Latest / The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors / Top 10 Go-To-Market Mistakes Founders Make Today with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin

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Top 10 Go-To-Market Mistakes Founders Make Today with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin · The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: As you know,
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: we are here every single Wednesday at 10 AM Pacific with another great SaaS expert
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: to go over their top lessons and learnings.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: And today we're honored to have Jason back with us to talk about a question he gets
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: asked a lot about being successful as a founder and go-to-market strategy.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: So he's going to be going over 10 go-to-market mistakes that he sees founders
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: making today and some strategies on how to overcome and what to do when you're
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: stuck in these situations.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: As always,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: we know this is going to be filled with so many amazing tactical learnings and hot takes,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: as always,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: reliable from Jason.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to have plenty of time for Q&A, so make sure to drop your questions throughout the session.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then we will have plenty of time to get you queued up to hopefully be able to
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: ask Jason live and chat with him in person.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: So Jason, welcome.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for joining us on Workshop Wednesday.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, everybody.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I am...
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: some of this stuff,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: if you've read Sastr or been part of our content for over a decade,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: some of it may be familiar to you,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: but I literally had probably a half dozen conversations with CEOs between five and
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: 25 million in air just the last couple of weeks saying,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Jason,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: can I pick your brain?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of busy.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have Sastr Europa coming up June 4th and 5th.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I hope to see you there.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I did a few of these with folks I knew.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I...
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I saw history rhyme.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: History continued to repeat itself.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: the world is actually...
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think the world for hiring,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: for people,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: for scaling is significantly different today than it was pre-March 2020.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've changed as people.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think expectations have changed in the workplace.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's still just these mistakes we keep making again and again.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought I would to myself dust off and think,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: of all the founders,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: the great founders that I've talked to over the last 30 days,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: what are the mistakes we're all still making?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'd list them out,
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: go through some quick tell,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: some quick cheat codes so you don't make these mistakes.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then we can open it up to some questions.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this first one,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: when I started Sastra,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I never wrote this because I didn't realize how critical it was.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's that do not,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: whatever you do,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: whatever you do,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: do not hire a head of sales that before day one can't demo the product.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: They can't demo the product.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I took this for granted in the early days
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure my first VP of sales could have demoed our product.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the good one I hired,
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Brendan Cassidy,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: who went on to be VP of sales at TalkDesk and helped put together all the original
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Gong revenue team and was the first head of sales at LinkedIn.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have to know this because he'd actually been a customer.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: LinkedIn had been an early Adobe Sign, Echo Sign customer.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he didn't know all the nuances of the product,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: but I didn't have to say,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: does he actually know how to demo use the product?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: He'd already used it a hundred times.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: also,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: frankly,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: if you sell a product that is sales related or revenue related,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: your sales team probably can pick it up if it's not that far from what they're doing.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the huge mistake I see founders still make
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: is they hire someone that is selling a space the VP of sales hasn't done before.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing vertical SaaS,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: they're selling to governments,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: they're selling a more complicated product than they've sold before.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the VP of sales all talks process and people in process and they have great
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: demos and Gantt charts and org charts and talk about their hiring philosophies and
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: their views of revenue attainment and quotas.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they just never learn the product.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found again and again, if they don't learn the product before they start, they never do.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying the best of the best can't.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there are some elite level folks that truly can, but boy, they just can't.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen this stumble again and again.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I just talked last week to a founder, just crossed 10 million ARR with a hybrid PLG sales-led motion.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: The PLG, the self-serve side is going really well.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: The bottom's up.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: The sales guy he's hired,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's been 12 months.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hasn't closed anything.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hasn't closed anything.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: They've got the leads.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: They've got the groundswell.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: They've got the PLG.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a fairly technical product.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I stopped him.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I said, can he demo the product?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, no, he needs a sales engineer and a solution architect and his right-hand man.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, did you ever ask him to demo the product before he hired him?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, no, he came from this great company.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: in the old days,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: in the old days before March 2020,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I never saw a rep,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: let alone a VP of sales,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: be hired before they did a demo.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Used to do it in the office.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Used to go in and you'd make a pitch in front of the whole sales team, the room.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we stopped doing this for sales reps in many cases, maybe not the best, but so many of us did.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: We lowered the bar when things were a boom.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We all changed as we became hybrid and distributed teams.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: But boy,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I got to tell you,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think 80% or 90% of founders never force the VP of sales to demo or learn the
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: product before we start.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I can give you so many other stories.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Another one, which I shared a while back, there is a VP of sales at another company that I loved.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he just went from a product that was somewhat complicated to one that was very enterprise.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the workflows were very complicated and very competitive.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And six months in,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: he raised his hand at the board meeting when they were struggling,
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: when sales had not gone up.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, listen, my number one mistake is I didn't know how complex this product was.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he took the job.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: He took the bet.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So look, slow it down.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know it is not too basic.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: If the VP of sales and the first five to 10 reps cannot demo the product on their
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: own without you,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: without an architect,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: without 11 people under her,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: him,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: just don't make the hire.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do not make the hire.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have the resources.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have the brand.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have the brand to carry you when they can't be demo.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: People will not buy in today's world just because it's a nice guy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just in the old days, it was someone that golfed.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then as SaaS took off, everyone thought they could sell because they're a nice guy.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know why they could sell because a nice guy?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because the prospect already tried the product and wanted to buy on their own.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then being nice is enough.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever you don't do this,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: if the CPA sales before they start need someone to demo for them,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: do not make the hire.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know they had someone do their demos for them at their last company.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hire this person at 50 million, 100 million, 500 million ARR.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do not pass go.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do not make the hire.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And related to that, it's kind of the same point.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: If today a VP of sales won't sell when they start,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: if they won't carry a bag,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: if they won't do the entire sales process to start at least the first quarter or two,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: don't make the hire.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, don't make the hire.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Anyhow, before they start, make sure they can demo the product.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can even give them,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: if you're not comfortable for whatever reason doing this in the recruiting process,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: do it pre-offer letter or even do a post-offer letter.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of diligence now for candidates post-offer letter.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I've invested,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: a CEO introduced me to a candidate and I'll say,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jane,
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Jim,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: George,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: let me tell you some reasons maybe you shouldn't take this role.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I want to talk them out of it, but I want to make sure it is a good match.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if they can't demo the product, give them a chance.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just say, Jason, before you start, Taylor, before you start, I want to make sure you can nail this demo.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we hit the ground running and spend the time.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if they won't do it,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's the right place for them.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they'll survive in this brutally competitive world.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So total cheat code.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I know 80% of you are going to do this anyway.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is a funny one.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I also talked with another founder in double digits, ARR 12, 14, 15 million the other day.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: He said he wasn't sure his head of marketing was working out.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes back to one of the earliest Astra posts about hire the right, wrong type of VP marketing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nothing get blue pens with your logo on it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Go read that one in its own way.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's as relevant today as it was back then.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said, why is your marketer not getting you any leads or why is not anything happening?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, well, I love Jim.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing this and doing that.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what's his background?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was a junior product manager at GitLab.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, junior product marketer at GitLab, product marketer.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, do you know what product marketers do at large tech companies?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: They don't get you leads.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: They don't get you opportunities.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: They don't even know who's on the sales team.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: They segment your product in collateral.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, he's like, but I love him.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's so smart.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know he's smart.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes at tech companies, the product marketers are really wicked smart on the product.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I asked him, okay, how long has he been there?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Four months.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: four months.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: What has he done so far?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's created a lot of landing pages for different versions of our product.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, that's what you got.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what a product marketer does.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So now having said that he made the hire, I actually didn't tell him to fire this person.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: What I said is do what a product marketer you,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to get landing pages and have them do a weekly webinar.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: They usually can do that and explain the product.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like they might not be good at the funnel,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: but leverage the asset you have,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: but he's never going to get you
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: what you need, which is demand gen.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So don't hire,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: whatever you do,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: don't hire a product marketer because they're smart and they love product and their
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: LinkedIn says marketer.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire anyone that says like corporate marketing.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, don't hire someone that says communications.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: If it's VP of communications,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: VP of something in communications,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I know folks that are in communication are going to hate me for saying this,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: never hire this person.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know how to get you leads.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: As you scale,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: as your brand gets big,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: as people want to talk to you,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: as everyone wants to,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know what's the most important marketers at OpenAI are probably
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: communications right what who knows what sam's gonna say tomorrow or the other
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: founders are gonna say or what phone's gonna or what's gonna happen with scarlett
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: johansson okay you don't need a demand gen you need corporate you need folks to
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: manage how the world sees open ai at a startup you do not need that until your
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: brand is at an epic level do not hire someone who's a vp of communications
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: corporate marketing third one whatever you do just like the vp of sales
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: has to demo the product where we start.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is my cheat code.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know a lot of folks are going to be mad.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, when there's a marketer you think you like, open up her or his LinkedIn.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: If the first line is strategist, do not make the hire.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do not make that because they'll never do any work.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone that's burnt out or tired or needs a team of 10, it could mean a lot of things.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: They may not be burnt out,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: but strategist means they need a team of 10 or they only want to give you ideas.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: What it really means is they won't execute anything.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Strategists execute nothing, nothing, not a damn thing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: They don't send a campaign.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: They don't do a webinar like we're doing.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: They don't host an event.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't write content.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Strategists do nothing but give you ideas.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You do need this in marketing.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need about three hours a month.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: You need a good three hours a month, but that's all you're going to get.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do not hire anyone who's first line in LinkedIn is strategist.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the final question, and this is an old sass to your post.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is true today.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you hire this marketer, ask him a Colombo question.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be a jerk about our tough to say, Hey,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Jim, Jane, just let me, what was your commit at your last role?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And a real demand gen marketer or growth marketer will answer.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: My commit was 5 million in pipeline per quarter.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: My commit was 300 MQLs.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: My commit was 2000 signups if they're growth.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: My commit was this.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't, don't, don't.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can just ask it like an innocent Columbo question.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: The product marketers,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: the strategists,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: the corporate marketers,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know what their answer,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: they won't be able to answer.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or if they do, they'll pause.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: They'll have to think.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Commit.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I did that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Did that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Back in 2019, what was it?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: A real marketer will just tell you the answer in 60 seconds.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I delivered.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And also, it's almost always their first line on their LinkedIn.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of strategist, the first line on their LinkedIn is, I drove pipeline up 184% at my last role.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hire her.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hire her.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire the product marketer you love.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire the strategist.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire the corporate marketer.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire someone without a commit.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, it's not their fault.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: They may have a great role at OpenAI or we're at whatever hot company that raised a billion dollars.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: They may be great for Notion or Atlassian.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: They ain't going to work at your company.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, third one.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: This relates to the first one, but it's the flip side.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the number three mistake I see with founders making today that have something,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: that start to take off.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's even more true today than the past is they exit sales.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: They exit sales.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I asked this question so many times to founders that are decelerating at five or 10 million.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's more common today because even though fundraising is harder,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: when you do fundraise,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: folks raise bigger rounds.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Even today, they raise bigger rounds.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll raise 10 million or 20 million.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the CEO will be like, thank God I don't have to do sales anymore.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I hate it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I hate it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I hate, I hate like
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: picking up the, doing the Zooms and that same stupid question for the 11th time.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get what, and why founders do this is the, they almost always, it's the same reason.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I got to get back to product.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have enough time to work on the product.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're falling behind on the product.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And look, there's a lot of truth in that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's why I really think you should hire a VP of product that is great far
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: earlier than most founders do.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not on my top 10 list, but it's super important, but it doesn't work that way.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do more in product and you have to do the same amount of time in sales.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: What changes?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: What changes is when you hire a great sales leader
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your job will be different.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You won't have to open and you won't have to close.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You'll spend all your time in the middle.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: You'll spend your time being grabbed and dragged into conversations to help close
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: deals because every single prospect and every single customer loves to talk to the CEO,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: even of a five-person company,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: even of a 50-person company.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: They love it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you will get dragged into sales.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you should not have to do the same things in the post-founder-led sales and
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: sales that you do in the founder-led sales,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: but you never,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: ever,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: ever get the time back.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: You never get the time.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So never step out of sales.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: I always see sales plummet when founders say, I'm just going to be a product guy now.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And this first point I see have accelerated the last couple of years.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not only do they want to step out of sales,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: they want to hire a mythical CRO or COO that will manage everybody.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Every founder has things start to grow.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: They get burned out.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: They have too many reports.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It takes too much time.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's too much drama.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Taylor's complaining too much about this.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm tired of her talking about the campaigns.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, and, and, and Amelia is just constantly complaining about the feature gaps and sales.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I just can't have this conversation anymore because I got to work on everyone.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Say it to me.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know we're on zoom, but I got to work on product.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got to work.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to have Taylor and Amelia and Bob,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: my,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: my sales marketing CSR,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: all going to report to my magical CRO that I hired.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: that came out of Notion.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And Notion, we use Notion SaaS revenue.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: 300 million in revenue?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Comes in.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: That CRO doesn't really learn how to sell.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: That CRO doesn't carry a bag.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: That CRO doesn't have a product.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: That CRO actually does nothing about marketing or customer success.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know what happens when you force your head of sales,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: marketing,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: or CS to report to some CRO or CO that doesn't know the product?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: They quit.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: The good ones quit.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: They came to work for you.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: The great ones,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: the pirates and the romantics,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: those first VPs,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: they didn't come to work for that person you hired off the street that doesn't do work,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: him or herself that just hits refresh on the dashboards and tells people they got
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: to do better next week.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: They came to work for you.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So tough transition.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So listen, the COO and the CRO are not, you may make these hires.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's value in these hires.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're running out of time, but they don't mean you get to stop managing sales, marketing, or CS.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean you get to stop doing sales.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Revenue always goes down.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: There was never anyone on planet earth that will understand all the nuances of the product,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: all the integrations that work,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: all the hacks,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: all the reasons why,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: all the reasons why you're better than the competitors.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: No one will ever understand this better than the founders.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to support sales that way.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: You don't get to get out of it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fourth one.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: This one is new.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even think this happened in 2008,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: 2009,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: when literally the entire global economy shut down,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: when the country of Korea prohibited
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: cash exports,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: when every single store in downtown Palo Alto was boarded up with like plywood,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: the global economy was so bad.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: We still didn't cut marketing to zero, even then, even then.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I see all startups that are struggling today.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're cutting marketing to zero.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're cutting marketing to zero.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is your job as founders and executives is to find the balance here.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Look, if cash is tighter,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the first thing we look at are variable costs and honestly, the bottom 10%.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: If things are tight, you got to move the bottom 10% out.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: They never do anything.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: They always consume time, energy, and resources.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So as tough as layoffs look in the media, look, a 40% layoff is brutal.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Laying off the bottom 5%, you find the next day everyone does better.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: because Jason's always dragging down the sales team.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: He closes nothing.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's complaining.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: He never follows up with the customers.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: He never finishes this or that.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that helps a little bit, but then you're looking at your variable costs.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do I cut?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't, there's so many things I got to ship the code and I got to keep the servers up.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so you cut marketing.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: You cut marketing because you know what?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Jim had 4 million last year and yeah,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: he did some pipeline,
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: but if I can just get all that budget back,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: that's how we're going to do it.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so listen,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Some of this is natural, but if you cut all your marketing, you're cutting your future.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're cutting.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to so many founders who the growth has slowed and I said, how's your pipeline looking?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, it's really slowed down.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how much are you spending on marketing?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what are you doing?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're doing all free stuff.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing our new podcast.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: We spent three months working on our podcast.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: We got the same 11 guests on the podcast everyone else has,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: the same marketer selling her courses and the same sales guy selling his courses
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: that's on everybody else's podcast.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: It took three months and we got over 80 downloads on the first one.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was free air quotes, hate air quotes.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was free.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: But think about all the soft costs and time you put into that podcast or that you're okay.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to just going to do content marketing because it's cheaper.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: great.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is this content so amazing that you did on ChatGBT or outsourced to some service?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's terrible.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: You got to do the free stuff.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: It always works, but it's almost never enough unless you have an inherently viral app.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing that really works at scale and free is word of mouth.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: You have to incent word of mouth and you got to at least do that marketing.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's actionable here is just this final point.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: What you got to do,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: rather than cut it to zero,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: unless you're literally running out of time and runway,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: you have to decide if you trust your head of marketing or not.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you trust them?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you trust them?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: If so, come up with a budget.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, last year it was $10 million.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: This year it's $5 million.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was $30K a month.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's $10K a month.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: But don't cut it to zero.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Trust them to take that 10K a month and spend it or 30K or 100.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Trust them to spend it as effectively as they can and not have everything have to convert tomorrow.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a problem too.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Marketing doesn't work if everything has to convert tomorrow.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Marketing sequences things.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's sequencing things over time in your pipeline.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you cut all of that,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I get that maybe you'll help the short-term stuff,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: but you're going to sacrifice your future.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you one last example.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have over 200 sponsors at Sastra.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: We talk to a lot of marketers and we talk to a public cloud company doing...
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Billions in revenue and actually generating over a billion in free cash flow,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: generating over a billion in free cash flow.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: We talked to one of the senior managers there is a good friend of ours in the executive team.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, well, we cut all events last week.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: We cut all spend on events.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, why?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we came back from this niche event and we didn't close any deals.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: We came back last week.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't close any deals.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: OK, first of all, it's not enough time.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not enough time for anyone that's run the field playbook.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, you cut everything.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: How's that going to help?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is like that is not the right reaction.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: The right reaction is to get more focused.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's to do less, but to cut your entire field budget to zero.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: When you're generating a billion dollars in free cash flow a year, it's too reactive.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is too reactive here.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have to calm down and you have to find a way to invest in the future and not
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: just and not just the present.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, point five.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to actually have an entire Sastr AI summit now.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been announced yet, just to you guys, just to our friends.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be inside of Sastr Annual on the 11th.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to have heads of marketing from OpenAI.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so here we're going to have the CEOs of everyone from Klaviyo to a tenant of
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: the head of AI at Zapier.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone talking about how AI really works in D2B for real.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: No one's doing this.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be awesome.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be wicked awesome.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to talk a lot about this in the coming times.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: But AI isn't, like, it hasn't changed every B2B and SaaS space in 60 seconds.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not revolutionary.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that two phones can talk to each other does not mean your payroll app is magically better.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It does not mean it's magically better.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: AI is,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: just because you can type in some text and get a cartoon does not necessarily mean
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: you've made your customers any happier.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I get it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's some nuance and complexity here.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hide from it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I see too many founders doing.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's expensive to hire engineers.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's expensive to do this, expensive to do that.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they're arguing, they're arguing.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can't,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: you have to,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: if nothing else in AI,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: if AI is not revolutionizing your space,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: and it is in many,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: it is in many,
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: it is in the contact center,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is in other spaces.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not, you got to be a parody.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to lose.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I see startups that are arguing with AI that are arguing against this tsunami of that is coming.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they're arguing that it doesn't work.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And they're arguing.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what the competition is going and doing?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying we can automate this with AI.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the competition is exaggerating.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're at the edge of lying.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you cannot fight this trend of AI.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot fight the billions and billions and billions being deployed every week.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot fight it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And also, this is where budget is.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Budget is being freed up because other apps are being cut.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Humans are being laid off.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: This budget doesn't come out of heaven.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't come out of nowhere.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: You always got to know where your budget's coming from.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And budget is being freed up for AI.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do everything in the world,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: great,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: but you're not at feature parodying AI and your competition is,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: they're gonna get this freed up budget,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: this efficiency budget,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: and you're not,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: you're gonna lose the deal.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I see folks losing deals left and right because at least they're not at parody.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: At least they're not at parody.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta jump on, you got no choice.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can't fight it anymore.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, 0.6.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll get through the next ones faster so we can have some questions.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, I see this.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see this so much with the founders I know well or invested in,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: but I see this constantly on LinkedIn,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: on social media,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: everywhere,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: which is people are just getting this wrong.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are in a new era of efficiency.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: The average public SaaS company does almost $400,000 in revenue per employee,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: over $300,000,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: trending towards $400,000.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was 100 and something thousand in 2021.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the average public company is more than twice as efficient as they were in 2021.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So efficiency matters.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Efficiency matters.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Profitability does not on its own.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: On its own.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Folks that are not growing but profitable like Dropbox are trading at two to three times revenue.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's not where you want to be.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So too many founders either believe this or probably worse are using it as an excuse.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're using the excuse, which is that they're not growing anymore, but hooray, we're profitable.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, listen, this is fine.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you've been hit like a ton of bricks by a downturn the last 18 months,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you gotta be cashflow break-even because there's no more money coming.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's no more this, there's no more that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: That is a different tactical goal than saying,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: we're gonna be profitable and that's some sort of win.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: There is some truth that as you cross 10 or 20 million in revenue,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: you may never,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: like what you still wanna do is grow at outlier rates.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Ideally you do this triple,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: triple,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I said T3,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: D2,
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: but it's really more like T2,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: D3,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: triple,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: triple,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: double,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: double.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like the best startups go from one to three,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: three to nine, and then nine to 18, 18 to 36.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know that sounds like a lot to everybody, this triple, triple, double, double.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think about what it takes to get to 200 million in revenue in less than
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: 10 years IPO,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: it takes that amount of compounding.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just put it on a spreadsheet.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you want to do to be the next Klaviyo or Rubrik or better or better.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: But
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is being efficient at like 10 to 20 million,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: which is 30% or more growth and breakeven can get you great PE exits,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: can get you an offer ultimately for two or $300 million to buy your company.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the growth still has to be north of 30, even if you're breakeven, it still has to be north of 30.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's just no world where profitability is above growth.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Emergence Capital just redid the data.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I did it on Saster.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think Meritech did it, a growth fund, a whole bunch of folks.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: They all summarized it in that.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Growth matters twice as much as profitability.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Profitability didn't matter in 2021.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't matter.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Forget about startups.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't even matter in the public markets.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: It matters, but growth is still twice as important.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So listen,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: do what it takes to survive,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: but don't pat yourself on the back like profitability is this magical end state.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to grow.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Point seven.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: talked about this a lot.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could stop talking about it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the world really has changed since March 2020 in so many ways.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is... I don't think today... For some folks, today is the hardest it's ever been.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have...
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Some SaaS leaders at hundreds of millions of revenue growing 0%.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen that in my lifetime.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's others where it's just kind of hard like 2018, like cry me a river.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard like it used to be.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Budgets actually have to be earned rather than money just flowing like it was in 2021.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it is harder for almost everybody.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Even for the best, it's harder.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's led to a lot of folks that are broken, the broken, the bitter, and the fractional.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: These are folks that just don't want to do it anymore.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, just between us, there are days I'm not sure I want to do it anymore.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Most days I do.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like 340 days I do.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was a day the other day I told Amelia who's on as I wasn't sure I wanted to do anymore.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm back.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm totally back.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But a little bit of it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is OK.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit of this is OK.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: But here's how I summarize it.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I barely even watch sports since March 2020.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't hire anyone that won't play the game 48 minutes.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's too hard today.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hire anybody that's not going to play the full game.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hire someone that is too angry about their last boss.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hire all these folks that think the system is loaded against them,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: that VCs destroy people with their liquidation preferences,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: that VCs destroyed their last company.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: that their CEO was a terrible human being, that they got, you know, I was lied to at my last startup.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: The founders told me this, but it wasn't true.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: I believe all that.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's elements of truth in all those things.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hire, don't hire them.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire them.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire, and don't hire the fractional.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: There is a very, very, very narrow role for fractional people.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: But most of them aren't willing to do anything.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're just like the strategists in marketing.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're not willing to do anything themselves.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't solve your problem.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, there's no room for strategists and dashboardologists in SaaS startups.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Want me to look at it?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I just simplify it.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: a little chip on your shoulder,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: probably necessary for success in a founder,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: probably great in your VPs too.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: A little chip on the shoulder.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like what I love,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: like a great,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: a great background for your first VP is a stretch VP is,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was a director,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: head of sales at somebody.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got them to 20 million and they taught me with this CRO from big company.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I got pissed and I quit.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great little chip, right?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I got topped.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to happen this time.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going all the way.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going all the way, Taylor.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to IPO this time.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I made that hire myself.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: It works great.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've had that chip myself.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I possibly even have a little chip myself even today.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: But when it's like that chip is so heavy, it's like a rock and it's weighing you down.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: The whole shoulder is falling out of the frame of the zoom.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can't hire that person.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's too much.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: They can't recover.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel bad that,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: frankly,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of people I've known over the years that are now in this category.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I try to help them.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: I give them new ideas, but they're not there.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're the broken, the bitter, and the fractional.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: They may have great LinkedIns.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're often wicked smart, and they often can identify your problems in like 15 minutes.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is where you'll get confused.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: They'll identify your problems.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to one of these folks who I've known for years the other day,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: and I described him a whole bunch of issues.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in 15 minutes in, he described...
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: the root cause and the issue is better than anyone I talked to in months.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then I gave him an opportunity, a great VP of sales role.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: It took him a couple of weeks to get back to me.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not cool.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of even taking the meeting with the CEO,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: he wrote me an email,
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: like a long email of all the objections and issues he had with the startup without
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: ever talking to them.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I can make 10 million.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if like the CEO is committed enough to sales,
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: even though they're growing a hundred percent at 10 million.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this, I need, I need it all to be explained to me before I'll take a call.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: He's great, but he may be too broken or bitter to do this.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire that person.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they're often, again, wicked smart, including the fractional.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Last couple ones I'll do shorter.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: This one is not new.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: This one goes back to the 1930s when we started Sastr,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: when enterprise software took off,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: or the 60s or the 80s when my grandfather started a little newspaper called Sastr
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: and would hand it out on street corners and bar stools.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then it became a blog in the early days.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Grandpa Sastr was talking about this back then.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hire for the logo.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Got to be in our first post in 2012.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is an evergreen error.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Again, when I talk to founders, I don't know why this is an evergreen error.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's because there's more folks that worked at Datadog or Notion or CloudFlare or
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: ZoomInfo or Zoom or all these iconic companies or Gong or SalesLoft or Outreach.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Pick your hero company.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's not just one VP that used to work there when I started in SaaS.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's like 30 sales leaders that have spun out of those companies, 100 over the years.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we're in love with these logos, especially the ones that...
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us realize we don't want to hire from a direct competitor, even though we're tempted.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still tempted.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do that because you'll overlook the downsides.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: But we're just so tempted that the guy that was early or the person that was early
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: at Datadogs got the answers in MySpace or that was early at whatever cloud leader
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: you like,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: that was early at Klaviyo if you're in e-commerce or Rubrik if you're in security.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And look, there's a time and a place for some of this.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And there is some benefit to it.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the simple thing.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: You got to do it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to do it with your team.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Literally take their LinkedIn and put your hand over that logo,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: that rubric,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: that Klaviyo,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: that notion,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: whatever.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And be honest.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Would you still hire them if they hadn't worked there?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I do those founders all the time.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: They tell me, OK, this my VP of whatever didn't work out.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Where did she work last?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Top logo.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, OK, this is the first question I ask them.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've done this multiple times in the last 30 days.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Would you have hired them if they didn't work a big, big fancy name?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're right, Jason.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: They always say this.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So once in a while,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: this is okay,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: especially if they were there really early,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: especially if the chip is the right size on their shoulder.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, but.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you're hiring for the logo, make sure you take your hand or maybe print it out.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even have a printer anymore.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if you do have a printer, find one of those smelly black thick markers.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: What are they called?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Put it all over their logo at the last cool company and ask everyone around the table,
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: would you still hire Amelia,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Taylor,
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: or Jason if this was their LinkedIn?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: If they say, absolutely, I don't care.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Best of the 30 candidates we've met make the hire.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: But probably people are going to be, well, you knew how to do it at Datadog.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Last two, and then we'll open it up for questions.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of tied to the marketing one, so we partially hit it, but...
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, we are cutting our nose off to spite our faces left and right.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's looking for instant ROI.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're looking for instant ROI.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most extreme examples I've seen actually is ourselves at Sastra.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we have these 200 sponsors.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of use them as a lab.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: I use them as a lab to learn.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what do they want?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, last year it switched.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of where they measure it on pipeline or opportunity or influence or
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: awareness or brand,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: they wanted scans.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted folks that would literally come to our events, get a scan, and that's how they were judged.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Did I get 584 scans?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Did I get 681?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did I get 1,011 too?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: listen,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: friends,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: scans is at the very,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: very,
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: very,
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: very top of a pipeline,
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: but most marketers in normal times view a scan with a little bit of skepticism.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, did they convert?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Did they take an action?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Did they take a meeting?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Did they sign up for a trial?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because having some SDR in your booth,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: wave a scanner in your face before they give you a yellow rubber ducky to take home
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: a swag,
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: that's pretty low on the intent scale,
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that there aren't good ones.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are because people that go to events, buyers go to meet vendors.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there's gems.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if you take scans as your number one KPI...
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure it's the best one, but the thing is it's instantly measurable.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: You walk out of a field event and you know that day how many scans you got.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it was interesting how like the whole tenor of what everyone wanted changed.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: And last year it all became scans, scans, scans.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I need a thousand scans for my boss.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's looking for instant eye in some ROI and something which is field marketing,
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: which you're lucky if you get it in six months.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're lucky if folks you meet at an event, you convert to a customer in six months.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we can talk about why that is.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: in the Q&A if you want,
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: but it's just,
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: the reality is,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: you might get someone at an event who already was shopping you,
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: you'll get those,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: and then you'll push them down the pipeline and they'll close right after the event.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: That happens all the time.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're building raw new events,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: it's just,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: it's somewhere between a high intent Google search and randomly discovering someone
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: on a piece of content.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the middle of an event, right?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it takes time.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want instant ROI, it's not there.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: The other one I just see, and it's just related to this, then we'll close it on the last point.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: This instant ROI is also, I think, destroying customer success.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this is my last point.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: And others' relationships with customers.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Many of us,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: the bigger companies,
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: push through multiple price increases the last few years without any notice and
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: without commensurate value.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's another 20% up.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we literally just had a vendor at Sastra we've worked with for eight years.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: They hired a new CRO a couple of weeks ago and she got on the phone with us and said,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doubling your prices.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doubling.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've been, we're a case study on this company's website for years.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're in videos for them.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're all over YouTube for us.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: The new CRO came in.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you doubling price?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you, is there a new feature functionality?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I don't really use the product, but it's take it or leave it.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doubling prices.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why did she do this?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, first of all, our relationships are burnt and broken forever.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like we went from NPS nine to zero, but look, she came in and it's tougher there.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so what do you do?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: You, you, you kind of do burn your base and we all burned our bases.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: We burned our bases with ripoff price increases again and again, not once a decade, but again and again.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: And, um,
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when you do that?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe you'll make this quarter.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: But are they going to refer more customers to you?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, all software is powered by word of mouth.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: That is everyone's number one source of new customers is folks telling their friends,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: telling other folks,
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: leaving one company,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: going to another,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: bringing you with us,
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: which you'll see again and again as the years go by.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: word of mouth remains HubSpot's number one source of new customers at 2.5 billion
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: in revenue.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: They stopped publishing this around a billion, but they even had the numbers.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's on the five interesting learnings from Sastra.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Through a billion in revenue at HubSpot from the beginning,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: word of mouth was their number one lead source.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself as founders, have you done things the last 18 months that have damaged word of mouth?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do you even have a customer success team at all anymore?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just put this up today on Sastr.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: G2 did some polls across all of their customers.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: The majority of their CS teams not only report to sales now,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: but consider themselves,
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: but are on quota,
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: have a sales quota.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is what folks did when they needed to monetize the base more.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of these CS folks being folks that would maybe show up to a QBR here or two,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: they said,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: listen,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: your job is protecting our NRR,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: which has declined the last 18 months.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so CS kind of became weaponized and part of sales.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at Sassero Sales,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: we had some very brutal conversations with CS teams trying to monetize us rather
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: than help us.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's done.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that CS is going to go back to the old days
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: where customer happiness was job number one.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: I said, maybe it's over.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: But as founders,
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: as founders,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: if nothing else,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: ask for your top 20% of your customers,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: for your top 50 customers,
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: draw a line,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: do a sort of big to small.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is at least for your top 20% customers,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: is there someone whose job it is nothing more,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: 40 hours a week,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: 100% time,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: at least make your top customers happy.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because if your CS team is doing nothing for those top accounts,
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: but trying to get them to buy more,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: buy more seats,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: trick them into bigger additions,
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: raise prices on them,
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Threaten them if they want to downgrade,
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: threaten them,
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: threaten them if they want to downgrade,
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: which has become a behavior.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's what account managers do.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's why back in the day, I refused to hire account managers.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want...
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day when e-signatures were early,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: the whole point of an e-signature in the early days was to make your life better
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: versus a fax machine.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's kind of funny.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if my team makes your life worse, you're never going to use my product.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, we will never have account managers.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: We only have customer success and sales.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that was dated.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: It worked pretty well for me.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: We never had less than triple digit NRR, but it was a different time.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: But
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just mean, even folks are weaponizing even CS for their top customers.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to put a couple people,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: maybe just one person whose only job is to making sure those top logos are happy
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: and nothing else,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: or they will churn.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: They will not churn tomorrow,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: but they will churn in a year or two when the renewal is up and they will go to
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: your competitor who finally gets an in because you treated them
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like an account to be managed up rather than an account to be made happy.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they're frustrated.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, and that year three renewal, they say, heck, I will try your competitor.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's happening all the time.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I just got an email.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: yesterday from a founder that's great.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: But after three years, one of their competitors stole one of their top 10 customers.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's happening now left and right.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if your CS team are account managers,
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: if they spend all their time not configuring the product,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: not getting the integrations to work,
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: not making sure new folks are trained,
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: not making sure onboarding metrics get better and better.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: If they're just there to create more revenue because they report to sales, you're gonna be sad.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be sad starting this year.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, those are my 10.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: What did I call these again, Taylor?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: 10 top...
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: GTM mistakes founders are making.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: So open it up for questions for the next few minutes.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully this was helpful.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jason.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're already getting a few questions.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: I was thinking of one though,
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: just when you were going,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: I heard you talk about this with Harry Stebbings a couple of weeks back.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um,
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: and it may have been an old recording,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: but I think for people,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: especially as we're talking about so much hiring,
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: you talk a lot about the pirates and romantics,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: kind of this arc that you're the Jason archetype.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think it'd be helpful for people to just hear in your words,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: like how you define what those people are,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: that profile of what is a romantic,
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: what is a pirate?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I mean, uh,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good question.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then let's, if there are questions from the group, let me take more direct tactical questions.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Look, your first, the first 50 need to be special.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: The first 50 people need to have an almost irrational connection to your product and customers.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: The first 50 need to be misfits a little bit.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be folks that have to be startup people.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, um,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in the old days, you were seen as insane to join a startup.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: So like most of them were going to be misfits.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: You really couldn't hire anybody else.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now that tech became so mainstream the last four or five years,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: just became the common college,
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: come out of college,
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: go work in sales at wherever.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: most folks you meet will not be this.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: They will not be misfits or pirates or mad.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: They won't, it's just a job.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And look, we, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people in this country and people need a job.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have a thousand and 2000 and 10,000 employees, most folks are there just for a job.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're there to, you know, work 20 hours a week and,
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: work from home and maybe work on their side hustles and do their other stuff and do
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: 20 hours a week,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: but you can't hire those people in the beginning.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you just need folks that are quirky and live and breathe startups and just don't
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: make an exception,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: hire anything else in your first 50,
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: that's all.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jason.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to take an audience question from Sanashki.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Sanashki, you want to come up and ask your question live?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Taylor.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Jason.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Jason, I'm the founder and CEO of an early stage company.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: My company is called Manifest AI.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been doing demand gen myself for the past 1.5 years.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we recently crossed our- 25 years, you said?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: 1.5 years.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: 1.5, got it.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we recently crossed our 1.5 mil revenue mark.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: there was a question that came to my mind and our goal is to hit 3 million by
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: December this year.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: like either we hire a demand gen lead or,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: just to speed up our execution,
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: like should I hire juniors to take up the initiatives,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: which I usually do myself.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what should be the strategy as per you, Jason?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I mean,
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I want to highlight is around 80% of our revenues are word of mouth.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: There you go, right?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: So look, the one thing you can't afford to do at that size even more is make a mishire, right?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hire the person that doesn't know how to do demand chain, right?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: So-
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you have a million and a half in revenue, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: So in a way,
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: you're almost actually,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: in my mind,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: you're almost late to make the hire because at a million and a half,
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: if you hire a great head of demand gen and she or he gets you another 200K,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: 300K,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: 400K of revenue,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: that more than covers their costs and adds a lot of value to your company.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you can certainly afford...
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: both one way or another to hire someone that is accretive, someone that actually can create more value.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So look,
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: absolutely go hire a head of demand gen that either is better than you,
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: which you've done this long enough.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: You'll know in seven minutes if someone's better than you.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: It won't even take you 10 minutes to know if someone's better.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Then just hire her or him before the Zoom ends.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just hire them immediately if they're better than you.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or are they at least as good at you as one part of what you do?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because most marketers are only good at one or two things, maybe three.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at best, they either don't do the rest or they hire people to do the rest.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure the three, like related to this, this is another cheat code.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: When you go to meet a marketer for a head of role or any role, just ask again an innocent question.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: What are the couple of things that you really love to do in marketing?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And don't interrupt, listen.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll hear it.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just did this for fun.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just did a podcast.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was great with David Gerhart.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can find it.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: It just came out.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be on Sastra in a couple of days, who was head of marketing at Drift.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was early.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: I forget where else he was.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: He was at HubSpot in the very beginning.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then he was at Privy, which is part of 100 million.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And people love him.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he's got a marketing community called Exit 5, very charismatic guy.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I played this with him.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Dave, what's the number one thing you like doing marketing?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, brand.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is that who you need today?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: A brand person at 1.5 million in revenue doing demand jet?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if people love Dave and he's great and you can go watch it, don't hire Dave now.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need him.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the Columbo question.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Figure it out and then see if those are the things that you need.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: This would be best.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: A million and a half, you don't have time to manage 11 up workers and kids who can't do it.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have time.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that, so that's what you should do.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: You already know the answer.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you can find some entry-level folks that are smart enough that you can trust to
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: give you leverage,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: because at your size as a founder,
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: 1.5 million,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: you don't have enough money,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: but you've got to start finding leverage.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to start finding leverage.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can't get out of things like to the presentation.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just drop marketing or drop sales,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: but if you don't start finding at least some leverage,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to hit a little bit of a wall.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the best advice I could give.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Jason.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Shnosky.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: OK, Jason, we have another question from Deepak.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to just read it out for you right here.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: What is your point of view on combining CS and support?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I mean,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, it's a bad idea because they're not the same.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Customer success's job,
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: at least in the old days,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: was especially to focus on bigger accounts and key accounts and make them wildly
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: successful over time,
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: to be somewhat proactive,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: to go into the office,
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: to study their configuration.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Support is a very, very reactive role, hyper-reactive and hyper-transactional.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: So in theory,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: they should be very distinct departments with only a little bit of overlap in the middle,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in practice,
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: the truth is,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: especially as the deal sizes are lower and the customer account goes up,
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: there is overlap.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: There absolutely is overlap between customer success and support.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I guess if you're head of CS...
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: has some experience and wants to own support.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the support team is cool with that.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not great.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: What doesn't really work well.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I haven't written a lot about this.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably a mistake I made too.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: I had a head of success of support, sorry, of support who was wicked smart, wicked smart.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I just managed him up to 12 million in revenue.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just managed him and he worked well with my head of customer success and worked well with sales and
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: But he was off the charts smart.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't even really manage him.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was just nominally his boss.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's self-managed.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: But who's going to manage support?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually something, unfortunately, that doesn't have a great answer.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Usually doesn't have a seat on the true management team, right?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's got to sit somewhere.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's not a better idea, I would do CS.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you've got to have your CS leader really want to do that.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of these things on the org chart where there's no perfect answer.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: Mahara, you're up next.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to bring you up to ask Jason your question live.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jason, thank you for having this question and this talk.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: This question actually is a mixture of the ninth and the 10th point that you
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: brought up,
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: which is looking for instant ROI and elimination of that customer success.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: One thing that we talk a lot about,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: even on this talk is about word of mouth and how customers and inviting other
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: customers and referring is like a huge weapon for a
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: For increasing your funnel.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: But one thing that is really hard to actually do is to measure word of mouth.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have like a really good researchers or NPS.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do that?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, okay.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: You just ask.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: But usually you have more than one touch point that makes a customer start being a new customer, right?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: The nuance of multi-touch attribution and all of this is complicated.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: But listen,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: what I did back in the day and it still works today is I didn't let a sales rep get
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: paid or close a deal until they'd filled out where you heard of me.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: So then the sales rep always, once they didn't get paid and they literally, it was a rule in Salesforce.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can do it in probably in HubSpot,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: they just couldn't,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: they couldn't close the opportunity until they'd filled out the field.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you hear about me?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so they would just ask and the beauty is it's another like,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, since they don't really care, they actually get really good answers.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Columbo stock question.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they get on the phone, you know, oh, Taylor, great.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for taking the time.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get into it, I want to do a demo and show that just where did you hear about us?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if Taylor said word of mouth from my friend,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: we could argue whether that's the first touch or the eighth touch of the 96 cents.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to suggest it's the best touch.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to suggest that if you ask someone in an open moment, it's the most important touch.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't really matter if it was actually AdWords or it was actually a podcast or whatever.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: You need to do all that stuff because we're in a multi-touch world,
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: but that's how I would measure word of mouth.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the first thing someone says?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Mahara.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Our next question is from Alex.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: Alex, I'm going to bring you up to ask your question to Jason.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I think you're on mute, Alex.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Jason.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for holding this webinar.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Very interesting.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: My question for you is, so I've been working in London for like six years in a startup industry.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: and my question is I was working in the demand gen side and I plan to start a new
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: agency especially targeting past growing startups series A,
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: series B in London,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: San Francisco and my question is do you see a demand right now in like for this
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: kind of services so do you see more startups outsourcing these towards agencies and
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: do you see a big demand or is more like they try to hire internal people that's
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: do BDR and demand gem?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I'd break it up into two groups for agencies.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I both love and I'm skeptical of agencies at the same time.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: I find most are terrible and frankly are ripoff firms.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: My rough rule is if a BDR qualifies me at an agency, I'm out.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: If I have to be qualified by Caitlin before I can even talk to a principal, that's not for me.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's good for Adobe or Intuit.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not into it.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: But we all need these partners and a lot of great folks want to run agencies for a variety of reasons.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's gems out there.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: And let me break it up to answer your question.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is there demand?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's two types of demand.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: In marketing, there's demand from marketers and there's demand from founders.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they're very different, right?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of marketers want agencies because that's how they've been trained to work.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: They have folks.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: if you build the right relationships with marketers that are senior enough and they
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: go from role to role to role,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: they'll keep bringing you in and you'll have a long life cycle being that person's
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: SEO firm or content firm or website agency or whatever.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Most marketers have five or six agencies that they bring with them to each gig of
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: different sizes and scales.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's fairly well understood and that's nothing new.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: Most founders in this day and age,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: when it is harder to find the pirates and romantics and budgets are more complicated,
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: they are actually,
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would think,
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: more amenable to outsourcing some of these things if the results are there.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: If the results are there,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: but most agencies are not willing to put in the energy it takes to work with the CEO.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: listen,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: if you,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: if literally,
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: literally me,
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: even for SaaS for itself,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: if you,
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: we could hire three more agencies today.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: If someone sent me the perfect email and said, listen, Jason, I saw you on Twitter.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: You said you need someone to manage your Marketo campaigns going out to 250,000 people.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: You need to segment your list.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're running 25 campaigns a month.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've read, I've actually read the campaigns.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've read the emails.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know what you need.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're pretty good, but we can do better and we can do better for this much a month.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll have a team ready and we can chat tomorrow.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to frigging take that meeting in 60 seconds.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you send me an email saying, dear Jason M, we have another AI tool to replace SDR.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: Would you like to talk?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's just no way.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: So just realize like you can either build,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: listen,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a total expert,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: but like if you,
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: there is a role for like this Epic agency,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Epic agency.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a, but I view them more as, as just as partners for founders.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: And are you willing to do that?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to do that?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: 99% of agencies say that, but they're really bucket shops.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: They want to assemble as many clients as possible,
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: sell them the same crap to the same people again and again.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll trick some founders into doing that, but they're going to fire you.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to keep tricking founders again and again to do that.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have the energy to go deep, do it.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: You will stand out from 99% of the competitors.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you've got to solve the problem for your founders, not make me talk to a BDR.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go to the next one.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Good question.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Jason.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: Jason,
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: this probably will be our last one,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: but this is a follow-up actually to the conversation that we were just having about
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: word of mouth and referrals.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Question from the audience is what's the best way to incentivize referrals?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: Should the CS team be rewarded?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: Should your client be rewarded?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: What thoughts do you have about that?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the best way, first of all, I'm,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: We talked in the presentation about being anxious.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth is powerful flywheel.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a slow moving one.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot, there's only so much you can do.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, um,
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: So listen,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: there are folks,
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: especially in the B2C world that hack referrals,
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: that they create incentives and,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: do this and I'll give you,
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: an iPhone and this and that.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And listen,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: if you happen to have a great growth marketer and team that loves those hacky things,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: let them run with it,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: But for most of us, it's not that complicated.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: We don't, it's not a magical referral system.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is making your customers insanely happy.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: insanely happy.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then just giving them a way to do that, that is low lift.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the simplest ways to incent word of mouth,
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: at least,
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: especially if your deal size is of any reasonable size,
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: is like every month do a steak dinner somewhere in a city and invite your prospects
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: and your customers together.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: This always works.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Invite them together,
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: do a steak dinner with as many people will come and have half prospects and half customers.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: They can't help but sell you.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you have a little more budget and time, do an event, your own event.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be SaaS or annual size.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Just rent a ballroom somewhere or rent the back half of a nice restaurant or do whatever,
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: a half day somewhere in a hotel and do an event,
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: invite customers and prospects.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: The customers that come and the prospects that come, they'll sell each other.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: They can't help themselves.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're showing up.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: So either they're happy or sort of happy, but care.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: They care and there's no more powerful way to have folks to incent this cycle than
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: to put human beings together IRL one way or the other,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a great way, a digital way to do it.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to like,
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: something I've written every 30 days for over a decade at Sastr.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do a weekly webinar for real.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not every once a month.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to do it every week.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do a webinar.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to do 52 a week at the same time.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: And a third of them have a customer come present.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: Have a customer come present.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is well understood, again, since the 30s.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Have a customer, one of your customers come and say, listen, this is how our marketing tool works.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, present a case study.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that case study actually will be valuable to other customers and prospects.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll also sell you.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: They'll do it for you.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Invite them to do it.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: We all do it for our best.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: When our best customers, best vendors ask us, they get a lot of value.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: If they ask us to do a webinar or something for them, we'll often do it, right?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: We'll either do it as a favor or if we're very passionate about it, we'll do it.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some folks do it because they like their own personal celebrity,
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: especially if they're mid-level or lower.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: I get asked like 11 times a day to do a podcast.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: but not every mid-level person at your industrial customer does.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: They might get asked once a year.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: So put them on the pod, put them on stage, put them on the webinar, but do it every week.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'll be,
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: you'll be surprised if you do it,
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: a third of your weekly webinars is a customer sharing a case.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll be surprised how much that incense word of mouth.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can do the other hacky things and pay for reviews.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: I did that back in the day,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: back when the app exchange was early for Salesforce,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: we,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: we did this and we were the first app with a thousand five-star reviews and no one
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: else had a hundred.
• 56:46
  Right.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: My head of CS was really into it.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we did a bunch of edgy things.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we got 1,000 reviews.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And back in the day, no one else had more than 90 or 80.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it sort of worked.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: It helped.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: But that alone, that kind of hacky stuff, I think, helps.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to do it, like my head of CS want to do it.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think it moves the needle.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think getting people to share their success stories with others in as regular a
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: form as you can is the way to do it.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much, Jason.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you all so much for joining.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're at time today, but thank you for your amazing questions.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of the questions I saw in the chat that we didn't get to,
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: there is so much content of this type of stuff on the SaaSter blog.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: You can pretty much Google or put in the search on the SaaSter website and you're
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: going to find the content.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: to answer some of those questions.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_03: But thank you guys so much.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_03: The recording is available on YouTube.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know some people joined late, so please feel free to find it there.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then next week, we are back with a Sasser fan favorite, G. Cabane.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he's going to be doing a topic very related to Jason's number five.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_03: And he's going to be talking about how to break through something that's on all of
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: our minds and figure out what AI tools are really working for B2B marketing.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: So G's going to be talking about that and building your new AI tech stack.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone come back to that one.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: G will tell you some stuff that actually works and growth hacking and marketing is pretty good.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you guys so much for joining.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see you back next week.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Jason.