Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Your Intention Matters the Podcast. Thank you very much for being here today. My name, of course, is Paul Madat. Today we have Harsh Sabiki, Chief Revenue Officer at BitRise. Harsh, how are things, man? Thanks for being here. How are things in the sixth today?

Really well, Paul. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Yeah, good, good. Friday, September the 11th, tough day in our in our world's history today, of course. So I appreciate the time being here. Looking forward to getting to know your story. Do me a favor if you would. Say hi and provide a quick introduction.

Sure, yeah. As Paul mentioned, my name is Horst Sabiki. I'm based here in Toronto, Canada. Been here my whole life. Um, and I'm uh been in uh software now for over 25 years, uh, dating myself a little bit. Um my career to CRO was uh rather unique. I actually started off um as uh a computer engineer. I did electrical engineering in at school. I went to McMaster University for those of you that are in Canada. Uh from there, I started off, and for the first six years, I actually was a uh software developer for Texas Instruments. Uh, you might know of Texas instruments from the calculators, but they do a lot more than calculators. And uh, you know, it was a great start, you know, start working for a Fortune 80 company at that time. Uh and you know, when you're working for such a large company, they have a lot of uh uh inward mobility for you to try different things. And one thing I realized early on, and I've been writing software since I was 12 years old, uh, as much as I enjoy developing the software, I love explaining how it actually works. So TI was uh uh nice enough to give me the opportunity to go and speak at internal conferences as well as external conferences. And you know, when I first got the um the idea and I got hooked on presenting to a large group of audience and explaining the the value benefits of the software, um I got hooked that okay, I I kind of want to do something different. You know, software development is fun, but maybe I want to move into more of a customer-facing role. And that was the impetus and in 20, 2006, so 20 years ago, I uh joined TI's uh technical sales associate program, and then I went through a year-long course of transitioning to sales. And for those of you that remember back then, that was the time of spin selling and sand and others. So uh I got indoctorated in those methodologies and uh went out and sold um hardware chips at TI. And then in the end of 2007, early 2008, I quickly realized that hardware is not going to be the key differentiator in the future, it's going to be software. So then I took a large um gamble, I should say, in my career. And I went from a Fortune 80 35,000 employee company down to a 200-employee company based in Waterloo, Ontario, called MKS Mortis Kernel Systems. Was with them for four years. I actually started off as a solutions engineer where I was uh the pre-sales engineer doing a lot of demos, proof of concepts, and whatnot, and then slowly transitioned into a full uh sales role with a quarter carrying um role near the end. In year four, we got purchased by PTC out in Boston. And uh, you know, that was uh it was great on a couple of occasions. One was I went through my first acquisition, uh, and two was I realized, okay, sales is kind of where I want to be in software companies, and then from there I moved on to various other roles, worked for a company called Rally Software, based in Boulder, Colorado, where I was selling agile lifecycle management solution. And then from Rally, I was the country manager for Rally Canada. Uh after three and a half years, they got purchased by Computer Associates CA, which then uh eventually got bought by Broadcom. Uh and you know that was again a good exit. Uh, but uh at the same time, uh GitHub called me. Uh at that time, for those folks that don't know, this was August 2015. So GitHub was a small startup, uh, not very well known. We had, I think, 20, 25 million revenue and only 200 employees. So I joined them. I was in the range of 250, 40, 250 uh employee in October 2015. And that was a rocket ship. Of course, it became uh the ubiquitous and the default standard for software development. So I was with them for four years, moved up the ranks from an individual contributor sales rep all the way to the country manager for Canada, and then also the director of sales for Canada and Central US. Um, so that was a lot of fun, and then we got purchased by Microsoft for seven and a half billion dollars. Uh, and then once you do it three times, and why not do it four times? So then I uh joined a company called HashiCorp, which was an amazing experience as well. Again, HashiCorp was very small at the time, only about 70, 80 million revenue. And there I was responsible for uh again Canada, the country manager for Canada, was with them for about a year and a half. I wasn't looking to leave, but um at Rally I met uh Todd Olson, who had started his own company called Pendo. Uh, he was our VP of software at Rally. He called me and said, Look, I'm transitioning from a PLG to a sales ad motion and moving up market, and I need someone to come manage uh uh enterprise sales for me globally. And that was the only reason why I left Hashi Corp. It would have been my first role outside of North America, and I kind of wanted to do that because that would give me uh more exposure to international markets. And I did that for about a year and a half, and it was great. Uh, and then because of that, uh Octopus Deploy was looking for uh a global sales leader, the chief revenue officer, uh, Australian-based company and based in Brisbane. Uh, and I joined them in uh uh in August 2022 and uh was with them for four years. Octopus Deploy is a continuous delivery at scale company. Uh, they're backed by Insight uh partners in New York. And after four almost four successful years, uh Insight wanted me to do what I did for Octopus, but at BitRise. Uh and here we are now. It's been three months out of BitRise as CRO.

Wow, 25, 30 years has been anything but boring, it sounds like.

Yeah, I think I've worn eight different hats, eight different roles, so it's been fun.

Are you married, father? Neither, both.

Yes, uh married, uh yeah, married to my beautiful wife Patricia, and I've got two boys, uh, Liam and Kian. They are seven and five.

Seven and five, gotcha. You know, Harsh, as we were talking before we hit record, the the the whole framework of this podcast is all about mindset and intention and their roles and overachievement in sales, because again, from my perspective, nothing is really given to any of us. And as we were talking, like companies can give them sales training and skill set training and product training and systems training and inbound leads. And but if we're not wired the right way, we typically don't get what we want because nothing's really handed to us. And so I'm curious about something. You mentioned you went to Mac and taking a look at your LinkedIn profile. Uh, I saw that you took engineering. And I think most people on the surface might look at engineering and think, well, that's not that's there's no real connection to a career in sales or business or anything like that. But I think a little bit differently because engineers, in my opinion, can be great at sales because very tactical, very strategic, very precision, ask a lot of questions, they have to get it right. And so I'm curious about how did you get into sales from engineering? Because I can't imagine you had sales in your brain when you were teaching engineering as your vocation sales.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, so I think the transition happened was when I first got exposure to doing public speaking and uh doing a demo of the product at Texas Instruments, I was developing uh uh an IDE called Code Composer Studio. And Code Composer Studio is an IDE for embedded developers. And uh what was great about uh that was as I was developing the product, and then I got the opportunity to go ahead and um explain it at various conferences, uh it was in a in a customer-facing capacity, and that's where I got the idea that you know explaining the value proposition of your software is what's going to differentiate one product from another. And then I knew that I didn't have all the basics of sales, so that's why the first step was actually a technical sales route, and I took on the sales engineer route where I would be paired with an account executive, I'd be responsible for the technical success of our customers, and that was fantastic, and I did that for three years, and if I may speak freely, Paul. What tipped me to the dark side, if you will, was really the credit, right? Uh who gets credit for the deal, who gets the big you know, commission checks. And really the the pay gap was significant, right? And it's because of risk and reward, right? The AEs uh take a lot of risk, you know, they they've got 50% base, 50% commission. So 50% is never guaranteed when you start a job as an AE, uh, whereas the SE comp is different, but the unlimited potential, unlimited earning potential is what ticked the scale for me. And I can tell you it wasn't an easy journey. You know, the first couple of years were definitely difficult. But to your point earlier, which you just made, uh what I brought to the table was a systematic thinking approach to it. You know, I was given a list of accounts, I know how to go and define my ICP within those target accounts. What is the proper message that I should be utilizing? Challenger sale was great from that perspective, you know, where inside impact reveal solution and call to action, but you have to have a systematic approach to going after prospects, getting them interested in your product before you can actually even ask for half an hour or 20 minutes on the phone with them.

Exactly. You know, and so I appreciate kind of your story to this point. You mentioned that uh, you know, when you when you said Texas Instruments, you said you probably think of calculators. And that was the first thought that I had, of course, because I'm so honest with that. But it took me back to uh when I first got into sales, I worked for Xerox. And so it's a different industry, but but similar in that Xerox was known for the photocopier. And but we but we did so much more than just photocopiers, right? Much like Texas Texas Instrument as well. And so you talked about the fact that when you got into sales, it was a hard journey, similar to me. In that first year for me in sales as a Xerox rep, I must have mentally quit um half a dozen times. Yeah, I just couldn't figure it out. I was in early, I was out late, I was all in. And I'm glad I didn't because it turned into 10 of the best years of my career uh, you know, working for that organization. And I'm curious about you, you know, you talked about transition going from TI to MKS. You went from this behemoth of an organization in TI to a smaller company, 200 people, more of a startup scenario. When I left Xerox, I left to start up my own business. Uh I I didn't leave to go to another employee-based organization. But that said, my choice to leave Xerox took me probably a year, uh, but like thinking about it, kind of game planning it, spreadsheeting the plus minuses of it. And do I do this? Do I not? How's it gonna work? How much money do I have? And you know, what's it gonna take? And so your your path was a little bit different, but I'm curious about something harsh. To leave TI to go to MKS, was that an overnight thought? Was it a long, drawn-out process? What was involved with you making that decision from a mindset perspective?

Oh God, it was it was uh uh sleepless nights. And and Paul, it was similar to you, even after I signed the contract and I'd given my uh two-week notice, I contemplated uh at least three or four times to calling MKS and saying, no, sorry, you know what, I I can't make the move. Uh it was it was definitely scary, right? And not just because I'm moving from a very large company to a small company, I'm doing it, I'll be doing a different role altogether. And a role that I had I had never done before. So that was more scarier because I'm switching from hardware to software, I'm switching from a big company to a small company, and I'm taking on a sales engineering role, which I had never done before. So it was definitely scary. But you know, I I said to myself, in life, sometimes you have to take two steps, uh, one step back to go two steps forward. And that was 100% the case because nobody would just hire someone from a hardware background and then put them in a position to start selling software overnight. You do have to take a step back, learn the industry, understand the mechanics and the basics of it, to then go ahead and put yourself into a position where you are the ideal choice for an AE role in the software industry.

Gotcha. And so how long did you give it?

Uh so similar to you, like I had those sleepless nights, and then the first three, four months were very difficult. Yeah. Uh, you know, it's difficult to concentrate. But uh, you know, every every week, you know, I told myself that uh this is for the long haul. This is just a short detour, a necessary detour, so I can learn the business and then move from there.

You know, Harsh, I want to talk about your journey a little bit here because you know, most organizations put in place a bit of a progression path. Like if you start in sales, there seems to be this almost um expected path of sales rep, sales manager, director of sales, VP of sales, maybe a president of a division. That seems to be kind of the path that most companies have in place. And not everybody follows that, but that seems to be kind of the like like the next step. And and if I think about my own selling career, well, I never made it to the director level to the VP level. I went from sales rep to product specialist to sales manager, and what I learned pretty quickly was that those are very different jobs. Yes, like very different, different skill sets, different day-to-day operations, different requirements. And you like you can be a really successful individual sales rep, crushing quota, bonusing out, like all over your territory, just dumb it. And you can be an average to a subpar leader, and vice versa, you can be the best leader a company can have and have average results as a rep. And so I'm curious about your choice to go from individual contributor into leadership. Did somebody tap you on the shoulder? Was that kind of a forecast of your own? And was that a hard transition for you, like it was for me?

Yeah, no, it absolutely was, right? And to your point, Paul, like I've noticed this as well throughout my career. Most times the best sellers don't always make the best managers. And because it is a bit of a different mindset. For me, one of the symptoms that I wanted to avoid, and I was lucky I had a really good mentor at the time, but one of the symptoms you want to avoid, especially if it's your first management position after being uh a great uh account executive, is uh the terminology call is called a super AE. In the sense that it's easy as a first-line leader to you see your your reps and you want to help them with their deals, so you just quickly take over because you don't have time to educate them rather than being a coach, you actually become the player, right? And hence where the super AE terminology comes from. That was probably my hardest transition. And I had to always tell my myself that I have to trust but verify. Okay, I should not just be able to, I shouldn't just take over the deals. If I don't leave by example, I can lead by example, I can show them how it's done, but not take the wheel. Let them still drive, let them control their own destiny, but give them the tools and guidance on how to navigate complex sales cycles. And I think that was the toughest transition. Once you do it once and you learn to you know bite your tongue and take a step back, it's so much easier than to help you scale. Because you have to master that if you are going to be a first-time leader, uh, because it's easy to fall into the trap of just joining an AE's call and taking over the the call and the deal. Rather, how do you coach them from the sidelines? So they're asking the right discovery questions and asking the right questions to move the deal along.

Gotcha. You know, Harsh, you as you were sharing your your background and your uh your career with us early on in the podcast, you mentioned uh forgive me for not remembering the actual company names, you mentioned, but you talked about making a transition in 2022 career-wise. And of course, that's now five, six years ago for in terms of our timeline, four or five years ago now. But in 2022, as a world, we were still coming out of COVID. Like it wasn't really as what it was in 2020 and 2021, of course, but it was still kind of there, and there was still work from home movement and still trying to figure it out, and et cetera, et cetera. But and so did COVID play a role in your decision and factor in? Was that uh is that part of it at all?

Uh a little bit, yeah. But in the sense that you know, the traditional old enterprise selling motion of getting on the plane every second week, going to visit customers, a lot of things could be done remotely, right? And uh that was that played a big factor in it as to how you sell. Because now you're selling remotely, there's some challenges associated with that. You know, in the old world, if you're able to go and see the customer physically and you take them off for lunch or a coffee, you know, you take them out of their office, uh, you end up getting a lot more information, right? Now, with it being digital, you can just rely on call transcripts and what the customer says virtually and on a call that's being recorded versus what they say physically, there's a whole body language and the tone, and there's a lot of nuances with that. So I think every seller out there had to transition in 2020, 2021 uh to that new selling model and get used to it. I still believe that I think now that after post-COVID, the best of both worlds is a combination of remote uh plus going on site to see customers.

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because in my world uh on the on the sales training side of things, specifically with our company, pre-COVID, it was pretty much all in person. Yeah. Like this is gonna be an audio podcast, but you and I are recording right now in Teams and it's virtual, but nobody wanted training like this back in 20. Like it wasn't even really a second option. It was like, who wants to do training like this? Let's get in a room. And so it forced us to chase things around, and et cetera. So good. Well, I appreciate you being here. You know, uh, Harsh, when when I reached out to you, uh, it was because I saw that you're speaking at an event coming up in November here in Toronto at the clinic. What are you talking about in November? What's your panel?

Yeah, that that's about uh uh sales enablement and the top of the funnel. Um, you know, how do we uh go after and expand like what's how do we prospect and try to acquire net new uh customers in the age of AI and the whole modern tech stack, specifically the RevOps stack, and what are the tools that uh the teams are using today to get the attention of prospects? Uh so it's gonna be about looking at intent data. You know, gone are the days where, okay, I want to go after you know um RBC, and then you know you've got the account, you know who your ICP is, you've got a list of contacts, and then you just start to cold call email or or call them. Now it's more about the top in November, it's gonna be about how do you look at intense signals from the top of the funnel to see okay, which clients are actually in the market and browsing for a solution that you uh like yours, like like the one that you're selling. That then helps you move away from 100% cold call to almost like a warm out outlook. Of course, because of GDPR and other uh issues, you're not gonna necessarily know who within I'll just pick on RBC. You won't necessarily know who, but if RBC is looking for you know a um uh a release management solution for their mobile apps, for their iOS app, um, you may not necessarily know who, but at least now you've got some context to say, okay, RBC's had four, five different folks in the last week visit our website. These are the pages they've looked at. This is the content that they interacted with. Let's now set up an ABM campaign that's focused on the product that we know can help solve that their potential issues. And to do that as well, you have to now get creative and use all those things as an input as to what they were browsing, how much time they spent on each page, what type of content they interacted with, with making sure that you are reaching out just in time with the relevant content. So you're actually talking about potentially solutions that they might be interested in, giving them proof points, give showing them okay, which other customers in their industry have solved uh using your product.

Fantastic. You know, Harsh, I really appreciate you being here today. I've enjoyed talking to you. I'm looking forward to the event in November. I'll be there as well. And so thanks for being here. I've enjoyed talking to you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Paul. You're welcome. Okay, everyone, thanks for being here as well. And as remember, as I always say to you as I close off each podcast, remember this your intention matters. Why? Because that's the result you'll tend to get. And I'll see you on the next episode.