EP. 23- Stop Automating Dysfunction: The Pre-Sales & GTM Evolution with Investor Mark Nix

Most SaaS leaders are betting big on AI right now.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: most of those bets won't pay off.

Not because the technology isn't real. Because the fundamentals aren't there.

I'm sitting down with Mark Nix, an executive with experience leading crossfunctionally across Solution Engineering, Product Strategy, Product Marketing and more and now more recently a Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital Venture. 

Mark has helped scale organizations from startups to global enterprises across multiple technology cycles, and he has a very clear-eyed view of what actually survives when the hype fades.

We're going deep on:

• How to evaluate real market potential vs. noise
• Why business process matters more than technology
• What most AI companies are getting wrong right now
• How presales and the FDE model are reshaping enterprise GTM
• And what Customer Value Realization actually means for the future of   
  pre and post-sales

If you're a CRO, VP of Solutions, SE leader, or a founder figuring out your GTM motion, this one is going to hit.

Elite Talent Recruiting helps B2B SaaS leaders hire high performing Pre Sales and Post Sales talent when speed and quality actually matter. 

We are on a mission to prove Pre Sales and Post Sales teams are just as crucial to revenue as offensive linemen are to quarterbacks. 

They accelerate sales, fuel growth, and help SaaS companies win bigger deals faster. 

We build SaaS GTM teams by headhunting top Pre Sales and Post Sales talent and delivering hires in 35 days or less, including Sales Engineers, Solutions Consultants, Solutions Architects, Customer Success, and Technical Account Managers. 

If your team is stretched thin, specialized roles are sitting open too long, or you are scaling fast and need reliable recruiting support that actually moves the needle, we help you hire the kind of talent that drives growth, innovation, and customer success without wasting months in interview chaos.

Check out our website: https://elitetalentrecruiting.io/

Connect with Arvi directly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvi-carkanji/ 

All other resources: https://linktr.ee/elitetalentrecruiting

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right. Welcome back, everybody, to Presales Unplug, the Leadership Playbook. I'm Arvi Kirkhandi, I'm the founder of Elite Talent, and I primarily work with task companies to hire top-tier pre-sales and post-sales talent. But today isn't about me. Really, the show is about the leaders that are building the go-to-market teams, the pre-sales teams, and the strategies that actually work in today's market. If this is your first time joining us, one quick note before we jump in, these conversations, the conversations are live and unintentionally unedited. So what you hear here today is real and exactly how it happened. We stream it live, but you can obviously catch a replay on our podcast across Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever your favorite platform is that you listen. And of course, if you do get value from today's conversation, just make sure to follow, subscribe, leave us a review. I honestly personally read every single one of them. And I also make sure that if there's any questions for our guests afterwards, to make sure to tag them on LinkedIn or get the answer for you so that I can make sure to share it. With that being said, today I'm super excited to be joined by Mark Nix. He's somebody with a very strong track record in the space. Not only has it been leading teams for quite some time, but he's also seen the investing side of things, which I'm actually really excited to dive into today. But thank you, Mark, for being here. I'm very excited to hear your story and just kind of dive into our topic.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Super. Thank you, Arvey. I'm very excited to be here with you and uh let's make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

For sure. Let's have some fun and of course, you know, share value. Um, first things first, I'd love to just honestly start a little bit with your story so your audience can understand where you're coming from a little bit and how did you end up in this wonderful world of pre-sales?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Sure. So um academically, uh background is physics and uh real passionate about how things happen and how things work. Um I was in the sales space, actually, with sales uh for a small software company, and um we also had responsibility then for kind of the showing and demoing of the product, and that grew. Um spent about 25 years in the ERP space, and then more of kind of the platform low-code, no code, and went from big companies to um smaller company space and really had a huge amount of fun in uh the smaller company size, which has kind of driven me to some of the things I do now, and um evolved um kind of into uh the VC and investment space uh where I'm a limited partner at uh stage two capital right now, which is a super exciting uh company in uh in the space.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I love that. And Mark, obviously, you've been around for quite quite some time. Uh, you've been through a lot of different cycles in your career. Most people, I feel like, have only maybe lived through one or two of those cycles. What patterns have you noticed that repeat themselves regardless of the technology?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So, great question. I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Moore and his technology cycles and how people buy and things like that. But with that, it in the SaaS space, it breaks down. I break it down into a couple different things. So, first of all, the excitement level. Yeah, someone has a new idea that they think that's gonna fundamentally change how business operates. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But if it gets traction, then there's always the big investment in capital. Um, and and that comes from a couple sides. It's not only companies getting into a space where they see an opportunity, uh, but it's also companies out there that have business issues, that see some traction, and they think that maybe that can solve it. And then we get into one of my favorites, which is FOMO, fear of missing out. And that may be a company that's looking at solutions, or it may be a player that you know wants to make sure they solve something. Um, and then that's where some of the craziness happens. You know, inflated expectations is always part of the cycle. So if you think about it, when you know cloud was the buzz, it was going to eliminate all IT complexity. You know, it was going to create that panacea. Well, we all know that that wasn't the case. And interestingly enough, uh, today AI is kind of in that same space where you know sometimes it's positioned to be the solution to every single business channel. You know, and and we all know that that's not the case. So, and then finally, you know, there's always the consolidation cycle that takes place. You know, there's some winners and losers, and you know, things commoditize, and then it's on to the next big thing and cycle. And and really that's happened across all the cycles I've been involved in, whether it's ERP or um CRM, SAS, you know, there was an interesting run with um kind of low-code, no-code solutions that then you know AI has creeped across and made a lot of those you know players and solutions um just not relevant anymore. So it's right. Everything kind of goes through that flow in that cycle, typically is what I see.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

That's very interesting. So, what I'd love to ask is when you're evaluating whether a company has like a real market potential, what are kind of like some of the first questions you ask that quickly tells you whether it's something real or maybe just like noise that might go away?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

So there's several questions that come to mind for me, and I always look from the go-to-market standpoint. So pretty straightforward. What problem are they solving? How painful is it, and can it be measured? So, you know, for for example, um, you know, maybe a solution, an AI solution that proactively um tracks weather and notifies a transportation company of delays and they've got thousands of orders in WIP. We know it's painful, we know we can measure it, and obviously it's very, very high value. Um then is the is the solution repeatable? So, in other words, you know, is it are there dollars and cents and opportunities for everyone involved? Because if if everything's a one-off, it's a consulting solution, it's not necessarily business solution. Um, and then kind of you know, finally, is you know, are businesses willing to invest to solve it? Yeah, because someone's gotta be willing to write a check for it. So, and really the strongest signals then for me finally is do you have a leadership team that can clearly articulate you know customer outcomes instead of just a CTO that's super super excited because they've got a cool technology? Yeah, and you've got to have the appropriate team then that can convey that. And then finally, you've got to be set up to scale because that's where the opportunity really sits.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, that's very interesting. A question I have for you based off of that is is there like I guess how how would a company know if it's too early to come in front of a VC versus not? Like if being, I mean, I would assume there's some times where the idea is really that good that you don't necessarily need sales to prove it, or I guess how are you guys evaluating if it's too early versus you know the right time?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Well, when I look at it how we evaluate and look, we want someone that um has a certain amount of a track record. Okay, they have customers, andor at least they have you know what I would refer to as development partners. You know, they may have um you know some signed letters of engagement with X number of people that um are excited and willing to invest and support a go-to-market, and and then you determine the kind of assistance they may happen to need. Is the value prop really unique? Is it focused? Is it a niche industry, um, you know, maybe business issue that you can see there's traction opportunity for everyone?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Very cool. That's awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. Uh, one thing that we were talking about offline, you mentioned the automating automating dysfunction, and you said that technology without process is really just automating dysfunction. How would you say can we help leaders you know recognize when their organization is doing exactly that and how can they fix it before they scale the wrong thing?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Well, part of that is tied to having the right business partners to be able to help them, but back to the original point: most failed transformations and deployments are process failures, they're not technology failures, at least if there's a level of competency and maturity. It's key that the process that's done under consideration for automation is the right process, and you're not trying to automate a bad process. And unfortunately, you know, that can be the case where AI is going to solve, you know, save the world, or a particular technology is going to save the world. And it's actually kind of set up an interesting trend in the marketplace that companies that have a strong sales motion that relies on value engineering in the discovery process. And um, you know, you see more and more, you know, where companies talk about in their go-to-market of a proof of value. So, how do we ensure it's the right process, optimized in the right way, and then truly proving that out as to how it meets a customer's needs, and that helps you avoid that automating you know, something that shouldn't be. I'll give you a great kind of historical example that kind of dates me a little bit. Back in the back in the day, there was something called finite capacity planning, which would take manufacturing work orders and optimize them into the perfect schedule. But you know, they would need to rely on a bill of material and you know a manufacturing definition. The majority of the time, most companies didn't have the level of accuracy they needed in their bill of material or andor in their manufacturing definition. So the what what I described is that you know that train is just going to hit the wall ten times faster because you don't have some of the basics down. Good data, good governments, you know, in that case, just an accurate bill of material and bill of resource. So it's it's it all kind of operates you know along the same lines. You gotta get the process right, you gotta get the re-engineering right, and then you can optimize and automate it.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

You know, one thing that comes to mind as you're saying this is obviously the startup world is like we always uh say it's chaotic, right? Because there's no systems, there's no processes yet. Well, maybe there is some systems and you know they're trying to implement processes. When you're growing a startup, is there like I guess what are your must-have like foundational things that you need to know, whether it's a leader or business owner, that you just can skip even as a startup?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

So from my perspective, that's where you've got an opportunity to rely on third parties. You know, if if you're a founder, who is your mentor? Who are the external eyes and ears that you look at that um kind of help clear the air of what may you know be perceived to be our art artificial exuberance and and things like that? So it goes back to you know those four to five questions, what are you solving and down that path. And and then finally, and actually something that's being written a lot more about is how do you properly scale everyone gets into the game for the most part these days, you've got this artificial exuberance and they're looking for this exit. Yeah, there's a path you need to be methodical about it from that, you know, from that perspective. If you take in too much capital, you know, you dilute your holdings and all of those things. So net net to bring it back full cycle, take advantage of mentors, take advantage of external resources, people that have done it before, if you have not, to ensure that you know you're not making the repeatable mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

That's very true. And I I think one of the biggest things that is a founder mistake, and obviously, you know, being a business owner myself, is when you're sitting in the seat itself and in a way you're driving, it's kind of hard to see the full picture of everything, right? So those mentorships, those advisors or fractional leaders that you're hiring really help you see because they're seeing it from in a way uh a different seed, you know, higher up, they're seeing the full picture versus you're just kind of focusing on the driving as you're going. So I do agree that mentorship is very, very important as a founder. I mean, no matter what kind of business you're in.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Well, and and and the final thing is none of this is new. We live, we live and operate in a um you know, startup, entrepreneurial world and space. And actually, the you know, we were talking a little earlier about my internet challenges that I had last night in a book that I that I picked up and was reading. And it's called Um Unlikely Entrepreneurs, um, wins, losses, and crucial crucial lessons building great companies, and it's all about stories of different startups, different founders, what they've done, what has worked, what hasn't worked. Yeah. There's lots of players and lots of opportunities for it.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Very true. Speaking of that, um, it's actually a great segue to my next question is right now with AI, everything is moving faster, right? You are able to start a business faster than it ever was before. But with that, I feel like the hardest part is differentiation. It's getting harder. Features are getting copied so fast. I mean, how, in your opinion, what is like a meaningful differentiation look like right now for a company that they're trying to stand out versus something that you know it's not necessarily going to stick around for too long?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Great question. So features and specifically AI capabilities, already we're seeing them become table stakes. There's a lot of buzz around it. Um, some people are delivering value, some aren't, but sustainable differentiation ultimately comes from successful customer experience that you can bring to the table in addition to the solution. People buy from people. What's your ecosystem background that you you know that you're able to provide? Do you have proof of adoption of your solution and ultimately measurable outcomes? Okay, no one's doing this for fun. You know, you're looking to be able to solve problems. Um for years, you know, software companies competed on product innovation who had the next bell and whistle. I remember when I worked for a company, and again, this goes way back, that didn't have net change MRP. We thought the world was gonna come to an end. No one cares about net change capability because the horsepower is out there to be able to run you know things like that. So it's so it's all change. Um, and today innovation is moving faster than custom customers can adopt those innovations. And it's really important to understand that. So the real competitive advantage again fundamentally comes down to, I believe, a company's ability to solve customers' problems with those technologies. And and again, back to you know, we we talked about you know some of the buzz we're seeing with proof of values, and that's where the demo isn't good enough anymore. Okay, just you know, that's that's table stakes. As a matter of fact, they don't even want to see a demo because they expect that all the research that they did, you know, they want and they asked Claude. So who is you know the best provider to do this, this, and this? And you know, show me demos. So if you're not out there, if you don't have those things, okay, it's a new world, it's a new world. Um you know, proof of concept doesn't provide differentiation anymore. Okay, that used to be the big play. Because at the end of the day, you know, a proof of concept addresses can a technology do what the vendor said it would do? Proof of value takes that dramatically to the next level. Not only does the technology work, does the technology work using my data and my environment? So they almost want to implement it as as part of the sales cycle. If you can do that, if you can cross that line in the kind of what the buyer's journey is now, that is real differentiation. And what I think is interesting and exciting about that is it's not about the technology, it's about the go to market, and it's how you execute.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

At the end of the day, companies are only gonna do that with with one partner, it isn't gonna be like what you used to do. Oh, okay, we're gonna do the RFP and we're gonna see five demos. You're gonna decide pretty early on in the evaluation of a partner. Hey, we're gonna do a proof of value. Yeah, not gonna do four of them. So it again, it really becomes a good market differentiator.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, that's that's very that's very good. And I I agree with it. I mean, it's it's really hard. Um, even the products right now, like you can, you know, search for one thing and get 10 different answers. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to the people that you're talking to. And did they provide the value that you're that you're looking for? And obviously, you know, I see that uh with the buying eye myself is on buying products or software, you know. Um, so totally agree with that. Is there uh based on like just your experience and what you've seen right now in terms of startups or just go-to-market differentiation, is there anything that you've seen right now that's like maybe really working well without you know busting any secrets or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

No, I I think it's the really the fundamental that we just talked through. I believe that everyone's got a commodity of technology, and it may be unbelievably innovative, but the secret sauce is the execution in the go-to-market because in enterprise sales, anyway, people buy from people, you know, they may be buying from a founder, and there's confidence and and whatever that may be. So out-execute your competitors, yeah, and you'll do well.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, no, that's that's fair. I wanted to shift focus a little bit to the pre-sales, and as we're talking about customer value, you've obviously spent a significant part of your career leading like solution engineering organizations. How has that role changed from when you started to, in a way, what's expected today from either the department or leadership itself in terms of pre sales?

SPEAKER_01 21:40

No, it's you know crazy the amount of change. I mean, there, you know, there's some fundamentals in what here's what hasn't changed a pre sales or solution engineer's responsibility is to help a customer. See solutions to their issues in your solutions. That hasn't changed. It's how you do that that has changed. So obviously, we've been talking about the role has evolved from just product demonstrations and supporting processes. It's all about business transformation. 20 years ago, it was only about the demo. We still want them to do that. We want to capture it and we want to make it available on demand. So that when you're out looking for your next solution and you're doing some research at two o'clock in the morning, and you ask Chat GPT for demos to such and such, that best in class demo and that content is there and available, but it's not a matter of that you're going to have an SC do that. So with that, we're seeing a huge amount of specialization across the entire go-to-market organizations because there's a lot of blurring as to what is pre-sales, um, you know, does it include some customer success, all different kinds of things. So that's pretty that's been changing pretty dramatically and very, very rapidly. Um, value engineering has been around for a while, it's just a specialization. Um, you know, demo engineers, it's not uncommon to see um pre-sales um supporting an enablement. The new kind of buzz term, so to speak, you know, is uh the uh the FDE or forward deployed engineering teams.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Which in reality, that's the start of some of the blur that's taking place between what's pre-sales and post-sales. Um, because at the end of the day, the customer doesn't care where the sale ends and the implementation begins. They they've got to focus their definition of success, you know, the the CEO, the CFO that makes a decision is when they see themselves getting business value out of that. And the hey, if we've got the pre-sales team, and then they do a handoff to a post-sales team, and then regardless of how good that term that handoff is from one group to the other, you know, an implementation team can't come in and say, All right, we're so excited to be here to implement new solution A. So let's start talking about how you run your business and what your business issues are, and that's been going on for decades. Yeah, not acceptable anymore. And that's why you know we see this blurring taking place. That's why typically a uh FDE team or FDE engineers, they're taking that configuration to the next level. They may even be doing it in a customer's environment. You know, so it's there's a big shift because there's a lack of trust. You know, we used to joke and say, oh, well, you know, when did you see that? Oh, well, that was in the demo.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's uh for sure. I was gonna say, in terms of the FDE role, like the four deployed engineers, first of all, there's been a 700% increase in companies hiring for FDEs, which is a very interesting fact I learned the other day. And it's I feel like, and kind of like what you mentioned, is first of all, that's been around for a long time. Um, second of all, we just change it to a new name now. Okay, cool, you know, like it used to be called maybe implementation engineer or something along those lines or integration engineer. And I feel like some companies have shouldn't even be calling it a forward deployed engineer because the title itself now is more expensive than the actual work that they're hiring for. And I think sometimes they don't understand, like I don't know, maybe just sounds cool to be hiring for a forward deployed engineer, unless they're truly doing like what a forward deployed engineer should be doing. Because sometimes I'll be jumping on calls and with potential clients and they're just describing to me what a post-sales like implementation person would do that's not necessarily a forward deployed engineer. So I thought that was an interesting fact. And I always encourage companies to, you know, really take a look at like what is that person going to do? Define your must-haves versus nice to have's. And just because it's a cool trendy title, you know, doesn't mean you should be paying more money for that person versus like somebody that's already been around for that long.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I that's a great point. And what I would kind of suggest that part of the conversation needs to be is what is the shift that's taken place in your sales motion that is driving you for this need.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

From my standpoint, yeah, you you think of you know of an FDE and what's that skill set, you know, they could be and could have a skill set kind of of what a demo engineer was that was building very customized solutions for a solution engineer to demo and show. The other side of it though is that if your business model is actually to be deploying um in a customer's infrastructure, yeah, then I do want someone with implementation level skills, yeah, governance, and and and all of those things. But it starts to go to um you know, what's the model, what's the skill set that's needed. In my opinion, the important part is to focus on what is the team of people that are needed to support that evolution and move from a POC environment to a POV environment. And then you can sort out kind of who's who in the zoo and and and what it takes to do it.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah, no, very true. And you mentioned this a little bit already, but I wanted to dive a little bit further into it. The the pre-sales and the post-sales lines are kind of blurring, right? We we do have a lot of startups that are hiring for somebody to be doing both. Um, or you know, obviously, as you grow a little bit more, then you can not necessarily just afford, but you know, you can split those roles up. Do you feel like we're moving towards more of a unified like customer-facing function? Or how do you see like the pre- and post-sales you know, functions moving forward?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Well, I think it it depends upon a particular company's business model and where is in their looking to scale early on, okay, the person that demos um absolutely could be implementing because the reality of it is that they could be a product manager, they could be, you know, they're wearing a huge number of different hats. Um I think the POV, you know, you look at POVs and you look at some of this blurring that's taking place, where that pivot is really stronger, is in the larger enterprise companies. So, for example, in uh my last companies where we did it and the lines were blurring, our reason for blurring them was is we wanted to ensure that we were driving, you know, it's a term that I use a lot, which is customer value realization, which starting in the sales cycle, what what were the goals, what was the vision, what were the business issues, and then ensure that um contract execution and what it takes to get to contract execution is you know just part of that golf swing. Okay, in in this day and age, customers don't want to like feel this oof, you know, we signed a contract, and now we're starting over again. Yeah, so the reason we went down a path, and I've gone down that that path, is you want to ensure that the outcome and the delivery of value is as hiccup free as possible. And that doesn't mean that hey, a solution engineer um then is involved in a go live. But what it means from my perspective is that they're involved well into um the design phase and you know some of those early points. It's gonna depend upon your technology, it's gonna depend upon the solution, but continuity um all the way out to the go live and gaining value, that's how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace. I've seen that be very effective in a competitive differentiation strategy because you know you'll you'll have a prospect that's like, oh, okay, so this is how this company operates. Or oh, so they introduced me to a totally separate implementation team and they're gonna come and meet me and they will learn about my business. That just doesn't apply anymore. It doesn't fly.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

No, I totally agree. I mean, I've been on that end of the buying side where it's been super split, and I repeat myself, you know, multiple times uh along with you know the post-sale side. And I will say, at least some of the companies that we worked with that have been really successful at pre and post-sale, sometimes they have the same leader managing both departments because they can see the full vision. Um, other times when they are split, those two people need to be, in my opinion, best friends, right? Like how do we help each other and you know, be successful in both ends. And the third thing is I've seen them also implement like a 30-day implementation basically process or onboarding process for the pre-sales I see, you know, with the customer onboarding uh person or customer success manager so that that handout or that handoff is smooth. Um, and I agree, I don't think that can fly anymore in the market because it's really easy for me to go and say, okay, there's 10 other companies that can do probably the same thing. I want to be taken care of and like the least amount of you know friction as possible.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Well, think think of one other thing that's been going on for decades. I mean, literally decades, is that you know, you'll get a um a tier one um consulting company that also sells the software. You know, think of any of our you know tier one players, and um you'll that's a different way to solve that same problem. So the selling team, then you know, you still have a lot of continuity of what that delivery team is. Yeah, all depends upon how big your company is. You know, are we talking about it in a startup? Are we talking about it, you know, someone in um in a space, it's just a lot of street fighting kind of going on, um, etc. Different people do it for different reasons, it has different labels, and I think we're very sensitive to it now because the rate of change, yeah. It just it's faster and faster and faster. So um, you know, the people don't have the appetite for the you know three-year, five-year deployment, and we'll protect the innocent or guilty is to the spaces that would have that. Um people need value quickly. There's got to be better ways to do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Couldn't agree more, and I think this is a perfect time to kind of segue into our rapid fire questions. Um, what is one tool that you can live without right now, or maybe since you're also investing in companies, have seen them not live without?

SPEAKER_01 35:10

So there should be no surprise in my answer. It's absolutely generative AI tools that accelerate um research, you know, analysis, uh create content, productivity. Now, it's not a silver bullet. You know, people that and you hear all kinds of stories around people that are, you know, have thought, write it and send it. You know, have have them do all of these things. It doesn't work. The silver bullet for me is writing very powerful, reusable prompts that the the tool gets better and better and better. So for example, you know, you you look in the you know in the business world from a sales world standpoint, it can evolve for a bit, but a single prompt that if you've got a quarterly business review, you know, on a prospect that you're working with, you know, it should be cut and paste, take the prompt, drop it, yeah, go go get that cup of coffee because you know you're gonna you're gonna have a board level PowerPoint deck or whatever it is that's provided back to you. Now you've got to go back and you've got to verify and you've got to do all of your homework, okay, or it's a huge crash and burn. Because the last piece, why is that important to me? Share a little bit of something about me, which actually I think is a differentiator versus a weakness. I'm a card-carrying dyslexic. So, you know, I transpose right and left and all of these different things. So these tools make me super, super productive from a comparative level. But I know how to use them and how not to use them.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Absolutely. I don't know if you saw in the news. This was uh maybe five or six months ago at this point, but I believe it was uh Deloitte that they had written a sort. I need to remember the entire story, but they had written a sort of research for the Australian government and they paid them, I don't know, four or five hundred thousand dollars for that research. And then the government uh requested a refund back because it was just an AI written document with full of errors, and it seemed like nobody had like reviewed it on top of that or whatever that was like. So um that wasn't the news a while ago. I don't know if you saw that story. I might have gotten some of the details wrong, but yeah, it was it was interesting to see.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

No, so I didn't see that specific one, but those things are out there all the time. It you know, it could be the you know, it could be a half million dollar you know study that was done, or it could be uh you know, a sales rep that you know improperly used something, you know, write a thank you letter or a follow-up or whatever it may happen to be. Um so yeah, it's just a tool. That's all it is, is a tool.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah, absolutely. Uh what would you say is the biggest growth level lever right now for SaaS companies in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Um I would say it's customer value realization, but with the driver, I mean that's kind of a framework that supports customer adoption. Um if you you know Gartner talked about this all the time, Constellation, everyone talks about it. The percentage of capability and functionality that is sitting on the shelf. And you know, you've got companies that are on technology overload, they're like, why should we be looking at this? Because we've got five things that you know we didn't deploy or partially deployed, or whatever it may happen to be. And the reason that I think that that's the biggest growth lever, whether it's your install base or whether it's a net new opportunity, really focusing on driving customer adoption of a solution ensures that they're going to get more value. Companies that are getting more value out of your solution are they're that reference cell, they're going to invest more. So this kind of goes back to some of the things that haven't changed at all.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

But when the velocity picks up, you know, we're we're not talking about a four-year ERP deployment that you know Jeff and Mike and Susan that were in charge of the selection, you know, a year into it, they're retired, they're down to the next road, and someone else is holding the velocity and delivery of values, it's table stakes now.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

For sure. Totally agree. What is one belief that you have that most people would disagree with?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Hmm. It's an interesting one. Um, so I'll I'll kind of frame this up after I make the statement. The best product doesn't always win. Um, I don't know if most people would disagree with that. Um, I know that there are a lot of people that disagree with it because their perspective is that it is the product, it is the technology, it is the feature function. Um my belief is that execution is equally important, if not more. That's one of the reasons why you see the small, nimble company that's just entered the market, they've got you know less than 50% of the functionality and capability, and they take down the large behemoth. You know, and and you can have an SVP of sales that's like you know, we we can insert company name. Yeah, you know, how did we lose to such and such? At the end of the day, you were out executed. You're a big company, you paint sales execution with a really big paintbrush. The smaller guy, they're nimble, their founder gets on the phone, the CTO is highly accessible. Um, it is about execution. That's what I believe. That that's when I work with founders and talking about competition in the marketplace, that's what I focus on.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Yeah, I love that. I'm I and I'm actually one of the people that agrees with you. Um, and I would like to add on top of execution, I would like to add branding and marketing. Sometimes you're just visible enough, and you know, compared to even whatever company, you're just there at the right time at the right moment. Sometimes it's a little bit of luck, too. Um, but on top of execution, I would also add marketing and branding.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Um you're absolutely right. And the reason for that is that we're not used to the sales cycle starting when they pick up the phone and call it.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

They've shortlisted one one way or the other. So your brand, your market had better be all out there, or you're you're gonna be listed as, and oh, by the way, we evaluated this company, this company, and this company. But they never pick up the phone.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, very interesting fact, but I'm still surprised at how many companies don't pick up their phone if a customer's calling. That still surprises me. And you know what, you've already lost me because I'm gonna call the next guy, and if they answer, then I'll start that conversation. So a whole different topic we can get into, but I wanted to mention it since you said that. Okay, do you have a kind of like your biggest hiring mistake story and what did it teach you?

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Um Yes. And that's when at one point in time, kind of early on in my career, um, I had this perspective of it was all about functional knowledge and skill. And you know, you would go looking for the absolute best athlete that can do A and B because that's what the market says is the most important thing. And I remember being in conversations about headcount and stuff, and it's like, I need one of these, and I need exactly one of these. Reality, you make that higher, and um you end up with one trick pony. And or you can, yeah, or you can. So here's what I look for, kind of from an overall standpoint. The most in some of the most important things to me are someone's adaptability, their executive presence, their ability to communicate, their ability to show empathy. Um, and then finally, teamwork. The most important thing, really, fundamentally, when it all comes down to it, you know, you want skills and you know all things being equal. I want to make sure that the people that I'm hiring, if they aren't wanting to hire them, work to get them to understand the value of teamwork. Because you need your entire team to be executing at an art level to be able to scale. You know, the the days of having that, and and even to to this day you hear people talking about it. Oh my gosh, um Linda does such an amazing job. You know, she can pull you know this rabbit out of the hat to save a demo, and we had system problems, and I can always rely on Linda. Well, if next year you know I need to be you know doubling the transactions and opportunities that I have, when Linda's not going to solve that. Now, if Linda's a really team-focused person, and she's always looking to raise everyone, that's gold. Yeah, what you want to hire with those things. You know, learning a skill, learning a new programming language, you know, is absolutely trainable. I mean, yes, you want people that have a particular industry background or executive presence, adaptability, teamwork. That's gold for me.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Love that. Do you have an example of maybe how you test that throughout the interview process in terms of the teamwork or executive presence that it's kind of taught you, you know, throughout the years of like, this is a couple of things I can ask to really weed that out?

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Great question. And um, I do. I have a very focused um hiring and interview process, and that goes along with having um peers participate in the interview process, um, which which is normal, but what I think is um somewhat special as to what we do is is that not only is it a matter of, hey, we expect you to do a presentation, we want to see how you prep for that presentation. You know, we make sure that people understand you know, during the interview and hiring process, it's always been, you know, so you know, maybe you know, you meant you met another um manager or two, you met a couple peers. Did you reach back out to them to get some coaching? Did you ask them to do a dry run? I mean, we we lay these things out, but that tied to then how someone executes really shows it. So we give them an opportunity to demonstrate some of those behaviors that we just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

I love that. I actually had a different leader in the podcast a couple weeks back, and she said that she willingly offers you know people a dry run in the interview process, and 95% of them don't take it. And I was pretty baffled by that number. Um, but I'm not surprised because I obviously I am in the hiring cycle a lot as my day-to-day job, but it's it's still surprising to me that you know the stakes right now for getting a job are higher than ever. And there's so much more competition than there's ever been. And everybody's like, oh, but how do I, you know, be this like unicorn person that shows up in front of a company? If they just hired me, I would show myself. And the thing is, like, I tell everybody, it's not about being really a unicorn, it's about doing the small, little, consistent things to stand out. And that starts with pre-interview, sending them an excited to meet note, post-interview, sending them a thank you note. It's it's still crazy to me that people think that's so basic, but like they still don't do it. Um, and then when you add that up throughout the entire interview process, you think, wow, RV's like been on top of it since day one. You know, it's not just like about once. And then same thing with the try-runs. You know, if if I'm being offered that, I will absolutely take it. It gives me a chance to get to know the team a little bit better. I could scoop out some more info if I needed to, maybe get to know the hiring manager a little bit more in depth as well. Like so many things. And um, yeah, it's kind of sad in my eyes when I see people that don't take that because it's a huge opportunity for you to stand out without doing anything too crazy, not to mention your sharp your skill set.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

Here's the last kind of little tidbit for people that are that are listening um either live or or to the replay, and it's the importance of the dry run. It's not about how you deliver that presentation. I mean, it it is, but here's the important piece. What did you do with the coaching that you were provided? Did you take it to heart? And then did you adjust and adapt? Because it shows all of those things that you know we've been talking about. Can you learn new things? Yeah, can you adapt with it? And the team members know to put a little bit of a zinger or put a little a little bit of teeth in that. Um, to see if did they listen.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah, so true. Yeah, that should tell you absolutely coachability. If I'm giving you coaching points and you don't implement those, that tells me that that person's not going to be coachable. Um, so couldn't agree more. Mark, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Thank you for sharing all this value, just being super transparent, obviously for joining me. And there are so much notes to take from this episode, whether you listen live or you're listening to the podcast afterwards. I hope you had your AI note taker on or you just took notes as your as we were talking or watched a replay. Um, by the way, Mark, what's the best way for people to connect with you? Um, that you'd prefer them to reach out if they wanted to.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Thanks for asking. Um, like the rest of the world, I'm out there on LinkedIn. There actually is more than one Mark Nix in the software industry, and I have met him. Um make sure it's this.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

I will put it in the show notes as well so that people can can have it easier to access as well. Uh, but thank you again, everybody, for joining. Thank you again, Mark, for for coming on and just spending some time with me and just dropping a lot of value. I will see you all on the next one.