The Exchanges

Q One last one. I actually don't know what this one means, but it could be interesting. Um, I probably should. Uh, there's a lot of definitions around relevance in sales. How do you define relevance?

A Yeah, I think the way I'll talk about this is there's a lot of best practice, you know, people that are training salespeople, folks online, especially LinkedIn, of what they should say when they want to communicate with customers and prospects to get an email, to get a meeting. And, and you see a lot of junk of like, you know, we shared the same high school, or I like this football team, and that stuff's like personalization, but it's not relevant to them achieving the objectives of their job. So what we like to do is coach our customers to understand the vocation that their buyers are in. What are the best practices and the problems faced with that vocation? Um, I'm a digital marketer. I'm a CFO. I'm a, I'm a lawyer. I'm, you know, whoever I am in the organization, you're probably facing these challenges. Here are some of the solutions that we've seen be wildly successful. And so being relevant means helping them out in their job versus just being personal and saying, we both like the same sports team. So when I talk about relevancy, I talk about a seller who is Delivering an experience to a buyer. And when the buyer feels that they sense, oh, this is not just another seller. There's a chance this person can add value to what I'm doing. Maybe they hypothesize my needs correctly. Um, and I've got trust to learn more about them, right? Cause that's really what you want to do is …

AI assessment note: “being relevant means helping them out in their job versus just being personal”

Q had introduced what seemed to be a competitive product. And when we talked again, he said his heart just dropped when he announced it and then quickly it became a massive source of leads because the Zendesk product worked, but it was very feature poor. Right. Does the Salesforce product generate leads for you when customers try it out and see they need more? Does that not happen for sales?

A Not, not really. It's not, um, they, they haven't put, you know, a ton of marketing behind it. Like they may have with Einstein or some of the other things that you've seen from them in the marketplace, I think. Um, and they sell it to, they try to sell it to CIOs and CFOs versus kind of the business line leaders and the sales leaders and revenue leaders. Um, so, you know, it'll come up in evaluations. We've had companies that were using it. They got bundled in on the renewal and then they wanted to move to us. So that's been helpful. Uh, but it's not as much, I don't think it's as marketed as some of the other things you might see like that.

AI assessment note: “Not, not really. It's not, um, they, they haven't put”

Q Well, how, yeah. And how has that changed things? Talk, talk a little bit about that. What, what, what, what's the evolution since March for, for you and sales loft?

A I mean, it's been wild. I mean, I thought, Hey, the economy is going to crash and the sky's falling. And we had, you know, a month of craziness. We lost our conference about the same time as yours. And, uh, so we had to go through all that. Um, but we bounced back with a vengeance after that. And I think it was, so our Q one ends, um, April Q one, the end of Q one was murky and, and, you know, rough. And then Q two just, Shot back up and Q three was the biggest quarter. Q four will be the biggest quarter ever. And so, um, really you had these trends already happening. If you go back years, you know, for the last five years, inside sales have been trending way faster than field. Um, you know, the rise of all these types of technologies and collaboration tools, the need for sellers to have digital at their fingertips to give the customer a better experience. Um, so it just accelerated all those things. It's almost like, you know, this was going to happen and it's, Almost not even a surprise that it's happened. It's just a surprise of what was the thing that caused it to happen.

AI assessment note: “we bounced back with a vengeance after that... Q three was the biggest quarter”

Q What about, since you took us on this, maybe this will be like our penultimate question, but that is an issue. What about time to deployment, right? Uh, I find that this, this is, this, this solves for so many other issues. If folks can get up and going instantly versus later, right? How, what, what metrics you use there and how has that evolved over time, if at all?

A Yeah, it's got, it's gotten a little longer over time since it used to be you just downloaded online, click and go. Um, now we're integrated with more systems. Now there's some change management and some process and best practices. Um, you know, we have an implementation process. Uh, we always work to be faster than a CPQ, way faster than CPQ, way faster than marketing automation. You know, way faster than a customer success platform that's going to do a bunch of instrumentation of your usage data. Uh, so I think that's kind of, but, but it also ranges from size of company and what the scope of what we're doing is, you know, we've got, um, you know, one of the 10th largest companies in the world who is not running a traditional CRM and they're building the integration to sales loft with their own CRM and our team's helping and assisting. That's going to be the longest, you know, time to go live of any deal that we've done. But it also be the most worth it and very sticky when we're in there. So, you know, there's examples like that. And so it ranges from, you know, we can get a, uh, emerging company up and running and day, you know, a day or two, um, enterprise can sometimes take six months if they're doing, you know, big integrations and stuff.

AI assessment note: “it's gotten a little longer over time since it used to be you just downloaded”

Q just for fun. So in the beginning, you actually had to drop a seven million dollar product line, right? A seven million dollar, not only was it doing seven million revenue, but despite issues, it was insanely profitable, right? It was generating massive amounts of free cashflow and you dumped it Entirely to build what is sales loft today. So what, what are the lessons learned looking back on that?

A Well, there's an old proverb, right? Like a wise man built his house upon the rock or, you know, someone else built it on the, on the sand. And I think that was a product built upon sand. And, um, you know, I remember there was an era of these companies that were, um, the feeds for the social networks like Gnip. And there was a couple of other ones that was before us, of course. And they had these, you know, big aspirations and valuations. They went away and we were leveraging data that existed on social media to help companies generate lists of contacts to communicate with. And we knew from the beginning that this wasn't the long-term play for us, but it went from zero to four million in less than two years. And then in the year that we shut it down, it went from four million to seven and a half million that year. Um, but earlier in the year, we had built this new product that is now our core of sales office, the cadence product. And, um, it's, it's what's, what is now defined as sales engagement, but we realized the old product didn't have legs. It didn't fulfill our mission the right way. And we couldn't build a billion dollar business, you know, under that product. So I think it was when I, when, when you introduced me to Jason at Emergence, um, the old product was a three to four million dollar ARR business. And the new product was like a 150 K and, uh, barely off the grou…

AI assessment note: “we realized the old product didn't have legs. It didn't fulfill our mission”

Q now you do believe, right? Maybe back then it was murky. What do you look like? Tell me what you look like at a three billion dollar company, right? And then a ten billion. What do you, what do you want the product to do? What's going to change? How's the market? It's going to change, right? Yes, it's bigger, but it's dynamic, right? The market isn't static, is it?

A Yeah, I mean, there's a way to digitally sell, and that's the way that we will adopt over the coming three, five, 10 years, and so companies will have a digital sales, uh, you know, application of record, and, you know, that's not going to be the CRM because the CRM is really an enterprise database, but that, uh, digital sales application of record will cover all revenue activities from the top of the funnel SDR that's converting an inbound lead into an opportunity, All the way through to the CSM who's renewing, upgrading, cross-selling, and engaging with their customer. And all of those things that they're trying to achieve will be boosted by the set of technologies that we've baked into our platform. Whether it's the sales engagement, that's the communications queue. The conversation intelligence, which is capturing the voice of the customer. The deal management that's helping you walk through your pipeline and forecast and all open up so that reps can, you know, always stay on task and Management can have visibility into everything. You know, that's the, that's the essence of what we're seeing here. And it's every company who sells to their customers in prospects via phone and email. Right.

AI assessment note: “companies will have a digital sales, uh, you know, application of record”

Q they'd have six, they could do six demos instead of three. That was groundbreaking. Shouldn't there be an AI, even though a lot of this is Sony baloney, why shouldn't not only the AE have six meetings, but they're the perfect meetings? Why shouldn't they be the perfect demos? Why, why, how are we going to get there? That to me is the nirvana for data and sales, isn't it?

A Yeah, I mean, it's empowering the rep to know, A, these are the right target accounts and customers that we should be talking to, and then B, here's the messaging that we should take when we engage with them because it's relevant to that customer, right? I think those are the big things. I love the idea of, you know, I love the concept of meetings as a center point of, of, you know, a sales process. It's like that old, uh, Billy Bean, uh, you know, the, the Billy Bean story where they come in and they say, you know, you've been trying to buy players, you need to buy wins, and the way to buy wins is to buy runs. Right. So they start engineering to buy runs. And so I like engineering to buy the right meetings and, and to buy it with the right messaging, but sometimes you, you need the right messaging to get those meetings in the first place. Right. So it's, it's the, it's the targets and it's the, the approach.

AI assessment note: “it's empowering the rep to know, A, these are the right target accounts”

Q first meeting, but intuitively we were already slacking, right? Zoom obviously got the biggest boost of all because it was a paradigm change. Where did, how did sales teams and sales off fit in that? Did it, did, did, did for Did sales teams and, and, and revenue teams working from home, was there a COVID boost from that? Um, and what will that look like when we're all vaccinated?

A Yeah, there certainly was. I think, you know, what happened was that companies that typically would take a year long to plan out their purchase or what they wanted to do strategically to change their organization, um, their people went home and they said, now it's an emergency and I got to go now. So we saw sales cycles reduced by 35%. It just happened faster. So there wasn't as much deliberation. There was much to bring in the consultant. There wasn't as much, you know, what else do we have to do while we're doing this? It was just, let's go get this solution that helps our reps stay accountable to executing on the right actions and stores everything so that we can see, you know, how we're being successful.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, there certainly was... So we saw sales cycles reduced by 35%.”

Q I remember we used those all seem slick at the time, right? They all seem slick. Didn't they? Yeah.

A Yeah. But they also were one channel and they were thinking about it in a very automated way. And what we did is we started chair siding with great reps and we would see how they would connect with their buyers. They had these spreadsheets with all the touch points they wanted to make. They were doing it multi-channel. They were researching them to get information and value so that when they connected with the buyer, they wouldn't be seen as spammy or they'd be seen as relevant and potentially helpful. And so we wanted to map all that out. How do you create a multi-touch cadence? That's not just email that injects, uh, relevancy into that messaging. So the buyer receives it warmly. And the original mission for that was let's be the application of record for SDRs because this new thing of SDRs and you saw predictable revenue come out and people were jumping on that bandwagon, but it was SAS companies and it was series A, B, C, you know, Kind of that was the sweet spot early on, but that just kept morphing and morphing, and today, you know, SalesLoft's the only complete sales engagement platform in the marketplace. There's companies that sell cadences, there's companies that sell conversation intelligence, there's companies that sell deal management, but only SalesLoft brings all of those together in one platform, and companies don't want to go to three different providers for da…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. But they also were one channel and they were thinking about it”

Q the funnel instead of the start. Right. And I, and I think we're going to see that more in bigger deals. Right. We're still going to visit the customer, but not, not to schmooze, but they may not want us to schmooze, but when we're vaccinated, It may make sense for Kyle to fly out for a million dollar deal, right? Right before it closes. It may make sense, right?

A Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned the fundraising never left the house for the, the entire time. And, uh, and there's some positives to that for sure. I think some of the positives are, um, they get to meet all, you know, anyone that they wanted to meet on our team. It was easy. I got to meet people with their team. I get to meet, you know, other partners easily, you know, just, and just, it's a lot less taxing of course, to be on a plane all the time. Um, miss the, miss the closing dinner. You know, that, that would have been a fun one to have, but we can do that another day, another time. Um, but yeah, it was, it was definitely a different experience, but I think there's, I think the positives outweighed the negatives.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned the fundraising never left the house”

Q And, and, and rough and tough. Can you, by becoming more enterprise doing, doing the everything from security, all the way to this sort of, you know, more protection for data. Can you drive your deal size up by that? I do will enterprises in essence, pay more. To get the level of enterprise grade software that they want.

A Yeah. And they're also paying more by nature of the fact that they have more seats, right? So we're charging by seats. So a company that's got, you know, 2000 sellers is going to pay a whole lot more than a, you know, a 10 person team. I think one of the big challenges when you're looking at enterprise needs is, you know, sales loft is SMB to enterprise. Can we keep the usability, the functionality, the ease of use, um, for the SMB as we're also building for enterprise. And that's been one of those things. Like if you go back to, Board meeting after board meeting after board meeting. That's always been a discussion. Should we see the lower end of the market or should we stay that way? And, and I've always said we're S and B to enterprise because, you know, we want to serve this entire market. We want to own this category. We want to transform this profession. Oh, by the way, you know, the Googles of the world are going to call on those series B, you know, excellent sales operators to come join their firm in their organization too. So we want to, I think the, by the way, the first ever Saster blog post I read was about second order revenue. I never forgot it. I was sitting in Cummings office at Pardot with the CEO of Rigger who just sold his company to Splunk, and he goes, you got to see this, and he turned his laptop. That was the first time I knew of Jason Limkin. It was secon…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And they're also paying more by nature of the fact that they have more seats”

Q the mission, uh, which, um, which is tough. Um, so there's a couple of things I want to talk about today, but maybe let's skip to that .1. Cause, um, talk about just a little bit. What's the journey? Where did you start? What was the initial vision? How has SalesLoft changed and how have you tilted? Like, how has your customer changed, your persona changed, your deal size changed?

A Yeah, well, great. Thanks for asking. So, I mean, there's been so many things that have changed, but there's one that has stood the test of time since the very beginning. I had been in sales my whole life going back to my childhood, and I had always sold in a different way where I was, you know, really trying to add value and connect with my buyers to, to, you know, deliver excellence for them. And so I had this vision that, you know, with technology and the internet and all these tools that existed, How are salespeople still stuck in the dark ages of the way that they, you know, deliver experiences to their buyers? And I wanted to create a world where, where sellers were loved by the buyers they served, where they, you know, work to understand them in unique ways and delivered excellence in terms of value. And what would happen is that would allow them to maximize their revenue potential. Um, but that never changed. You know, we talked about sincerity and sales and, um, and then, you know, everything from there changed. What are the specific problems? How are we solving them? With which products. And that's just morphed a ton as you, you, you know, of course, and I'm happy to share more, but that's kind of the essence of the beginning of that is, you know, clear visions never changed, but lots of navigation through making that a reality.

AI assessment note: “clear visions never changed, but lots of navigation through making that a reality.”

Q do you, um, do you segment your sales team? How do you deal with internal conflicts with natural energy going to enterprise, right? There is, even if you want to stay in the market, which I'm, As you know, I'm the biggest champion of, right? Because when you leave the bottom, you never go back, do you? But how do you allocate resources, both sales and marketing and engineering resources?

A Well, I mean, that all comes from being operationally healthy. And, you know, that's a, I think if there's, you know, this is a game of creating differentiators. Once you've picked the right problem and category and you're executing, it's all a differentiation game. And for us, the number one differentiator we have is organizational health. You won't find another company with the amount of reviews in sales tech that has the same glass door reviews that we do period. They just won't find it. And, uh, and what that means is, is that we're very rigorous about Okay. We're coming into the year. Here's the theme for the year. Here's our vision, vision, mission values. Here's the core strategies for the, you know, the 18 month core strategies with the goals. And here's the way we're refining those metrics. And then we're refreshing those through OKRs on a quarterly basis. So enterprise is not just running away with the show, right? They get that segmented planned approach that follows with the, the, you know, the projects that are assigned to it. And there's no core values that matter more. There's no core strategies that matter more Then be the best place to be a customer of and that's across the whole board. So that takes priority over everything else and then be a best place to work and then enterprise international partners, things like that happen. Um, but I think it's all throug…

AI assessment note: “enterprise is not just running away with the show, right? They get that segmented”

Q Are you budgeted today and how often are you budgeted?

A Uh, And yeah, um, hard to say. It'd be a great answer for our CRO, or a great question for, for, for him. I think so. I, I know we come in kind of, we try to get ahead of all of it, right? We try to be the one who helps them set the budget. So it's hard to say like when it was there or, you know, how much we, we added, but it is definitely companies are saying we have to have this and now more than ever. And it's a lot of the consultants out there have done a great job with this. And the advisory companies like, uh, Forrester Topo is a fantastic one. Um, You know, Gartner and, and they've got, I think they've, and then all the marketing that we've all done. I think there's a point now where people are saying it's a must have.

AI assessment note: “It'd be a great answer for our CRO, or a great question for, for, for him.”