Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah, 2 00:00:04.840 --> 00:00:09.250 welcome back to BB growth. I'm dan Sanchez with Sweet fish Media and today 3 00:00:09.260 --> 00:00:13.730 I'm here with Patrick clowns who is the director of product management for 4 00:00:13.730 --> 00:00:17.550 service now. Patrick is actually a great friend of mine and I've been 5 00:00:17.560 --> 00:00:20.680 wanting to have them on the show for a while. We're finally making it happen 6 00:00:20.680 --> 00:00:24.990 today. So Patrick, welcome to BBB growth. Hey, it's great to be here. 7 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.710 Thanks dan. We've been friends for a long time and somewhere in our 8 00:00:30.710 --> 00:00:34.730 friendship, Patrick texted me or send me an email or something. He's like, 9 00:00:34.730 --> 00:00:39.960 hey, I have an idea. He pitches me an idea on this business idea. Yet he was 10 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:45.460 working as a, one of the top sales rep set pay scale and had tried to do a lot 11 00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:49.200 of different businesses, most of which I was like, I don't know if there's 12 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:52.570 going to be a market for that. I don't know if there's a market for that. And 13 00:00:52.570 --> 00:00:55.730 then out of the blue one day he's like, hey, I have this idea and it ended up 14 00:00:55.730 --> 00:01:01.760 being an idea that was, he built into a company and then sold to service now to 15 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:07.310 become what it is today and the category of Icty asset management. 16 00:01:07.320 --> 00:01:11.050 Remember when he first told me about it, I was stoked because I knew it was, I 17 00:01:11.050 --> 00:01:14.670 knew once he told me what he was trying to tackle, I was like, oh yeah, that's 18 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:18.440 a problem. And I never even thought about it as a problem. He essentially 19 00:01:18.440 --> 00:01:22.460 had the hypothesis that like, hey, people have all these SAS tools, 20 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:26.600 they're everywhere. Everyone is being billed monthly annually for all these 21 00:01:26.600 --> 00:01:30.450 SAS tools as big as sales for us, all the way down to like $10 a month, 22 00:01:30.450 --> 00:01:34.590 social media management tools. And he had an idea that nobody's really 23 00:01:34.590 --> 00:01:41.920 keeping track of how much at all costs This was back in, I think 20 15, like 24 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:45.950 it was early on before it was even really a category. You were thinking 25 00:01:45.950 --> 00:01:49.490 about it, right? Yeah. And you know, the hard thing is the there wasn't even 26 00:01:49.490 --> 00:01:53.920 really a because there wasn't a category, I was I was literally saying, 27 00:01:53.930 --> 00:01:58.310 you know, like staffs for your staff, what do I type in to even see what's in 28 00:01:58.310 --> 00:02:02.470 the market? So yeah, the the market research portion of, But I'm sure we're 29 00:02:02.470 --> 00:02:05.780 gonna just jump into it. So what we're gonna be diving into since this was 30 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:09.650 kind of a fascinating story. And I got to watch it from like, the sidelines as 31 00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:13.160 Patrick would keep me up to date, as far as what was going on is the 32 00:02:13.160 --> 00:02:16.600 marketing and the category creation around something that's new. Like, it's 33 00:02:16.600 --> 00:02:19.920 obvious that a category is firming here because the problems emerged that 34 00:02:19.930 --> 00:02:23.830 hasn't been around before saS proliferation created a new problem. 35 00:02:23.830 --> 00:02:28.530 And we have just stumbled upon this that there was there needed to be a 36 00:02:28.530 --> 00:02:31.640 solution here. So what we're talking about today is kind of like the 37 00:02:31.640 --> 00:02:35.520 marketing steps Patrick took as well as his team took in order to make it a 38 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:38.080 thing to get to the point where they're at now, where it's now, it's become a 39 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:42.220 full blown category within the category of I. T. S. That management now, it's 40 00:02:42.230 --> 00:02:47.440 kind of a call SAS asset management. A lot of people call it just SAPS 41 00:02:47.450 --> 00:02:51.010 management today management. But I'll tell you how it landed there, even 42 00:02:51.010 --> 00:02:55.390 though I I debated with the couple of industry pungent that we're trying to 43 00:02:55.390 --> 00:03:00.910 give it a label talk about that. I'm sure sure. So in the beginning, like 44 00:03:00.920 --> 00:03:04.620 you were trying to figure out how to sell this thing. It was like, as you 45 00:03:04.620 --> 00:03:08.110 talked to people, it was an obvious problem, but this like actually maybe 46 00:03:08.110 --> 00:03:10.680 it wasn't obvious, right? You talk to people and they're like, no, we had it 47 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:15.370 under control, right? Is that how the early conversations went? It kind of 48 00:03:15.370 --> 00:03:20.560 depends who you talk to and, and really also how much they cared about costs. 49 00:03:20.570 --> 00:03:25.160 So some people, um, we're just so focused on, hey, we're just trying to 50 00:03:25.160 --> 00:03:28.630 go faster with all these tools to just get off my back and let me innovate. 51 00:03:28.630 --> 00:03:33.240 Let me build, let me do whatever I'm gonna do quite frankly. A lot of, a lot 52 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:38.840 of marketing VPs that I talked to, they are funny because a lot of them, if 53 00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:41.870 you're listening to this show, I mean, I mean you're all about top line growth. 54 00:03:41.880 --> 00:03:45.610 How do I get top line growth and if I need to spend a little bit more money 55 00:03:45.610 --> 00:03:50.150 to get a big lift like get off my back about how much I'm spending because 56 00:03:50.150 --> 00:03:53.890 look at look at the scoreboard right? But that's the attitude of a lot of 57 00:03:53.900 --> 00:03:58.150 sales and marketing VPs over their tech stack is as long as I'm delivering on 58 00:03:58.150 --> 00:04:02.130 my number, let me do whatever I need to do. Yeah. And so you go to the other 59 00:04:02.130 --> 00:04:05.680 side of the business which is more bottom line which is going to be your I. 60 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:10.660 T. Or finance department. And they're typically because they're cross centers 61 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:16.350 you're you're focused on proliferation of a tool, a bunch of tools, some of 62 00:04:16.350 --> 00:04:21.480 which need to be rationalized out. Like now all of a sudden you know efficiency 63 00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:25.770 matters and it doesn't matter that we have 10 video conferencing tools the 64 00:04:25.770 --> 00:04:29.780 company or should we just have one or two? And so there's all these questions 65 00:04:29.780 --> 00:04:34.220 that start to come up about the tech stack and we we found different 66 00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:38.210 personas would kind of lead us down different rabbit holes. But that was, I 67 00:04:38.210 --> 00:04:43.470 mean, just the problem discovery dan was was complicated when you've got 68 00:04:43.470 --> 00:04:48.020 multiple stakeholders and you know, and then and then to see that developing 69 00:04:48.020 --> 00:04:52.480 our research, you know, kind of let us down. It led us to the conclusion that, 70 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:55.910 well, this is either there's no category for this because no one really 71 00:04:55.910 --> 00:05:00.980 cares about it or no one started and created one yet. And fortunately it was 72 00:05:00.980 --> 00:05:05.260 the latter. No one had started it yet. So we were right at the cusp. You know, 73 00:05:05.740 --> 00:05:08.710 what's interesting is you're listening to this and you're a marketer, which 74 00:05:08.710 --> 00:05:13.710 most of you are. I always think of like the heart of I don't know, you could go 75 00:05:13.710 --> 00:05:16.720 either way with this, but the heart of marketing really falls into 76 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:20.810 entrepreneurialism because the heart of what a marketer does is trying to 77 00:05:20.810 --> 00:05:25.770 discern what the market wants, right? You can say it's been the reverse you 78 00:05:25.770 --> 00:05:29.350 at the heart of entrepreneurialism is marketing because you're trying to 79 00:05:29.350 --> 00:05:32.870 discover the market, you're trying to get at the heart of what, what are 80 00:05:32.870 --> 00:05:36.210 people really bothered by and how can I best serve them? What are they actually 81 00:05:36.210 --> 00:05:40.100 willing to spend money on trying to solve for the same problem? That's why 82 00:05:40.100 --> 00:05:44.260 usually good entrepreneurs are in essence good marketers and good and 83 00:05:44.270 --> 00:05:48.470 probably the best marketers are usually can be good as entrepreneurs To to some 84 00:05:48.470 --> 00:05:50.860 degree there is a lot more fastest, you need to be a good entrepreneur of 85 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:55.880 course, but how was it when you were trying to dive in there and like how 86 00:05:55.880 --> 00:05:59.450 many different ways that you have framed it to different people? Like you 87 00:05:59.450 --> 00:06:02.120 were trying to form this category? What were some of the words you were 88 00:06:02.120 --> 00:06:06.150 throwing around to get it to stick in people's minds? Well, I mean if you're 89 00:06:06.150 --> 00:06:11.350 doing, if you're doing effective problem discovery, right? I'm trying to 90 00:06:11.350 --> 00:06:14.660 figure out what is the problem, You don't go in there with this specific 91 00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:18.750 thing that you think is the real problem. So The first question, 92 00:06:18.750 --> 00:06:22.650 remember with the first, I think it was 20 people that did some interviews on 93 00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:29.110 the question we asked was what is painful or difficult about having lots 94 00:06:29.110 --> 00:06:34.700 of staffs products in your business? So again, I'm just talking about your you 95 00:06:34.700 --> 00:06:38.870 have a lot of products, what's what's hard I mean really opens, you know, 96 00:06:38.870 --> 00:06:43.240 answers more technical people would might bring up Oh yeah, making this 97 00:06:43.250 --> 00:06:48.100 integrate with that occasionally. But I started to get after the question, I 98 00:06:48.100 --> 00:06:53.160 mean deeper the hypotheses was is it painful for them to renew software? Is 99 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:57.390 it painful for when they're surprised by renewal? How about usage? Are people 100 00:06:57.390 --> 00:07:01.320 wasting money? You know, And it turns out, you know, vendor management and 101 00:07:01.320 --> 00:07:05.980 renew. Als was not that big of a pain point. But the fact of, you know, big 102 00:07:05.980 --> 00:07:12.590 enterprises that have, you know, 10,000 dropbox licenses where half of them 103 00:07:12.590 --> 00:07:16.830 haven't been touched in the last six months. That is actually a much bigger 104 00:07:16.830 --> 00:07:21.560 pain point that we uncovered. But it came through a really broad set of 105 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:25.840 question about the problem around this market. Yeah. And so from there dan it 106 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:29.600 kind of just again, we started to look up and say, surely someone else is 107 00:07:29.610 --> 00:07:34.620 doing this. And the closest thing we could find was was when we typed in 108 00:07:34.630 --> 00:07:37.720 because these are software subscriptions, we looked at like 109 00:07:37.720 --> 00:07:43.060 subscription management software, you know, and assassin management software. 110 00:07:43.060 --> 00:07:47.350 So the two areas we usually would end up in is you know, products that would 111 00:07:47.350 --> 00:07:51.330 help you manage the technical underpinnings of delivering a fast 112 00:07:51.330 --> 00:07:56.410 product. Right? So a little bit more of devops and how do you keep a service 113 00:07:56.410 --> 00:08:01.280 going? And then the other side was actually more for customer customer 114 00:08:01.280 --> 00:08:04.400 management teams that would mostly, you know, they're basically looking at 115 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:08.420 their book of business and managing the subscription book from the vendor's 116 00:08:08.420 --> 00:08:11.710 perspective. So I said but who's managing the book of all these 117 00:08:11.710 --> 00:08:15.960 subscriptions across vendors from the customer side And the closest thing we 118 00:08:15.960 --> 00:08:20.540 could find is like a vendor management tool or a contract management tool and 119 00:08:20.540 --> 00:08:23.790 that's that's where we, you know dan we were looking at this and we're like, 120 00:08:23.800 --> 00:08:28.040 well it's a little bit of vendor, a lot of staff, it's got these other 121 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:33.280 components of I. T. So the more we tried to talk with our key persona 122 00:08:33.289 --> 00:08:37.990 which ultimately ended up being you know, I. T. You know, directors and VP 123 00:08:37.990 --> 00:08:43.390 s of I. T. At mid market companies um that had a lot of cash products those 124 00:08:43.390 --> 00:08:47.920 people were really looking for a tool that was that was the technical kind of 125 00:08:47.930 --> 00:08:52.160 repository of all the different products they own. How many interviews 126 00:08:52.160 --> 00:08:57.170 did it take for you to kind of figure out who that was? You know, there were 127 00:08:57.180 --> 00:09:02.210 initially about 20 to kind of get us going. But quickly beyond that when we 128 00:09:02.210 --> 00:09:08.020 started to try to try to actually expand the buckets of presales, We were 129 00:09:08.020 --> 00:09:14.010 probably you know 5060 conversations in before we started to like say I think 130 00:09:14.010 --> 00:09:18.670 there's something more with these IT leaders. And sometimes the hard thing 131 00:09:18.670 --> 00:09:22.360 is when there's not a well defined market or even a well defined problem. 132 00:09:22.940 --> 00:09:27.380 Small companies sometimes our buyer was the CFO and the controller because 133 00:09:27.380 --> 00:09:32.470 they're trying to control spend and maybe they cared more about it. Um Then 134 00:09:32.470 --> 00:09:35.890 the I. T. Manager who might have been an engineer that kind of graduated into 135 00:09:35.890 --> 00:09:39.850 leadership and wasn't really that focused on better business management. 136 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:46.180 So so I would say somewhere between about 50 and 100 interviews. And let's 137 00:09:46.180 --> 00:09:49.700 be honest those interviews were essentially sales discovery calls. 138 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:53.140 Where were you know early on. We were trying to figure out what your problem 139 00:09:53.140 --> 00:09:58.480 can we help you? And that was probably you know our 1st 10 paying customers 140 00:09:58.490 --> 00:10:03.110 came from those. You know that handful of conversation. It's interesting how 141 00:10:03.110 --> 00:10:06.970 many conversations you have to have in order to really identify it. A nugget 142 00:10:06.970 --> 00:10:09.840 that I'm getting out of. This is kind of like, as marketers, why don't we 143 00:10:09.840 --> 00:10:14.530 keep meeting with customers, right? Things change markets change. People's 144 00:10:14.540 --> 00:10:18.750 fears, worries, priorities change over time. It's like you need to be in front 145 00:10:18.750 --> 00:10:21.570 of your customers all the time because that's ultimately what's going to give 146 00:10:21.570 --> 00:10:24.610 you the insight as you figure, figure it out. And it's just as true for when 147 00:10:24.610 --> 00:10:27.710 you're starting. Probably more critical when you're starting, but it's still 148 00:10:27.710 --> 00:10:31.900 true for later on. So, having conversations and hearing you say like, 149 00:10:31.910 --> 00:10:34.840 oh no, we were 100 conversations and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a lot of 150 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:40.200 conversations, but it probably pays off even if now you were doing more 151 00:10:40.210 --> 00:10:45.190 interviews later. Do you still meet with customers? You still do? Or is 152 00:10:45.190 --> 00:10:50.870 that somebody else's job from where you're at now? No, I mean, so, so fast 153 00:10:50.870 --> 00:10:54.340 forward a little bit. Um we'll go back to the middle part of the story, but 154 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:58.480 we're still creating the category. But now I'm actually, I lead the product 155 00:10:58.480 --> 00:11:04.400 advisory council for our product suite at service now. So I'm working with um 156 00:11:04.400 --> 00:11:09.300 usually kind of some of the biggest customers, all I mean Out of the 20, 157 00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:13.490 customers on that, probably half of them are our household brands and names 158 00:11:13.490 --> 00:11:17.350 that you would know immediately. So it's impressive that service now has 159 00:11:17.350 --> 00:11:22.290 all these existing customers we sell into and we even we'll we'll get them 160 00:11:22.290 --> 00:11:25.610 interested and they'll be net new customers because of some of this 161 00:11:25.620 --> 00:11:30.060 technology That that we brought in. But there's a much bigger platform play at 162 00:11:30.060 --> 00:11:36.680 service now, right that we're selling family of a deal of our service. Yeah, 163 00:11:36.690 --> 00:11:41.050 very much so. Yeah, very much so. I think it's 87% or something of our 164 00:11:41.050 --> 00:11:46.040 revenue comes from expansion on current accounts, something ridiculous like 165 00:11:46.040 --> 00:11:50.720 that. So, but I want to take you back to that challenge dan. We were talking 166 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:54.970 earlier, I think last week there's this challenge we had when it was us and a 167 00:11:54.970 --> 00:11:59.060 couple other startups in the space and we kind of had like these little 168 00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:04.130 startup battles to try to define what, what the heck do we call this thing, 169 00:12:04.130 --> 00:12:08.620 Right. And of course everyone differentiating in small little ways to 170 00:12:08.630 --> 00:12:13.220 try to say, oh we do more, you know, we have data that's more security focused 171 00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:16.620 and someone else saying, well we do data science were more into the 172 00:12:16.620 --> 00:12:22.550 financial procurement space and so in our our stake in the ground was the 173 00:12:22.550 --> 00:12:27.400 vendor space. So we, we tried to say, hey, will, you know, there's more to 174 00:12:27.400 --> 00:12:31.510 solve because there's more to SAS management than just SAS, there's 175 00:12:31.520 --> 00:12:35.150 regular soft, there's traditional legacy software, there's other things 176 00:12:35.150 --> 00:12:40.750 that I. T. Wants to manage. And so with vendor hawk, we almost actually name 177 00:12:40.750 --> 00:12:45.810 the company Chavez hawk, but decided not to because we thought we don't want 178 00:12:45.810 --> 00:12:49.930 to pigeonhole ourselves with only staff because there's a lot a lot of other 179 00:12:49.930 --> 00:12:54.810 assets of the company that maybe we could get into. So an adviser of ours 180 00:12:54.820 --> 00:12:58.890 gave us some tips and said, no, let's just stick with vendor hawk, Watch your 181 00:12:58.890 --> 00:13:03.990 vendors like a hawk. And so, um, that did create some problems because 182 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:08.400 because we were more open to talking about other stuff than fast, we would 183 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:11.970 get pulled down the road a little bit. Like why can't you help me track all my 184 00:13:11.970 --> 00:13:16.250 random stuff that like paper cups and you have to like, no, we're not 185 00:13:16.250 --> 00:13:22.420 tracking those things in here. But what it turned out dan, is that some of our 186 00:13:22.430 --> 00:13:27.380 competitors were more focused on, you know, SAS optimization and, and fast 187 00:13:27.380 --> 00:13:31.270 Discovery and we did those things, but we, we tried to put our corner of the 188 00:13:31.270 --> 00:13:37.310 market on fast vendor management to be able to say, hey, nobody else can track 189 00:13:37.310 --> 00:13:41.480 the life cycle of the vendor better than we can. And not only, you know, 190 00:13:41.490 --> 00:13:45.820 not only bringing them on, but also optimizing and saving money and cutting 191 00:13:45.830 --> 00:13:50.410 throughout until you maybe decide you need to retire that. So we, we remember 192 00:13:50.410 --> 00:13:55.410 I wrote a blog because some, some folks were, we're talking about this, you 193 00:13:55.410 --> 00:13:58.360 know, like, oh, this is, this is our success. Uh, I think they call it a 194 00:13:58.370 --> 00:14:03.390 fast optimization platform. So I was like, no. So I pulled up a blog and 195 00:14:03.390 --> 00:14:07.070 like this is why we need to call it fast vendor management and it's not 196 00:14:07.070 --> 00:14:11.830 like it got a million views or reads, but what's interesting as a marketer 197 00:14:11.830 --> 00:14:16.110 and you're looking into the struggle is, you know, entrepreneurs are often times 198 00:14:16.110 --> 00:14:20.260 trying to create what is the thing that's going to resonate and how do I 199 00:14:20.260 --> 00:14:24.030 get, you know, a little bit of chirality behind my brand. And one of 200 00:14:24.030 --> 00:14:27.660 the things that we did with this silly T shirt, I'll show you guys here kind 201 00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:33.900 of silly, but it's a picture of a sasquatch, the bottom, it says, it said 202 00:14:33.910 --> 00:14:38.860 do you have a sasquatch? And so we, we did this whole thing where it's like, 203 00:14:38.860 --> 00:14:43.370 hey do you have a Saas squash lurking in your business? And then on the back 204 00:14:43.380 --> 00:14:47.880 basically we have all these creative saying related to sacks like you know, 205 00:14:47.880 --> 00:14:51.220 get your assassin shape, Are you surrounded by staff holes? That's 206 00:14:51.230 --> 00:14:57.060 pretty funny one. So I mean tons of stuff but we were trying to create this 207 00:14:57.070 --> 00:15:02.760 this kind of edgy fun brand that people would say, oh man, those vendor hog 208 00:15:02.760 --> 00:15:07.980 guys like they have a good time. They realize the irony of the space. And so 209 00:15:07.980 --> 00:15:13.220 for us we we tried to make our brand feel a little bit more, you know, 210 00:15:13.220 --> 00:15:17.640 relatable. Well yeah, and and now we're talking about like brand marketing as 211 00:15:17.640 --> 00:15:22.560 opposed to just, you know, you know, category creation. But it's I mean 212 00:15:23.040 --> 00:15:26.180 Categories of the big picture which brand sports especially when you're 213 00:15:26.180 --> 00:15:29.860 trying to go after the category. It's interesting to see you and the other 214 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:33.000 two competitors all trying to position for what the category is going to be 215 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:36.110 when the category is not clear yet. Right? But the winner is going to 216 00:15:36.110 --> 00:15:39.550 emerge out of the three somewhere or some other things you do to try to 217 00:15:39.550 --> 00:15:43.580 establish you got yourself is like the category King, right? Because usually 218 00:15:43.580 --> 00:15:47.690 there's one category one. Yeah. Who else gets the scraps? So what were what 219 00:15:47.690 --> 00:15:51.950 were some of you are doing to do that? Some of the things I was just basically 220 00:15:51.950 --> 00:15:56.220 borrowing a page from out of the playbook from my marketing team at pay 221 00:15:56.220 --> 00:16:00.450 scale to shout out to those folks who are leading marketing efforts there. 222 00:16:00.450 --> 00:16:05.340 But they had a, you know, they had a compensation best practices report, 223 00:16:05.350 --> 00:16:09.670 right? Which is similar to to a lot of the people do like a state of the state 224 00:16:09.670 --> 00:16:13.790 of the industry, right? So we had, you know, the state of SAS vendor 225 00:16:13.790 --> 00:16:18.340 management, right? So that kind of, it was an annual report and we, you know, 226 00:16:18.340 --> 00:16:22.380 it was a bunch of effort to go get a bunch of respondents I think. You know, 227 00:16:22.380 --> 00:16:27.250 we had, you know, 50 60 of respondents on the first years report. And we used 228 00:16:27.250 --> 00:16:31.720 data from that, you know, sample size and and really just put it into a nice 229 00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:36.210 looking, you know, a nice looking report that we're starting to push out 230 00:16:36.210 --> 00:16:40.900 there and into the market. The other thing, the unique asset besides just 231 00:16:40.900 --> 00:16:45.540 like you know, scott leadership was also um you know, data that we had 232 00:16:45.540 --> 00:16:50.830 uniquely that others didn't. And so we had for example, um like the benchmark 233 00:16:50.830 --> 00:16:54.070 report that we were starting to introduce to the market which was 234 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:58.270 looking at usage benchmarking right? Like what if you have zoom for example 235 00:16:58.280 --> 00:17:02.960 how many licenses zoom get wasted on average, you know, by across our 236 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:07.440 customer base. And so we had done some benchmarking. So if you're thinking 237 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:12.160 about like, you know, a new category, I like to think about what can I uniquely 238 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:15.869 add to the conversation that others can't add as well struggle to talk 239 00:17:15.869 --> 00:17:20.260 about. And that was sort of our that was our, you know, I've got to give a 240 00:17:20.260 --> 00:17:24.869 big shout out to brian Blackburn who was like critical to getting our 241 00:17:24.869 --> 00:17:28.480 marketing. You know, he designed this shirt and he also helped us with that 242 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:32.860 benchmarking report. And he was like an early, you know, marketing higher that 243 00:17:32.860 --> 00:17:38.170 we had that really move the needle. And so being able to have that conversation 244 00:17:38.180 --> 00:17:41.740 with our customers and with the market to say, look, we know that we know 245 00:17:41.740 --> 00:17:45.180 about the state of this market because you've done the research and we also 246 00:17:45.180 --> 00:17:49.190 have customer data to back it up. Um what was sort of our first couple 247 00:17:49.190 --> 00:17:53.510 punches into the market and shortly after we were making those strides into 248 00:17:53.510 --> 00:17:58.310 the market is when um we were acquired and we said, you know what if we're 249 00:17:58.310 --> 00:18:01.620 going to go after this, we want to, we want to partner up with a really big 250 00:18:01.620 --> 00:18:06.780 company that's already got a brand and now we can kind of leverage that power 251 00:18:06.790 --> 00:18:12.170 to build out the ecosystem further, make them do it three years later. 252 00:18:12.840 --> 00:18:15.750 Looking back, I remember when you put together the benchmarks report and 253 00:18:15.750 --> 00:18:19.250 thinking like, and there was a lot of time and effort back then, I didn't 254 00:18:19.250 --> 00:18:23.170 appreciate it for what it was. Now. I have had some taste of B two B 255 00:18:23.170 --> 00:18:26.820 marketing then, but obviously being a host on GDP growth and interviewing all 256 00:18:26.820 --> 00:18:30.410 these B two B marketers all the time. I've grown to appreciate what category 257 00:18:30.410 --> 00:18:34.490 design is and how hard it is and how important it can be. Now I'm looking 258 00:18:34.490 --> 00:18:38.460 back at the benchmark report of my genius, quite a great way to start it 259 00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:42.210 off because it could have been a multi year battle. I mean once you got bought 260 00:18:42.210 --> 00:18:46.480 up by service now it became like oak domination right? Because you got 261 00:18:46.490 --> 00:18:50.870 plugged into existing infrastructure that made it easy to go and find more 262 00:18:50.870 --> 00:18:54.960 business and plug it into a big business. But before then it could have 263 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:59.090 been a multiyear play out and if you would establish the benchmarks early, 264 00:18:59.090 --> 00:19:01.240 that would have become clearer and clearer that you would have been able 265 00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:05.060 to own the space or easily because you were the one writing the rules by 266 00:19:05.060 --> 00:19:10.990 setting the benchmarks of what success looks like exactly. And whoever said by 267 00:19:10.990 --> 00:19:15.380 the way, whoever sets up those first benchmarks, the more you get other 268 00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:20.660 people that are influential in in, in the general space or adjacent spaces, 269 00:19:20.660 --> 00:19:25.280 the more they start to reference that, the more immediately that becomes the 270 00:19:25.290 --> 00:19:28.640 thing that people talk about. So the hard part and this is where we were 271 00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:33.000 headed was because we need to get a robust set of data and then we need to 272 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:37.880 find people to be able to talk about it in such a way that hey, if you haven't 273 00:19:37.880 --> 00:19:42.300 looked at vendor hawks benchmark report for fast, like, you know, you haven't 274 00:19:42.300 --> 00:19:45.580 been looking in the right places. And so that was kind of the, that was the 275 00:19:45.580 --> 00:19:50.120 strategy early on. But you know, if you're, you know, a marketer and you're 276 00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:54.290 thinking about your category, the, you know what the unique insight that 277 00:19:54.290 --> 00:19:58.510 you're bringing to your market and then how connected. And then I'm sure you 278 00:19:58.510 --> 00:20:01.870 talked a ton about this. How do you amplify that really quickly? Scale it 279 00:20:01.870 --> 00:20:04.750 really fast? So, um, I won't even go there because I'm sure everyone 280 00:20:04.750 --> 00:20:08.750 listening smarter how to do that. But I am. But I remember you, you were like 281 00:20:08.750 --> 00:20:11.760 the sales king of the company. Of course you were the founder, you had 282 00:20:11.760 --> 00:20:17.310 your technical co founder and you were doing your Patrick thing, right? You're 283 00:20:17.320 --> 00:20:21.690 probably one of the best sales website that I'm friends with as far as like 284 00:20:21.690 --> 00:20:26.390 getting in there and don't know, being being persuasive what were some of the 285 00:20:26.390 --> 00:20:29.420 marketing things you were doing? Some of the things you were doing to current 286 00:20:29.430 --> 00:20:33.470 almost like rita, I guess you've got sales enablement with marketing in 287 00:20:33.470 --> 00:20:40.280 order to kind of land your first big customers. Yeah, yeah. So, um, again 288 00:20:40.290 --> 00:20:44.560 part of trading the category and the brand, you know, like obviously the, 289 00:20:44.940 --> 00:20:49.350 the first, the first call deck, you know, your slides looking uniform. That 290 00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:54.560 really helps. But then the leaves behind documents, like the first couple 291 00:20:54.560 --> 00:20:58.840 of documents that you're leaving behind, I'm sure those of you who do content 292 00:20:58.840 --> 00:21:01.650 marketing all the time. You know, there's different stages, different 293 00:21:01.650 --> 00:21:04.580 content for different stages of the funnel, right? You gotta Brandon you 294 00:21:04.580 --> 00:21:09.370 get awareness. Um, you're going to get past that awareness level to the kind 295 00:21:09.370 --> 00:21:12.580 of consideration stage. Like I never really thought I could use this 296 00:21:12.580 --> 00:21:16.560 software into more of the evaluation like I'm comparing and then they get 297 00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:19.940 sounded like purchase. Am I going to go with this one of the competitor if 298 00:21:19.940 --> 00:21:23.240 there is a competitor? So if you think about that, you know that funnel 299 00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:27.250 getting smaller, the content just getting more targeted is what we're 300 00:21:27.250 --> 00:21:31.060 focusing on. So we had a couple of assets at the high level, what is this? 301 00:21:31.540 --> 00:21:35.820 But then we started to make more assets at recount further into the funnel 302 00:21:35.830 --> 00:21:40.380 where the decisions we're getting more technical, it doesn't really sound like 303 00:21:40.390 --> 00:21:46.020 a sexy thing to create. But one of the things that helped us close deals was 304 00:21:46.030 --> 00:21:51.950 not just our side by side comparison, but actually like our data security 305 00:21:51.950 --> 00:21:56.850 practice. Like we were in a space where where a lot of startups didn't have 306 00:21:56.850 --> 00:22:02.120 their stuff together when it came to data security. But our CTO was like, we 307 00:22:02.120 --> 00:22:06.530 keep getting asked about the security of our app and how it integrates and he 308 00:22:06.530 --> 00:22:10.530 just like wrote out this amazing document looked very well organized. We 309 00:22:10.530 --> 00:22:13.900 had some graphs in there and by the time we put that in the hand of our 310 00:22:13.900 --> 00:22:18.150 customer, it sounds a little bit boring, like, oh, you're, you're marketing with 311 00:22:18.150 --> 00:22:23.250 a, with a security document. Well, if it's a technical sale. Yeah. Our 312 00:22:23.250 --> 00:22:26.660 engineer on the bottom of the funnel content, they're asking questions like 313 00:22:26.660 --> 00:22:29.500 that. You have to be prepared to give them answers and the answers are in the 314 00:22:29.500 --> 00:22:34.280 content. Yeah. And then the next step right after that is when you figure out 315 00:22:34.280 --> 00:22:37.760 how to close customers is probably one of the next most imminent questions, 316 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:42.810 which is okay. Great. I bought this thing, I'm turning it on. How do I use 317 00:22:42.810 --> 00:22:47.440 it effectively? And this is the first onboarding implementation guide what 318 00:22:47.450 --> 00:22:51.140 the recommended steps on how to get going and that that's a whole another 319 00:22:51.140 --> 00:22:55.610 like, you know, 10 podcasts and through on that topic of customer success. But 320 00:22:55.620 --> 00:23:00.270 just getting your reps talking in such a way that they're relevant and they're 321 00:23:00.270 --> 00:23:03.940 hitting those objections. If you're not on the phone with some of the customers 322 00:23:03.940 --> 00:23:08.380 or you're hearing the feedback from the sales reps on the front line, then you 323 00:23:08.380 --> 00:23:11.760 got to just jump on some of those calls and say, hey, I want to make sure you 324 00:23:11.760 --> 00:23:16.490 have enough of everything that you need to close. And that's been the gap 325 00:23:16.490 --> 00:23:20.470 analysis. You know, just say, what if you had one other thing to make the 326 00:23:20.470 --> 00:23:24.500 biggest difference in hitting your number? What what would that one asset 327 00:23:24.500 --> 00:23:29.030 B I like asked that question and you'll probably uncover a few different 328 00:23:29.030 --> 00:23:34.370 answers and and the trends will lead you towards a pretty potent asset. So 329 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:38.430 my last question for you is how are you managing all this when you were just a 330 00:23:38.430 --> 00:23:42.770 small team? Did you have a marketer early on or were you kind of the one 331 00:23:42.780 --> 00:23:46.470 leading the charge with all the marketing as the Ceo and kind of like 332 00:23:46.470 --> 00:23:53.390 the head of sales? Mm Yeah. So early on again I came from a sales and inside 333 00:23:53.390 --> 00:24:00.460 sales background. I was selling, you know, and good size deals inside and so 334 00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:04.840 being ceo of a startup, obviously I'm over the pipeline and I'm trying to 335 00:24:04.840 --> 00:24:09.600 close deals. But I was also that the new thing for me was how do I put 336 00:24:09.610 --> 00:24:13.950 opportunities and deals from the top of the funnel? Aside from just, you know, 337 00:24:13.960 --> 00:24:18.810 here's a giant list of qualified, you know, people go cold column. Right? So 338 00:24:18.810 --> 00:24:23.020 I actually had some help. The two flavors have helped that. I had one was 339 00:24:23.020 --> 00:24:26.970 a consultant who was really good at demand gen. It was helping me run in a 340 00:24:26.980 --> 00:24:30.740 couple different programs to do more paid marketing. And we even did, we 341 00:24:30.740 --> 00:24:36.200 even did a mailer actually mailed some milk and stuff out. And uh, and then 342 00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:40.680 the other thing that I had was really helpful was again, are the marketing 343 00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:45.520 manager brand I mentioned he he could design which was great, but he could 344 00:24:45.520 --> 00:24:50.460 also write and that combination of, you know, the creative side and also the 345 00:24:50.460 --> 00:24:55.090 communication side of being strong that let me have something where I just need 346 00:24:55.090 --> 00:24:59.560 to kind of mock up the rough idea and he could pretty much execute it, you 347 00:24:59.560 --> 00:25:03.950 know, you know, almost to the t, you know, with minimal adjustment, right? 348 00:25:03.960 --> 00:25:08.760 So I I basically had those, those two people helping the strategically 349 00:25:08.760 --> 00:25:12.660 thinking about legion, but also tactically making it look beautiful and 350 00:25:12.670 --> 00:25:16.430 and actually sound like that's and you were kind of operating in the market 351 00:25:16.430 --> 00:25:19.680 are thinking about the category, thinking about the content where it 352 00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:22.450 needs to fit into the funnel practically because you were talking 353 00:25:22.450 --> 00:25:25.330 customers, you're running into the issues yourself, you're like, oh, we 354 00:25:25.330 --> 00:25:28.690 should have some content here. People keep asking about it. It's kind of 355 00:25:28.690 --> 00:25:33.410 obvious now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And again, if you're, if you're not hearing 356 00:25:33.410 --> 00:25:37.210 those customer calls and maybe you can, if you feel like that's awkward or your 357 00:25:37.210 --> 00:25:41.040 team doesn't watch you. I mean, listen to recordings, listen to what listen to 358 00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:45.330 recordings of how the calls go and what what people say and where they get hung 359 00:25:45.330 --> 00:25:50.390 up. Um, and then the hope that those anecdotes will start to, you know, draw 360 00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:53.520 a correlation to what, you know, the things that are needed to help move the 361 00:25:53.530 --> 00:25:59.030 sail along mid cycle. So good product marketing can be a grease in the wheels 362 00:25:59.030 --> 00:26:04.610 of sales if you know how to listen. And uh, it's always, it's always a hard 363 00:26:04.610 --> 00:26:09.980 skill patrick. This has been an insightful called love. Learning about 364 00:26:09.980 --> 00:26:13.440 how the creative, how that category creation happens when it's early on 365 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:17.670 before. It's clear that the category is formed. I've learned a ton. Where can 366 00:26:17.670 --> 00:26:22.250 people go to learn more from you if they have follow up questions. Yeah. 367 00:26:22.260 --> 00:26:25.280 Yeah. I've got a couple of different blogs that might be interesting at 368 00:26:25.290 --> 00:26:30.160 Patrick rounds dot com. You can just go check it out. I'm sure it will link it 369 00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:32.990 in the show notes for something. But I've got a couple of different blogs 370 00:26:32.990 --> 00:26:37.180 there. You can check out and uh, yeah, other than that, that's the main place 371 00:26:37.180 --> 00:26:41.140 to find me or on length and hit me up and yeah, it's been fun, fun chatting 372 00:26:41.140 --> 00:26:44.910 about this dan, appreciate it. Awesome. Patrick, thank you so much for joining 373 00:26:44.910 --> 00:26:50.840 us and thank you for listening to baby growth. Yeah, 374 00:26:51.940 --> 00:26:55.930 Are you on linkedin? That's a stupid question. Of course, you're on linkedin 375 00:26:55.940 --> 00:27:00.440 here. Sweet fish. We've gone all in on the platform. Multiple people from our 376 00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:04.170 team are creating content there. Sometimes it's a funny gift for many 377 00:27:04.240 --> 00:27:08.310 other times. It's a micro video or a slide deck and sometimes it's just a 378 00:27:08.310 --> 00:27:12.400 regular old status update that shares their unique point of view on B two B 379 00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:16.630 marketing leadership or their job function. We're posting this content 380 00:27:16.630 --> 00:27:21.420 through their personal profile, not our company page and it would warm my heart 381 00:27:21.430 --> 00:27:25.980 and soul if you connected with each of our evangelists, we'll be adding more 382 00:27:25.980 --> 00:27:30.960 down the road. But for now you should connect with Bill Reed, R C 00 Kelsey 383 00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:34.920 Montgomery, our creative director dan Sanchez, our director of audience 384 00:27:34.920 --> 00:27:39.370 growth Logan, Lyles, our director of partnerships and me, James Carberry. 385 00:27:39.380 --> 00:27:43.280 We're having a whole lot of fun on linkedin pretty much every single day 386 00:27:43.370 --> 00:27:44.860 and we love for you to be a part of it.
