This week’s podcast rounded out our CEO series where we’ve been interviewing some great CEOs to learn about each of their respective journeys and the parallels between sales engineering and being a CEO.  This week featured Matthew Darrow, an SE who quickly rose through the ranks and learned a lot in his journey to becoming a CEO.

Listen to this great conversation with Matt here:

#127 How a Sales Engineer Raised Funds to Start Vivun

It’s hard not to learn from such a great conversation.  This week’s 4/1/1 takes just some of the thoughts that come to mind in how to forge one’s path forward effectively, whether in their corporate pursuits or otherwise.

 

1 – Seek (good) mentorship.  Not everyone is a great mentor.  Find someone that you look up to and who has your best interests at heart.  There is so much to gain from having a good mentor and so much is possible with respect to how that relationship can grow. 

2 – This has been said before, but if you believe in something, and we mean really believe in something, then take a chance and go for it!  The worst that can happen is that you learn something, and best-case scenario you achieve what you sought to do. 

3 – Get good at storytelling.  We’ve talked about this on the show a lot, but there is so much to gain from being a good storyteller.  Whether it be being able to better sell a product, service, or yourself, being able to take others on a compelling journey through the forest of your words and to do it well, is so valuable. 

4 – Keep it simple.  Matt talked about how it took a lot of trial and error to get from a 40-slide pitch deck to an extremely effective one, that consisted of just a single slide.  We’ve all heard the importance of keeping it simple, but actually finding a way to do so isn’t always the easiest.  Work at it and it’ll get easier, and let the cliché ring true that less truly is more. 

 

Vivun: It’s great seeing systems designed with SEs in mind. Vivun is a great tool for Pre-sales teams to manage all they need to do to close business more effectively.   

 

Note that this show is not sponsored by Vivun, but it’s still something you should check out.