Latest / The High-Performing Technical Leader / Ep.37 - Too Many Tools, Not Enough ROI: Fixing Sales Tech Adoption with Dean Curtis, CEO at Ingage

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Ep.37 - Too Many Tools, Not Enough ROI: Fixing Sales Tech Adoption with Dean Curtis, CEO at Ingage · The High-Performing Technical Leader

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, welcome back everybody to the High Performing Technical Leader podcast.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Arvikarkanji.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as a reminder, we do these podcasts intentionally live when they are edited with all of our guests.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually super excited today.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go into a very interesting topic.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have today, I'm joined by Dean Curtis of Engage.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to have a very interesting topic in terms of tools, which has been something that, you know, with AI, I feel like everybody's kind of tripled the amount of tools that they use.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the topic is going to be about how do we make sure that the tools we are using, they're bringing us an ROI and we're just not having a bunch of tools that don't connect to each other, don't talk to each other.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But um, thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to dive deep today.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to dive in and have a great conversation.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, before we even dive into all of this, I would love to for you to tell your audience a little bit about where you came from.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: You started your career as a math teacher in Baltimore and then you turned into assistance engineering and then obviously to where you are today.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So walk us through a little bit, you know, what took you from the classroom to leading today.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you had asked uh, you know, 22-year-old dean where he would be now in 50 plus, would I be sitting in the seat?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I never imagined that.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'd be a principal or something like that in the school.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, I started out as a math teacher at Baltimore County Public School, spent four years there, and I realized I had a technical skill.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a magnet school.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had a bunch of Apple computers, and I was helping the tech guy a lot.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: What could I do with this technical skill?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to try something in the business world.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: My wife's uncle worked for Oracle.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: He told me about a postgrad program at Oracle, and I got into the system engineering track in that program.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: But what I realized is that teaching is selling to a room that didn't ask to be there.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you basically earn the attention every day of middle school and then high school kids.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it really teaching and selling isn't very much different.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So as I went from teaching to being in sales, it wasn't really that big of a difference.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then moved through a bunch of tech companies, Oracle, Palm, and Telsync, and then Apple before I got here to uh and to uh engage.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I've always thought that same way.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like sometimes teachers make like the best salespeople because if you can sell middle school kids or kindergarten kids to pay attention to you, I feel like you can do anything.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's awesome to hear.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh when you were at Apple, you said that you were part of running the partners program there to lead the go-to-market motion and eventually um either and then eventually took over a CEO here.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, how did that happen from Apple to here?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I was it's interesting.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: My tech career was all around mobility.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, well, mobility, of course, mobility.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone has mobile phones now.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: But back in the mid late 90s, early 2000s, mobility was the was the hot thing.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: So at Oracle, at Palm, and in Telsync, it was all about mobility.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And at Apple, clearly, it was the iPhone time.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent eight years at Apple, and our focus was enterprise adoption of iPhone, then iPad and Mac.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched companies buy hardware and struggle to get people to use it, believe it or not, because it wasn't actually the hardware, it was the apps, and it was all about the adoption of apps on these platforms.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what we did was our whole mission in life was to gain adoption of Apple products across the Fortune 500.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the app gap was real, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: There weren't some of the apps that people were used to using on other platforms.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what I realized was that selling to every industry here at Engage, we tried to do the same approach.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: We'll sell to everyone.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, everyone needs the what we do.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't always work.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of people are the RNS that doesn't know what Engage does, what problems are ego solving for sales leaders today?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we're we're a small, it's startup company, it's probably good to level set.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we we primarily focus on the home improvement industry.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we niched down really quickly after.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I came into League Go to Market.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I realized trying to sell what we had to everyone was a bit of a fool's error because you can't solve everyone's problem.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we realized that home improvement companies spend a ton of money on leads.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: They spend a ton of money on leads, hiring, and training.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when the rep walks into the home and the experience depends on which rep showed up, not if a rep showed up, we realize we had something in how we did presentation software differently than others, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can't clone the best rep.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can, however, give everyone the best pitch that the company says this is how you sell the products that and services that we offer.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what Engage does.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: We we claim to be the readiness platform for the trade.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a I call it's a basic, basically a three-part harmony training, practicing, and pitching.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: So most people think of presentations as the pitch.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna pitch you, I'm gonna sell you windows, doors, siding, all those things.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we believe when you pair that with a great training and practice, where you rehearse and practice before the appointment, you don't waste the thousand dollar leads.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: That pitch is the is the thing that this the company codifies for the team in our software, and that gives them a really predictable way, a consistent way that they have confidence in pitching at the kitchen table.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we've grown to where you know we're delivering over a million presentations a month in home improvement companies across the US and engage.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh you brought up two really interesting points.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is the idea of niching, because like you said, I feel like when you're trying to sell to everybody, you're selling to no one, right?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so and I know that even right now, I mean, the product can be multiple, multi-use, multi-industry use.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: How did you guys decide to niche in this specific industry?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe like any tips for leaders out there that are kind of going through the struggle of niching and how to find out the right way to do that or their exact ICP?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, coming from Apple, we had Apple consult anybody because they're Apple.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I realized very quickly that as a small startup, that is impossible because it's there's just not enough money to go around.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked at our the clients that we had and I listened and talked to our sales reps and I asked them a very simple question who's easiest to sell to?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I was talking to Charlie, our lead rep at the time, I said, What are the conversations that you're having where you can literally see the light bulbs going off during the demo?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, These home improvement guys, he's like, Every single one of them has the same problem.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're selling super complex things to people who don't buy them frequently, and they're crazy expensive.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we at that point we said, Aha, let's go focus on more of them.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that's great is they're a big referral network on their own.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So they rely on referrals to get business.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: They were really fast to give us referrals to their friends who were non-competitive.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that helped tremendously by us saying, but the really the magic was listening to our sales reps to understand where the easier sales were coming from.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Very good point.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I actually want to dive a little bit deeper into this if you're okay with it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But there is, you know, we know LinkedIn is huge right now for selling, reaching out to people, et cetera.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like there's also a lot of SaaS products that focus in the home improvement industry where you don't necessarily find the leads on LinkedIn.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, how are you guys finding these home improvement leads?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what have you seen perform right now to people or selling, I guess, to ICP that's not your typical, you know, LinkedIn user?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we we literally just took took uh turned off our LinkedIn ads because they they were not converting at the same rate as meta ads to this uh cohort of people.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So meta is is one, but we also do a lot of industry conferences.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the one of the best things about the home improvement industry is they are they are so willing to share what works for them.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a ton of industry conferences where uh we just came back from the qualified remodeler top 500, where the ex where experts on the stage are their peers telling them what worked in their business, technology-wise, finance, marketing, all of it.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's pretty amazing to see how the industry supports each other, and that's helped us by going to those industry conferences as well.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, love that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like events has definitely been really big for a lot of different industries now.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now that kind of we've fully put COVID behind us, events are really coming up, and it's been nice.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's been nice getting to connect with people in person, way better than just um, you know, through ads or just uh and I think that is I mean, we'll we can talk about AI in 10, 10 different ways, but that's one of the things that people are that I'm finding is they want those personal connections.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that people sell today for home improvements is a very personal experience.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to get somebody that can, you know, fork over$20,000,$30,000 on a home improvement project in an Amazon way.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So there's still the the you know face-to-face selling that's happening.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for us, having the opportunity to meet face to face with these potential clients at conferences has been a game changer.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, very true.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to shift the focus a little bit to our kind of like our main topic today is why we have so many tools and you know, why they end up in this digital dumpster.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things you and I talked offline was that you said that a lot of companies invest in tools that never really provide an ROI.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the most common reasons that you've seen a tool ends up in that digital dumpster, so to speak?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I call it so yeah, digital dumpster, digital junk drawer.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: We all have one of these things in our house, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where the old goes to die.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the first thing is that no one named the problem.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: They bought a feature, but they they didn't buy a fix.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So they went to a conference and they they talked to some salesperson and they convinced them that they had this tool that would provide the holy grail of everything that's for their business.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is they never had the problem defined.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Once they've once you defined the problem, they also then didn't have someone who would own the rollout.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: We at Apple, we term this the DRI, and I've carried that that language into our business today, direct responsible individual.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that individual is not responsible for doing all the work, but they are responsible to make sure adoption happens and lining up all the resources that are there.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the third piece, I think, also is the people who have to use it are never involved in choosing it or evaluating it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the core of actually a book that I'm writing on tech adoption is involving the people who absolutely will be the make or break of that solution.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's that's it's a huge part of it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then last but not least, I think the training that people put uh their team through for the for the technology is typically a one-off event.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So when training stops at launch, we see that they they might use a piece of the technology, but they don't they don't get the true depth of adoption of all the features.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're like, wait, I'm not getting all the value that you said I would get out of this.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, yeah, because you only trained on the surface level of features, are there additional training that you need to provide over time to your team to make sure it doesn't end up in the digital junk drawer?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a really good point.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, number one, I see that a lot to where companies, you know, at the top level will get this product that they think it's gonna solve the whatever sales teams or customer success teams problem, and they don't involve the team that's gonna be using it on a day-to-day.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, that doesn't solve our problem because it wasn't ours to begin with.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And on the other hand, I've also seen that companies um they think that they'd buy a product to solve a pain, but really kind of along with what you mentioned is like, you know, oh, buy our lead list uh enrichment, you know, system, and then we'll provide you all the leads and book it in your calendar.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And really what they had was a sales problem to begin with.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So they buy for the wrong reasons to kind of get out of that pain.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you kind of agree with that or not.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they start using it, yeah, they're like, oh, wait, this is not gonna solve my actual pace.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Piling new technology on bad process doesn't fix the bad process.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so happens all the time.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is they don't put a number to it.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, sorry, but like the only the other thing, they don't put a number to it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you hire uh someone in your business, you hire a customer success rep, you hire a sales rep, what do they have?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: They have a number.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hit this number or you don't have a job here.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why not add that number to the sales team or to the software that you're buying?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: If if you buy a piece of software that's supposed to move your close rate five points and you're not measuring whether it moved the close rate five points, well, whose fault is that?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: You need to make sure that if you want to have ROI, you need to understand what the metric is that that software is intended to move.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Emailing software, probably not a metric, it's table stakes.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're buying something that's gonna improve lead conversion, what's your lead conversion today?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: How much does it have to be 90 days from now for you to say that you were successful?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very simple thing.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think a lot of people do it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, very true.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then in your own personal experience, have you had any tools?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, don't share names or anything like that, but that you adopted and didn't work out.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe some tips on like what went wrong in terms of how you evaluated it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what do you do differently now?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a bunch of examples in our business: a revenue tracking tool, a commission tracking tool, lead enrichment tool.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you one, and I'll give you the specific name of the software because I think a lot of people use it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we wanted to adopt Notion for our company knowledge base.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we did not properly set the expectations with the team, and we did not properly train the team consistently to ramp adoption of the tool.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: We basically said, here it is, start putting your stuff here.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And before we knew it, guess what we had?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: A digital junk drawer of a whole bunch of stuff.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we pressed pause, we brought in a consultant.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we hired an expert on how to architect a notion system.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: We started smaller, we started with documents, then we added projects and tasks later.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we wanted we we took a much more measured approach the second time around.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So like the the 2.0 version of deploying that technology.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I call out Notion because I think a lot of people use it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one of those things that if you go in without a plan, you'll have chaos.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we had chaos.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we had to press pause and get an expert in to help us with our implementation.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's actually a very good example because I also use Notion.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So uh now that you're saying that, I feel like I need to step back and really put in some actual processes and systems in place.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then on the sales side, I feel like even for field sales teams, but even in general, like most salespeople and teams are using like five to six sales tools minimum.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're like a CRO looking at that stack, what like how do you decide what to consolidate, what to keep?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how would you even go about doing all of that?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned this earlier.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't know your sales process, how in the world can you buy technology to support it?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I would suggest starting with the sales process, not the tech stack.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Map every tool to a step that a rep takes, and a tool that maps to no step needs to be thought through and reconsidered.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: We were using an enrichment tool that everyone it was the hottest thing going, and we were using a lead enrichment tool, but it really didn't map to our ICP.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like great, it's a lead enrichment tool, but it doesn't have great data about contractors.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So awesome.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: It works for pharmaceutical reps.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And like, well, we don't sell there, so that doesn't really make much sense.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So and I think if you start with the process, not the technology, then tech then you then you find where you have gaps.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh, wait, here's step three in our process.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a piece of supporting technology.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: First off, does any of the things we already have help us there?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think a lot of times we buy things and use 20% of them, and you're like, oh, what about that other 80%?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can I bring that software to bear on this problem?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then look at usage, not licenses, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Seats paid against seats active in the last 30 days and make sure maybe maybe you just overbought and not it's not the right thing for all salespeople, but the account managers can use it or something like that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then consolidate where those two tools might hold the same data.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, maybe you have a tool that solves a problem and a gap that you've identified in the sales process once you've done that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, sometimes you have to pull tools away from some users, but it's to the betterment and in the simplification, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of our one of our core tenants here is simple scales.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And every time we get more complex, guess what?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's where failure occurs.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Simple scales, complex fails.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Keep what the rep uses in front of the buyer and make sure that you don't disrupt their paycheck is another one to think about.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think we go through and we're like, we're not using this.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the reps are like, I don't use it that much, but what I do use it for the most critical moment of my sales process.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: So while the analytics might say it's used only 10% of the time by reps, if it's the most critical thing in their sales process, make sure that that's not killing the paycheck of a sales rep.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing worse than taking money out of a sales rep's paycheck.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it's it's true that you mentioned that because also I feel like most salespeople they want to keep it simple.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like they hate plugging in numbers or uh updating fields in their CRM.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like they they really just want to sell, talk to the right people, and ideally close those people.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then the rest, like they they don't want to do any of it.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, they do not sales specifically, you need it as simple as possible.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then on that end, like assuming you know, we looked at our systems and processes, everything's in place.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: If I am adopting a new tool, what measurement should be in place to really prove that this is working maybe in the first 90 days or 60 days?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you measure that a tool is actually doing what it's supposed to do?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would I would this if anybody's gonna write down one thing that I say, I think this is the thing.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's the problem in one sentence with a number, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: For example, new reps take X weeks to close their first deal.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what how are we gonna solve that problem?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or our close rate goes from X to Y in this many days.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of people say we need better visibility into what the reps are doing.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, what does that mean?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: How do you measure that?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the metric?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really about one the problem in one sentence with a number.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you have that, naming the DRI before you sign on the tool, don't be wishfully thinking that if I oh, I'm gonna buy this tool and then I'm gonna figure out who's gonna do the implementation.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be a name with a job, and it can't be a name with four jobs.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like this has to be the thing that they're directly responsible for and that they have the time in their schedule to do it.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when budgeting season comes around, it can't pull them off of the deployment of the technology.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: They really have to have this as one of the primary things that they're doing.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then making sure you have a baseline for that metric that you identify.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people will get, you know, 30, 90 days into a rollout and they're like, oh, wait, what were we doing before?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: This seems like it's working.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, no, what's baseline on day one?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So 30, 60, 90 days in, you can actually say, did that number move?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean at 90 days you just throw it out.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's something that you have learned.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait, we need more training, or I need to go talk to the reps, or whatever it is.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's really important that you you don't just knee-jerk, pull it out.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's probably some value that's being added, and it might not be even what you thought it was.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: The key though, at the end, at the end though, you do need a kill switch.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: You need to understand that if you're not driving a result within a certain amount of time, that it's time to move on from that technology.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: But give it time.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I look at an adoption curve, like there's a lot of really good things going on at first, and then it's gonna dip, and then it'll take off.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So understand that maybe you'll have out some success early on, then there'll be a dip before you actually uh have the realized value from whatever software you use.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you say to like the um the devil's advocate of like, well, if we don't adapt quickly, like everything's moving so fast, if we don't adapt, when we're we might get left behind on a certain tool or just AI in general?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's a fallacy.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: The it's it's the it's kind of the same thing of keeping the same person on the team way too long when you're just afraid for their seat to be empty.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I call it the empty seat fallacy, um, where you're like, I can't, I can't let Jim go because Jim has been here for a long time and we'd be, you know, he's not doing a great job, but he's better than having an empty seat.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sometimes pausing on technology and doing it right is way better than spinning your wheels and doing it wrong.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get into the hiring aspect of it later.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you mentioned such a good point because I mean, I think about it too right now with the adaptation of AI.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody jumped on it as they should, but sometimes or some of them jumped it too much ahead where they let go of a bunch of people and now they're like, oh, we need a higher bag because it's not what we thought it was.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't actually replace humans as we thought it would.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I've told our team for the last year is by the end of this year, I want AI doing 80% of what you do.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you are responsible for a hundred percent, and that 20% is the human value you bring.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think if we get people in that sweet spot, in that zone of genius that they are great at, the AI can do a lot of the things you mentioned earlier, updating the CRM and drafting emails and all that stuff.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Those are great pieces, ways to leverage AI technology.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: You still need taste, you still need judgment, you still need experience of the people, and it makes you way more valuable.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I feel for the people who don't bring that level of value because I think they are at risk in their in their jobs.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we're always trying to focus as well.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that's very true.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of like AI, I guess they kind of organically transition to this section.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But um, one other thing that you and I talked about offline was how teams kind of adopt tech in the age of AI.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them now are like build versus buy.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can vibecode our own things for five different cool tools.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what when does building it yourself make sense?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when does like maybe the hidden cost of it uh really come up of, you know, if Tom wrote this, but Tom's on vacation, so what are we gonna do now?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Type of thing.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's pretty simple.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Build when it's your edge and your advantage, and you have someone who is responsible for maintaining it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: As a software person, as a technology person, I can tell you the number one thing people are underestimating when vibe coding is the support and maintenance and care and feeding of the software.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's the when you buy a piece of software, the majority of the cost is not the running of the servers, it's the QA and the support and the bug fixing, and there's a zero-day vulnerability and PHP and that the servers get patched overnight.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you buy when it's a solved problem.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you a very simple example.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: We just got a uh a notification from one of our vendors that there's a piece of software that is gonna triple in price.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: They were purchased by a bigger vendor, and we the our immediate reaction was, well, let's just write our own.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: It should take our team like a weekend to write it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, okay, so do we go from paying$2,000 for this software to$6,000?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: That$4,000 gap, is it worth our team's time to build and maintain that software?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer was no.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'd rather pay three times as much for the software because I'm gonna buy the solved problem.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I like, for example, I built a dashboard because it was really fast and cheap to do.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now our team is maintaining that dashboard because it pulls in all the sources exactly like we want it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was a decision we said we're gonna build because the systems we're pulling data from have great APIs.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: We can securely host it, and it truly is a tailored dashboard to our company.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we built.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you have to really look at all those hidden costs: maintenance, security, integrations, um, onboarding the next hire when Tom's on vacation.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what happens when those things, you know, you you have to make sure you have plans for all those.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: So those hidden costs of I actually know a business.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of our customers said, We're gonna go build all of our tools ourselves.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: They kept using our software, but they rebuilt their CRM, they rebuilt their lead management system, they rebuilt the whole thing, they're out of business in nine months because they took their eye off the thing that they're really good at and thought they were attacking.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, and I know that's a you know, it's a hyperbolic example, but it happens.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do what you're great at.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is such a good point.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen, I mean, I've made that mistake in the past too, where I'm like, I'll just build it, or you know, it shouldn't take that long.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen it even with other leaders now.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm part of some communities where we've had calls and they're like, yeah, they're dumping all this AI built on me, but I have no time to manage the team to really focus on my you know, skill set of like marketing and bringing in leads, et cetera, because now I'm just over here building AI tools.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like you said, somebody still has to manage it because it's not I like to think of AI as like your side driver or like your passenger.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, they do drive, you know, like so maybe 80% of the time, but you're still the one of holding the wheel and the gas and the you know, the brake pedal, and you're the one that decides when that actually happens.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're a really efficient coworker.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: They you can hand them all the stuff you don't want to do, and they're gonna do it perfectly every time or pretty near perfect, and that's awesome.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: You still have to be in charge, you still have to like I love your your metaphor of holding the wheel, right?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, this isn't full self-driving.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Tesla, not yet.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, cool.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then one thing that I like to say too is like every vendor, I feel like right every product now is AI powered, and as they take over for more of the prep or the follow-up work, what should leaders really expect from their reps to get in front of the buyer?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how should they change how they invest in the tech itself?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there's great value in using AI to prepare.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like we I used AI to help me prepare for this podcast.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: It helped me understand who you were and who your audience was and the types of things that would resonate.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like the if I'd tried to do all of that myself, it I could do it, but it would have taken a tremendous amount of time.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Every meeting that's in my calendar over the next 48 hours is already prepped through AI.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So AI is taking the prep and it's helping me with follow-up.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Every email is drafted.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: What's left is reading the situation, is responding in the moment, handling the objection that nobody scripted because AI can't predict everything.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Great prediction engine, but you need to be able to do that.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I in our business, where we support this home improvement industry, the number one conversation that they have to have is price.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: AI can't present the price.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: It can help you generate it, it can help you give a great quote, but presenting it and price conditioning and pre-selling and asking great questions and handling objections, those are still things that a human needs to do in the moment, reading the room, understanding what people said before.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: All of those soft skills are still human skills.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, sure, AI can help you with all of the prep, all of the follow-up, but practicing and being great with people and all of those things are still skills that the whether you're a home improvement seller or someone who's just working in the world, you still need those skills.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I I mean, as a as someone who's hiring people all the time, I'm looking for people who have those skills all the time.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a really good point.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I wanted to dive a little bit deeper in is like with, as we mentioned a little bit, you know, there's also events that are back now and like more in-field sales.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, they're obviously you guys are focusing on the home improvement um sales.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: However, there's a lot of businesses that are kind of going back to it.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Even in SaaS, you know, they'll go door to door and knock on certain offices, and especially if you're in a city like New York City or San Francisco, where you can door-to-door sell still.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: What should leaders be measuring about like field sales?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what tools would they use the most, or like what are things that they should never look at versus should look at?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we so it's it's interesting you mentioned door-to-door because in the home improvement industry, that is a massive lead source for a lot of people.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the challenge that I think a lot of them that a lot of them have told me that they have.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Getting the appointment set is only part of the equation.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, having them show up or not cancel the appointment is huge.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is what do you do in the gap between the set and the sit is so important.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what are the AI tools that can help?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: What are what's the content?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're a big we're a content company, so I'm always thinking about content that I can share that keeps you, I call it warming.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I got to keep you warm so that you actually set the appointment.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: One of our clients told us they they set these appointments and 80% of them cancel.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if I can help them go from 80 to 70, it means millions of dollars for their business.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that no matter who what business you are, where are you investing in that technology to keep or in the process or whatever you're doing to keep the appointment set?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: We focus on the closed rate once you sit them, but how about the cancellation rate?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's looking at all parts of the funnel.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I got that sales funnel of from from when they're identified to when they're actually closed loss.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of pieces in there that content can help.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: AI can help in terms of understanding who that buyer is and what might be important to them.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's really about the readiness of the team to do all that work.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, it I think a lot of people are cutting technology and they're looking at cost savings.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage people to invest that into the practice and the teach, like the training part of the job, because the more their sales team is ready to handle all of those pieces of sales process, the more they're gonna win.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, such a good point.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't mind, I I'd love some like of your guys' secret.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do you keep people warm from the moment they send an appointment to the actual appointment?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're going all in on content and working with our clients to identify the things that help.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's a couple schools of thought.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: One is show them what would happen if they don't do it.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the horror show of what happens when you don't replace the roof and you have a leak.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and and I think anybody can think of their business and what is the downside of not acting now and show literally show them what happens, visual proof, creating a bit of urgency as well.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It you know, it's the classic fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how can you build fear, uncertainty, and doubt in a positive way to get them to say, I can't miss this appointment because I might have mold in my basement or I might have I'm losing 50% of the money that I'm spending on expensive electricity through my windows.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm using home improvement examples because that's what we do every day.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I think every business has those pain points that they're solving for the client and what is the content you can send them in the in that gap.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: The key is you can't send something that you can't track.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't track whether someone opens it, how long they spend in it, whether they interact with it, it's it's kind of a sure it can provide value, but it's the analytics side of it and understanding are they actually viewing it, what parts are they viewing that set your sales rep up for success.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something that your guys' software helps with?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love that like you you could build a piece of content formatted for a phone, it goes out.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: We actually, one of our clients told us a story last week.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: They've seen a 60% improvement in cancellation rate.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: So 60% more people are sitting their appointment.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what they do is they send out this well-formatted, very simple piece of content that shows who the rep is, their face.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little intro video, what to expect when they arrive, and a bit about their product so that they can start browsing some of the options before they get there.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it builds trust, it streamlines the meetings, and people are sitting more appointments.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty crazy.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a really good point because it's true.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you in a way personalize and humanize your appointment, the chances of you missing it are probably less.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: I might have to seal that now.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and hopefully our audience will too.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, awesome.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, we've kind of arrived at our rapid fire questions section.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So this is fast questions on my end, but you can take your time answering them to give the most, you know, best answer on your end.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, number one, what is one tool that you can live without right now?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a vibe coded tool.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: I call it, I call it my OS.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And what it does is it implements a framework that I teach with inside of our company called the 531 Focus Framework.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone's interested in this, if you connect with me on Instagram, I'm Dean Curtis23, and just send me a message.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I will and say, give me your five three one focus framework, I'll send it back to you.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's super simple.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's five daily non-negotiables.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: So simple things that even on my my worst day that I can do fitness, reading, all journaling, those types of things.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Three commitments for the week that I make public to the company.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Here are my top three things that I'm working on.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then every day, my one is the one thing that makes everything else easier.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's from a great that one thing comes from Gary Keller's great book, The One Thing.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: So 531 Focus Framework.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: I built an app so that I can track it.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's on my phone, it's on my iPad, it's on my Mac, it's on everything.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I can always see where I am on that every day.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll be the first one to message you, and then hopefully our audience will too.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what is the your biggest growth lever for SaaS right now in 2026?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's time to value.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You need to own that first 30 days of the customer.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Most churn is a failure to launch, and the signal is already in your data in the first 30 days.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's the number one thing we're focusing on that improving that time to value.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the more it can be instantaneous and you layer value on top of it, uh, the likelier you are to retain that customer.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's true outside of SAS as well, right?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: They need to see wins.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And our mission as a company is we help our clients win.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the scoreboard is not our scoreboard, the scoreboard is their scoreboard.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Who is gonna go to a sporting event without a scoreboard?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not helping them post wins on their scoreboard, you're not helping them grow, and you're not, you're not helping them grow, and in turn, you're not gonna grow either.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: What is one belief you have that most people would disagree with?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is I'll I'll stay on the sales theme, and I think it's that your best rep is better than the rest, and that's fine.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: The job, so like everybody looks at their best rep and they try and replicate them.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, don't replicate them.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can't replicate greatness because there's probably something in there that they just have, and I can't give charisma to the person who has or a curiosity for following up to someone who doesn't have it.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: But what I can do is I can help raise the floor in a sales team.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: I it's really hard to raise the ceiling.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you raise the floor in a sales team, you're gonna actually see more return than trying to get the top guy to close at a higher rate.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So learn from what they do, but don't try and replicate them.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're special.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Take some of those things and try and get them, try and get your lower performers up 5%, 6%.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's millions of dollars in your business.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard that before.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Raise the floor and not the ceiling because it's true, you probably can't raise that, but you can raise the floor for the team.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think also, like if you're not that tough performer, rep, it can be exhausting for you in that sales team to be constantly compared to them or you know, constantly trying to be that person.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I love that you mentioned that.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually really, really good.
• 38:43
  unknown: Thanks.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is uh what is a hiring mistake that you've made and what did it teach you?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I will I'm gonna give you a I'll give you a general answer on this one.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the general answer is we didn't used to do a test project and now they're mandatory.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: So every new hire in our company, whether it's a customer success rep, a salesperson, project manager, engineer, every role we hire for, we define the outcomes that they need to drive and we build a test project that proves that they can deliver one of those outcomes and we pay them for the test project.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we ask people for their time, they do something that is the real job, and if they can't do it, we don't hire them.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is it like a like how much how long is that our test?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is it like a two-hour thing or a half a day or a full day?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the role.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: So a more senior role is going to require more of a time commitment.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then, but for example, we have um a partnership manager role open right now.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what we did is we anonymized our part, our top partner list, and we sent it to them and showed them a lot of data over the last quarter or two.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And their job is to prioritize the partners and build a quick plan on what they would do.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we expect that they're going to use AI.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't use AI, they're not getting hired.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to see how they think through that plan.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we give them a really specific breakdown of the things that they have to do, and it's typically three to four hours of work, and then we'll pay them for their time.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I love that.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have a side question for you.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that's come up with me recently, especially when I'm doing my screening calls as well, is yes, we do want people to use AI.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, how do you differentiate people that use AI and let AI hold the wheel versus like be that person that holds the wheel and AI is their coworker?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've had multiple scenarios where we're screening for specific candidates and they're like, Yeah, I'll use AI to help me solve this, you know, question and answer problem, whatever.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Well, great, what do you do if there is no AI?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they can't necessarily answer that.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to that?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the second part of the test project is a 30-minute presentation of their work to the team they're going to work with.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we do a panel where they have to, so you you send your work over, the panel reviews it, and then through that review, they now come back with questions that you have to answer live.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's pretty obvious when someone has no idea the work that they've put in.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because I my personal, I love using AI.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: I we have a company meeting today, and I had a it's a really important topic where we changed some of our marketing messaging.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: I need to train the whole company on it.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: AI was the best partner to work on with that.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Help me create a game, an interactive game to test their knowledge and help me build a skill in Claude that I they can actually do role play practice with.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have built that myself.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the training, the presentation, I made that all myself because I need to own it.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're gonna see right through me if the pages that I put up in front of them during the during the uh during the meeting were just a bunch of AI garbage.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm glad we clarified that because I I want to make sure that people listening to this and if they're implementing AI within their hiring process, as they should, because everybody should use AI right now as they're coming on to roles, they still know how to do the job without AI.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really important.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if I'm making them 80% of their job is AI, what is the 20% they're a master at?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm hiring them.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly, exactly for sure.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, speaking of hiring, what are you typically looking for in early hires, you know, as you're building or scaling a team?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so our three core values are default to action, simple scales, and be the example.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I hold the team to those three things.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I hire for those three things as well.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I want people who want to own an outcome, not a task list.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at the job description, we we don't do typical job descriptions here.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: We do what we call opportunity profiles because I believe every role that we're hiring for is an opportunity for someone to produce outcomes for our business.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't the old classic Steve Jobs quote, right?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't hire people to tell them what to do.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: I hire people so they tell us what to do.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to see people who are really curious and want to drive outcomes.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they we we really will turn away people who don't show that and have that curiosity, um, that default and examples from their past where they do the simplest thing, not the most complex thing.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we want people to really think about the next quick action that can move us forward, not the super tedious, long, drawn-out thing that just creates more complexity in the business.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a good question for you that has been a topic that's come up recently a lot for me as well, especially with other leaders.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: But do you guys hire based on domain expertise, or you know, they have to come from SaaS home improvement, right?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or something along those lines, or what is typically your requirements on that end?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: It totally depends on the role.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, our partner manager, what I want is someone who has really rich partnership experience.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: They can learn the trades.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, our customer success team, I'm opting for people who understand the home improvement business because they'll get the my sales team is doing X, Y, and they'll understand that process a lot better because they have.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: That industry knowledge on the sales side, we've gone both ways.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Really, I want killers who completely love helping people solve problems and want to make money and are driven, you know, to not close business at all costs, close really good business that's going to renew in a year.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to me, those are so it really depends whether they have that industry knowledge or not on the role.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Engineers, I want the most curious product engineers that we can that we can find.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you made that distinction because it's been something really big lately, especially for the startup like companies in general, where typically most of the roles we're hiring for is domain expertise.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, the number one reason most of candidates or that I speak to that have been denied.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's it's important, and I do agree with you.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's best to depend it based on the department, right?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like how much does it matter to that department, the domain expertise, or just how much it doesn't?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's a good kind of rule of thumb to really come up with that answer.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: My last question for you in your opinion, what separates somebody that is good versus a nate player?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right now, the number one thing that we're looking at is curiosity around AI.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to see what you've built.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone should be a builder of something, whether it's just a simple artifact that helps you understand your job, your customers, your role, your individual task.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want a team of AI builders.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a the the phrase that I always maybe, maybe I'll get famous for this phrase someday, but AI rewards the curious.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that wholeheartedly.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I am always trying to find the most curious people.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why I want to see how they do a test project.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see where they leverage AI to do it.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to watch what they ask, how they work, and how they take feedback.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make sure we are hiring people that want to own problems and drive outcomes.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And AI is a great way to help them do that.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the best way to end this.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on, Dean.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, first of all, where can people find you and connect with you?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll go back to Instagram.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm constantly posting stuff on Instagram and leadership, mindset, business, and technology.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's Dean Curtis23 on Instagram.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always, of course, I'm on LinkedIn as well.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, I don't share as much content on there.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's more of the uh, I don't know, CEO journey stuff on LinkedIn.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then obviously our uh our company is engaged, so engage with an I, I-N-G-A-G-E dot Io, if you're interested in what we do.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if I could plug one last thing, I am actually looking for people who have had failed tech adoptions to tell me their stories.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm writing a book on tech adoption and it's called the Tech Adoption Project.com.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: So tech adoptionproject.com.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to check that out, there's a bunch of surveys on there for things that went really great and things that didn't go so well.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to tell me your story, I'd love to connect with you there as well.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of different yeah, I'll put this on the show notes too.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you uh, or I can take it from just our transcript here, but um, I'll put in the show notes as well so it makes it easier for people and I'll link your Instagram as well.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because honestly, most people plug in their LinkedIn, so I like that we're plugging in something different now.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for joining, being super transparent and going deep with me on some of those questions.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, there's a lot of notes to take from this episode, including myself, which I will be implementing some of those.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate you coming on.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you to everybody watching live or catching the replay later.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to connect with Dean on Instagram and check the show notes.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks for tuning in.