Episode 360: Navigating Sales Leadership and AI Trends

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:00:54 – (Brynne Tillman): Hello, everyone. I am so excited. Today we have Ron Gupta as our guest. He is the Chief Revenue Officer at Evolution iq. He’s a distinguished figure in the business world, recognized for his dynamic leadership and revenue generation strategies. With a rich background spanning technical, operations and executive roles, Ron has significantly influenced various sectors by leading companies through periods of rapid growth and transformative change.

0:01:24 – (Brynne Tillman): His expertise. Expertise encompasses a broad range of markets and verticals, particularly in leveraging technology for measurable business improvement. Ron, welcome to the show.

0:01:35 – (Ron Gupta): Thank you. Thank you, Brynne.

0:01:38 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m really excited to talk with you today. You’ve done some really great things in a lot of great companies, so I appreciate your insights. Before we jump into your genius, however, we have one question that we ask all of our guests.

0:01:53 – (Ron Gupta): Sure.

0:01:53 – (Brynne Tillman): Which is, what does Making Sales Social mean to you?

0:01:58 – (Ron Gupta): I think from the beginning of time, sales have been a social endeavor. It is about convincing somebody that what you have has value in their lives, whether you’re selling them a trinket or enterprise software. So it has to contribute value. And for them to believe you, there has to be an authentic relationship.

0:02:18 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:02:19 – (Ron Gupta): That’s why used car salesmen always got a bad rap because there was never an authentic relationship. Somebody walked in and you tried to like fast whatever you had on the lot them. That’s not selling to me, that’s transactional. That’s having a transaction. To me, selling and being social about it is about forming a lasting relationship, delivering value, delivering impact, and then backing that value up through the course of the relationship.

0:02:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that answer. That’s terrific. And that’s going to dive kind of right into your ethos around sales. So let’s start from the beginning. What attracted you to the technology sector? And how did you, you know, really find the sales or revenue leadership role for you? Most people don’t go, I’m going to go in and be in sales.

0:03:10 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah. And ironically, there are very few people who say, I want to get into sales and then get into sales. A lot of them who actually want to get into sales wind up doing something else completely. It’s really interesting how careers play out because I read this book a long time ago called. I think it was called there’s no Elevator to the Top or No Escalator to the Top. But it’s basically this. This executive recruiter who went. He, you know, hired CEOs for Disney and Walmart and that level of recruiting.

0:03:37 – (Ron Gupta): And then he went back after the fact and asked them questions around the career and how they got to where they are, how did they start, you know, vying for those kind of roles? And it turned out that a lot of it was, you know, circumstances, like just. Just being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes you almost feel fortunate to be where you are. And I kind of feel the same thing in my life. I mean, just starting with software. My undergraduate degree was in civil engineering. So nothing to do with computers, nothing to do with technology.

0:04:05 – (Ron Gupta): I was deciding what to do for a graduate degree and some of my friends are going into computer science. I was like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. This was the late 90s, early 2000s. I was like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. I want to go figure that stuff out. So I wound up doing it with a focus on distributed systems. So I got technical and then I started programming and I started doing a lot of delivery. And then I figured that’s a skill that you have to keep updating every few years. Right. Like technology completely shifts. It goes from Python to Julia or whatever the latest trend is. And you got to develop your skill set around that.

0:04:37 – (Ron Gupta): Whereas the thing that I always did naturally was relate to people. So I figured, like, how do I take what I understand the technology and the passion I have for technology, but not force myself to upgrade my skill set completely every few years? So that’s what got me into sales. And I went and got an MBA to make kind of sure I built around that, the natural ethos that I had, and built a skill set and a formulated set of tools that helped me in the journey.

0:05:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that, you know, sales. Often people say I got in it by accident. Right? Like, you know, that’s where I got hired out of college or. But for you, it was a conscious choice it was. I’m curious. Yeah, so I’m curious because there are a lot of other things you could have done, too. You could be in an operations role, in a human resources role in the technology sector. Sales is hard. Right. So tell me a little bit about, like, why.

0:05:40 – (Brynne Tillman): Just go deeper in, like, why sales? And do you feel like you just had a natural ability? You mentioned people as a reason, but just one. One level deeper on that would be awesome.

0:05:51 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah, yeah. No. Well, first of all, a little bit in jest, but have you seen the car sales guys drive and the cars operations guys drive? It’s a little different. Just kidding. On a serious note, like, I felt like when I was in a room, so even in sales, when I started, it was kind of progression.

0:06:07 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:06:07 – (Ron Gupta): So I first came into technology. In technology, I started working for a company called csc, which doesn’t exist anymore. It got absorbed by, I believe, Raytheon and Booz Allen. Yeah. So I was on a partner track there, but it was services and delivery. So it’s kind of, you know, building code initially. And then I was running a team that was focusing on business process optimization.

0:06:28 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:06:28 – (Ron Gupta): So it’s kind of still very focused around delivery. What I realized very soon was when I was on the selling side of that delivery, I started out on kind of just running people. And then at some point somebody said, hey, Ron, this is great. You got a team of like 50 people. You got to go get revenue for them to be able to go out and deliver. So that was kind of light bulb for me, that, hey, tip of the spear is always going to be sales.

0:06:52 – (Ron Gupta): So I realized when I walked into the rooms and I was having these conversations, I could empathize with what was my customers back then. So selling into public sector. I was selling into the technology groups there, but I could relate to their problems. And I came from a world where, you know, I had solved some of that or lived through some of that on a personal level. So it gave me a level of authenticity that kind of, you know, that. That made that social bond happen.

0:07:18 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:07:19 – (Ron Gupta): And honestly, some of the people that sold through throughout my career are still friends of mine, not just. Not just customers and prospects. So that’s where I first started. So it was first from programming, then into kind of delivering software. Then I was like, okay. One of the companies that I was working with, and this is where the happy accident happens, was a company called pegasystems. And they were brilliant. They were top of the market in what they did, but they struggled in that particular Industry.

0:07:48 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:07:49 – (Ron Gupta): So I wound up meeting the CEO from the company, Alan Treffler, who kind of gave me my first shot into sales. And it was directly into sales leadership, where I was carrying a bag, but also running a small team. And I just loved it. I gravitated to that very naturally. I had amazing results first year onwards. I loved nurturing the team around me. So that’s kind of what took me full fledged into sales and sales management.

0:08:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. That’s great. And yeah, almost everyone. There’s a little bit of an accident in there if you end up in sales.

0:08:23 – (Ron Gupta): And there’s a bit of. There’s a bit of someone has to take a bet and a gamble on you.

0:08:28 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:08:28 – (Ron Gupta): In sales. Basically when you’re in sales, what I always say, hiring a rep for any B2B enterprise company is basically a million dollar opportunity cost. Right. Like, so we bring somebody in. You’re. It’s not just what you’re paying them in salary. The opportunity cost is pretty large. So a sales leader and a sales manager, when they’re recruiting, has to believe the person you’re bringing in can deliver results that are at par with that.

0:08:52 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:08:52 – (Ron Gupta): So somebody. And when you’re coming in cold from college or like from doing something else, like I was, someone has to listen to you, hear you, and believe that you have the capability to deliver on that. Otherwise, you know, that’s kind of. There’s a bit of luck, but there’s a bit of positioning yourself and skill and then somebody else taking a leap of faith on you.

0:09:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Okay, so I want to go down that path for a minute because I think recruiting the right salespeople is one of the biggest challenges sales leaders like yourself faces. You know, someone in sales can sell themselves very easily and they may not really be great at sales in the field. So can you give us a couple of tips or, you know, if there are other sales leaders that are looking to hire that have helped you hire better?

0:09:43 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah. What you’re talking about is called reflective behavior. Right. Because salespeople are very good at being whatever you want them to be.

0:09:50 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:09:50 – (Ron Gupta): So interviewing salespeople are probably some of the most complicated interviewing skills that someone has to develop. So I’m a big believer in trends. So if somebody has done something multiple times, they’re more likely to be able to do it again. And this kind of goes in the face against what I just said about somebody taking a bet on you. And there’s a variable there because if it’s an opportunity cost, which is slightly lower if you’re going into mid market and you’re willing to go find somebody who has that hustle and can go prove himself in the market, go for it, right?

0:10:28 – (Ron Gupta): But if you’re selling like million dollar products or multimillion dollar products and it’s a very evangelical senior CXO sale, that’s not somewhere where you want to put in a rookie, right? You want to bring somebody who’s actually been there, done that, proven that they can do it.

0:10:44 – (Bob Woods): Right?

0:10:45 – (Ron Gupta): So the part of the interview that I always focus on a lot is historical evidence. I want to know like who have you sold to before? Have you sold to them across multiple companies? Either you in multiple companies or them in multiple companies, Right. Because that shows that there is relationship, that shows that there’s a level of thought leadership happening and you’re not just a transactional component of that process.

0:11:07 – (Ron Gupta): And then the other thing I asked for is, and this has become a little bit, some states allow it, some states don’t. You can’t ask somebody’s salary, which is fine. And I don’t want to know salary because it doesn’t really tell me a lot because you know, Google pays a heck of a lot more than a startup would.

0:11:22 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:11:22 – (Ron Gupta): I don’t have a way to measure. But what I want to know is have you been to club every year you’re there, right? Have you empirically had like a, you know, $500,000 million$2 million w2 year? Because if you’ve done that, and the reason for that being important is it tells me that you have, you know, how to run big deals that are big for whatever market segment you’re in. Because if I was selling a core system, everybody’s selling $20 million deals. So if someone comes and tells me I sold $30 million last year, what does that mean? Not a whole lot, right? But on the other hand, if you’re selling $500,000 solutions and you tell me you sold $30 million, I’d be, holy cow, that’s huge. Right?

0:12:02 – (Ron Gupta): So when I ask you that question, I want to know that you can close really large deals for whatever segment you’re in. And then I want to know that you have the ability to get the maximum value for it. Because people who have done those million dollar years, they know when to walk away, they know when to challenge the prospect, they know when to say like, you know, you’re telling me you want to spend $600,000 on this, why not 800 or why not one?

0:12:27 – (Bob Woods): Right?

0:12:28 – (Ron Gupta): Whereas if you get somebody who has never had that big year. They’re going to say, oh, wow, 600,000, that’s like 80% of my quota. Let’s just say yes and move on. Right. So it’s those things that I look for that are indicative of. Of past trends that are usually indicative of future success.

0:12:44 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. So you’ve had some great successes. Just transition to your role at. I think it was Usher, right, Where you’ve increased revenue 10 times in three years. Talk a little bit about how you did that.

0:13:00 – (Ron Gupta): Well, I mean, it’s. So that’s the kind of stuff I always say. Sales is awesome because you get to take credit for everything, but it’s rarely your effort. Right. I mean, so, yes, you have to go put yourself out there. But we had an amazing engineering team there, an amazing product team that really leaned into what we were selling. And we had customers who really saw the value, of what we’re doing. So a lot of the growth there was actually we got a lot of new logos, but a lot of the growth was still very organic because customers wound up buying one solution, getting really great results from it, and then moving on to two or three others.

0:13:35 – (Ron Gupta): So I think it’s always easier to have that kind of success when you have an engine behind you beyond just sales and marketing. And I think Usher was one of those happy confluence of events where everything kind of fell into the right place at the right time.

0:13:50 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So that’s terrific. And I love that you’re giving credit to your team because really, although there is no company without sales, there’s also no execution without everybody else.

0:14:04 – (Ron Gupta): And actually the company I’m at right now, it’s kind of interesting because we will tell our customers, our prospects that we’re essentially a product company. Like Evolution IQ. We have 200ish people, let’s say. And like, we have, I don’t know, 10 people, 12 people who are directly selling. Right. And we’ve got, like, amazing contributions from each one of them. So our revenue, our car, our ARR is very large for our company in the stage we are.

0:14:30 – (Ron Gupta): But it’s not predicated on, like, people, you know, 20 sellers doing a million dollars or 50 sellers doing a million dollars. You know, it’s like 10 sellers doing five, $10 million each.

0:14:40 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:14:41 – (Ron Gupta): So it’s, it’s. But our focus then is on product and engineering. Like, 80% of our company is really in that space because you want to make sure we build. And especially with AI coming to the fore these days, you want to make sure your technology is Rock solid. And it’s delivering value at all facets.

0:15:00 – (Brynne Tillman): So let’s go down that road. So talk a little bit about the tech landscape. What trends do you see that are happening? Throw in a little AI and kind of the future of revenue generation in your industry.

0:15:13 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so AI has come to the fore recently, but it tends to be more around the ChatGPT LLM stuff.

0:15:21 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:15:22 – (Ron Gupta): But the parts of AI that I think are still driving tremendous value are things like predictive analytics, machine learning. That is still really, I think, the main part of the AI engine that’s delivering value. What I think is going to start coming to the fore, especially as you go mid-market. And I’m being sold a lot of things myself. As Chief Revenue Officer, I’m a prospect for a lot of people. So a lot of really cool transactional tools that use the other side of AI, which is the ChatGPT LLM and being able to take the data we have, condense it, synthesize it, and kind of drive some value from it.

0:16:03 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:16:03 – (Ron Gupta): So summarization and things like that are getting a lot simpler and much more of a table stake these days. But I think still where the value in AI sits in the market today is predominantly on the stuff that was AI before AI got flashy and buzzy.

0:16:21 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:16:21 – (Ron Gupta): So it’s the predictive analytics, the machine learning. It’s all of the things that you do to kind of take work off someone’s plate, but to also drive intelligence into whatever they’re doing. So help with decisioning support. So that’s definitely part of the landscape. But beyond that, technology is always evolving. So it’s interesting. My son’s 18 and he’s going to school to study computer science and he wanted to go do a major in cybersecurity.

0:16:50 – (Ron Gupta): And I’m like, that’s great, go do what you want to do. But here’s the thing. When you graduate in four years, you don’t know if cybersecurity its own market or it’s been vertically integrated into something else. You don’t know what’s been eaten up by what. Now everybody’s saying AI is eating the world, but it might be something else 10 years later. We went through all of this before as well. We had the whole web cycle where we were like, oh, the web’s gotta be something great and new. And it is. And it just spans and morphs and creates new career trends.

0:17:18 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:17:19 – (Ron Gupta): So I’m really excited to see what AI does because I’m seeing new career trends. Around prompt engineering, for example.

0:17:25 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:17:25 – (Ron Gupta): That wasn’t a thing like even a year and a half ago.

0:17:28 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:17:29 – (Ron Gupta): So it’s really interesting to see how technology evolves and the market evolves to kind of capitalize on that.

0:17:37 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s very interesting. I’m curious how you see technology with SDRs or BDRs and even customer service. And then I’ll throw in after wards a little story that I heard when I was at a conference, at an outbound conference. Outbound conference last week.

0:17:57 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah. So SDR and BDRs, again, they, they can. Kind of. One of the things that they spent a lot of time on was research.

0:18:05 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:18:06 – (Ron Gupta): So I think technology helps with that significantly. Right. You can throw, you can throw any name. So somebody demonstrated a tool to me recently where you throw the name of a company and it’ll spit out like, you know, everything you need to know about it, including mapping to your ICP and your, the kind of software you’re selling and figuring out who are the key contacts there, tying into zoom and for picking that information up and putting in front of you.

0:18:29 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:18:30 – (Ron Gupta): So it does simplify the research aspect of it. Right. But I think where, you know, when we talk about what’s going to happen to the, to the human resource landscape with AI coming to the fore, I think the skills that people have to work on are going to be the more interpersonal things. The relationship element for you from your perspective.

0:18:51 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:18:51 – (Ron Gupta): Because that’s not something. At least short term, I watch a lot of science fiction as well, but short term, I don’t think machines are going to start building relationships immediately. So from a social selling perspective, from a SDR BDR perspective, being able to understand your company’s value proposition, being able to interpret that into what the prospect needs for themselves with solving their problems and being able to empathize with where they are in their journey and having a community, having a conversation and a communication that’s built around those elements.

0:19:26 – (Ron Gupta): I think that’s what the value of an SDR and BDR channel is today.

0:19:31 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:19:31 – (Ron Gupta): It’s not. It’s no more about doing a ton of blind research and kind of providing data back to sales or marketing or whoever it is. It’s really about building the relationships, understanding the value proposition, doing all the human elements that, you know, AI now helps you do.

0:19:48 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:19:49 – (Ron Gupta): Same thing. Even when we think about technology like evolution iq, one of the things that we focus on is doing a lot of decision support, but we don’t want to make decisions because we believe AI is Strongest when there’s a human in the loop, the SDR then in that circle becomes a human in the loop to have the conversations, to have the more empathetic communication streams that machines today don’t.

0:20:13 – (Ron Gupta): So that’s the SDR part on the customer success part. So I’ll only talk about my world. I think customer success in my world I’ve typically been in B2B sales. It’s been very human-centric and it still is very human-centric because your customers want to know you’re listening to them, you’re hearing them and you are there for them. Right. So they want to be able to pick up a phone and go like, hey Ron, very specifically, this is not working for me or I have this challenge. How can you help me solve it? And that becomes a conduit later into sales as well in other parts of the organization like product marketing, product management.

0:20:49 – (Ron Gupta): So I think CS is a very, very critical element of every company. I haven’t seen a lot of AI being applied there except kind of doing builds and simplifying what you’re presenting to the customer. But in terms of again the contact and the communication, that seems to still be very human-centric.

0:21:05 – (Brynne Tillman): So I’ll share with you. And it is currently. And what I saw is what’s coming, which I think is pretty cool. And I’m just going to share just briefly because I was blown away and this is the context, not the actual content, but. Phone call Ring ring. Hi Ron, have you been. It looks like the last time we talked was about three weeks ago. How can I help you today? I’m having trouble logging into my portal. Oh, let me take a look. It looks like you’ve tried to log in three times with the wrong password.

0:21:37 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s why you’ve been locked out. Let me resend that to you. Okay. Are you in? That’s fantastic. I also see that you were looking at this page a few times last week. Is this a service you’re exploring? Oh, excellent. You know, just back and forth. If you’d like, I can schedule a time with your account manager to explore that further. Interested? Okay, I’ve got his calendar up. How is Wednesday at 2:00? Does that work for you? Would you like me to add anyone else to this? This invite?

0:22:08 – (Brynne Tillman): George. Great. Is that George.smith bcc company.com. okay, great, he’s been added. Is there anything else you’d like me to add to this calendar invite? I will. I’ll connect this. The transcript for this call? No, we’re Good, Excellent. Well, enjoy talking with our team and if you have any other questions, call me back. So it pulls from the CRM and all that information, all the client journey in seconds that people can’t do and there’s no wait time.

0:22:41 – (Ron Gupta): No, I love that. And I’ve seen scenarios like that and I think it makes a lot of sense when, particularly when you’re selling something that’s a little bit more transactional or it’s mid market where you kind of have pages that people are going to for us. Solutions that I sold typically have been very bespoke, so the problem definition changes a little bit, but absolutely. I mean, I’m always open to change and I always expect change.

0:23:06 – (Ron Gupta): Right. I just don’t know what it is as yet. But that’s a really cool use case.

0:23:10 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m sure it was really cool use case and it’s not like available everywhere, but this is like where the vision is that it’s going. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.

0:23:21 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah. Having said that, here’s the counterpoint to that. Like, I fly a lot, right. So I fly with United and have status of the United. The thing I love about my status, when my parents have a problem with United and they call them, they have a transaction that’s run through an AI layer. So you wind up talking to machines for like 20 minutes before you can actually get to what you’re trying to get done.

0:23:43 – (Ron Gupta): Whereas, like me, again, separate relationship because I fly as much as I do, but I have somebody pick up the phone in 30 seconds and usually the transaction takes four minutes.

0:23:52 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:23:53 – (Ron Gupta): So I think the sunny day scenario that you walk through is amazing. What we want to make sure is that that can apply to every context. So when you come in and you go like, hey, ring, ring. But this time the story is a little different. And it’s not like my login doesn’t work, but it’s like the server crashed at 3 am in the morning. What is the empathy part of the resolution that comes in? I’ve seen some really good demos about that as well, but it’s still evolving in my mind.

0:24:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. For me, the idea that I feel like I’m talking with someone, number one, that I’m pressing one, pressing three and then hitting zero seven times because I’m frustrated.

0:24:33 – (Ron Gupta): Absolutely, yeah. So this wave of AI is as pervasive as it is because there’s a question about if you can have a conversation on a blind screen and be able to tell if it’s a human and the computer on the other End that kind of shows the efficacy of AI and the current generation of AI. It’s very hard to tell. It’s very, very hard to tell. So no doubt. I mean scenarios like that could absolutely start playing out pretty soon.

0:25:00 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. You know, and, and one of the things, you know, I’m probably a half a generation older than you are and when I started in sales we did not have email or cell phones. Right. We just didn’t. And I remember getting an email signed to me from. I was at Dunn and Bradstreet, it was called CC mail. It wasn’t even emailed this for I, I don’t even remember what that stood for. Internal. And I remember thinking how am I going to fit this into my day?

0:25:32 – (Brynne Tillman): I didn’t even recognize how it was going to help my job productively. And I think over time. Right. That’s what our cell phones have done. That’s what, and I think that’s what AI will do. I’m not sure it’s going to cost us jobs, but I think it’s going to make us more efficient and more productive. So that’s my hope anyway.

0:25:54 – (Ron Gupta): I think the job market will evolve.

0:25:56 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:25:56 – (Ron Gupta): So it always does to accept and adopt new technology.

0:26:01 – (Brynne Tillman): Yes. So that’s amazing. So if you were to look back on your career, tell me a little bit about, you know, did you have mentors or did you mentor people that helped guide you into your current ethos?

0:26:17 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah, 100%. I think that’s probably the most important thing that anybody starting anything out new should do.

0:26:23 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:26:23 – (Ron Gupta): Find somebody who’s been there, done that. And not just one you’ll find through stages of a career you’re gonna have different people who can add value to your lives and it should be a two-way street. You should be able to contribute somehow or the other. But to me, absolutely. I’ve had a few people I worked for, people I felt like I could run through stone walls for.

0:26:44 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:26:44 – (Ron Gupta): And I wanted to be leaders like them and I wanted to kind of understand how they do it. So I learned a lot from them. But then you have to figure out what’s genuine for you as well because you can’t be them. That’s the one thing I had to realize. But for a while I tried because there were some idolized enough where I was like, I want to be just like you when I grew up. Right. And then I realized that I didn’t have whatever it was, like whether it was the charisma, the empathy, whatever, there was some quotient for them that made them and I wouldn’t have that. So then you have to take what you learn from them and infuse your own around it.

0:27:15 – (Ron Gupta): So that’s my journey. And I’ve had a number of really amazing mentors and I still talk to a lot of them today. You know, some of whom are in roles that have grown like, you know, they’re still like a few levels ahead of me, the CROs at much larger companies or the CEOs at large companies, but there’s some who are now at the same, you know, it’s kind of the same level I am at, but there’s still so much that I can get from them because they’ve done it for a longer time.

0:27:41 – (Ron Gupta): So always like, you know, I always wind up spending time with them and then the same thing. I try, like first of all, for people who work with me, I always try. And you know, if there’s things that I’ve been through and journeys that I’ve had, I try and share that. So hopefully that helps people. But there are people, there’s actually a handful of folks who I have formal one on one mentoring time with. So we go over challenges, we talk about things that are evolving landscape. So we have these guided, structured discussions on a frequent basis. So I would strongly recommend that for anybody getting into any new career field.

0:28:16 – (Brynne Tillman): This has been wonderful. I so appreciate your time. Really. You’ve got some great brilliance and I can see why your career has been so successful in the revenue world. But before we end this, I always ask, ask what question should I have asked you that I didn’t?

0:28:33 – (Ron Gupta): What you should have asked me that you didn’t. I guess. What is the one regret that I have in my career?

0:28:42 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, okay. So, Ron, you should ask the next.

0:28:45 – (Ron Gupta): Guest that I should not answer that. Ask the next guest.

0:28:47 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s the one regret that you wish you had done something differently?

0:28:54 – (Ron Gupta): I mean, I don’t think it’s different. I think it’s hindsight being 20-20, I wish I’d done certain things times a little bit earlier. I don’t know, maybe he’s buying crypto early. I don’t know. I’m just kidding about that as well. But it’s looking back at my career, there are areas and juxtapositions and choices that I made that in certain phases, ultimately in aggregate, it all worked out right? And that’s what I tell people, especially teenagers when I talk to my son. And it feels like the world’s crashing around them. In any given day, I’m like look, in aggregate, it all works out right.

0:29:26 – (Ron Gupta): Your point in time situation might not be ideal. So I put myself a couple of times where I prioritize the wrong thing and I wound up in situations where, had I had the foresight, I would not have found myself in today. So I think that’s probably, you know, I probably wasted three years of my, three to five years of my career, which I could have done something different. And hopefully that I’ve had a bigger impact on people around me more than myself. So that’s probably the only regret I have.

0:29:53 – (Brynne Tillman): So my, my oldest stepson, I think in eighth grade was given an assignment, you know, what is one thing you would change in your life? And he had to write an essay and his whole essay was on how I wouldn’t change a thing because I don’t know how it would have ended up. Like if I changed that, I might have been in a completely different place.

0:30:13 – (Ron Gupta): Was he a philosophy major? Because that sounded pretty deep.

0:30:16 – (Brynne Tillman): You know, he ended up really kind of in a political science world, but he’s not doing that now. He’s more in leadership and management. But yeah, I mean, it was just, I was blown away by that, you know, at a young age to have that kind of philosophy. Like, no, like maybe I think I’d want to change that, but who knows where I’d end up. So anyway, shout out to him. He’s so smart. Anyway, thank you so much for your insights. I know that you’ve offered some great content that will help other sales leaders and merging sales leaders.

0:30:52 – (Brynne Tillman): So if someone would like to get a hold of you, what’s the best way?

0:30:56 – (Ron Gupta): Why? I’m old-fashioned. So LinkedIn’s probably still the best way to get a handle on me.

0:31:02 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. That’s old-fashioned now. That’s the old way.

0:31:06 – (Ron Gupta): Yeah. No, I just meant I’m not giving your Twitter handle and an Instagram, whatever they call it. It’s good old-fashioned LinkedIn.

0:31:14 – (Brynne Tillman): Me too. So I love that. Ron, thank you so much for your insights and to all of our listeners. When you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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