's such a long long road map to go yeah absolutely I couldn't I couldn't agree with you more it's uh that the future is incredibly broad it is yeah absolutely so um last question uh thanks for joining me by the way 100 um I'd love to love to give our people looking to be you know maybe in your case uh sales leaders in the future sure maybe they're just breaking into the sales career what's some advice you could give them sure how to be a great sales sales individual contributor and then a sales leader yeah there's a lot of um there's a lot of really good attributes of a sales leader in my opinion uh you know uh Frank slootman Dave Steiner used to talk about this blue collar work ethic yeah right uh whether you went to Ivy League school or went to Public Schools you could still take that blue collar work ethics yeah so as a sales leader your ability to be able to demonstrate day in and day out that you have the willingness to roll up your sleeves right and when your seller goes through pain you go through pain with them yep right when your seller wins allow them to take the pedestal right and celebrate that uh those wins you know those are some of the key tenets of sales leaders um you know I personally think that you know uh one of my strengths if I'm gonna you know talk about the things I think I do well is I find the things that are incredibly complex and I simplify them yeah and then when you simplify them you can operationalize them to the point of making those activities repeatable and predictable yeah so sellers like to win right they like to win so if you can create velocity in the amount of wins that they have that at the end of the day has a huge impact not only on customers but the the other folks in the organization yeah yeah absolutely that's awesome so yeah I mentioned propensity to take action I I know that when I'm recruiting people one of the things I'm looking for is that propensity to take action I don't want people to to spend a lot of time overthinking things yeah yeah just go just go and um you know there's that saying if uh you know if you fail soon enough you have a chance to actually fix it yeah yeah you know if it fail don't do it again and then try something else right yeah mistakes are okay just try not to do it again that's right that's it and it's awesome all right Chad thank you for joining me on glide chat I appreciate the opportunity that's awesome you're gonna have a lot of fun oh it's gonna be great I can't wait absolutely and uh make sure you guys like And subscribe to us on YouTube Spotify and apple thanks guys thanks Mike appreciate it [Music] foreign [Music]