welcome to another episode of Glide chat my name is Mike Lombardo with me is Charlie Sullivan and what's your exact titles uh eight commercial AE yep Boston special I.E covering uh Boston Metro Boston Metro let's go let's go Metro Boomin I met him uh at a Celtics game I know I've seen that picture yeah he's cool yeah with all like Steve Aoki and everything but um Charlie you and I met oh um man there's gonna be like two or three years ago now yeah it's been a minute yeah and on on uh a long burn Slow Burn deal yep I I give you a lot of credit for your patience but it was a big one it was a big Telco um and I I have to tell you Charlie at the time you were inside sales when I found out you were an inside sales rep I was like floored because you're just such an amazing rep like you just kept you're cool you um you were patient you're communicative to everybody and I just want to just congratulate you for being such an awesome rep no appreciate it Mike so how long have you been in service now I've been at service now I think uh coming on five years yeah five years five years it's crazy moved out to uh Boston for the roll yep and I've been here ever since and where are you from originally Cleveland Cleveland yep Cleveland race one and raised every time I hear Cleveland I think of um the uh The Drew Carey Show oh yeah I don't know why I just that's like well he's from Cleveland he's from okay and that that song is in the intro yeah exactly yeah I've never been to Cleveland it's a fun town yeah a bit smaller than Boston yeah but uh it's pretty it's weird we have an office in Cincinnati yeah which is like what three hours yeah big state oh yeah big state yeah a lot of farms you know one thing I noticed about you like I said you're just an amazing rep like right off the bat and I was really just super impressed and I was really happy to see you continue to get promoted what goes into being a good salesperson yeah no especially with early in career sales and yeah going up and uh I think one of the main things I learned a number of years ago was learned from the people around you yeah you know yeah and kind of build your relationships because this relationships become your network and the network allows you to advance in your career and allows you to keep on learning yeah no so that's it's such a big thing especially when everything's new to you yeah so that was what I focused on in the beginning it's just keep building relationships keep learning you know and you also learn from your customers yeah so that's another big thing yep um one time a customer told me he's like you can't have a conversation with me unless you know my business yeah so I took that to heart yeah I just really studied what they did and took a step back and I'll tell you you know it's funny you say that when you as soon as you said that I do you know Sean Baker yeah yeah I immediately thought of him because he is a a very large Fortune I think like 10 customers and did a whole presentation to Glide fast not even about the servicenow road map not even about the you know what he what what our goals are what the account presented the business and what their goals are and with their road map I've never seen anybody hit the nail on the head like that and just have that much understanding of it so it's funny you say that you're definitely your spot on well especially in this day and age I mean everything goes back to financial impact outcomes yep I mean I talked to someone yesterday and they had a deal where they gave like a couple demos yeah and I mean he said the only thing they focused on was strategic pillars and outcomes yeah so yep that's really I mean if you take a step back and just simplify things too yeah it goes a long way for the customer for just your complete understanding because servicenow can be such a beast and it's just a lot a lot I know so it's like like where do you start and uh it could be a little daunting yeah I think when I first started I was like what the hell am I doing yeah I know it's deep and wide too exactly it's not just like it's not like you're just focusing on customer service management and going down that rabbit hole it's like security and every it's like every aspect of every business exactly what about building trust like you're trying to sell somebody something I'm not trying to sell you something you don't need you you really do need this how do you try to like I feel like that trust trust is built over time you know it's not just like a one call no I'm gonna trust you yeah yeah exactly so I think being yourself being genuine um yep it goes a long way and that allows the customer to trust you quicker being straightforward uh and upfront with the customer right off the bat and just being communicative I think that's such a big thing underestimated too yeah yeah so just uh allowing that communication to go back and forth funny you said that because and I I went like this because I love this quote I I like made a whole thing around Glide fast around is trust equals consistency over time so to your point like you know one dinner one handshake one phone call is not gonna build anything but consistency being there you know and as challenges come up how you deal with that like how you deal with conflicts like you know these projects are not easy right these are these are we're digitally transforming large organizations a lot of them have had the same processes for decades and Legacy technology nobody wants to change so these are not easy projects like challenges are going to come up you know if I sit here and say you know we've never had a issue on a project you know we'd be lying right right and I learned this early on it's about how you react to the to the issues that come up that's what people notice you know if if a customer says listen you know I don't like the way this meeting or our daily stand-ups being run or I don't like the way the status reports are you know and if you just like in one ear and out the other you're not going anywhere well that that goes back to just active listening 100 one time um or like early days when I was still architecting we were re-implementing servicenows a super large project at like a fortune 15 company and it was like a six month project and we're about to go live and I'm just cleaning up production data like like uh demo data and I'm telling you like it's a day we're going live and I'm and I'm deleting like you know like blank users like just normal date you know like data cleanup and I did something where I deleted something I shouldn't have I deleted the wrong table and it wasn't something we could restore like I went down everything I was like oh no oh maybe I can get it from sub production no I can't do that different sys IDs or whatever it delayed go live right so I I found the solution the solution was I had to restore the instance from last night over a sub production then copy that data back over it was gonna take like two or three hours or something it was gonna delay go live and so I had a couple decisions I could try to sweep it onto the rug I could try to cross my fingers and hope it gets fixed before go live or nobody notices or I took the third option which I walked right into the cio's office and told her exactly what happened and I said here's the problem I messed up I do have a solution and here's where we're at yeah and I'll never forget she's like I want you to remember this moment in your career because what you just did you were honest you didn't sweep on the rug you found a solution as well and you know what we'll figure it out we'll get through it because I thought I was gonna get like fired I was like a little worried but I learned it's like be honest you know sweeping someone to the rug and then it grows and gets it gets worse is 10 times worse well that goes back to communication yeah being honest yeah I mean if you're not if you're not an honest person people are not going to want to work with you if you mess up once with that makes it a lot harder to build back the trust yeah why would an organization want to move off a legacy system to service now in your opinion well there's a lot of things I mean you see it today with uh efficiency gains and a lot of people moving to the cloud and uh it's really just trying to create that better experience for their end users whether it's customers employees so I think um a lot of these Legacy systems are outdated today's culture people are moving from company to company all the time yeah so how do we keep them here yeah create that that experience for them making sure that they're happy and uh the happier the employee the better results you're going to get from them and what collaboration you're going to get and the more business outcomes you're going to achieve from that so I think it really kind of starts there I totally agree where do you see yourself going in the future so you you've you've grown right from inside were you an ADR as well yeah so I started yeah started from the bottom now we're here now we're here let's go let's go where do I see myself going from here I think um it's a it's a process you know I think I need to earn my next step in my career yeah so and I have a lot to learn to get there but eventually leadership role and and growing up growing through the chain that way a lot of people were trying to get you out of that inside sales yeah right I know that was like a whole thing and then you had a big deal closing at the end of the year right so you had to yeah kind of hang on a lot of things going on yeah I was just morph patience and how's it been on the commercial team now unreal yeah it's been so fun it's a great team Griff's a great guy I mean it's it's yeah I think it's my favorite team I've ever been on really hands down it's funny because like him and Al are just like yin and yang they're like two different people but so uh for those who don't know Al's Chris Boss and Chris Christian boss but I I think they I I love it because you got like Best of Both Worlds you know oh yeah and you can learn from both of them yep different ways yeah so I mean yeah John is he's awesome yeah you can learn so much from him how many people are on your team uh there's six of us six eighties but then there's the extended team which is probably upwards of 20. you know who's your SC Ed Newman Ed Newman yeah he's been in the industry for the past like 30 years so if there's 80 hours out there inside sales reps that are looking to move up what's what's some advice you could give them to to get to the next level uh well one you gotta close business it all starts with that but I think results are huge you learn quick at servicenow is that it's a team win for sure I mean if you think we have so many products that we sell across the platform yep we have so many different um solution sales SCS leadership overlays overlays you know so it's how do we work together to make sure that it's best for the customer and and we want as a team here so I think going back to that over communication um and laying your plan out and having that strategic idea on how we can help them we'll work in working together so as you're saying that I'm thinking back to that that account that we work together and how many different people were involved in that it was it was a there was a lot of people involved in that oh yeah that one and uh happy to say it's you know it's going we're fast forward I think we're we're at least a year out of that oh yeah closure and it's still going on so going well and they're getting a lot out of the platform and work we're cashing all the checks that you wrote so you're welcome that's good that's awesome all right Charlie thank you for joining me on on glide chat what'd you think yeah it's a lot of fun let's go let's see it again [Music] thank you [Music]