Transcript
WEBVTT
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Yeah,
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welcome back to BB growth. I'm dan
Sanchez with Sweet fish Media and today
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I'm here with Patrick clowns who is the
director of product management for
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service now. Patrick is actually a
great friend of mine and I've been
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wanting to have them on the show for a
while. We're finally making it happen
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today. So Patrick, welcome to BBB
growth. Hey, it's great to be here.
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Thanks dan. We've been friends for a
long time and somewhere in our
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friendship, Patrick texted me or send
me an email or something. He's like,
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hey, I have an idea. He pitches me an
idea on this business idea. Yet he was
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working as a, one of the top sales rep
set pay scale and had tried to do a lot
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of different businesses, most of which
I was like, I don't know if there's
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going to be a market for that. I don't
know if there's a market for that. And
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then out of the blue one day he's like,
hey, I have this idea and it ended up
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being an idea that was, he built into a
company and then sold to service now to
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become what it is today and the
category of Icty asset management.
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Remember when he first told me about it,
I was stoked because I knew it was, I
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knew once he told me what he was trying
to tackle, I was like, oh yeah, that's
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a problem. And I never even thought
about it as a problem. He essentially
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had the hypothesis that like, hey,
people have all these SAS tools,
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they're everywhere. Everyone is being
billed monthly annually for all these
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SAS tools as big as sales for us, all
the way down to like $10 a month,
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social media management tools. And he
had an idea that nobody's really
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keeping track of how much at all costs
This was back in, I think 20 15, like
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it was early on before it was even
really a category. You were thinking
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about it, right? Yeah. And you know,
the hard thing is the there wasn't even
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really a because there wasn't a
category, I was I was literally saying,
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you know, like staffs for your staff,
what do I type in to even see what's in
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the market? So yeah, the the market
research portion of, But I'm sure we're
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gonna just jump into it. So what we're
gonna be diving into since this was
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kind of a fascinating story. And I got
to watch it from like, the sidelines as
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Patrick would keep me up to date, as
far as what was going on is the
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marketing and the category creation
around something that's new. Like, it's
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obvious that a category is firming here
because the problems emerged that
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hasn't been around before saS
proliferation created a new problem.
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And we have just stumbled upon this
that there was there needed to be a
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solution here. So what we're talking
about today is kind of like the
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marketing steps Patrick took as well as
his team took in order to make it a
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thing to get to the point where they're
at now, where it's now, it's become a
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full blown category within the category
of I. T. S. That management now, it's
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kind of a call SAS asset management. A
lot of people call it just SAPS
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management today management. But I'll
tell you how it landed there, even
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though I I debated with the couple of
industry pungent that we're trying to
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give it a label talk about that. I'm
sure sure. So in the beginning, like
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you were trying to figure out how to
sell this thing. It was like, as you
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talked to people, it was an obvious
problem, but this like actually maybe
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it wasn't obvious, right? You talk to
people and they're like, no, we had it
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under control, right? Is that how the
early conversations went? It kind of
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depends who you talk to and, and really
also how much they cared about costs.
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So some people, um, we're just so
focused on, hey, we're just trying to
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go faster with all these tools to just
get off my back and let me innovate.
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Let me build, let me do whatever I'm
gonna do quite frankly. A lot of, a lot
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of marketing VPs that I talked to, they
are funny because a lot of them, if
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you're listening to this show, I mean,
I mean you're all about top line growth.
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How do I get top line growth and if I
need to spend a little bit more money
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to get a big lift like get off my back
about how much I'm spending because
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look at look at the scoreboard right?
But that's the attitude of a lot of
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sales and marketing VPs over their tech
stack is as long as I'm delivering on
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my number, let me do whatever I need to
do. Yeah. And so you go to the other
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side of the business which is more
bottom line which is going to be your I.
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T. Or finance department. And they're
typically because they're cross centers
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you're you're focused on proliferation
of a tool, a bunch of tools, some of
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which need to be rationalized out. Like
now all of a sudden you know efficiency
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matters and it doesn't matter that we
have 10 video conferencing tools the
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company or should we just have one or
two? And so there's all these questions
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that start to come up about the tech
stack and we we found different
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personas would kind of lead us down
different rabbit holes. But that was, I
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mean, just the problem discovery dan
was was complicated when you've got
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multiple stakeholders and you know, and
then and then to see that developing
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our research, you know, kind of let us
down. It led us to the conclusion that,
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well, this is either there's no
category for this because no one really
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cares about it or no one started and
created one yet. And fortunately it was
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the latter. No one had started it yet.
So we were right at the cusp. You know,
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what's interesting is you're listening
to this and you're a marketer, which
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most of you are. I always think of like
the heart of I don't know, you could go
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either way with this, but the heart of
marketing really falls into
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entrepreneurialism because the heart of
what a marketer does is trying to
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discern what the market wants, right?
You can say it's been the reverse you
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at the heart of entrepreneurialism is
marketing because you're trying to
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discover the market, you're trying to
get at the heart of what, what are
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people really bothered by and how can I
best serve them? What are they actually
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willing to spend money on trying to
solve for the same problem? That's why
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usually good entrepreneurs are in
essence good marketers and good and
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probably the best marketers are usually
can be good as entrepreneurs To to some
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degree there is a lot more fastest, you
need to be a good entrepreneur of
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course, but how was it when you were
trying to dive in there and like how
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many different ways that you have
framed it to different people? Like you
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were trying to form this category? What
were some of the words you were
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throwing around to get it to stick in
people's minds? Well, I mean if you're
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doing, if you're doing effective
problem discovery, right? I'm trying to
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figure out what is the problem, You
don't go in there with this specific
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thing that you think is the real
problem. So The first question,
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remember with the first, I think it was
20 people that did some interviews on
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the question we asked was what is
painful or difficult about having lots
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of staffs products in your business? So
again, I'm just talking about your you
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have a lot of products, what's what's
hard I mean really opens, you know,
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answers more technical people would
might bring up Oh yeah, making this
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integrate with that occasionally. But I
started to get after the question, I
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mean deeper the hypotheses was is it
painful for them to renew software? Is
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it painful for when they're surprised
by renewal? How about usage? Are people
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wasting money? You know, And it turns
out, you know, vendor management and
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renew. Als was not that big of a pain
point. But the fact of, you know, big
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enterprises that have, you know, 10,000
dropbox licenses where half of them
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haven't been touched in the last six
months. That is actually a much bigger
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pain point that we uncovered. But it
came through a really broad set of
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question about the problem around this
market. Yeah. And so from there dan it
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kind of just again, we started to look
up and say, surely someone else is
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doing this. And the closest thing we
could find was was when we typed in
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because these are software
subscriptions, we looked at like
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subscription management software, you
know, and assassin management software.
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So the two areas we usually would end
up in is you know, products that would
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help you manage the technical
underpinnings of delivering a fast
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product. Right? So a little bit more of
devops and how do you keep a service
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going? And then the other side was
actually more for customer customer
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management teams that would mostly, you
know, they're basically looking at
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their book of business and managing the
subscription book from the vendor's
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perspective. So I said but who's
managing the book of all these
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subscriptions across vendors from the
customer side And the closest thing we
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could find is like a vendor management
tool or a contract management tool and
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that's that's where we, you know dan we
were looking at this and we're like,
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well it's a little bit of vendor, a lot
of staff, it's got these other
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components of I. T. So the more we
tried to talk with our key persona
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which ultimately ended up being you
know, I. T. You know, directors and VP
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s of I. T. At mid market companies um
that had a lot of cash products those
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people were really looking for a tool
that was that was the technical kind of
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repository of all the different
products they own. How many interviews
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did it take for you to kind of figure
out who that was? You know, there were
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initially about 20 to kind of get us
going. But quickly beyond that when we
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started to try to try to actually
expand the buckets of presales, We were
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probably you know 5060 conversations in
before we started to like say I think
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there's something more with these IT
leaders. And sometimes the hard thing
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is when there's not a well defined
market or even a well defined problem.
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Small companies sometimes our buyer was
the CFO and the controller because
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they're trying to control spend and
maybe they cared more about it. Um Then
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the I. T. Manager who might have been
an engineer that kind of graduated into
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leadership and wasn't really that
focused on better business management.
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So so I would say somewhere between
about 50 and 100 interviews. And let's
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be honest those interviews were
essentially sales discovery calls.
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Where were you know early on. We were
trying to figure out what your problem
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can we help you? And that was probably
you know our 1st 10 paying customers
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came from those. You know that handful
of conversation. It's interesting how
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many conversations you have to have in
order to really identify it. A nugget
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that I'm getting out of. This is kind
of like, as marketers, why don't we
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keep meeting with customers, right?
Things change markets change. People's
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fears, worries, priorities change over
time. It's like you need to be in front
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of your customers all the time because
that's ultimately what's going to give
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you the insight as you figure, figure
it out. And it's just as true for when
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you're starting. Probably more critical
when you're starting, but it's still
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true for later on. So, having
conversations and hearing you say like,
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oh no, we were 100 conversations and
I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a lot of
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conversations, but it probably pays off
even if now you were doing more
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interviews later. Do you still meet
with customers? You still do? Or is
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that somebody else's job from where
you're at now? No, I mean, so, so fast
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forward a little bit. Um we'll go back
to the middle part of the story, but
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we're still creating the category. But
now I'm actually, I lead the product
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advisory council for our product suite
at service now. So I'm working with um
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usually kind of some of the biggest
customers, all I mean Out of the 20,
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customers on that, probably half of
them are our household brands and names
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that you would know immediately. So
it's impressive that service now has
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all these existing customers we sell
into and we even we'll we'll get them
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interested and they'll be net new
customers because of some of this
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technology That that we brought in. But
there's a much bigger platform play at
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service now, right that we're selling
family of a deal of our service. Yeah,
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very much so. Yeah, very much so. I
think it's 87% or something of our
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revenue comes from expansion on current
accounts, something ridiculous like
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that. So, but I want to take you back
to that challenge dan. We were talking
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earlier, I think last week there's this
challenge we had when it was us and a
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couple other startups in the space and
we kind of had like these little
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startup battles to try to define what,
what the heck do we call this thing,
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Right. And of course everyone
differentiating in small little ways to
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try to say, oh we do more, you know, we
have data that's more security focused
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and someone else saying, well we do
data science were more into the
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financial procurement space and so in
our our stake in the ground was the
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vendor space. So we, we tried to say,
hey, will, you know, there's more to
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solve because there's more to SAS
management than just SAS, there's
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regular soft, there's traditional
legacy software, there's other things
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that I. T. Wants to manage. And so with
vendor hawk, we almost actually name
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the company Chavez hawk, but decided
not to because we thought we don't want
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to pigeonhole ourselves with only staff
because there's a lot a lot of other
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assets of the company that maybe we
could get into. So an adviser of ours
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gave us some tips and said, no, let's
just stick with vendor hawk, Watch your
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vendors like a hawk. And so, um, that
did create some problems because
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because we were more open to talking
about other stuff than fast, we would
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get pulled down the road a little bit.
Like why can't you help me track all my
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random stuff that like paper cups and
you have to like, no, we're not
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tracking those things in here. But what
it turned out dan, is that some of our
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competitors were more focused on, you
know, SAS optimization and, and fast
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Discovery and we did those things, but
we, we tried to put our corner of the
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market on fast vendor management to be
able to say, hey, nobody else can track
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the life cycle of the vendor better
than we can. And not only, you know,
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not only bringing them on, but also
optimizing and saving money and cutting
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throughout until you maybe decide you
need to retire that. So we, we remember
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I wrote a blog because some, some folks
were, we're talking about this, you
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know, like, oh, this is, this is our
success. Uh, I think they call it a
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fast optimization platform. So I was
like, no. So I pulled up a blog and
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like this is why we need to call it
fast vendor management and it's not
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like it got a million views or reads,
but what's interesting as a marketer
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and you're looking into the struggle is,
you know, entrepreneurs are often times
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trying to create what is the thing
that's going to resonate and how do I
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get, you know, a little bit of
chirality behind my brand. And one of
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the things that we did with this silly
T shirt, I'll show you guys here kind
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of silly, but it's a picture of a
sasquatch, the bottom, it says, it said
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do you have a sasquatch? And so we, we
did this whole thing where it's like,
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hey do you have a Saas squash lurking
in your business? And then on the back
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basically we have all these creative
saying related to sacks like you know,
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get your assassin shape, Are you
surrounded by staff holes? That's
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pretty funny one. So I mean tons of
stuff but we were trying to create this
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this kind of edgy fun brand that people
would say, oh man, those vendor hog
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guys like they have a good time. They
realize the irony of the space. And so
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for us we we tried to make our brand
feel a little bit more, you know,
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relatable. Well yeah, and and now we're
talking about like brand marketing as
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opposed to just, you know, you know,
category creation. But it's I mean
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Categories of the big picture which
brand sports especially when you're
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trying to go after the category. It's
interesting to see you and the other
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two competitors all trying to position
for what the category is going to be
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when the category is not clear yet.
Right? But the winner is going to
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emerge out of the three somewhere or
some other things you do to try to
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establish you got yourself is like the
category King, right? Because usually
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there's one category one. Yeah. Who
else gets the scraps? So what were what
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were some of you are doing to do that?
Some of the things I was just basically
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borrowing a page from out of the
playbook from my marketing team at pay
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scale to shout out to those folks who
are leading marketing efforts there.
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But they had a, you know, they had a
compensation best practices report,
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right? Which is similar to to a lot of
the people do like a state of the state
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of the industry, right? So we had, you
know, the state of SAS vendor
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management, right? So that kind of, it
was an annual report and we, you know,
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it was a bunch of effort to go get a
bunch of respondents I think. You know,
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we had, you know, 50 60 of respondents
on the first years report. And we used
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data from that, you know, sample size
and and really just put it into a nice
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looking, you know, a nice looking
report that we're starting to push out
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there and into the market. The other
thing, the unique asset besides just
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like you know, scott leadership was
also um you know, data that we had
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uniquely that others didn't. And so we
had for example, um like the benchmark
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report that we were starting to
introduce to the market which was
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looking at usage benchmarking right?
Like what if you have zoom for example
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how many licenses zoom get wasted on
average, you know, by across our
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customer base. And so we had done some
benchmarking. So if you're thinking
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about like, you know, a new category, I
like to think about what can I uniquely
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add to the conversation that others
can't add as well struggle to talk
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about. And that was sort of our that
was our, you know, I've got to give a
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big shout out to brian Blackburn who
was like critical to getting our
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marketing. You know, he designed this
shirt and he also helped us with that
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benchmarking report. And he was like an
early, you know, marketing higher that
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we had that really move the needle. And
so being able to have that conversation
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with our customers and with the market
to say, look, we know that we know
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about the state of this market because
you've done the research and we also
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have customer data to back it up. Um
what was sort of our first couple
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punches into the market and shortly
after we were making those strides into
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the market is when um we were acquired
and we said, you know what if we're
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going to go after this, we want to, we
want to partner up with a really big
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company that's already got a brand and
now we can kind of leverage that power
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to build out the ecosystem further,
make them do it three years later.
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Looking back, I remember when you put
together the benchmarks report and
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thinking like, and there was a lot of
time and effort back then, I didn't
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appreciate it for what it was. Now. I
have had some taste of B two B
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marketing then, but obviously being a
host on GDP growth and interviewing all
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these B two B marketers all the time.
I've grown to appreciate what category
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design is and how hard it is and how
important it can be. Now I'm looking
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back at the benchmark report of my
genius, quite a great way to start it
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off because it could have been a multi
year battle. I mean once you got bought
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up by service now it became like oak
domination right? Because you got
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plugged into existing infrastructure
that made it easy to go and find more
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business and plug it into a big
business. But before then it could have
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been a multiyear play out and if you
would establish the benchmarks early,
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that would have become clearer and
clearer that you would have been able
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to own the space or easily because you
were the one writing the rules by
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setting the benchmarks of what success
looks like exactly. And whoever said by
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the way, whoever sets up those first
benchmarks, the more you get other
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people that are influential in in, in
the general space or adjacent spaces,
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the more they start to reference that,
the more immediately that becomes the
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thing that people talk about. So the
hard part and this is where we were
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headed was because we need to get a
robust set of data and then we need to
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find people to be able to talk about it
in such a way that hey, if you haven't
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looked at vendor hawks benchmark report
for fast, like, you know, you haven't
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been looking in the right places. And
so that was kind of the, that was the
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strategy early on. But you know, if
you're, you know, a marketer and you're
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thinking about your category, the, you
know what the unique insight that
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you're bringing to your market and then
how connected. And then I'm sure you
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talked a ton about this. How do you
amplify that really quickly? Scale it
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really fast? So, um, I won't even go
there because I'm sure everyone
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listening smarter how to do that. But I
am. But I remember you, you were like
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the sales king of the company. Of
course you were the founder, you had
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your technical co founder and you were
doing your Patrick thing, right? You're
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probably one of the best sales website
that I'm friends with as far as like
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getting in there and don't know, being
being persuasive what were some of the
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marketing things you were doing? Some
of the things you were doing to current
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almost like rita, I guess you've got
sales enablement with marketing in
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order to kind of land your first big
customers. Yeah, yeah. So, um, again
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part of trading the category and the
brand, you know, like obviously the,
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the first, the first call deck, you
know, your slides looking uniform. That
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really helps. But then the leaves
behind documents, like the first couple
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of documents that you're leaving behind,
I'm sure those of you who do content
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marketing all the time. You know,
there's different stages, different
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content for different stages of the
funnel, right? You gotta Brandon you
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get awareness. Um, you're going to get
past that awareness level to the kind
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of consideration stage. Like I never
really thought I could use this
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software into more of the evaluation
like I'm comparing and then they get
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sounded like purchase. Am I going to go
with this one of the competitor if
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there is a competitor? So if you think
about that, you know that funnel
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getting smaller, the content just
getting more targeted is what we're
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focusing on. So we had a couple of
assets at the high level, what is this?
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But then we started to make more assets
at recount further into the funnel
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where the decisions we're getting more
technical, it doesn't really sound like
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a sexy thing to create. But one of the
things that helped us close deals was
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not just our side by side comparison,
but actually like our data security
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practice. Like we were in a space where
where a lot of startups didn't have
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their stuff together when it came to
data security. But our CTO was like, we
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keep getting asked about the security
of our app and how it integrates and he
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just like wrote out this amazing
document looked very well organized. We
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had some graphs in there and by the
time we put that in the hand of our
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customer, it sounds a little bit boring,
like, oh, you're, you're marketing with
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a, with a security document. Well, if
it's a technical sale. Yeah. Our
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engineer on the bottom of the funnel
content, they're asking questions like
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that. You have to be prepared to give
them answers and the answers are in the
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content. Yeah. And then the next step
right after that is when you figure out
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how to close customers is probably one
of the next most imminent questions,
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which is okay. Great. I bought this
thing, I'm turning it on. How do I use
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it effectively? And this is the first
onboarding implementation guide what
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the recommended steps on how to get
going and that that's a whole another
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like, you know, 10 podcasts and through
on that topic of customer success. But
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just getting your reps talking in such
a way that they're relevant and they're
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hitting those objections. If you're not
on the phone with some of the customers
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or you're hearing the feedback from the
sales reps on the front line, then you
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got to just jump on some of those calls
and say, hey, I want to make sure you
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have enough of everything that you need
to close. And that's been the gap
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analysis. You know, just say, what if
you had one other thing to make the
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biggest difference in hitting your
number? What what would that one asset
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B I like asked that question and you'll
probably uncover a few different
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answers and and the trends will lead
you towards a pretty potent asset. So
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my last question for you is how are you
managing all this when you were just a
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small team? Did you have a marketer
early on or were you kind of the one
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leading the charge with all the
marketing as the Ceo and kind of like
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the head of sales? Mm Yeah. So early on
again I came from a sales and inside
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sales background. I was selling, you
know, and good size deals inside and so
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being ceo of a startup, obviously I'm
over the pipeline and I'm trying to
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close deals. But I was also that the
new thing for me was how do I put
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opportunities and deals from the top of
the funnel? Aside from just, you know,
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here's a giant list of qualified, you
know, people go cold column. Right? So
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I actually had some help. The two
flavors have helped that. I had one was
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a consultant who was really good at
demand gen. It was helping me run in a
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couple different programs to do more
paid marketing. And we even did, we
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even did a mailer actually mailed some
milk and stuff out. And uh, and then
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the other thing that I had was really
helpful was again, are the marketing
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manager brand I mentioned he he could
design which was great, but he could
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also write and that combination of, you
know, the creative side and also the
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communication side of being strong that
let me have something where I just need
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to kind of mock up the rough idea and
he could pretty much execute it, you
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know, you know, almost to the t, you
know, with minimal adjustment, right?
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So I I basically had those, those two
people helping the strategically
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thinking about legion, but also
tactically making it look beautiful and
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and actually sound like that's and you
were kind of operating in the market
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are thinking about the category,
thinking about the content where it
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needs to fit into the funnel
practically because you were talking
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customers, you're running into the
issues yourself, you're like, oh, we
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should have some content here. People
keep asking about it. It's kind of
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obvious now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And
again, if you're, if you're not hearing
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those customer calls and maybe you can,
if you feel like that's awkward or your
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team doesn't watch you. I mean, listen
to recordings, listen to what listen to
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recordings of how the calls go and what
what people say and where they get hung
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up. Um, and then the hope that those
anecdotes will start to, you know, draw
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a correlation to what, you know, the
things that are needed to help move the
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sail along mid cycle. So good product
marketing can be a grease in the wheels
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of sales if you know how to listen. And
uh, it's always, it's always a hard
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skill patrick. This has been an
insightful called love. Learning about
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how the creative, how that category
creation happens when it's early on
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before. It's clear that the category is
formed. I've learned a ton. Where can
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people go to learn more from you if
they have follow up questions. Yeah.
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Yeah. I've got a couple of different
blogs that might be interesting at
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Patrick rounds dot com. You can just go
check it out. I'm sure it will link it
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in the show notes for something. But
I've got a couple of different blogs
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there. You can check out and uh, yeah,
other than that, that's the main place
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to find me or on length and hit me up
and yeah, it's been fun, fun chatting
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about this dan, appreciate it. Awesome.
Patrick, thank you so much for joining
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us and thank you for listening to baby
growth. Yeah,
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Are you on linkedin? That's a stupid
question. Of course, you're on linkedin
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here. Sweet fish. We've gone all in on
the platform. Multiple people from our
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team are creating content there.
Sometimes it's a funny gift for many
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other times. It's a micro video or a
slide deck and sometimes it's just a
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regular old status update that shares
their unique point of view on B two B
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marketing leadership or their job
function. We're posting this content
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through their personal profile, not our
company page and it would warm my heart
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00:27:21.430 --> 00:27:25.980
and soul if you connected with each of
our evangelists, we'll be adding more
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down the road. But for now you should
connect with Bill Reed, R C 00 Kelsey
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Montgomery, our creative director dan
Sanchez, our director of audience
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growth Logan, Lyles, our director of
partnerships and me, James Carberry.
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We're having a whole lot of fun on
linkedin pretty much every single day
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and we love for you to be a part of it.