97: Aurelien Mottier, CEO of Operatix on effective pipeline generation for startups

0:10

Welcome to the sales Bluebird podcast, where we believe that it's plain wrong. That sales teams of startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams do. They're bigger and more well-known competitors. If you're a seller or a sales leader at a B2B startup, especially if it's in the cybersecurity space, you're in the right place to. I am your host as usual Andrew Monahan, and welcome to episode 97 of the sales Bloomberg podcast. Our guest today is or Ray as I call them some kind of dumb with accents and the front of some things properly. So Ray is the CEO at upper ethics. Ray, welcome to the podcast.

Ray: 0:52

Hey, thank you to have me Andrew 97 now. That's good.

Andrew: 0:56

You know, pod fade is usually seven, right. And, uh, a lot the 97 it's was taken a little bit to get there, but I'm pretty pleased with how things are going there. So it's okay to call you Ray, is that right?

Ray: 1:07

It's perfectly fine.

Andrew: 1:09

Right. Why don't you tell us about opportunities quickly? Cause I think there's a frame, the rest of our conversation.

Ray: 1:14

No problem, Andrew. So, uh operatics uh, so as, as you mentioned, I am the CEO and co-founder of operatics. We started the probiotics exactly 10 years ago in January, 2012. So it's a, it's a monster funny Vasari is the month of our 10th anniversary. Uh, and, and what we do at operatic. 80 technology companies, mainly software organization. We have a few Oliver services organization also in our portfolio and we add them to achieve strippings accelerate. So to say course increase of Regine value with more business. Okay. Uh, we've got different level of services. So if we want to go into the nitty gritty, we have, uh, account-based everything. They bought services, which is usually, Relatively Peltz. And then for clients who have an average value of 150 K a R R complex have cycles Mitzi person. type of process. And usually only targeting a relatively large accounts. Okay. So what we have done to do is to identify who is when the accounts and blend the seed, adapt the message to all the different individual that will be a responsible. No consensus of, of buying a solution. We then have a bit more of a traditional type of, sales service, or pipeline generation Saudis for the mid markets, um, which is basically using a technology stack in which we would inject data, curated data, uh, and use the technology stack or marketing stack to. I identified the people that seems to be the most interested about the value proposition of our clients and that tech stack will then spit up opportunities or interesting leads to then the human being and the demand of our team that will do the qualification and the distribution. The last part of offerings is on the channel where we add our clients to accelerate the recruitment of channel partners, accelerate the enablement of channel partners, but more from a sales and marketing suspected. We lived the technical side to our clients. And most importantly, Andrew, we add them to accelerate what we call the activation or the reactivation of these partners and what it means, what we mean by activation. We mean actually getting your net new partners to revenue. So getting them to sell something. And we know that's difficult because it's a dog-eat-dog world. You only get a presentation when you sell something. And some of the solution was sitting under digital. Now six months, nine months or cycle. So, so that's where we get involved to support them in getting their first few. So they can start to see some margin and then can invest or the reactivation. So we work with, that's going to mention any name today. companies where have that 80 20 rule, where 80% of their revenue is coming from 20% of the channel partners. And they want to make it a little bit more even. So we are going to the 80% of our dominance and we try to. Resuscitate them. We try to bring them back to life. We tried to get them to set again. Um, as I said, we only worked five to technology companies and in term of coverage, we cover pretty much the whole world. There's three territories that we don't do at the moment are China, Japan, and Korea. Uh, but we are looking at, depending on if he's in Singapore later on this year, That's a territory. So that's, that's my intro intro.

Andrew: 4:27

So if I'm the head of sales at a startup, uh, I could look to operatics to take on some things I'm thinking about. I need some help actually, to execute on, to do better, to start things like that. Is that right?

Ray: 4:42

That's one of the traditional use cases. Um, the, the startups we tend to work with of. The usually get injected with a fair amount of investment. Okay. And we see this investment growing in the cyber security space in particular, some of the valuation, some of the investment that are coming into into cyber tech companies are, are relatively large. And that creates two issues for us as leader issue. Number one is that when you get to big investments, all lays on you, the VCs are breathing down your neck. You've got to get it done. You've got to do it quickly. And you've got to do it with the less risk possible. Okay. Uh, and if you are that Belson, you can come to a company like us. If you're in the cyber security space we've got around. I think active right now, we've got around 95 or 96 active cyber security clients. So that's been that may Tim in the U S and meet Tim in Europe, all across the MEA. We speak to your bales on a daily basis. We know that bios right? So that's how we accelerate stuff for them. We've got experience. We've got people, we know who the CSO is.. Less training it's more for plug and play type of approach.

Andrew: 5:49

Yeah. So, The startups that I work with. I mean, their, their challenges, their things are thinking about is the classic ones, right? We need to talk to more people. I don't know anyone. I actually had probably two or three companies that are doing very nicely and getting inbound and, and getting their name out there. The rest of them are struggling to not struggling, but they're trying to get more right there. AEs are not overloaded with opportunities and you know, all the bad behaviors that go with that. If you're not overloaded. That's one area that I see them really think about it. How do we get more coming in? And then secondly, I see them thinking about is we want to try different things, right? We want to, maybe we're selling to enterprise. We want to try mid market or to mid market enterprise. Want to try that out? And they're looking for creative ways to go do that, rather than saying let's throw some heads at it. I'm going back to the first one. I, how would you recommend that a head of sales thinks about, the. The engagement of a company like yours are not right. When do they do it themselves? When do they not do themselves? And say we need more meetings.

Ray: 6:55

Yeah. It's it's, it's a great question. Tremendous question. my, obviously I'm a bit bias because I'm the CEO of the company I've been at it for 10 years. So I do believe that. And then we are doing words. So to believe that we are a great solution for, for just individuals. Um, I think we need to look at the choices they've got. Okay. Um, and chase number one is to say, well, what's important for me. Is it important for me to build an empire and have my own, my own team and doing it? And do I have the bandwidth to manage them or do I need to recruit them on the job to manage them? And usually the answer to that question. Uh, one of the big factor that, that impact the, do I build my team internally or nuts is there is technically two. First one is geography. Okay. If you are that says leader and you are based in San Jose or in Getty Fido in the bay area, building as your team is a very difficult, very competitive people are extremely pricey. And in fact, the good one, you will never find a CV on indeed or whenever they just get, they just get scooped away and they never. You know, 80 dusty I'll look for a job. So the welfare talents is really real. Okay. But also because you are so much in a rush, you don't have the time to really find those diamonds in the rough and, you know, make them better. You need to have some way I can just come in and stung key it to work with someone that can come and do the job. You don't have the time to train them. And that's the difficulty. So finding people who are job ready, that are good, that your competitors are naturally. That will come and walk for you for a solution that never sold in the past. That's a bit difficult. Okay. The second thing is that, as you mentioned, uh, in, in your two part of the question, there is a sort of, how do we go about it? Where's my target market. What's the right message with JCP. You know, I'm just coming out of a call with a company that's been at it for five years. They've got pretty much 250 clients. They are still figuring out if they should start. But the up, so what your tub dunno, bottom up approach. We spend an hour discussing about that. Um, and I think that's where we have some deities fundamentally. It's the creation of a sales playbook. Okay. I do believe that you've got different level of whatever we want to call them. But those people who are generating pipeline that will create that pipeline that will create do sales meetings. You've got one category, which is easier to find, which is the scale of category, which are the people that can do the job. If they've got a playbook, if they know what to say, if they've got templates of emails and they've got. They've got the scenario to follow. Okay. What's trail what's precious is the guy was the pioneer. The person that not only is able to adapt the message. Text slap, stand up desktop. Go ahead. And adapt the message, but also someone was able to communicate back to management without messing up in your relationship and say, Hey, you know what, Andrew, I don't think we should take it. This people have been doing that. I've done some stats. We should try that. Finding the people that can do that is really difficult. Usually you don't have it in the video. And it's a mixed of DDR and the manager of a video that can look at the status, the intelligence collected from the video, and then give you some guidance. Okay. The chance we've got that operatics that all our managers in the operation team I've started from the bottom. So they all have done the job. They have been successful at the job. So these are people that can see through things and defining what's working. What's not working. Okay.

Andrew: 10:27

Let me play devil's advocate a little bit on that. Right? So, one of the things I've heard from sales leaders is that's one of the reasons why they liked to keep things close, right? Yeah. It's kind of hard to find the pioneer and the ICP and the right messaging, but we got to own that. Right? We got, we got to do that ourselves because you know, this is critical to our success. We don't want to outsource it to someone else. Is that what you hear a little bit.

Ray: 10:51

I hear that. Um, usually when I hear that and it's a very early stage company, we probably get a phone call three, four months later saying, okay, we've tried. And you know, we'd like to do it. I mean, you know, I guess the analogy that I would take is if I've got a wall to paint at home, I can go to the shop, get some pain, get some brush and do it. Oh, I can just be a little bit more and get a professional to do it. And I invest my time. Some wives. Why would it be more productive doing something else? Right. And that's exactly the same thing. What I get to this conversation and say, look, what sort of guys are you? Do you wash your car? Do you have a jet wash and you wash your car and you'll drive, or do you get something, someone to wash it for you? Do you do your own garden or do you have a gardener? Right. So, and I think you've got to be. We can't sell. We can't sell to anyone. We can't be a fit for everyone. The clients that come to us, the advantage of disease. Okay. Those guys know the markets. They have data, the data is ready. Okay. They probably know if, and when people would be interested by most stuff, they probably would have an aid or an understanding of what would be the right ICP. Because they've done it. They've got experience in doing it. You know, we've got 120 people worldwide that only focus on cyber security for many clients. Okay. Right. So that Intel it's, it's, it's kind of the AP is what you won't get from your own team. So what I say to people that, that comes to me with that document, and I said, look, it's going to be very simple. If you are persistent, And because you are smart because you are the leader of a tech startup, and I'm sure you are smart, potentially smarter than us and smarter than me. You may think your nine months to do it, but I'm sure you're going to get it right. I can do it in three months. Do you have nine months or do you want to get it done in three months? Because you're going to fail. It's inevitable. We've all failed. We are professional of it. We do that for a living. We still sometimes fail. We are human. It's impossible to get it right all the time. Okay. But you will do it. You are a smart guy. You will do it. I'm sure you're going to get a trade, but it's going to take one more time. I can shorten on that timeframe. Okay. Yeah. That's usually the arguments that we use or I'll just Google documents. If you're on a bell system, that's fine. Go ahead and build up your team. I'll catch up with you in the three months to see why you aren't and usually you want to go to them three months later, they are still in the recruitment process and that's what said, okay, well, we're going to discuss against.

Andrew: 13:25

I do think that, uh, people generally miss, uh, misunderstand, let's say what it really takes to, to spin up a BDR SDR type team. One of the things I, well, what I see a lot is, uh, they do one. Try and do it themselves, right. They want to assign a headcount or two. They might have the guy sales leader, maybe two or three AEs. And they're thinking, okay, let's add in a, an SDR BDR function. And I think that the challenge that I see people running into a lot is that, uh, they don't invest the time. And frankly, the tools for that BDR SDR to be successful. Right. Because what they ended up doing is they sucked into board and CEO and leadership meetings. They've got to focus on deals that are alive in the pipeline, and they're high impact. Usually if they go referred in by the board, they can't just leave them for someone else to go and work on. And the poor SDR BDR is sitting there trying to do their best they can, but they're not getting the focus of the, they really deserve in order to be successful. I think it's a trap that we got to be careful of as sales leaders that we. We don't do that. And then after three or six months we declare it not working. Right?

Ray: 14:41

Yeah. Uh it's it's you know, you're right. I mean, it's, uh, it's a function in the business. It doesn't get respect. Okay. Uh, when in fact it's, the functionality is probably getting my eyes, but I'm a bit bias is one of the most important function. Why he's done it to sit at the boat for the person who is responsible for generating pipeline for that. Now the person responsible for the insights. Yeah. Yeah. Usually you don't have that. They report to a CRO or they report to a CMO, um, and, and devices don't tend to be earned, but this, one of the most important function is your ears on the streets. It's about listening to prospect, voice of the customer. What are they saying about the competitors? Is all that information coming back up in some companies? Yes, because you've got leaders that are extremely respectful. Of the, of that function. And usually these are leaders that have done the job themselves. We've got some fantastic clients that know exactly how to strike a relationship with and we've got some beautiful partnerships I've been going for three year, year old, six year olds. Well, is there send videos on our side working with SMEs and, and we've got these absolutely fantastic at giving the social recognition. That does receive the, is that you've done the job enjoy, you know, you know what it is to pick up the phone. And I think it's becoming a little bit more difficult with times because there is a lot of people that gives us a bad name. Unfortunately, there is lots of companies that do a terrible job at what we do and they do it cheaply and that's, but they are kind of, I guess, driven by the demand of doing each ship, a baby belt off hormones and all that sort of great stuff. Um, so is it, the market pushing them? You probably have to pick one as a combo, but the point that I'm trying to make is that you get to rate of rejection, the job. Okay. Stuff enough to wake up and, you know, nobody likes to go and speak with a stranger or it's all quality is bizarre. It's not easy. And when you get that rejection and you do a tough job, and on top of that, you don't get respected by the people you try to feed. It's just, it's just very difficult to survive. Right? You've got to put yourself in the shoes of that. Doesn't need to have empathy for that team.

Andrew: 16:56

And you wonder why they quit?

Ray: 16:58

Do you know, lots of people say, you look at the salaries of SDR BGI. SMAD like, uh, we've seen some gay, uh, north America. Living for base salary of $120,000.

Andrew: 17:11

Oh yeah.

Ray: 17:13

The argument of the person that's recruited them, which is one of four clients is to say, well, you're just producing three times what? My days are producing internally and digital with inbound and he's doing outbounds. Okay. So he's doing this, no mentor, nothing. And I paid them around the 60 K. So if he's doing the job of three people techniques. I should pay that 480. So if I give him on around 20, I'm saving 60 it's about it. So the salary go crazy because people think that's money is what's. having run a company of BDRs, John, myself. I can tell you at what they want is progression. What they want is respect. What they want is social recognition of what they are doing. And that's really what excited them. Of course the paycheck is important because inside. But they don't leave jobs because of money. Most of the time they leave jobs because of.

Andrew: 18:05

Yeah. Bet. Yeah. I can imagine that. Just going back to your saying about, uh, you know, how hard it is, I'll tell you a quick story. So when I moved over to the us from the UK, it was January of 2000 and I got to bay area territory. Um, and I did my ABC, right. AB it of be a kind of see a cons and, uh, I targeted 25. Well, you were no assessors in those days had directors of information security, right? Whoever was the lead person for security and these companies. Right. And I heard 25. And in the first four months, just by cold calling, I'd booked meetings with 17 out of the 25. Right. And I thought that's really good. Right? That's a good success rate, you know, but if a bit of hard work planning the phones, but you know, I got there and that was, uh, that was high 1,725. The about eight years ago was the last time I actually had a role where I was at a cybersecurity company and all the leads were my own. Right. There was no, I wasn't getting anything from anything from anyone else. So cold calling was part of it and it was a grind. Right. I would just get nothing like to through rates the, the, uh, the accept rates as before. So I'm sure that's common, right? I mean, everyone's being, hitting these people up a lot over the years. It was more vendors now than the word back then. And I wonder what that means for, you know, when you think about pipeline, generation meeting, booking, all the things that a classic STR BDR would do, what does it mean for them about how they're successful and how they have to go by doing their jobs?

Ray: 19:39

It's a good question. I think. I think you need to look at, uh, you need, we need to define success. What is success? Okay. Um, is success a big commission check at the end of the mouse is success having the right level of conversation and honoring what you are doing is success generating a lot of meetings. Is success generating a lot of pipeline? Is it cost first of all, I think it's important to define success. Yeah, I know. It sounds really basic. But we have a customer success team that just does that with clients. And I can, what I can tell you, injuries that sometimes the success change on a quarterly basis. When you are in a startup definition of success, you start the program and people get kicked me meetings, right. I don't care. Get me out of there. All right. And then they get to the end of the year. I said, oh my God, no, I want people that are ready to buy, but ready to buy yesterday. So. Expectation can change and you need to manage that. And, and you know, one of the big issue we've got is that life span or the life cycle of a sales leader is also evolving. You know, people don't stay in jobs for three or four, your five year old, six year old, seven year olds make 18 months, two years a year or

Andrew: 20:57

two months is the average right now.

Ray: 21:00

So, so that's the thing to take into consideration. You know, we tend to do two things, so. Th there is three and gore of success. And, and again, the definition of success may vary from one claim. This one is also for me to tell you exactly what success is. You know, what I can tell you is that from my perspective, the long-term success is quantitative pipeline. It's low volume. I quality a conversion, great conversation. Now that's what some clients want, because sometimes we work with a very large company and we work with an ed of regeneration and the reason why they sign a contract with us, because they want to create a lot of it's to put in the system, because this is how they are being incentivized. So again, is it the right thing to do? Is it a necessary evil? You know, we, we, we've got to, we work with our clients and we should, you know, we are here to support them to whatever they want to do. And yeah. But the right thing to do is to generate pipeline is to have quality conversation that can convert now from regarding your question, which is how do we see that from an SDR BDR perspective? I think you have two things, Jen, if you are someone to just get meetings and that's why our a, the paper performance meeting stuff and, you know, clients and your Albany meetings, and you get. If I ask you to get me to, you're going to get me to get the meetings. If I asked you for five, you may get me three good one and two shitty one, because you know, it's, you need to make your number. I need to make your commission. I may driving the right attitude. Probably nuts. I know you feeling good about it. Are you feeling good about it? Probably. Yes. So I think there is two things. There is a commission check, which is basically your update on performance. And then you've got the gamification along the way where you are paid or recognized. Probably not paid, but recognize social recognition or, you know, recognition amongst the group of people you belong, you belong to through doing the right things. So what I say to my team is gamification for attitude, paycheck for results. Okay. But then that every single program is equal. Sometimes we've got campaigns would shop. I remember when we first started to work with Palo Alto net. And we started to, you know, back in the days was pretty much, uh, early, uh, probably early 2000 and Y probably just before 2010 as we started to work with them, as you said, there was no CIA. So pretty much then you are speaking to the ed of network infrastructure. It may have been a gay was dealing with security, but you had no budget. Right? So you had to speak to the network, people. We used to have the money, I want to say to them. So if we can get, we can help you to get people off Facebook. That's what the firewall does. Uh, what, you know, that was a very easy message because people are the massive issue with Facebook when Facebook came out, everybody was on Facebook. Okay. Yeah. Um, and then you've got another message while you may sell. I don't know, without mentioning any company name, you said, uh, Adidas or waffle and point security that doesn't have too much to differentiate. And that's difficult because you get into a situation where you, Andrew May not be satisfied with what you've got at the moment, but you're telling me that I can't speak to you. I won't engage with these people until September twenty, twenty three. So call me back three months before that, and we discuss about changing, but right now, I'll say in the contract, I mean, wisdom. Okay. So I think commodity value first, um, disruptive is also something to take into consideration when. Looking at incentivizing and setting up what the targets are and also the way you go about it, because we are specialists and we live in Brisbane, we just kind of segments every part of the process. We've got different team from inbound response management, which is taking leads and converting them into a box Unity's versus outbound prospecting. When you do inbound, it's about product knowledge, you know, uh, if I call text you, because I want to buy your. Uh, analytic trick gal from you. I'm going to ask you questions straight to about the range about, uh, what they've, uh, you know, question at that age. Me want to ask you about the, but I go straight into the detail. If you are cutting someone, who's driving a patrol car to send them an electric car, you'd have to elevate the conversation as to what is the benefit of driving an electric car versus a Pittsburgh. So you create the human and that drives something after that. Or so, Andrew. The expectation of the prospect in the first meeting. If I am window shopping, find you online, put a request online for you to contact me. I've got to BDR to call me booked a meeting. You do a demo. I want the demo. I want to have a technical conversation. I'm interested. I've got the budget. I'm pretty much ready to go. Okay. If you do the opposite, which is going after someone setting up a meeting from cold, you basically have a prospect say, look, you sent something to me that create a light bourbons. Okay. But you are basically telling me that I'm not doing what I'm doing right now, properly develop on that. And what you want to have is a surrogate is capable of going to that meeting, keep the laptop in the bloody bag and have a conversation with the person about their business and what they are trying to achieve. They'll just, you know, VR meeting a demo of letting the pre-sales guy speaking about the demo and, and trust me, sometimes we see clients who are struggling. W they ask us to go the C-level and credit him, but they don't have a self-esteem team that actually can innovate to that sort of conversation.

Andrew: 26:19

So I imagine that's kind of frustrating because you know, the, the feedback they'll probably come back to you is these meetings are not very strong or not very good, or, you know, some sort of variation on that. When in reality, the execution from the client's side, you know, could be improved. Let's say.

Ray: 26:38

Yeah, we, we very much try to, we have a very unnecessarily steam. Okay. Uh, they have a commission, they are paid on the revenue on, uh, clients expansion. So basically satisfaction. So, You know how much our clients are spending with us and our own dusting with us. Um, and also the performance of the program. I'll send a team even if they don't deliver themselves. Okay. So they are task to go ahead and find clients that have the right expectations. If I get onto a call and someone has to be the question, do you have a pay drop off in smart or massive out? If I go on to the core and someone said, okay, you're going to book meeting from just the name of the company. I do nothing, but just give you a list. Uh, but do you qualify your beds? Do you do Ben qualification? Absolutely. Red lights. You don't want to be, we don't want to work with those games. These are people that don't get it. These are people that just clearly don't get it. And there is no point working with someone that don't get it, you know, because you can't quantify. And is stupid as well when we used to do solution selling. I don't think you should anyway, unless they'll get that, uh, I can get quite passionate about that. Um, but I think expectation is that we you're going to help us to open up a door in the meeting, you know, in a, in a large accounts, the opportunity is 200, 200 K down the line. We've got to get that before our competitors. Our job is to go and create the demand, not to respond to the demands. But that's the big push again, without mentioning any companies, but we work with a software vendor, like a cyber security software vendor that got that coil at the end of last year. Um, very successful company, but very successful because they had lots of inbounds. So people coming onto that website, knowing about that solution. And I think without being rude, it kind of drove a little bit of complacency from the 70. Oh, yeah. And when they, when COVID really eat them and they could not participate to events and generate leads, the leads generated from the website, one that's efficient in bounds, one that's efficient. They turn to us and say, okay, we try to do outbound, but our team, our insight team are struggling to do the outbound. Okay. So they done to us and we are successful in getting the meeting, but the expectation of the Sam's days was that we would give them a meeting with a CIS or fully qualified from. Okay. And we've told them, I said, well, we can do that. But if we do that, we would have to take the first two meetings with the prospect. We need to have a first meeting with them to do the qualification and then potentially a second meeting to do And then we can come back to you with what you want, but I can't do that from a three, four, five minutes phone call with somebody who was never spoke to me before. And they will tell me, you know what, let me tell you about my cyber security posture. Oh yeah. They need you we've been at. Okay. It's and that's, that's why we need to be careful. And we've got shred licensure process. And if people don't understand what we can do for them, and we are very honest about what we can do and what we can do, we just don't want. Well, let me ask you something on a success. I know this is going to be a little bit generic, right. Um, but I worked with a few companies, uh, I wouldn't say any of them are overburdened with a flow of inbound leads right now. Right. So their SDR BDR teams that they're working with are mostly open, right? Yeah. Um, and I think the. Like a huge generalization across these companies. I would say that the, the benchmark is one good meeting booked a week per BDR, SDR given us mostly outline. Does that sound like it's about right to you? Is sound a little bit low, a little bit high where you reckon I know there's lots of bankruptcy. Yeah. If I was to play devil's advocate, I said, define good meeting. Um, but look, I, I know what you're saying. I think it's slow. Uh, I think it's slow because I would probably be around four meetings, the amounts, um, what we task our team to do is anywhere between 10 to 12. Okay. Again, you need to be, you need to be very careful about how you set targets, because you would have clients that have a big name. So for example, if you walk with a Google or an Oracle or. People are maybe more likely to say, oh, you know what, we already walk with them. I don't know that we use the system. So yeah. But yes, it's kind of, and then also, what does Google want to talk to me about? Right. So let's say, so if you're a smaller company, you've got a little bit less of a, of a name and a brand. So you see, you've got to take that in consideration to answer your question very simply. And if we kind of look at an average, I would say that. Two 12 sales accepted leads, which is meeting that, uh, being accepted by the prospect and the, to, to the, the a E should be the average per months. Okay. That's roughly around two to three per week. Okay. Yep. Uh, or 0.5 a day. Right? If you, if you factor in 20 working days in a, in the months, now, what you need to look at is how many of those meetings are truly going to take place. Yeah. Okay. Um, and we are low for drop rates in the us. We're slightly alien in Europe adopt no way, but there is a little bit less commitment in north America from prostate than we have in Europe. But if you go at both 15, 20% drop rates, you've got one of three. We have not articulated the value of the meeting. The meeting has been booked too far ahead or. Um, oh, we just put, putting out in the twisted, the arm of the prospect to say yes for the meeting and then they can sell it because they don't see the value. They just want you to get rid of the gate. And then you enter to get the conversion of the meeting that take place into SQLs, into sales, qualified, lead, early stage opportunity in your system. And for us, the rule of CERN is anywhere between 40 to 55%. Okay. 55% will be the disruptive vendor. 40% would be your more classic. As I mentioned, Didas wife, uh, Sabre, you know, the same doc, lessee that you've already got. George, you got to one.

Andrew: 32:55

So that's the call. That's the conversion from first meeting to opportunity, right? Yeah. Okay. But that seems, that seems above average to me, I know companies working along the 30%, 35% mark, so that that'd be a good result. Yeah.

Ray: 33:15

I mean, again, we are in a way in a comfortable position. Uh, Andrew we've been at it for 10. Um, we've got a management team that, you know, most of our guys would have five, six years experience in running program of that nature. Um, we have data, which data is a big, big, big issue everywhere, particularly in Europe, maybe less. So everybody thinks that getting discovered at August, I mean, for, in the U S is the silver bullet, but the reality is that if your name is in this, all that. And you are CIS and there is Yama by number and you must be pestered by matronly sections of datas, you know, on a daily basis. So sometimes getting out of this database and trading some of our data and actually doing a real prospecting job, which is engaging with companies and trying to find the right people and having conversation and, you know, developing from one conversation to another, like a pinball, you know, going around the place is, is more successful. Um, But that's, that's the confession that we see because we are, I guess we are expressing what we do is so, so yeah, we, we do, we, we do it with a little bit more method.

Andrew: 34:29

You find that your cell, your own sellers, are they engaging with the, the CMO or the CRO most often at startups?

Ray: 34:38

So it depends on the size, Andrew, um, you know, uh, if you want to go, if for the very early stage. We actually speak with VCs and peers and the people who inject the money. That's that's your quickest. Um, so when you speak with those guys, you thought to work with 1, 2, 3 company in that pot for you, the next startup that comes in that needs injection, they just introduce you to the CEO. Nobody thinks about it. People sign on the dotted line and off you go sometimes. So some things we've got to count them down because it's too quick and people will make quick decision, make quick decision to turn them back as well. Um, when the company, when you get to series a B, I would say CMR, CRO and CEO. Okay. Uh, are the other three screaming doesn't know we would want to talk to, when you start to go to C, D E F or APL, you may drop to marketing director or VP say. Okay, so that a version, and then you've got the big ones. If you want to go and sell to Microsoft, if you want to go ahead and sell to Google, uh, someone with a marketing manager or a VP marketing or ad off lead generation director, or VP of region for region could be a fantastic, you know, these are people with massive budgets. So depending on the size we do at that, But, but you're right. Sales and marketing would be the main two personnel. It's usually we start with marketing and some things we've got marketing saying, because marketing that, the money for stuff most of the time and marketing would say some things, oh no, no, we've got everything we need. And even if they say that we go to sales and say, yeah, well, apparently you've got everything in it. And that's where you start to see the Gulf rust.

Andrew: 36:24

Yeah, I could, I could see how, uh, the be very few sales leaders saying, yes, I've got everything I need. Thanks very much. Um, let me, let me change tacks on you a little bit, right? So, uh, there's no better way to get to know Ray them through one of these bullshit LinkedIn polls out there. Uh, so let me read you a couple here. These are not quite as bullshit as some of them, but, uh, let's go with these. So first one is Steve Smith. Who's, who's very active on LinkedIn. Um, his question was so 500 K is added to your 2022 sales budget to increase sales by. 1.5 million. I don't know, from what, but, uh, let's say a big increase in sales. So you're getting, you're getting 500 K to increase sales. Uh, so do you a higher, more sales and marketing operations people B hire a specialist such as operatics or something like that. Hire more FTRs or hard, more AEs. What's going to get you to that, uh, that increase in say. I think it's a stage. So it's, Maywell flocking is electric spread my risk. So I would probably not invest everything into one. If I'm honest with you, I think that would be, there would be a bit silly. Um, I would definitely try to get an expert in the markets to come, but that would also try on my own with my young team. I like the age of sales and marketing or. Because that means that she would get a better understanding of your racial, your numbers. What's working, what's not working and potentially help you to identify bottleneck or people in yachts that at walking that you could also replace or fix that you need to change in your team. So there is the idea of visibility. And understanding of the current process with, with certain marketing operation at the lake, I would definitely invest but security for the first quarter, if my self psychology, six months, nine months. And I want to have a massive Q1 to get things moving. And, you know, we had lots of people in the cyber security space, uh, which I believe is, you know, we don't just do say about security, but I know that Andrew is well, you've got a lot of expenses. And the fact that RSA in San Francisco have been postponed to June. That's messing up with a few plans, right? Just people who've got a six months, nine months out of cycle. They expect RFA. They look at it, you know, rub their eyes. It's you? That's two hundred and fifty five hundred, six hundred leads there. And then for my 5,800 K investment in that booze, guess what. Yeah. And what you're going to do in June with RSA is 2023 number. Now it's not 2022. So what do you do? So I'll take my 500 K and cuts it in two. And I think to give you on the side, say, I'd say outsource sales specialist in Q1, a big push to see what. I would take a cell that I would put in sales and marketing operation, so I can get a better understanding of my lead for process what's working where the, my best sellers with bang and why. And I would keep the rest in my back pockets because if one of those two don't work, I need to probably get to da. Yeah. Getting a ticket to a place where my bus comes, find me because I don't do my, but that's a classic example of a poll is trying to get simple answers to complex problem. And then you get denser. I think, you know, it's just that, and it's very difficult because you've, it's very difficult without having a very clear use case of where the company. Uh, if you tell me this is how much pipeline you've got, how many sales people you've got the conversion rate you've got, you can make, obviously this is, as you say, it's a bit bullshit. It's like, yeah, no, those spores are here so people can get some likes and some stuff it's about the high price. It's about engagement, but it's still an interesting question. Yeah. Last one then, uh, on the, on the LinkedIn poll. So Adam pack hard. When on a sales call, do you a use a script of some sort be no strep, but follow a framework or see, do a different call each and every time. Um, oh, okay. Um, so if, if, if it's me, I'm definitely in the second grade. But I've got to say something, you know, again, if I was to set up heretics, I've been at it for 10 years. There is not one question you can ask me. I don't have an ensemble. There is not one objection that I, you know, it's always the same objection. Right? So we've got obviously a way to, on sort of subsection a way that we believe is smart. A way that we believe this is intelligent, whether it's, we believe is honest. Um, But I don't like to have a scripted approach. I don't like to be rigid when I go to a meeting, I need, I need to read the room. You know, I need to see if I'm with someone that wants to go fast and want to tell me about the problem. If that's the case. I don't care if I speak for It's not about me. That meeting is about them. I want to hear about the issues and I'm here to get information. I'm not here to tell them about what if people, you spend an hour with someone at Genesis? Well, sorry. I've been speaking too much into you're about to make product. What do you guys do at. I think that's a successful, I think that's a successful call because you've been very good at asking question. You've been very good at doing solution setting. You have, you clearly are a good service person because you've got empathy and you care about the problem of the person you don't jump into. So I am glad you say that because we do that now you just keep on digging, keep on digging, keep on uncovering. Yeah. And so I liked, but sometimes you get to call it. You know, I've, I've, we've got to February Australia customers and, you know, they usually already have a, they like to give it more directive and they like to start with the business model fast. And they, the one I will speak about customers, um, which is a terrible way to start the meeting because, you know, you speak about the costs without speaking of the value. So, but that's fine. So you've got to be ready for that. So I th I think I would have been the second position, so I would have a framework. I know what I want to deliver. Some of it will be a little bit scripted when I get to the topic, but I want to read the room and make sure that the people get what they want from the meeting. Yeah. Right. Well, that's kind of how I would think about it as well. I think that, I think as you get more senior. Your framework is embedded in your mind. Anyway, as you get more junior, they need more help. They need more structure because they're, they don't have the experience that someone like you have, right? It's like hiring an, a, your company, you know, next week and somehow expecting them to operate like you do within a few weeks without giving them much help is not very effective to help them ramp right now. It's it's I think it's, it's also being what they see from the sellers gay. Now Timmy's passion is very important. Do they care about what they are selling? Do they actually believe in it? You know, do they it's super important? Uh, I, the things when people are saying, oh yeah, that gate, that gate was, could sell ice to his chemo. I mean, it's nothing to me. It's just like, I don't get that. Like, w it's not about speaking at them or trying to sell something. I mean, you can do that. If you do B to C potentially, or you send to low-level people's stuff for like $50, whatever, but you want to start a complex, then you want to help them to find the budget to buy your stuff because they don't have a line of budget for it. And you're going to be a bit smarter than that. Yeah, for sure. Well, listen, really I've enjoyed the conversation today. Uh, covered a lot of ground. I love one snippet was gamification for attitude, uh, pay for results. I really love that framing of how to think about, you know, the, the compensation and the motivation of the team that you're working with. So there's a bunch of nuggets in here. I'll, I'll call them out for everyone afterwards, but, uh, I love the conversation. If someone wants to get hold of you and they want to talk about. Uh, this whole area and getting some help. How would they get ahold of you show? Um, well, I'm quite very active on, uh, on, on LinkedIn. So my name is There is a couple of things, but, you know, um, um, you should find me, I should, I should come somewhere or on your knees. A U R E L I E N, which is M or w T I E R. My email address is earlier at operatics. Uh, not that com um but anything else? So opportunities or P E R a T I X company is very active on LinkedIn. You should take operatics, you'll find our websites. You should take lots of things about SDR performance and things. You'll find our website. Um, but yeah, I mean the internet LinkedIn is probably the best way. Sounds good. All right. Thanks again for your time. Pleasure.