Latest / Unstuck Pod / How to Generate Growth with Happy Clients (Robb Miller and Jamie Schneiderman)
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hi everyone. Welcome back. I want to ⁓ welcome Rob and I'm going to, rather than that guy do badly, try to talk about it. I'm going to pass it over to Rob and let him tell you about him. And then we'll get into what we normally do. So Rob, welcome. speaker-1: Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. As Jamie so kindly noted, my name is Rob Miller. I am a fractional CRO. Currently, I've worked for a variety of startups over my career. These are companies that are either under a million US dollars in revenue or over 50 million or around $50 million in revenue. They are anywhere from seed stage to series E. I've had a few exits, one IPO, some better than others, but in all cases, or in most cases, we have been trying to get a company to a certain level of growth. Early stage, it might be you know, a factor of 10 year on year and later stage, it might be really pushing hard just to get that 20%. ⁓ I've run teams as big as 25 people, 30 people on several different continents and certainly in many different time zones. And that's sort of been a specialty of mine, especially in the last 15 years. And that is helping companies go from the U S into the EU or Latin America or APAC and also the other direction EU or those other regions into the United States. speaker-0: Awesome. at any time, so thank you Rob. At any time are you working with multiple companies? I know you say fractional, so is it one, is it many? How do you think about your time? speaker-1: you're doing. it certainly is. It can be a challenge, although if managed properly, it's really not actually that difficult and frankly, not even as difficult in some ways as managing a widely dispersed team on a full-time basis. I have generally found a sweet spot for me to be two primary clients and you're able to function in a variety of different ways. Again, I've only been a fractional for about two years, so I'm learning as I go in a certain degree, but I think the experience of just running widely dispersed teams, as I mentioned before, and many different time zones of varying sizes and having to recruit, sell, speak to the board simultaneously is good preparation for what I'm doing now, which is just pieces of that. So as an example, for one of my clients currently, I'm mostly recruiting and helping them with go-to-market strategy. For another client, I'm actually in the trenches, going to events, doing the blocking and tackling, and upskilling some of their newer team members. So hopefully that answers your question. speaker-0: That's good. Okay. So, so let's do this. This is fantastic. I want to go back to, you talk about the range of different companies at different stages, right? So I think it's fascinating to talk about the differences. Let's talk about the early, early stage of business. So when you've worked, when either you're current or when you've worked with clients and they're sort of in the zero to million in ARR, like what are the things that work? best or you've seen work best during that time to drive real traction. speaker-1: Yeah, good question. And it might be a different answer depending on whether it's a PLG, Motion or Enterprise. Yep. Or something in between or maybe... speaker-0: I'd the way, think the group would love to hear some of your thoughts depending on those things. like that would be fantastic. speaker-1: Well, I certainly have more experience in the mid-size to enterprise sales motion. lot of the companies I've worked for have been going that direction from day one. In some cases, they start as PLG and then get there over time. I would say if you're in that kind of early revenue stage, the most important thing for most startup businesses now, whether it's SaaS or SaaS plus AI, is to get those lighthouse clients and to make them as happy as possible. because the only way, the only lifeblood I should say of a business at that stage where you're trying to gain credibility is going to be to have those clients not only speaking on your behalf, putting your putting their logos on your website, managing the PR, getting out onto social media with this story, in addition to the revenue. And I sort of feel like the revenue is nice. And of course, if you're a seed company or you're self funded, revenue is really important, of course, as you want to as you want to make new hires, develop new product. But I think more important is the distribution. I think that's a well-worn understanding in the technology world right now. If you're PLG, of course, you might be spending your money a little bit differently to get that growth. And maybe you're trying to get 100 clients as quickly as possible. And it's more important that you actually get things like your credit card swipe and your pricing regimen nailed down early on, versus an enterprise motion where it might be just as important that you move gracefully from founder-led sales into founding account executive or first feet on the street, so to speak. But when you're at that stage, I would say it's true in both scenarios. Clients are the number one thing that you need to need to have. They build your credibility and then secondarily make sure that they're happy. Customer success is very important because if they churn, you're done. I you're going to end up trying to a leaky boat. speaker-0: Yeah. No, no, no. Sorry to interrupt you. put referenceable clients, right? So back to your point, which is, ⁓ I wrote my, I'm writing, I write my notes to myself when I do this, which is great. ⁓ but the referenceable clients, which to your point is you need them, but you need ones that you can then reference what I hear from you or that you can reference. speaker-1: or potential. Sure. I mean, it's lovely if you get a large defense contractor or a bank and they might be particular about how much you can leverage their name or likeness. If that's true, I would say just find your champions and find ways to bring them into closed door sessions. At least have the ability to feature them in your sales presentations. Even if you can't, don't take no for an answer, I would say, as you're negotiating those contracts and understand that they might not want you to splash their logo all across your website. Fine. but find a way, find a reasonable sort of replacement for that that makes them referenceable, makes them your champion. speaker-0: No, this is great. Okay. So let's, let's jump forward. So I hear you. get the initial. And by the way, lot of folks, ⁓ obviously that I work with are they've gotten some initial traction. They've gotten some things to go. What's the, what in your experience, what's been the, what are some of the key things that you've done that have really helped to take that initial traction and then scale it. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I think you, from a product perspective, and I know this isn't really a podcast about product, but it affects sales if it's not repeatable. So I have worked for early stage businesses that thought they had a brilliant design and maybe it was, but it couldn't get past five customers or it started to fall over on itself. So make sure the product is engineered for scale, I would say first and foremost. And then I would say, make sure that you're leaning on repeatability with regards to your sales motion. So as an example, If you've just sold one person or one client in manufacturing and two in financial services, and you're thinking about one in media entertainment, you might be spreading yourself too fit. You're trying to tell too many stories to too many different people. Pick a lane. And that doesn't mean just go all in on manufacturing. There could be a downturn in manufacturing next quarter, and that might affect you materially. But I would say don't try to go after the whole world at once. Don't blow the ocean as they say. Find the two or three vertical targets. Find your ICP. and get to know them really well. And if you're fortunate enough to be able to onboard BDRs or salespeople or whoever's going to be running that sales motion for you, make sure that they really internalize and understand that buyer. Because there's nothing worse than getting that cold email or meeting someone at an event and shaking their hand and immediately realizing that you're not speaking their buyer's language. The buyers can sniff it out in a second. So train, get that motion going, have the experience and adapt. speaker-0: That's fantastic. Yeah. I'm always very focused for me. Like when I think about what I do with clients, it's always, we always start with what problem are you solving and for who, and people often, a lot of times the client will say, well, this is what we do. like, I didn't don't care. let's go back to what they want, not what you do. What you do is secondary to what they want. You adapt what you do to what they want or what they need. I think is the sort of where I'm going from. going from so yeah, so completely agree with you on speaker-1: I actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to expand upon that just for a second, because I 100 % agree with you. When it comes to actually telling your story, make sure it's a story and that it's one that's relatable to the prospect. If you go in there and just say, look at this amazing set of buttons I put on this SaaS platform that you can push and then things happen, they have tuned you out before you've even gotten to the second sip of your coffee. You need to go in there and say, I believe you have a problem. Is it like this? Because this is what I'm hearing from others in your space. If they start nodding their head up and down, you finally have them, then you must present how you're the solution and then get into what you do. But make sure that you've actually identified the problem that you've got an empathetic relationship with this person or these people before you move on because everyone is completely tired of listening to the It's the spew of a founder who might be quite proud and maybe rightfully so, but you have to make it relatable. again, like I said, tell a story, make sure that it makes sure that they actually leave their meeting somewhat entertained. speaker-0: ⁓ no, think it's funny. your button comment too. It's like, no one cares about your features and they, and they don't care about pretty or features or anything. It's like, what does it do for me? Right. And to your point about story, I think that's really where it comes from. People do relate to other people, but yeah, no, no, this is great. Okay. So let's do this. I want to talk about some present day challenges. So, so you're working with clients, you work on your own business, you work with clients. What are some challenges that you're dealing with now or you've dealt with recently that you can share as stories and kind of, ⁓ what'd you do if they're, and by the way, it's okay for this group. It's okay to say, I don't have the answer yet, or I don't know, or these are things that didn't work because every, or relate again, all these things, it all happens like. speaker-1: Well, the best way to learn is from your mistakes, honestly. And that's why people like you and me, once we get into the second or third decade of our careers, actually really get good at what we do. Yeah. Because we've earned the stripes. In answer to your question, I would say a big challenge for a lot of companies at that stage is, and I'm going to use a somewhat hacking expression, but it's relevant and that is product market fit. I can tell a great story and I've become relatable to a couple of my early stage prospects. Maybe they were clients that helped me develop this product to begin with. speaker-0: ⁓ huh. speaker-1: great, I am an excellent fit for them and I am solving a big problem. Now, I want to take that story to a different market. I'm going to come into the US or I'm going to go approach a whole other bevy of prospects that I think are similar and that have the same problem. But what I discover, and this has been true for clients of mine and employers of mine over the years, I discover that either I'm too early, they're not ready to hear this story because the people I've sold to are very forward thinking or... They haven't cleared a budget and their budgets are on a very fixed schedule. So now I've got a nine month wait, let's say until they're able to buy my product. Or maybe I'm not pricing it properly. That first client, I solved a very specific problem. saw super huge value in what I was bringing to the table. So they paid me my six figure platform fee or whatever it is. But these other sets of clients, they've got it solved. Maybe they've got some. competition in there or some other product that's doing it for them. Or maybe like I said before, they just, they haven't cleared the budget. So it's not just going to materialize out of thin air. Again, these problems dial up or down depending on whether you are, you know, a transactional product, you know, something that might be like a thousand dollars a month or less. That's very easy to get a procurement person or anyone in organization of any seniority to swipe a credit card to purchase. If you're selling something that's six, seven figures, obviously that's a much longer sale cycle and a different story. And you have to be ready to hang in the pocket, as we say, and ride that one out for nine months until you get, you get to buy it you get the budget, et cetera. speaker-0: So using some examples or anything that you've experienced, any specific examples that you could go back to, if you could wave a magic wand and say, here's what I would, I did, ⁓ but here's what I wish I had done or we had done. Cause it may not even be about you, but you've been part of these things like the time that would have been smarter, better. speaker-1: Yeah, OK. I've had a couple of experiences in my career where we were selling a product that was relatively low cost. It was very easy to use. There was a PLG motion to it. And we were trying to adapt it for the enterprise. This is actually very common in the SaaS space when you're coming from that background and you're trying to go up market. And you're seeing it happen now with a bunch of these AI products as well. In my experience, The challenge there is it's very easy on a website and because most people are doing 70 % of their research before they ever talk to you because of available resources to them. They're associating a certain price point in their mind. And even if they now want to take your product and give it to 500 of their employees, they aren't necessarily doing the math the way you're doing the math. So the sticker shock problem is a problem and you've got to find a way to improve or increase the value of that enterprise product. So whether that's making it more secure, which might be something that a company would want versus just a sole proprietorship. If it's making it more robust in some fashion, if it's adding features that an individual contributor or a sole proprietor wouldn't need or want to have, make sure that those are being baked into the product. And so that comes back to kind of a product problem, less of a sales problem. But the sellers and the account executives problem is they're trying to build value and they're sort of fighting against perceptions of price and value that are out in the market that they can't frankly control. So the lesson is make sure, and what I've lived is great, add value to the product. And when you go out and market and pitch it, make sure that that value is actually there for them. So make sure that the enterprise version of whatever you're selling solves a big enough problem for them to make it worth the spend. speaker-0: Let's talk about pushing. So I think that clients, companies, SaaS space as an example, B2B, whether it's B2C, but there's a push, right? Everything at the beginning is pushing. Push as hard as you can, work as hard as you can. You talked about product market fit and everybody's driving their way to a version of that, whatever that means. What are the signs that that's not working anymore? That pushing harder isn't... enough and what are some things that you've done or you do to get past that. speaker-1: Yeah, that's a really good question. Cause I think the answer is changing. Earlier in my career, and even as early as five, six years ago, I would have said pushing is the only way to get enterprise product sold. And you may have created a tremendous value and you've been in a procurement process. You're about to enter a procurement process and you've got all the champions you need, but you get stymied somewhere along the line. It's a CFO, it's someone illegal. I'm not sure it's as much as your audience will understand. could be a variety of different pitfalls that you end up. having to navigate around. But ultimately, if you don't have a champion willing to pull you forward, in other words, they know how to buy from you as much as you got to sell to them, you're dead or it's going to be a struggle, right? Even if you do get your deal done. And I certainly have, I've used all the tricks of the trade, right? It's last minute discounting. It's, Hey, do me a favor. I need this by the end of the quarter. I can bundle in more products or services for you, but here's what you need to do for me. And I think that a lot of that can still work, but there's a fatigue out there for sure when it comes to. the buyer's persona. And it also will depend on who you're selling to. Someone who's sitting in a CIO seat may be far more cynical than someone sitting in like a head of product seat. Someone who's really motivated to grow new product versus protect my organization. So it's not a one size fits all answer for you. But what I will say is I actually have backed off personally from pushing too hard. I actually think it's better to give space to your buyer to do your homework ahead of time. In other words, make sure you've got the right person in the mix from as early as possible in the sales process as you can. Make sure that it's priced appropriately and that they are doing the work on their side to get it budgeted and sort of pre-approved around the hallways of the organization they're selling into. And then spend less time calling in favors at the end or sending annoying emails every 24 hours because I think that results now more in buyer fatigue than it used to. And you're going to turn your prospect off and you might even lose your deal. speaker-0: I always, it's, it's interesting for me. I always think about this in the context of how do you generate more pull, right? The push has limitations. Pull for me is a, there's tactics, but a lot of it is strategic in terms of pull. You mentioned understanding your customer, understand them, understand their world, know where their problems are. And then the pull becomes easier, right? Solve for their stuff as opposed to pushing your stuff. You've been great. I appreciate the time and stuff. So of course. Tell, can you tell people how they can find you and follow you, follow what you're doing? speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Totally. I think the easiest way is what you would expect me to say on LinkedIn. You can find me very easily. It's Rob Miller. Rob with two B's by the way. That's easy to Yeah. I do actually ⁓ do events. I'm speaking at the Future Faster Today conference, which is happening in Barcelona at the end of February. I don't know if this will be on your site before then or not, but there will be other events coming in the future. And ⁓ I will find a way to start to make those more public on my social media. speaker-0: easier. speaker-1: just so that if anyone ever wants to connect in person, which I am a big believer in, I am happy to make it happen. speaker-0: That was great. Listen, I appreciate it. I thank you for your time. This is great. ⁓ Let me thank you, Rob, for that. I'll make sure to add some links into the description after, we'll see what we can do on that. And I wanted to thank everyone else for watching and for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode. speaker-1: Thank you.