E183 - Sales Tips from a Legend featuring Scott McNealy, Co-Founder of Curriki

Hey, welcome everybody. Scott, how you doing?

Excellent. Well, definitely excited. Had a lot of fun preparing for this one for sure. Everybody, we have the legend Scott McNeely on for today. The title topic is sales tips from a legend, but truth be told, we'll be meandering through a whole bunch of different topics. For those that are members of Sales Community, thanks. For those that are not, Tucker will throw up a free link. Feel free to go ahead and join. We're sponsored by Sandler today, who's the sales training sponsor of Sales Community. They've been around forever and have some fantastic new age ways to help with sales training, individual contributors, all on up. A lot of what we're seeing these days and talking to C-level friends about Sandler is really those first-line sales managers. A lot of times they got promoted up through COVID, really didn't deserve it. It was kind of a retention thing. I always feel, and I know Scott did too, it's really those kind of first-line managers that really run the go-to-market engine. So thank you, Sandler. So by way of introduction, Scott lives in Vegas, has happily married to Susan, who I remember meeting several times back in the Sundays. Four awesome sons. Oldest is Maverick, who people probably know is a pro golfer, pilot, husband. I think you had recently given Maverick an interesting birthday present.

And then Dakota, who works at Ford, running a bunch of the factory business areas, and he has also notably bought and sold six trucks for a good profit.

Awesome. And then Colt, who I've had the pleasure of meeting and talking to, is the founder of The Little Horse. Graduated Stanford in three years while also working at Rex and being an amateur golfer. You've been a bit involved, to say the least, with The Little Horse.

Awesome. And then youngest is Scout, who kind of was in the house flipping market, making a lot of money, and now he is the caddy for Maverick.

Awesome. That'd be great. And then you're certainly have always been an avid golfer and ex-hockey player, and now becoming a rancher with your cow and back.

High-tech. Awesome. I don't know if you remember John Henshaw, he has a vineyard, Blackbird Vineyard. So you may need to kind of tag team on that. Get a little pairing of your designer beef and the wine.

So anyway, we first met. I knew you kind of more as a competitor probably when I was at Sun and StorageTek. I'm sorry, when I was at StorageTek and EMC, and then through the Sun acquisitions of StorageTek, came on to Sun summer of 2006. My job there was basically running the financial services vertical from '06 to '09. Certainly was a tough time, but in spite of the financial headwinds, we managed to grow. I love that you're always very direct, you're always there especially with face-to-face sales calls. I would be the executive face-to-face with all these different CIOs and C-suite people, and you'd have Ruckers, Tucci, Chambers, everybody else coming through. You were fortunately always there for me to come on and help with those executive touch points. So thanks so much for that. Customers always loved you, and in a nice way, always found your dry sense of humor worked then and still works now. You always wanted feedback on everything, especially if it was about your direct reports, which we want to talk about here. Several times it would be late night, you being a San Jose Sharks fan, we'd have to find a bar that was open late enough to still have the game on. Several times we'd be in the bar just kind of hanging out, and all these kids had no clue that they're watching the hockey game with Scott McNeely, and you're in your element. We just kind of hung out and had a good time, and then of course always got up early the next day to answer the bell to go on sales calls. One of the best things of sales calls with you was the private jets always made it much easier to bounce around to various cities. In my book, which Tucker will throw up a link for, my testimony to you was: thanks to Scott McNeely for reminding me that in spite of the headquarters crap, the customer and your sales teams are what count. So show up and do the right thing. So appreciate you for that. Also to help me with the introductions, Tucker, as we go here, you can just kind of pull in some of the great comments. Glad you like my shirt. It's a Sun Microsystems bowling shirt, so this is proof I still have it, still nice and pressed, a little big, but anyway. Rich Napalitano, who ran the US go-to-market in sales, says: 'Scott's deep understanding of technology and his ability to see major transitions in the industry, like the big freaking Webtone switch as a precursor to cloud, his ability to inspire teams, and his commitment to mentoring others.' He said personally he appreciates you taking him as a former engineer, a repeat startup guy, and handing him the US to rebuild from a sales perspective. He definitely appreciates what you've done to make him an exceptional leader. Greg Papadopoulos, who was CTO and ran R&D, is a partner now at NEA, said: 'More than any other CEO in the valley, Scott deeply understood that sustained innovation wasn't top-down; it bubbled up from the creativity of individual engineers, marketers, and everyone in the field. Sun was a singular culture in this way, and everybody misses it. He was also an expert at punching above his weight with his legendary biting commentary. It made customers think, it made the markets pay attention, and competitors see simply masterful. I miss that too.' Bill Boss, who was CIO, CISO, ran president of Fed, a bunch of different areas: 'Scott has always had amazing vision for where technology is going. The network is the computer, define the future of client-server and the evolution of the web. He also mentions a big freaking Webtone switch. Unfortunately, he also predicted the future we are all in with social media: you have no privacy, get over it. Sun under Scott was also a place that created incredible leaders that went on to lead amazing Silicon Valley companies like Google and many others.' Billy Scannel, who was a longtime competitor at EMC, now president at Dell, runs go-to-market. Actually talked to him this morning. He says: 'Scott is one of the most competitive executives I've ever met. Early in my career when traveling to see customers all over the world when EMC competed against Sun, it seemed every customer I visited had either just met Scott or planned to see him in a day or two. I often wondered, were there five Scotts running around? Then he was on the board of Greenplum, who EMC acquired. He created the Greenplum Challenge, which was held at Pebble Beach, and it was match play format with top sales reps from both companies. Scott and his family created a video of how Team McNeely was gonna crush Team Scannel. It even featured his young son at the time, Maverick, who now plays professional golf. Scott always prepared to win and leave it on the field.' Do you remember that?

He also said in the sidebar, he said anytime they played there, they would leave a few EMC golf balls in your backyard there at Pebble. He says a true competitor and absolute legend in our industry, and a pretty good stick in his day. Colt says on behalf of all the boys: 'Wow, introducing my dad is quite a challenge. But what people don't know about him is that even though he was in charge of the company that brought amazing technology and innovations to the world, he was an even better dad.' So I mean, you can't get better than that. So anyway, I will send these to you so you can put them up on the fridge and show Susan and anybody that comes by. So jumping into the question: you went to school in Boston, across the river from BC.

There you go. Interesting summer job that you had was washing cars and other odds and ends for Roger Penske.

Nice. And then fast forward, you both end up on the board of GE.

Awesome. And then for those that don't know, Scott was co-founder of Sun Microsystems and CEO from '84 to '06. Started Kicki in five as a co-founder and board member, and really on a fantastic global education mission there.

Awesome. So Tucker, maybe post that. Birdies for education.com. Yes, great. So Tucker, maybe throw that up there. I've got an annual ID I do every year to Kicki. And then you did Wayin from 2010 to '17, Flume Ventures the past couple years, and then you're mentioned before with The Little Horse. So that's got to be a lot of fun.

Exactly. And then now getting into some more questions here. I was talking to Rick Scurfield this morning, and he had a great question: how could you be a CEO and a great golfer?

Gotcha. And especially in Vegas, all those courses. But what a lot of people may not know that Colt alluded to, but you're very passionate on the parenting side. Any thoughts to share there based on what you experienced with your parents and then what you and Susan did well?

Awesome. Really good. Well, I'm totally up to do that podcast with you for sure. Lots of great wisdom for sure. So early days of Sun, I know Andy made the product, but then you had Vinod, Eric, Bill, and you. How did you figure out who's gonna do what?

Awesome. And by chance, I was at a Stanford MBA program probably 20 years ago, and we had a case study on Sun Microsystems, and Vinod came in and told us a ComputerVision story. Can you briefly tell that?

Awesome. Never give up. For those earlier in career, maybe inappropriate these days, but certainly a lot to be said for showing up, waiting, seeing people. I think to a certain degree, people really admire what I'd say would be kind of polite aggressiveness. Because if you're going to do that with them, they know that you're going to be there 24/7 if the hits the fan or they need help or issues going on.

Absolutely. Know me, like me, trust me. Absolutely. And it was also great about the Vinod story. It wasn't just the rep and then the leadership going on to call in Vinod. He was there with that. How many times these days I see it where hey, the rep's there, and okay, where's the leadership? Where's anybody from management? Rep's coming to me, 'Hey, Randy, can you help?' I'm like, 'Where the hell's your leadership?' 'Well, they can't really get here. They don't want to. They're busy or they got a QBR.' I'm like, 'Yeah, be freaking kidding me.' What's more important than leadership also showing up to show that support to help the sales team?

Absolutely. And I think Hal Stern, if I remember right, was kind of the ringleader of that group.

So great. All right. And then for those that have chimed in, Tucker, if you want, feel free just to kind of pop them so others can see. But thanks to John, Colt, Ruthanne, and Ryan, who just went from LinkedIn to Indeed to now I think Salesforce, Ryan, and Dimitri, and Helen, John, Dimitri again. If anybody wants, feel free to ask a question. We have Tucker behind the scenes as always helping us. So thank you, Tucker. So Sun spawned a lot of unicorn CEOs, a lot of great leaders. Any tips for how you develop people?

Yep, absolutely. And then when you're hiring top talent, any traits in particular that you look for?

Yep, absolutely. So from Rick Diana, we have a note here: 'Thank you, Scott. 25 years ago when one terabyte filled the data center, I learned a competitive sales lesson. EMC and Sun both had share of a particular Fortune 500 auto manufacturer. It was in my account, but it woke me up nevertheless not to take a competitor for granted. Apparently, the EMC account team was proud of its four terabytes in the data center until they learned that Sun had 10x that with 40 terabytes on the edge. And yes, Scott, sales pros cannot zoom themselves to sales prominence. Would love to hear another parenting story. I did love playing right field in college but wish I concentrated more on golf.' You gave lots of parenting tips there. Anything else briefly you want to add?

Absolutely. And from Joe Schu, I thought it was Jonathan for a minute. The picture. Thanks for great Sun years, Scott. Many of us learned from the culture that you built that sales is very much a contact sport, and getting in the trenches in person with customers, especially in hard times, means absolutely everything. I mean, you're always... we'd have times when things would break, and we'd get in there, you'd come out. Most CEOs and leaders would kind of run away, and you'd kind of jump in the fire.

There you go. So great. So you kind of were or are admittedly shy, but yet you seem to be an extrovert in business. How did you kind of get over that hump?

There for sure. As Greg Papadopoulos mentioned, I think you called it the biting commentary. So how about the Marriott meeting story?

Absolutely. And Ruthanne chimes in on the sales culture. So with the sales meetings, the directness, leading by example, you are very deliberate in really shaping that great sales culture.

That's great. So in conclusion here, Jack says, 'Sorry, join late. Did I miss the top 10 list?' No, but I should have done a top 10 list. I'll do that next time. We can come back with that. So yeah, lots of great sales tips that you shared. Anything else relative to sales wise if you're talking to a sales team today?

So awesome. Well, they've been amazing for sure. Thank you so much. Coming up actually next week on Monday, we have Greg Brown, who's the CEO of Motorola Solutions now. I don't know if you remember, I remember an interesting Wall Street Journal quote that Ed Zander, who I think was Greg's predecessor, said that really wasn't too sales-friendly. Do you remember?

Little misquote. Yes. But I can vouch, known personally very well, Greg is wired like you: customers first, sales, kind of everything else. And then after that, we have Denise Mard, who's a channel chief at Dell, Matt Herer, who runs a big piece of WWT. They were probably an early channel partner of yours as well. Lots of other great guests as well. So for everybody watching, thank you so much. Thanks to Sandler for sponsoring again. For those that are members of Sales Community, thanks. For those that are not, you can go to salescommunity.com and join for free. Tucker, thanks for your help behind the scenes. And Scott, personal thanks for all you did for me and my family and my career and my life. Just leading by example always professionally and personally. Thank you so much.