The Exchanges

Q That's very cool. And, uh, uh, talk to me about future growth. I mean, are you going to try and productize this at all or keep it sort of a service, a service business?

A Yeah, for now, we're going to keep it as a service business. We might expand into, um, maybe doing some LinkedIn outreach as well, but I mean, email is getting such great results for our clients, and I think, you know, stating the obvious, but email, um, you can reach almost anyone on email, right? So I think it's, it's something that's sticking around, so we're keen to just grow it as it is, to really become the absolute experts at email outreach, and that's kind of the track that we're on. In terms of growth, we're looking for, um, We want to increase to maybe get three new clients per quarter, and by the end of twenty-twenty-two, we're aiming for between 40 and 50 clients on the books.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, for now, we're going to keep it as a service business.”

Q Do you do any higher volume, lower touch campaigns where it's like a mail merge email to 2000 instead of custom to 200?

A No, we don't do that. We, I mean, we're exclusively focused on the personalized outreach way of doing things. And, you know, part of the reason that we do that in the UK and in the European market is to demonstrate that legitimate interest that's necessary to be compliant with GDPR and data regulations like that. But actually, we do run campaigns in the US that are really successful. And, you know, the primary reason we do the personalization is for the results, but a byproduct of doing that Helps us, you know, achieve that GDPR compliance in Europe to show that we're basically contacting people for a legitimate reason. We've done research about them or their organization that we reference in the email. And that's what gets people clicking on the email because, you know, like, Hey, we've read, we read a post that you wrote recently. We've seen an award that you've won. Uh, we've seen something, we read a case study that talks about X, Y, or Z. We think it's great for this reason. We wanted to get in contact. And it's that kind of intro to the outreach, uh, that really gets people's attention.

AI assessment note: “No, we don't do that. We, I mean, we're exclusively focused”

Q What's your intention though? For people listening, should they think about using you for two months and then stopping or are there ways people can get value from you over the longterm over and over again every month?

A Absolutely. It's for the longterm. I think, you know, some of our clients who've been on board since January, maybe start to close deals after, well, I know for sure that one of them in particular start to close deals after kind of three months in, it's just building that pipeline. And, you know, we also do manual follow-up is a nurture lead. Uh, you know, there's so many different facets to it, but absolutely. It's a longterm approach. The idea of being in our vision with this is to, whether it's for a sales team or for a founder to just put this engine running in the background every day, we're researching We're reaching out with that personalization. So we're just building that pipeline of opportunities. But yeah, I mean, we don't see any clients who try us out for a month and then decide not to do it. I think a lot of the time with our clients, they're testing the water to see if it, you know, to, to see what the rewards are for them in this, what they can get out of this and, uh, and to scale up from that point.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. It's for the longterm.”

Q That makes sense, and do you think you'll keep focused on SaaS, helping SaaS companies?

A Yeah, I mean, our, our clients as it stands are, uh, SaaS software, one service based, uh, client as well, but I think, yeah, absolutely. I mean, anyone out there, you know, running a SaaS business between one and 30, 40 employees, either with some sales reps in house. I mean, that's the thing. Sometimes we work with companies who don't have any sales reps yet, and they're not ready to do that, but they need sales opportunities. We work with other companies who have sales reps, but, uh, they're so busy, and I've, I've been in this position as well, doing new business sales where, You're also responsible for prospecting in your territory. And so we're there to support reps in that position as well. So we, you know, we can work with companies much bigger than, you know, brand new companies. But yeah, I think that sort of one to 50 employee size SaaS software service based companies were kind of ideal for.

AI assessment note: “our clients as it stands are, uh, SaaS software... but I think, yeah, absolutely”

Q And Joe, just reiterate, what was your role at Autodesk?

A I was a territory sales rep there, um, which was, so I was South England was my territory, um, while I worked there. It was, I mean, it was existing customers. It was finding a new business. Again, I mean, it's a pain point for many sales reps, uh, out there, you know, but where you're kind of responsible for managing deals right through to the end, of course, but finding new opportunities, managing customers. It's a, you know, it's a multifaceted role and something that suffers. And I saw it across, uh, you know, different teams in all sales roles that I've had is that, uh, That constant effort to prospect, to find new, to find new opportunities that, that can take a bit of a hit when you're busy doing other things in sales.

AI assessment note: “I was a territory sales rep there, um, which was, so I was South England”

Q So what's the secret to hiring freelancers to run the system? Many would argue, you know, your real IP really are the systems you've built to manage freelancers, to have them understand what to write, train them, and then get them on client accounts.

A Yeah. Well, none of our, none of our freelancers really deal with clients. We do that entirely internally. The way in which we manage them is a combination of Google sheets, air table. Uh, we use the, you know, we use technology like that to just be able to coordinate things and to distribute tasks. It's been a learning curve to be honest, but it's been really interesting. I actually used to do work. Um, last year I did some freelance work for Scribbly. Um, and they, you know, they had a very much A freelance team writing content for them. It was a really great business and I, and I really liked that way of doing things. They didn't have a massive team internally, but they were, you know, they had a good footprint in the industry and, um, yeah, I thought they did a really good job of doing that. So we have a, we have a model that doesn't require us to have a huge team internally and we can just, yeah, rely on the freelancers we work with.

AI assessment note: “The way in which we manage them is a combination of Google sheets, air table.”