High-impact sales leadership with Miro’s Adam Carr

Great leaders serve their teams, not the other way around.

In this episode of Reveal, host Dana Feldman chats with Adam Carr, Head of Global Sales at Miro. Adam shares his journey from a solopreneur to leading a global sales team of over 300 people across 12 offices.

Drawing from his own experience, Adam discusses how to effectively lead teams by building trust and encouraging a culture of experimentation. He also offers advice on advancing your career by making intentional moves that make you a well-rounded leader. 

At its core, leadership is about elevating others and driving results with purpose.

Adam Carr:
I’m constantly prioritizing the needs of the team, and I help them grow and perform as highly as possible. And I think that I do that in a very logical and empathetic way, meaning that, like, I want people to bring their best work every day. And when they know that I’m deeply invested in their success and helping them and helping them unblock obstacles, or when they’re stuck helping them think of creative ideas, I build the trust, and I get them to want to lean in harder. And so, you know, it allows me then to challenge them and poke holes and not feel like I’m integrating them in their deals.

Dana Feldman:
What do the world’s best CROs have in their playbooks? This is the place to find out. This is Reveal: The Revenue Intelligence podcast. I’m your host, Dana Feldman. Hi, I’m Dana Feldman, and this is Reveal: The Revenue Intelligence podcast. Each episode, we’re focused on helping you build the ultimate CRO playbook. And we promise to give you access to the most influential revenue leaders at the world’s top companies so that you can actually achieve your revenue goals as well. And in this episode, I’m delivering on that promise with my guest, Adam Carr. Adam is the Head of Global Sales at Miro, a visual workspace for teams to manage projects and design products.

Dana Feldman:
And they have over 80 million global users. Incredible. As head of global sales, Adam runs a team of more than 300 people across twelve global offices, and that includes sales solution engineering and channel partnerships. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Carr:
Awesome. Happy to be here.

Dana Feldman:
Hey, Adam, I know you are so passionate about data driven approaches. I think you call it disrupting yourselves before you get disrupted. You have a lot of fresh perspectives, and I am really, really excited to get into this conversation with you. With all of my guests, I really kind of like to start at the beginning of their sales journey. I know that you worked early on at pretty notable companies like AT&T and Box. And so just to kind of ground the listeners and help us learn a little bit more about you, let’s start at the beginning. Talk us through how did you get into sales and kind of your journey to where you are today?

Adam Carr:
So my background’s a little bit interesting, and the way I would describe it is that I have an accounting mindset. I was an accounting undergrad, so numbers came naturally to me. It’s not because I enjoyed it. It just was. It was easy, which is a bit strange to say. And how that relates to sales, I think it’s actually pretty natural in a lot of ways. But I come from a background of accounting and entrepreneurship.

Adam Carr:
So during school, I started multiple different businesses and that led me to graduating, starting a business, raising money, failing and the economy tanked. And I was like, oh no, what am I going to do? And so I actually, I pulled the ripcord and I went to corporate America. I joined as an SDR at AT&T. A lot of folks don’t realize that they have an SDR type of program. It’s in Atlanta, Georgia, and you’re out there, it’s for college hires. I barely made the cut to get into this program and I was out there for about six months and then they place you across the country and you don’t get a pick. You’re stack ranked every day. Back then it was when you had to wear a suit and tie and you literally couldn’t get up from your desk without putting on a suit jacket.

Adam Carr:
And so I landed in San Diego out of all places and I was in a role which is interesting because a lot of people don’t realize that AT&T has a big business there that resells SaaS. And so I was there as an individual contributor. I worked my way up into management and it led me to the Bay Area. And so I was like, I’m in this tech mecca, and what am I doing working at such a large company? And so I parlayed that to join Box, and it was a perfect fit to get into tech because Box just inked a relationship with AT&T where the 6000 sales reps at AT&T were going to resell Box. And so what’s interesting about my background is, like, when you look at all the experiences, they all tell a story and around my learnings and help me round myself out as a leader and I was a bit intentional in that. And so at Box I went and learned the channel ecosystem and what I did there is I helped them build from zero to one. So it built out the AT&T relationship, from zero to 20 million by the time I left. This was pre-hundred million pre-IPO Box, incredible time.

Adam Carr:
And I was crazy enough to start at Box and at the same time decide it was a good idea to do my MBA. So I did a part-time MBA at UC Davis. It was every other weekend. It’s kind of a blur because of just the timing of work and doing that. And fast forward three years later I, you know as, as most folks say during the MBA program you meet individuals. And then it just, it actually led me to my next venture which was at FiveStars. And I loved Box. Great culture, great company, and it was hard to leave, but I was ready to get back into direct leadership.

Adam Carr:
And so this was an opportunity for me to get into second line leadership and learn a different motion, which was transactional motion. And so there I learned how to run a highly transactional business and lots of great learnings. I realized that the transactional motion and the hyper transactional is not maybe my favorite, but it was good to learn to and worked from incredible people. So one theme across all my background is that, is that I’ve worked for just amazing individuals. I’ve learned a lot from them. And after FiveStars, I did a quick stint at a company called Classy, incredible mission and vision, and very fortunate to be able to come in there and help rebuild out their sales foundation and help lead them through some transformational times and work for someone incredible there, who to this day, is now a mentor and a friend. Adam Aaron.

Adam Carr:
And from there, I decided it was time for me to take a step back, think about what was next for me, what was next was I wanted to move to a company that was PLG. I wanted to go to a company that had the bottoms up and that was looking to build the tops down. And the way I described that is, I always thought what would have happened if Box and Dropbox was one company leveraging the power, the bottoms up motion at Dropbox, the tops down at Box? That’s why I took the leap of faith at Miro. And this was pre-pandemic, and I really believed in the mission and vision that Miro was going after. And I know it’s been a wild ride since then. I mean, I was there when there were 15 people globally and now there’s 300 plus around the world.

Dana Feldman:
Wow. Okay, I gotta ask a few. I gotta dig in. I gotta ask a few questions. You know, in each of those stops, you really mentioned a lot about working, who you worked for, really credible people. Did you just get lucky that those people you reported to, were that, or was there something in the interview process or kind of in the profiling process of these companies that you really look for when you’re thinking about your next job?

Adam Carr:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think that it was not intentional, to start, to be honest. And I think that those are things that I think about. Some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years, that’s one of the biggest ones, is that I would say Miro. I was much more intentional about that piece. And looking back, everyone says it’s easy to look back and connect the dots. But it’s hard when you’re in the moment and you’re looking forward. I’d say it’s one of the things I, looking backwards that I’ve been fortunate to work for some incredible people and they’re all very different.

Adam Carr:
I think that’s what’s made me diverse in the way that I think and that it’s helped shape who I am today. I think I’m much more intentional now as I think about that than I was earlier in my career.

Dana Feldman:
Yeah. And, you know, I give a lot of props. Like these programs. The program you went through at AT&T, right? I started my journey out in the SDR program at Salesforce. Like, the fundamentals these programs give you as a sales professional are, bar none, you know, and I have a lot of love, respect and space for these organizations that gave a lot of us our start in being in this profession, you know, so I hear you on that. I think it’s incredible.

Dana Feldman:
I’m curious. Let’s talk a little bit about like in that journey, some of the key lessons that you’ve learned. And so I’d love. I know you’ve mentioned this and I want to dig in and I have to imagine it’s something with your love for numbers and you and, you know, where you started out. But I think one of your lessons is around, like building strong relationships with the CFO and the CPO. Talk to us what’s behind that.

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I mean, ultimately you’re in the people business at the end of the day. So I think what starts is that building a thriving team is one of the most important pillars of the business. And you can have the greatest process, playbooks, tools in the world. But if you don’t have the right people with the right mindset that are enabled properly, it’s all meaningless. And so building that cross-functional team and the relationships or where you can have that trust to challenge one another. Disagree is mission critical. I’d say, like, you know, ultimately the CFO is by the partner of crime. That’s going to help shape the future of the business and making sure that you’re setting yourself up and the team up for success when it comes to how do you build a repeatable, predictable, scalable business motion.

Dana Feldman:
I love it. I’m curious, any advice you have maybe for some of the listeners out there that don’t yet have that relationship with the CFO or the CPO, but need it, how would they go about it? Anything you’d advise them there?

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I think it’s starting from like, you know, I think they’re both very different in many ways, and it depends upon your role. There’s counterparts that you have within the CFO function, for example, like maybe if you’re not the head of sales or the CRO, but you’re working with strategic finance. And so it’s building relationships within that line, of that line of business per se that I would say is critical. So it’s not necessarily just a co. It’s the folks within the organization that are your allies and are helping you make sure we’re setting up for success. I think on the people side, there’s business partners, and at the end of the day, it’s making the effort, it’s taking the time to do that. I’d say a lot of this happens organically just by being around people. And for those companies that are in the office, it’s going the extra mile to ensure that you’re doing the right thing.

Adam Carr:
But I think that what matters most is that you think from the business first. A lot of times folks earlier in their careers, they missed that. They think from the people side, and you think about the business first and your objective in that way, it helps go a long way of building these right relationships.

Dana Feldman:
Cross functionally, I had such a hard lesson that follows that early in my career where I was trying to figure out where to put the people, and my leaders said, Dana, first we figure out what’s right for the business and the right structure for the business, and then we put the people into that. And it was a real moment for me as a leader of changing my lens about, like, what’s important. So I love that. What other key lessons have you really learned as you went through that trajectory of your career that would be great for the listeners to hear or learn from?

Adam Carr:
Yeah. Yeah. So I mentioned working around great people. I talked about the importance of, like, cross-functional alignment. I’d say a few other areas around change is constant. The way I described it, as growth, mindset, as everything. I’m a lifelong learner. Like, my resilience and how I’m able to constantly evolve myself over the years is because I’m always learning.

Adam Carr:
I look at every opportunity, whether it’s a hard opportunity or a positive opportunity, as an opportunity of improvement and learning. I think it’s really important. I think the other thing that I would call out is that the importance on work life balance, it’s easy to say, hard to do, but it’s always, always top of mind for me. And the more I talk about it. I see the more that I embody it, and especially being a dad up to, it’s really important to me that I am able to box out the right timeframes for myself because, especially we get a global environment where at any hour of the day, someone’s on, someone’s doing something, and you could lose sight of that really fast.

Dana Feldman:
So anything tactical you do there, do you just really set the boundaries of some time blocks on your calendar and it’s no go zone while with the family or anything? I think listeners always want to hear where they can pick up some of these tips.

Adam Carr:
So, part of it is that I try really hard to set the right boundaries when it comes from the calendar side. That’s the starting point. I live and dive on my calendar. I’d say, like, but I think you got to make you time, too. So, like, for me, like, I’m a 05:00 a.m. workout person. So, like, I’m up at 430 in the morning.

Adam Carr:
I am, you know, at the gym at 05:00 a.m. and that, Mike, that’s, like, the me time. And then you look at, all right, well, when’s the family time? It’s like, well, I actually do the best I can a few days a week, to, uh, I got this really cool bike. It’s called the bunch bike. Uh, and I take my daughter, and I bring my son, who’s three, with us, as well. We bike to school, and so, like, I purposely block those times out. I think those are really important because it’s so easy. And again, I don’t do that every day, but I try my best to do it two or three days a week. And then the other part is that, like, we’re always sitting down together as a family.

Adam Carr:
When I’m in town at 06:00 p.m. like it is on the dot, I make sure my last call is before then so that I’m not, like, going over. And those are just maybe some small tactics that I do, but they become, you know, part of my daily routine. And I think that’s the part that makes it work well, is that it’s not like a, you know, an ad hoc thing. It’s like I have it in my. Built into my operating rhythm, and I.

Dana Feldman:
Think you said something there that resonates, at least with me. Like, I do the best I can. Right. You have intention. It’s not about perfection, but we’re just. We’re doing the best we can with all that’s going on, which I think is great. All right, let’s talk a little bit. You went through this incredible journey getting into sales leadership.

Dana Feldman:
A lot of our listeners have aspirations to get into sales leadership. What would you say it really takes to become a sales leader?

Adam Carr:
Leader? Yeah. Before, like, the way that I think about it, maybe this is a bit of my journey, too, is that I think it starts with first understanding, like, what are your career paths? And there’s multiple career paths, and everyone just thinks it’s, well, it’s a ladder. You got to climb the ladder. And I think it’s. That’s. That’s fundamentally wrong and that there’s a lot of zigzags that you can be making. You get. And, you know, I’ve seen great leaders, you know, go from a, you know, individual contributor to manager back to individual contributor.

Adam Carr:
And, you know, part of my journey is that I’ve taken lateral moves, and I did that intentionally. It was hard at the time, and I made less money doing those as well, but I knew those would pay off in dividends. And so I think it starts with first understanding what are my career path options? Where am I looking to be three to five years, because it’s hard to look further out than that. Life changes and the market changes. What are the competencies tied to what roles? What experiences do I need to have? What are my gaps, and then what do I need to do to bridge those gaps? I’m a huge fan of individual development plans. Like, you need to have a development plan that you’re constantly looking at, and it’s on you to have that. I think that’s also something that’s really important, that, looking back in my career, is that I always had a career plan of what was my next role and what were my gaps and what did I need to do to bridge those gaps. And I wanted that honest feedback from my leadership team.

Adam Carr:
And it wasn’t just my direct manager, it was the skip level as well. And that created the awareness that this is something I’m passionate about and that I’m ambitious about. And so to me, those are the starting points. When I think about what it takes, what are some of the characteristics? We’ve promoted a lot of first time leaders at bureau, and they’ve demonstrated some strong evidence in leadership leverage and results. And the way I think about that is like a few ways. One is how do you inspire and motivate? Are you able to rally the team around a vision, a mission? Are you able to connect the dots from big picture to the tactical day to day execution? And that’s hard to do, but the most effective leaders are able to zoom in and zoom out. Another area that I, that I think is really important is understanding how to build a highly performance culture in a culture of learning and coaching. A lot of folks, you know, think they’re doing coaching, but they’re not actually coaching.

Adam Carr:
And they’re not actually getting people to learn and think they do a lot of the doing instead. And so I think that it’s a, it’s an art and a science. And we have invested a lot lately into the coaching programs here at Miro. And I think that’s really important too, for leaders. It’s like if you don’t have those coaching programs, then go find third parties that offer those programs that allow you to continue to evolve. The other area, I’d say, is strong communication and empathy. You have to be able to like my favorite concept is radical, candorous. It’s a great book.

Adam Carr:
I love it. I believe it’s a core part of my leadership is that for you to be able to challenge people directly, you have to be able to care about them personally. They have to know that and feel that. And so that is really, really important is being an effective communicator. And then another area that I think about is able to block out noise. Do you understand how to drive, focus and prioritization? Because especially in the hypergrowth organizations, it is so easy to get caught up in the minutia. It’s so easy to get caught up in a bunch of noise happening around you because you’re moving at a million miles a minute. And so if you’re able to just keep your team focused and driving to the drumbeat, that’s really, really important.

Adam Carr:
And then the last one I’d call out is operational excellence. And are you able to understand how the inputs tie to the outputs? And it’s not saying that you have to overly scientific emotion or no, it’s you understand both the science and the art and you’re able to drive a good sales process with good hygiene, understand how to qualify deals properly and leverage the toolbox that you have at your disposal.

Dana Feldman:
I love those. I feel like we could like write a book off those, Adam. And just like we’d all be the better for it. I’m curious. As you said, you’ve hired a lot of first time leaders at Miro. Out of those, is there one in particular that you see being an area that, like, first time leaders, you know, maybe struggle with or need a little bit more time or experience with out of those that you guys really lean into?

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I mean, it’s across the, like, I’m trying to think if there’s, like, one thing that would stick out. I think the hardest part is, especially if you’re going for managing your, your peers, you know, that’s the hardest because these are folks that you were in the trenches with every single day and then being, now being at their boss and being able to take that, like, you know, boss hat on, like, manager hat. And so that’s probably a hard piece is like, how do I properly hold people accountable, have those crucial conversations? And so that’s typically, like, you have that ruinous empathy early on. It’s really hard to navigate that because you just want to make sure you bridge that, those conversations where you’re not an asshole and you’re actually someone that they care about you to build that trust. And so I think that’s probably the hardest thing that I see early on with leaders. They don’t know how to balance that appropriately.

Dana Feldman:
Let me double click on one that. I think it’s not new, but I think it is one that is becoming more and more central of a topic when you look to hire leaders or as you look to promote them. And that’s a lot around operational excellence and having an operating rhythm. I would love to get your point of view when you go and interview leaders to join your team. What are you looking for there? What do you, where do you see the gaps? Let’s talk a little bit about this topic.

Adam Carr:
I love when they have structure. I love when they think about their 13-week operating cadence and how they think about what they do each week and how it evolves across the quarter. And so, to me, the structure and the drumbeat is, is a core part of how you create discipline. And I think that’s one of the things that a lot of, a lot of folks, like, lack in some ways, because it’s more ad hoc. And, like, for me, like, there’s nothing. I’ll give you an example. Like, team meetings are critical. We run forecast calls every week.

Adam Carr:
There’s no excuses. When I miss a forecast call. I love them. My team knows I love them. I join forecast calls really happy because I just enjoy, like, the understanding of the business and the levers we have the pool. And I’d say, like, one on ones, like, I never miss those. And I think there’s certain core components of that. And then how you think about the fact of, like, well, the quarter evolves, great, but we’re talking about next quarter, how you’re connecting those dots between both short term equity in the quarter, but also long term, and how we’re focusing on performing throughout the year.

Adam Carr:
So I think there’s a lot to unpack there. Like, you can even pull in. How do you coach your reps effectively? How do you use data to be able to know where to focus and spend your time? Because there’s just so much that you could do. And then the one thing I love is understanding how you use data to actually measure the impact that you’re having in your business. And so some of the best interviews I’ve had is that they break down the folks from, like, where they’re focusing their time and then telling me, great, I’m focused on this specific area. Here’s how I’m going to do it, and here’s how I’m going to measure the impact of that. And then they’re able to reback on the improvements they made.

Dana Feldman:
I love it. Okay, let me ask you a little bit. Like, as you’ve gotten to this place where you have a lot of this wisdom, lessons, things you think about, and you kind of reflect back on your career, you know, what was the most bold move or thing you did when you reflect back on your whole journey?

Adam Carr:
I don’t think there’s one specific area that I would call out that was like, this is the boldest thing. I think maybe the entrepreneur path out of school and everyone else was getting jobs. And I decided that with a few buddies of mine that we were just going to go do our own thing. We raised money. We were paying ourselves. Like, there was, it was an incredible experience and I learned a lot. And maybe that’s a big part of who I am is that I have this entrepreneurial spirit. And in some ways I felt like it set me back, but in other ways, I’d say it propelled me because when I joined my first real job, I was so far ahead from understanding business.

Adam Carr:
And that actually helped accelerate, I think, a lot of my own professional development as well. And then I mentioned this already before, but I think that, like, the fact that I made lateral moves in my career intentionally is bold in some ways because I try to give that wisdom to folks that, you know, it’s, don’t optimize just for the short game, play the long game. And to do that, you might want to take some lateral moves here and there just to get better exposure of the business and different roles and responsibilities. And I think that’s been a big part of, like, who I am, and I think that’s really important. So I would say those are a few things that I call out as things that I would say had a material impact, looking backwards.

Dana Feldman:
Yeah, it aligns a lot. Like during my time at LinkedIn, they used to talk about career and career moves, almost like you had a passport book and you go and get stamps on different pages from different experiences. Right. I, and then you end up at a point in your career where that book is quite full and that has a lot of value and worth and wisdom, and then you can kind of start to carve the exact role you want at that point. Right. But you’ve got to, like, go and get all those stamps. And so it’s similar to what you’re saying. And I think we’re also, you know, in the last, I don’t know, 1015 years we’ve been living in a world, too, where a lot of very big titles get thrown out to entice people to come over.

Dana Feldman:
And, you know, I often give the advice, like, do not go title chasing, make sure the role is worthy of you and vice versa, and that you’re really going to, it’s going to take you to that next page in your passport book is sort of how I look at it as well.

Adam Carr:
Yeah. I could not agree more. I think the learnings, especially early on in your careers and the variety experiences are so critical because it’s really hard to go back and get that.

Dana Feldman:
It is.

Adam Carr:
Yeah.

Dana Feldman:
And at some point, right. When you get to a certain level, you’re expected to know those things. Right. And if you haven’t gotten that experience, you know, I don’t think there’s anything more stressful than being in a role, like perhaps that you don’t really have the knowledge or the know how to do so. So I agree with you. So tell me this, like, as you also look back on your career kind of last career question before I ask you some other things. But, you know, what’s the thing you wish you would have done differently or maybe a mistake you made that others can learn from?

Adam Carr:
Yeah. I would say one of the biggest learnings that I’ve had is that as a sales leader, you focus so much on optimizing the buyer’s journey upfront, getting the deal done. And what does that mean? It’s like we celebrate the close one, everyone has close one channels and you celebrate the win and it’s broken in many ways. And what do I mean by that is we should celebrate when the customer realizes value more so than just the initial win. And so what does that really mean? Well, that means that being more obsessed with the adoption, the utilization, and so it doesn’t stop with just pre sales, it’s actually leaning in post sales. And I feel the only way to grow revenue at the end of the day is if your customer is getting value out of what they purchase. And especially if you’re going to be a multi product company or if you’re a land and expand motion. It is so critical.

Adam Carr:
And so that is foundational when you think about things that I’ve learned and I wish I would have had the awareness and I know it all earlier on. The second thing I’ll need to highlight is that breaking inertia is so freaking hard and that it’s having this day zero mindset, like never lose sight of that. It’s easy. It’s easy just to continue to do what you do. And especially in growing organizations, you have to rethink the market’s changing, the business is changing, know, competition is changing, the product’s changing. So when you do make intentional shifts to make a change, create healthy friction, to be able to force that change to happen, because it’s really hard, especially as you get bigger, it’s harder to make those fundamental changes in the business. The other thing I was thinking about is that just less is more, things get more complex, especially as the organization grows, as there’s more people, as there’s more customers, focusing on like just three things and like creating a drumbeat around it and the importance of communicating it frequently. And so everything you do should tie back to the drum beat.

Adam Carr:
And I’m happy to talk more about that. And then it’s, that also plays into the last piece. Just like you’re being in a startup world or in our hypergrowth company, like you’re constantly managing through change. And it’s so important to make sure that the team comes along for the ride and it goes, you know, sometimes you lose sight of like the importance, especially as you get multiple different layers in the organization that, you know, everybody’s got to be brought along and don’t assume that the dots are connecting across the board. And so that’s something that, you know, we spent significant amount of time on right now, making sure that everyone has the context, the why that’s leading to the things that we’re doing differently that may make them uncomfortable, that may make them think differently, but it ties back to bigger, bigger initiatives and bigger outcomes.

Dana Feldman:
Like, tell me more about the drumbeat. I mean, I’m so interested in everything that you just brought up, and I couldn’t agree more, but tell me more about the drumbeat that you talk about.

Adam Carr:
The drumbeat that we have is build pipe, progress pipe, protect the base, and everything should be within that. And so I think that those are. It’s simple to say. It’s very, like, simple language, but that’s the point. It’s like, every day. How are you thinking about building your pipe? How are you thinking about progressing your pipeline that you have now then? How are you making sure we’re protecting the base? And protecting the base, as I mentioned before, around the importance around, you know, adoption utilization, like, that’s mission critical. That’s. That’s something that, like, I, you know, I’m happy to talk a little more about is that, like, you know, you know, something that’s a bit different than we’ve done here is that, you know, we, you know, sales reps have retention numbers in their plan, and.

Adam Carr:
And that forces them to be able to think longer term and think about the impact and what they’re selling and how is that actually being adopted and utilized. And so that’s why it’s a core part of the way that we drive the business forward.

Dana Feldman:
I know everything that you’re saying is so true because I have to give you and your team a compliment. Some of your leaders are just like Mark Tracy’s putting out phenomenal content that’s really nicely tactical around how to progress the pipe. Right. His medic deal reviews, and I stole it, by the way, and I brought it in. I gave him credit. It’s credited to Mark. But I think, like, as leaders and even myself, as I’m figuring out my operating rhythm and I’m perfecting it right. I think there’s such an opportunity for us to learn from each other and take some of those.

Dana Feldman:
But I know what you say to be true in a lot of it because I’m seeing it come out in the frameworks your leaders are using and how they’re thinking about doing those things. So just thank you for that value add. But I really do see this come through with your. With your organization.

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I love that. And Mark is incredible. We’re lucky to have him on the team. And, yeah, I think that it’s like, I think goes back to. It’s easy to say a lot of these frameworks, methodologies, but it’s all about how do you actually make it relevant for the individual and show them how to actually implement that. And that’s a part that we spend a lot of time focusing on.

Dana Feldman:
Yeah. And I really loved as part of it, too, it was how do you run a deal review with medicinal? And what really was a piece for me was how do you explain how to show up as humans in those deal reviews to make it psychologically safe. And that’s a really important thing that you do not find in a typical deal review outline. Right. And Mark had anyways, and I just. I loved it. I think it speaks a lot to Miro culturally. So kudos to your leadership and what y’all are doing over there.

Adam Carr:
Yeah. One of my favorite things, you know, before getting on a deal review or whatever it may be, is, like, we. There’s this concept of, like, judgment free zone. I think that’s important because, you know, sometimes I forget about titles and, like, you know, because I don’t feel that way. I feel like we’re all in the trenches together. We’re all on the same team here, like, and so you have to remind folks that, hey, it’s judgment free. Like, it’s okay not to have answers. It’s okay to say, I don’t know.

Adam Carr:
And so I think it’s a core part of our DNA because that’s how you get people to open up, and I. And you can actually understand where you can provide impact and where the real risks lie. And then you can spend more time actually thinking of how to actually move things forward. I mean, get creative around that.

Dana Feldman:
Love that. I love that. I know that I kind of asked you about what were lessons learned, things you would have done differently. And I think the best part of any mistake or lessons that we’ve learned is that we grow and we learn and we get better. And I think especially for successful leaders, it ends up becoming part of their DNA and their leadership philosophy. Right. So I’d love to spend a minute just chatting about that. How would you describe your leadership philosophy? I mean, I think we’re getting a flavor already, but I would love to just, like, how do you describe it? And are there leaders that have really influenced what it is, good or bad, along the way?

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I think the concept of, and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of other leaders references is, like, serving leadership. I’m constantly prioritizing the needs of the team, and I help them grow and perform as highly as possible. And I think that I do that in a very logical and empathetic way, meaning that I want people to bring their best work every day. And when they know that I’m deeply invested in their success and helping them and helping them unblock obstacles or when they’re stuck helping them think of creative ideas, I build the trust and I get them to want to lean in harder. It allows me then to challenge them and poke holes and not feel like I’m integrating them in their deals. And so I think that my leadership is a bit of a blend from a lot of the leaders that I’ve had. I would say there’s not, like, one specific person that defined my philosophy. I would say that.

Adam Carr:
And it’s not even my leaders that I’ve learned from, to be totally honest, I learned more from my direct reports and other folks in the organization than I maybe have in some cases, from my direct leaders. And so I’m constantly looking at how people are interacting with their teams, what are the tactics they’re doing. I’m like, wow, I really like that. How could I, how could I make that part of my own? And so I think that, you know, I still have a lot to learn. I know. Meads. Am I perfect? That’s what’s exciting about the journey, is that, you know, you, you’re. I’m constantly learning and evolving my own style every year.

Dana Feldman:
It’s such a. I don’t, I don’t want to say it’s a secret, because by now, but I think that one of the best things about leadership is how much you learn from the team below you and how many moments, at least, that I have when I watch my team do something and it’s just so good. And I’m like, oh, God. I was like, I could never have done it that well, you know? And then I just, and then I just steal it and I take it, and I’m like, okay, they are making me better, too. So I love that. As, as part of your answer. I’m curious, too, though. Like, as you’ve made these changes and gone through this journey, is there something that you take with you as you go to every organization? Is there something that Adam stands for? And it’s like, this is where.

Dana Feldman:
This is what we’re going to put in place as I go into a new adventure.

Adam Carr:
Yeah, I think, like, maybe to start off, the most important thing is the people. And I cannot underscore that enough. It’s hiring the right people, developing the right people, retaining the right people. But I’d say the part that I believe outside of that component in doing that is I call it the program. And what I mean by that, it’s something I learned and this has evolved over time, but specifically from Adam Aaron. So maybe he’s had a bit of a. More of an impact on my abilities. What does that mean? The program to me is the sales process.

Adam Carr:
It is the qualification framework which is Medpic in my eyes. There’s lots of these out there. It doesn’t matter what you use as long as you have something. And then the last piece is the sales methodology. And the three of these together is what I call the program. And the program is if implemented in the right way with the right leadership and the right people to go drive that, it creates an incredible momentum in the business and it helps you drive execution. And so I would say that’s one thing that I look at that I brought into the organizations. It is a key part of what I believe builds the foundation of the business.

Dana Feldman:
Is there a lesson you might pass on to the listeners, just maybe the hardest lesson you’ve had in leadership?

Adam Carr:
I think the hardest thing that I’ve had in leadership would be just saying no and being comfortable with that. There’s so much opportunity and there’s so many, like you’ll get asked to do things from everywhere. You know, it could be from the exec team, it could be from cross functional folks. Like, it’s okay to say no. It’s okay to have a stack of priorities and force folks to be, prioritize the asks across the board. And I think that sometimes, even when I ask for things, you know, folks will say yes when in reality they should say no. And I’m trying my best to encourage folks and I need to be thoughtful of, like what’s already on their, on their plate. And so for me personally, it’s just saying no and being okay with it.

Adam Carr:
I think a lot of folks would want, you want to know that you’re just not going to prioritize and take it on. And so that’s probably one of the biggest things. And I’m still learning that, by the way, because I’m passionate about the business. I’m passionate about when I see low hanging fruit opportunities. And that’s something that I think is still an opportunity.

Dana Feldman:
Yeah, I hear you. And you don’t want to let people down and you want to be able to help everyone and do it all. So I feel you on that. Okay, well, let’s talk a little bit about, I mean, it’s a topic so top of mind for other leaders just around building a culture of innovation, allowing creativity, encouraging fresh perspectives from your team. How do you do this at Miro and the team that you’re leading today?

Adam Carr:
Yeah, so something that we started, you know, early on in my time at Miro, and big kudos to our CEO is that, you know, this mindset of experimentation. And so, you know, what do I mean by that? I mean that, you know, we take a lot of what works really good in a product, alpha beta ga, that type of mindset of testing. And we’ve brought Nana to go to bark and motion. And so we are constantly running tests, whether it’s plays, whether it’s messaging, whether it’s technology. And we follow a process. We follow, like, okay, this is an alpha stage. Okay, this is in beta phase. Okay, this is going ga now across the organization.

Adam Carr:
And we’re not perfect. Like, we have an opportunity to continue to evolve it, but it helps us. Like, the concept that I think you mentioned earlier is that we want to disrupt ourselves before someone disrupts us. And that’s a mindset. We have to constantly be challenging the way that we’re doing things. There’s got to be a way better to do it. And so we’re early on that journey and, like, in how we leverage AI, for example, in the go to arch emotion. But guess what? We had a ton of tests going on, and we’re going to figure it out, but we’re going to figure it out the right way.

Adam Carr:
So when we do scale it, we have evidence that it works. And that’s something that I think that is helping us constantly be able to bring new things to the teams that are more effective in the outcomes.

Dana Feldman:
I mean, I have to imagine your sales.org is loving that because there’s such an opportunity to innovate in this profession and how we help them and how we give back more selling time. So I might steal, like, we do a lot of tests, too, but I’m going to. I might steal that Alpha beta ga framework because I don’t know if we’re always, like, communicating that this is in the very early alpha stage as we test it. Right?

Adam Carr:
Yeah. And it’s part of that is bringing together the right team. Right. You have, in some cases, you’ll have somebody from product, you’ll have somebody from, you know, product marketing, you have someone from Ops, and you’ll have a sales stakeholder. So it’s that, like, is that really, like, empowered team that’s coming together? And, yes, we’ll make people aware of something that’s in beta, for example. But we’re not driving certifications, for example, the feel in that phase yet. And it’s like I said, we have a lot. We have room for growth.

Adam Carr:
It’s not perfect by any means, but I think the concept is what’s really important. And the culture of experimentation. And it took a little bit to get off the ground, but now that you start to see that bleed and each teams are starting to test and they start to think in that way, which is what is awesome. So it doesn’t have to be decentralized. You now are empowering others to be able to have that same experimentation mindset.

Dana Feldman:
And you touched on it earlier as you guys are doing these experimentations, and let’s say they’re successful, that means more change for the team, which is change management, which is super hard. But I’d love to just like. And we’re all going through it. We’re all implementing changes and new initiatives. When you’re doing that, what are steps that you do to ensure that it’ll be successful or that your team is behind it?

Adam Carr:
So, depends on the magnitude of change. I’d say is one, but two. It really comes down to, you know, looking at it from different points of views. So I think those are when you get your biggest blind spots is in, well, you. You engage a. You forget to engage ics. It’s like, well, how do we. They bring a different point of view than a first line manager or a second line manager or a third line manager.

Adam Carr:
And so those. Those different point of views are so critical because they’re thinking about it from a totally different perspective. And 99% of time, we find out something we totally missed. And so, again, by no means are we perfect, and by no means do we land every single area that we’re driving change on. But that’s been really critical to do that. And also getting some of the leaders to buy in as the project owners has helped a lot. So, like, if we’re updating our sales process, like getting a stakeholder in sales to own it, they start to feel accountable for it, and it gets them to really deeply understand that. And that has helped us, as well around how would they actually implement that change on their team? And so we get.

Adam Carr:
We get that as a. As a good avenue as well.

Dana Feldman:
Okay, so, so tell me this, like, you guys, you’re innovating. You’re thinking through the change management. I’d love to get your take on what do you think’s gonna be the most disruptive innovation for revenue teams in the next like fast forward ten years, maybe not even ten. I don’t know. I mean we could say like a year at this point, but like it’s going so fast. But what do you think’s gonna be the most disruptive innovation?

Adam Carr:
I don’t know if I can pinpoint what exactly that technology is going to be, but what I do believe is that I believe what’s going to we’re in ten x productivity and I think what does that mean? I think it means that we are going to see how AI is going to like my opinion is that how we build pipeline, we’re going to get really, really good at the science piece of the sales. And then what’s going to happen is that we can focus majority our time on the arthem and the art being how you run discovery and how you objection. Handle. And that’s the part where I feel that we’re going to be able to focus a lot more of our time because, you know, what’s, what’s the most time consuming piece right now? It’s a lot of the cases, it’s building that pipeline. It’s the, it’s the worst part of the job is prospecting. You know, first you have your accounts, then you’re trying to identify, okay, who do I go after in these accounts with what message? How do I go find those people? Their information is not always accurate. Then I got to get them into some sort of cadence and sequence. It’s just very cumbersome.

Adam Carr:
And so like I actually don’t believe that the sdR.org is going to go away this believe that we’re going to make them way more productive and that we can get to the meeting faster in a more efficient way so that we can focus their time on how to run better meetings. And so that to me is like where we’re focusing our attention right now is on AI. Is that how do we, how do we get to the meeting in a more efficient way? And we’re putting all our attention on that portion because I believe that’s the most critical area right now that will help ten x our productivity.

Dana Feldman:
I love that. I couldn’t agree more and I’m actually really excited about it because I think if there is one area to really disrupt, it’s how we are doing that time to a meeting. And there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of science behind that whole, all those motions for years. And now with AI and the signals and what we can see now, we’re just going to get better and by the way, our buyers are going to appreciate it, too. Right? How we take them through that very beginning part of the journey.

Adam Carr:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited, and I see new technology popping up weekly, and I’m like, wow, okay, this is super interesting. And so I think part of the problem now is how do you scale this? How do you make this easy? Because, you know, as we know, and you would know better than me on this, is that it’s just the, especially in the revenue world, like, there’s so many silos, there’s so many different tech, and so it’s really around. How do you consolidate all this and make it really simple for the individual to be able to have one place to go to, not ten different types of tools to be able to do get their job done.

Dana Feldman:
I agree. Like, get it, like, the winner of getting all those signals together in one place and, like, alerting, like saying hello, this is where you go is going to be revolutionary, you know? So I’m excited, too. Well, Adam, thank you. This has been an incredible discussion, your journey. I admire it and appreciate you sharing it with all the listeners. I’ve learned a lot from what you’ve shared and has given me a lot to think about myself. So thank you. Thanks for the time and just, I’ve really enjoyed the chat.

Adam Carr:
Yeah, likewise. I’m glad we were. I’m glad we were finally able to make this happen, and it was awesome to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Dana Feldman:
Love it. We’d love to have you back again. So with that, we will close out this episode for the listeners. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode. Please follow Gong on LinkedIn for our tactical takeaways from this conversation, which will include some of the best plays to add to your playbook. And be sure to follow the show so that you never miss an episode. Adam, thanks again for joining. We appreciate you and have a great day.

Adam Carr:
Thank you. You, too.

Dana Feldman:
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. Follow Gong on LinkedIn for our tactical takeaways from this conversation, including the best plays to add to your playbook. And be sure to follow the show to never miss an episode.