#216 - Ariel Hitron, CEO of Second Nature - on winning the essential sales conversations

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to practice sales conversations without pressure. My guest is Ariel Hitron, Co-founder and CEO of Second NatureAriel has held various executive positions, including VP of New Markets and VP of Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura, where he ran global sales teams with dozens of repsHe's a tech entrepreneur drawing from experience in both the field and the lab. He's run global sales teams with dozens of reps; built playbooks and training sessions for sales as a product marketer; and earlier in his career, designed and developed multiple software product lines from the ground up, each generating tens of millions of recurring revenue, used by millions of consumers. What he learned is that the key to success in scaling a sales organization is hiring the best people and coaching them to be even better. That's why he co-founded Second Nature in 2018. Second Nature is on a mission to help make talking about your products as easy as second nature, to ace every sales call. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ariel to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we equip sales to deliver top performance. We discuss the disconnect between marketing and sales, and how things can change for the better if these departments would understand each other better. Ariel shares the big lessons learned from starting and gaining traction with a SaaS business in a very crowded market. Last but not least, he tells about the do's and don'ts to create a software business that no one can ignore.Here are some of his quotes:We're getting the materials and the kind of messaging from marketing. We're getting everything, here's our messaging. The reality is, nobody cares. Nobody cares about your messaging. Yeah. And now you have a very short time span, and you have to understand what do they care about at this point in time? What do I have to prove to them today? In 13 seconds, or five minutes or 25 minutes, if you're lucky? And how do I focus the conversation on that?During this interview, you will learn four things:Why many software vendors don't get the traction they hope forHow to overcome the cynicism in the market around embracing innovationThe best investments to make in the early stage of your product evolutionHow to go about making big steps forward on your start-up journey without burning yourself outFor more information about the guest from this week:Ariel HitronWebsite Second Nature