How to build winning Sales Teams: The Playbook from AppDynamics, Zscaler & CrowdStrike

Timestamps:

00:05 - Intro + The 3Rs Framework Overview

01:30 - Dan’s Career Journey: IBM to CrowdStrike

05:20 - Building High-Performance Teams

10:10 - The 3Rs in Detail: Recruitment, Retention, Revenue

15:50 - Hiring Better with the ICE Framework

19:40 - Avoiding Bad Hires & Candidate Red Flags

25:10 - Retention: Developing Leaders & Coaching

30:00 - Enablement & Repeatable Sales Execution

35:40 - Driving Revenue with Predictable Processes

About Daniel Elding

Daniel Elding is the Managing Director of Wingman Enablement and has led sales enablement at CrowdStrike, Zscaler, and AppDynamics. He’s coached thousands of reps on MEDDICC, value selling, and deal execution—turning A-players into championship teams and helping companies scale through hypergrowth.

Bad news can’t wait: I qualify candidates like I qualify deals

The moment I saw recruiting as truth-finding, not talent-shopping, my results jumped. I ask hard questions early, because the cost of late truth is chaos. John McMahon’s line sticks with me: “Bad news can’t wait.”

Pressure tests reveal reality

I ask for numbers, names and sequences. I recreate pressure: “You’re one deal short, Procurement is stalling, your champion’s on leave—what do you do in the next 48 hours?” Real operators light up; storytellers fog up.

Pipeline makes courage possible

The bravest hiring decisions I’ve made were enabled by options. With a live bench, I can walk from red flags. Without one, I rationalise. Same in sales: pipeline gives you posture.

Tactical takeaways:

• Build a candidate pipeline weekly, not when headcount opens.
  
  
• Standardise truth-tests: specific metrics, stakeholders, timing.
  
  
• Time-box decisions. If facts wobble twice, cut fast and move on.

The Three Rs gave me a playbook, not platitudes

Recruitment sets the ceiling

I learnt at AppDynamics that A-players stay when they’re surrounded by A-players. Lowering the bar to “fill heads” poisons culture and performance. The bar is a retention tool.

Retention is leadership, not latte perks

Great sellers leave bad managers, not good companies. Many managers are promoted super reps. Unless you teach them to coach (and to let reps make their own decisions), you create a bottleneck. My rule: if I’m teaching it, I must be better at it than the rep is today—whether it’s a value narrative or a MEDDICC deal clinic.

Revenue means linearity, not last-minute heroics

I want boring, predictable quarters. That means one language, one process, one forecast rhythm. The Three Rs—Recruitment, Retention, Revenue—compound. Improve one and the other two get easier. Improve all three and you grow on purpose.

Tactical takeaways:

• Hire to a written bar; don’t “exception” your way into regret.
  
  
• Train managers to coach, inspect, and inspire—three separate muscles.
  
  

Track linearity: reduce the quarter-end hockey stick by moving decisions forward weekly.

Sales is science first; the art is how you run the recipe

Make inputs non-negotiable

When Dan talked leading indicators—discoveries, NBMs, stakeholder access—I nodded like a bobblehead. If the inputs are right, the quarter behaves. If they’re wrong, no amount of end-of-month theatre saves you.

The recipe vs. the flavour

The science is the sequence: discovery → value → access → differentiation → commercial close. The art is your signature: how you earn trust, frame consequences, and navigate politics. People romanticise the art and forget the science. Then they get “surprised” by slippage.

Invest only when the math says so

I only deploy SEs and partners when budget, access and a qualified need exist. Otherwise I’m sponsoring theatre. Value-selling is expensive; spend it where probability exists.

Tactical takeaways:

• Weekly track: discoveries held, NBMs set, VPs met, champions activated.
  
  
• Review deals by stage criteria, not vibes.
  
  
• Protect SE time like oxygen. No access = no demo.

The email that taught me coachability (and attention to detail)

The tiny tell that wasn’t tiny

I once championed a candidate I thought was a home run. A senior leader declined because the follow-up email had spelling mistakes and ignored feedback about CV gaps. I thought it was pedantic—until it wasn’t. If detail slips in the interview, it falls apart under quota.

Coachability in action, not theory

We’d asked for corrections. The candidate rushed instead of reflecting. That wasn’t urgency; it was a refusal to internalise feedback. In sales enablement, details are leverage—names, numbers, next steps. If a candidate sends signals they won’t sweat the small stuff, they’ll bleed you later.

Standards scale culture

The lesson stuck: standards aren’t snobbery; they’re scale. When leaders defend the bar, teams learn what “good” looks like without a slide deck.

Tactical takeaways:

• Ask candidates to revise something and watch how they respond.
  
  
• Treat written comms as a proxy for deal reviews and exec updates.
  
  
• Use small tests to predict big habits.

MEDDICC isn’t admin; it’s the language of winning

Great reps already do it

Dan’s line landed: the best reps see MEDDICC and value-selling as the words for what they instinctively do. It’s not extra; it’s the map we can coach against.

What’s in it for me?

I’ve failed before by rolling out a process without selling the upside: fewer surprises, cleaner exits, tighter forecasts. If your team can’t answer “why this helps me hit plan,” you’ve rolled out paperwork, not enablement.

One structure, faster impact

When deals are structured the same way, a leader can add value in ten minutes. No memory mining, no “where did we put that?”—just gaps, risks, next moves. That’s how you compound learning across the team.

Tactical takeaways:

• Train MEDDICC as a deal-advancement tool, not a checklist.
  
  
• Coach the “gap list”—unknowns = risks.
  
  
• Make forecast accuracy a team sport: same definitions, same exit criteria.

From AppDynamics to Zscaler to CrowdStrike: patterns don’t lie

A PhD in selling (and why I didn’t know it at the time)

Like Dan, I didn’t appreciate how elite AppDynamics’ sales culture was until I left. The discipline, the linearity, the obsession with outcomes—those muscles pay dividends years later.

Building the cockpit at 37,000 feet

At Zscaler during COVID, onboarding and enablement were built mid-flight. That’s where I learned the power of simple, common language under pressure. MEDDICC + value + leading indicators = orientation when the world spins.

Start from zero on purpose

Moving to CrowdStrike to operationalise MEDDICC from the ground up showed me this: companies win when leaders can inspect, coach, and inspire—fast. The product matters, but the repeatable recipe matters more.

Tactical takeaways:

• Teach “what we do, why it matters, who cares, and what changes.”
  
  
• Keep the language tight so it travels across products and geos.
  
  
• Celebrate boring predictability as a leadership KPI.

Summary

We don’t win because we’re lucky; we win because we’re intentional. ICE keeps hiring honest. “Bad news can’t wait” keeps recruiting (and selling) efficient. The Three Rs align people, culture and numbers. Science first, art in the execution, with leading indicators as your metronome. Coachability is visible in the smallest details. And MEDDICC isn’t admin—it’s the common language that turns instinct into a system. Do this well and you’ll stop losing winnable deals, stop chasing unwinnable ones, and start enjoying boringly brilliant quarters.