Walk and Talk w/ Dan Watkins

[Take our assessment] | Book a meeting Dan is talking directly to reps today about how to think about career progression. Most salespeople focus on the wrong things when planning their next move, and it costs them more than they realize. Dan breaks down the four levels of selling, from transactional roles all the way to global enterprise, including what deal sizes look like at each stage, what ski...

Book a meeting with Dan Dan is walking through something he sees in almost every company he consults with. Most go-to-market teams aren't actually integrated, and it's costing founders and revenue leaders more than they realize. This is part one of a five-part series on how to build a truly vertically aligned, integrated go-to-market team. Dan covers the first two steps: recognizing the pr...

Book a meeting with Dan Dan's lived in California, Ireland, and Spain, traveled the world for work, and made friends across every kind of belief system. He has one rule for all of it: share openly, never proselytize. This episode is about why that rule has changed him more than almost anything else. In this episode: The one filter Dan uses when deciding who to let into his life and his team Wh...

⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan. Most reps find a script, follow it to the letter, and wonder why it feels off. Dan's built a career on borrowing the best techniques from the best books — then making every single one his own. This episode is the step-by-step on how to do that. In this episode: Why copying a script without personalizing it costs you the best part of the sale How to take any techniqu...

📄 How to think through location, comp, and in-office vs. remote for your GTM team Book a meeting with Dan Most founders pick a city for their office and assume the talent will follow. Dan just got off the phone with a client making exactly the wrong call — and breaks down why location, comp, and in-office expectations have to be designed together, not decided separately. In this episode: Why hiri...

Book a meeting with Dan Dan shares the loop that's quietly shaped his career over the last 12 years: ask someone you trust for one thing to work on, find a book on it, and go back to thank them. Simple in theory. Hard in practice when your ego is in the way. In this episode: Why the best feedback comes when everyone's in a good mood — not at a review How Dan turned "you leave dead bodies everywher...

⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠ If you're walking into a meeting and leading with "the CEO said we need to do this" — you're not leading. Dan breaks down why quoting authority that isn't in the room is one of the fastest ways to lose your team's respect, and what to say instead. In this episode: Why name-dropping your boss undermines your own authority How to take ownership of a message even when it c...

⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠ Dan's been thinking about this one all day. AI is already changing parts of his business — but most of his team hasn't touched it yet. This episode is his challenge to every founder and leader to stop watching and start building. In this episode: Why Dan is making AI application-building an OKR for every team member No-code tools you can use today for under $1,000 — or...

⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠ Dan's walking through Lehigh before his next meeting, sharing something that happened with his son the day before. A simple admission changed everything between them. In this episode: Why telling your kid "I don't know what I'm doing" is one of the most powerful things you can say How dropping the need to have all the answers opened up a real conversation What happene...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠ 🧠 Are you a me, a we, or an it? Take the test Dan's driving back from Las Vegas — car on autopilot, honest mode on. He's sharing a mistake he's repeated more than once: getting so locked into solving the business problem that he forgot to bring people along with him. In this episode: The me/we/it framework that changed how Dan thinks...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan 📄 See what overhiring a senior leader actually costs you → ⁠https://content.databased.com/lp/vp-of-sales-hiring-mistake Most founders hit Series A and make the same hire: a VP of Sales. It feels like the right move. It's usually not. Dan breaks down exactly how that decision turns into a $1M+ mistake — and what to do instead. In this episode:...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan The right blend is the one that actually fits your life, your relationships, and what you're building right now. Dan shares how his own blend has shifted over the years and why the version that works today looks nothing like the one that worked fifteen years ago. Don't take someone else's prescription. Find the blend that fits you and build around i...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan Two interactions in one night reminded Dan of something that never stops being true: the businesses and salespeople who actually care about the customer always win , and the ones chasing the deal always wonder why they keep losing it. This one is for anyone in sales or customer success who wants a reminder that genuine care is still the sharpest comp...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan Dan's in Henderson, Nevada thinking about one of the simplest productivity shifts he's made as a leader: replacing sitting-down meetings with walking meetings, and stacking virtual one-on-ones with errands, school drop-offs, and low-intensity cardio. If you're running eight one-on-ones a week and dreading every Zoom call, this one is for you. And if y...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan Dan's at the Grand America in Salt Lake for an annual investment conference, and what's on his mind is something most high performers never slow down to think about: what do you actually do with the money you're earning? This episode is Dan's personal playbook for building financial stability and diversifying risk, from paying off his f...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ What are the specif skills that make you hireable anywhere, at any level, regardless of what your current company decides to offer you? If you want to scale your career as a rep, this episode is for you. Don't ask if your company will promote you. Ask if you're skilled enough that any company would be lucky to have you. This podcast is spo...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Many leaders fall into the trap of swinging between total hands-off freedom and suffocating micromanagement, when neither one actually works. The fix isn't somewhere in the middle. It's setting the right expectations from day one and then deciding who belongs on your team. Stop doing the job of the person you hired. Your business won't scale...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ How you choose to perceive the universe, and why that single choice shapes how you handle every loss in sales, in business, and in life. His belief: the universe is inherently good, and for every hard experience, something equal or greater is coming around the corner. Give yourself a break. You had to go through that to get to what's ne...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ Dan talks about emotional intelligence, specifically the side most people overlook: knowing yourself well enough to know when you have nothing left to give. Whether you're a leader or an IC, how you manage your emotional state in high-stakes moments determines the outcome more than almost anything else. The person who stays calm the longest wins....

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ See it for yourself, access our ⁠ Cost of Vacancy Calculator. ⁠ A hiring process that drags on too long is one of the most overlooked ways leaders lose quota before the quarter even starts. Every week you add to your hiring timeline is productivity you will never get back. This podcast is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠DataBased⁠⁠⁠ . Your partner in b...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dan's thinking about a habit that changed the trajectory of his career and his personal life. It started with a conversation eleven years ago with a colleague at Qualtrics and a simple challenge: if you want to get better at something, you need to hear about it from lots of different angles. This episode is about why the two-book rule has b...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The topic on Dan's mind today is one most people get completely wrong. Feedback is rare. Most reps go months without hearing anything specific from their manager. So when it does come, what you do with it matters more than almost anything else. This episode is for individual contributors who want to stop leaving feedback on the table and start...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dan's walking and thinking about the one leadership behavior that fewer than half of managers actually do consistently: giving real feedback. Not vague encouragement. Not quarterly check-the-box conversations. Specific, direct, in-the-moment feedback that people can act on the same day. This episode is for leaders who want to be the kind of manager...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dan's just landed back in Salt Lake after a trip to San Francisco, and what's on his mind isn't the meetings he just came from. It's the question he gets asked all the time by executives who are also parents, partners, and people trying to hold it all together: how do you actually do all of it without shortchanging any of it? Dan doesn&...

> ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a meeting with Dan ⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Dan's just finished a workout and he's fired up about something that's been on his mind since early in his career: grit as a competitive strategy. Not grit as a buzzword, but grit as a deliberate choice to do the work nobody else wants to do, more consistently than anyone else is willing to do it. Dan draws on Angela Duckworth's research, advice from a for...