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Welcome to Pay Attention, where Attention's CEO and Founder, Anis Bennaceur, interviews some of the smartest minds in sales, growth, and product leadership.
Anis Bennaceur (00:01.422)
Hi Michael, how's it going?
Mickael (Agicap) (00:04.229)
Hi Anis, good and you?
Anis Bennaceur (00:06.51)
I'm doing great, thank you. Very excited to have you on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening or watching this, let me introduce very briefly Michael. Michael is the Chief Revenue Officer over at Agicap. Michael, I'll let you complete what I just introduced you with.
Mickael (Agicap) (00:25.733)
Sure. Hi everyone. I am Michael, Chief Revenue Officer of AGICAP, the leading cash flow management in Europe and hopefully soon in the US for SMEs and mid -market companies. And before that, I was an entrepreneur in a completely different field in augmented reality. And before that, I worked in different startups in marketing and data analyst roles.
Anis Bennaceur (00:54.19)
Sweet, sweet, sweet, thank you. So I love to always start with this question. I'd love to know about the three pivotal moments, sorry, I'm gonna redo it. So let's dig in. I would love to know about the three pivotal moments in your career that made you where you are and who you are today.
Mickael (Agicap) (01:17.253)
Yeah, so yeah, now that it's been a while, I can definitely connect the dots if I look back at my career so far. First of all, I kind of randomly landed in the world of tech startups because after I graduated from Parisian Business School, my only focus was to go work in Asia. And I was more into classic.
sectors like automotive or consumer goods, this kind of stuff. I applied to, for example, the graduate program of Procter & Gamble in Asia. It didn't happen. Instead, I became the marketing manager of a tech startup in Israel that was completely unexpected. And this is how I ended up in tech startup and I loved it. And so that's why I stayed in this field after my first year in this tech startup.
back then called NetVizio. So that was the first pivotal moment to get me into tech. Then something was also not planned or that happened in a random way. It was the way I became an entrepreneur in the first place. I randomly met the person who would become my co -founder at a startup event at which I was not supposed to attend in Paris. I was supposed to go to the beer festival in Germany and last minute say, you know what?
I'm not gonna go, I have a good feeling about this tech event. And it ended up being the event where I met my co -founder and worked with him for the next eight years. So you never know. And last but not least, I ended up at AgiCap. So after I left my own startup, I really thought about some sectors I was interested in. And one of the topics was cash flow management.
So I researched on Google, and it happened that the most promising startup in cash flow management in France was Agicap based in Lyon, where I was also living at the time. So it was also quite a coincidence. And when I connected with the co -founders, they were also just closing their first significant round of funding. So it was also perfect timing to hire someone like me. So.
Anis Bennaceur (03:35.918)
I love that. I absolutely love that. I have so many questions around this. First one is, so why specifically cash flow management, right? You, as a previous entrepreneur and founder, what made you so attracted about or into cash flow management?
Mickael (Agicap) (03:57.893)
Yeah, well, when I thought about my own experience as an entrepreneur, I really tried to put the finger on the pain points that I experienced myself and where I was like, okay, why is there not a proper B2B software, SaaS software dealing with this? And cash flow management was one of these topics. It was of course super critical for me as an entrepreneur and that...
We still had to manage manually by extracting the bank statements and putting them in a Google Sheet and categorizing everything by hand. And we tried to get the software in place. We had demos with Sage integrated with Salesforce. It was just a mess. It just didn't work. And so it's crazy. It's so critical. How come there was no proper?
tool dealing with it. And this is how I got interested in the topic, and again this is how I found out about Agilent.
Anis Bennaceur (05:02.382)
That's interesting, right? Because you are a former founder, entrepreneur, and in a way, you had that challenge, that pain point. Why didn't you start your own startup around that instead of joining another startup that had just raised within that topic? Were you burnt about? Yeah, sorry, go for it.
Mickael (Agicap) (05:22.053)
Well, no, that's a good question. This would have been an option. But honestly, I felt like they had been working on the product for almost three years and they just reached the point where they had something quite mature. I mean, they really knew what they were doing and they seemed like they had found product market fit. And I was like, okay, it really makes sense to team up and secure a decent...
shares like a stock option to also be like in an entrepreneurial position and make sure that if this thing flies it will be as good as creating my own company and so that was my bet like join them as an early employee and really help them crack the game and yeah make sure that there was also some equity at stake so financial incentives are like...
Anis Bennaceur (06:20.398)
Yeah, of course. Most founders actually fail at finding product market fit and it seemed like that company, AzurGap, had found product market fit when you joined them. Since you joined them, did you feel like they actually had the product market fit that they described to you or do you think that it got just tighter and tighter over the years? And you're like just looking back and thinking, oh my God, I thought we had product market fit, but we did not have real product market fit until a certain point.
Mickael (Agicap) (06:50.629)
No, actually, I think it was actual product market feeds the day I joined. But when I started AgiCap, we really focused on small companies. And back then, the average basket price was like 50, 60 euros per month, so quite much smaller than what it is today. And so we've constantly been pushing up market since. And as you push up market, of course, your product market fit evolves. And what was required for good product market fit in small companies is
definitely not the same challenges, not the same product requirements, not the same way to generate demand, to close, to serve, which is interesting. So as your company evolves and your customer segments evolve, so does your product market fit. So we need to constantly challenge it and evolve it.
Anis Bennaceur (07:39.534)
So that is a great segue into a question that I wanted to ask you. It seemed like as your product market evolved, also I assume your role and responsibilities at the company evolved and changed. My main question is, how did you manage those shifts? And how did you ensure that you succeeded in each of these different phases?
Mickael (Agicap) (08:01.573)
Yeah, sure. So I was initially hired at Agicap as the first chief marketing officer. And here the way we operated is really to take the acquisition channels one after the other and try to launch each channel in a very operational way myself. Of course, I had some great team members with me, but I was really like hands on in launching the channel, full focus on.
Okay, let's launch paid marketing, Google Ads, and then display ads, and see how it goes, and iterate. Work like super hands -on. Back in the days, I shot the first video testimonials myself with my iPhone. I went to the client, shot the video, I edited in the train back to the office, and the Facebook ad was live the day after. And boom, you get your first leads coming.
You see that the unit economics work, that you have a good payback on the speeds. And you push it, you push it, you push it. And then when it starts being stable, you re -delegate and you move to the next one. SEO, OK, how can we create a scalable SEO engine at Agigap? Then like gross marketing, then field marketing and webinars, et cetera, et cetera. So it was really like sequential, not trying to do everything at once, but.
being hyper -focused, hyper -operational to re -understand the core drivers and make sure the execution was flawless. Because of course, these are very common channels. So the devil is in the details and really executing very, very well to make it work and then delegate. So that was more of the game as a CMO than when I transitioned to CRO. The approach was a little bit different because it's a full funnel approach. And the point is really to have a good
360 understanding of your revenue equation and your revenue drivers and retention drivers. And so here, the approach was more to say, okay, first of all, let's have good data foundation in place because it was the time it was still a bit of a mess. So it's like, let's determine our revenue equation. We understand our benchmark and our KPIs, each step of the funnel, and then build a foundation to have a good monitoring and forecasting.
Mickael (Agicap) (10:24.101)
infrastructure and dashboard every step of the funnel. So that's when we created the data team. One of the first actions was to create the data team and establish this revenue framework, putting in place Google Cloud Platform, Looker, looking at the data, performance data to make sure we had a really good benchmark every step of the way. And then when this was in place, it was more focused on...
driving inbound and outbound acquisition playbook in collaboration with the country managers and the local leaders. And we try to replicate in every geography what had been successful in our initial home market in France. And yeah, on the way, I also spend a lot of time interviewing more experienced CROs who have been at the job for a few years, who give me some guidance on how to get better at this game.
And now, even now, like a few months ago, I took over alliances, global alliances on top of revenue management. And same, I always try to find a good balance between very operational, so like taking some topics directly myself and executing myself, like talking to the before in accounting or...
reowning some partner accounts directly to really understand what it takes. And in parallel, be more into like management and I try to amplify what works with the other team and delegate a lot.
Anis Bennaceur (12:00.366)
That makes sense. One of the things that you just said here is, so you moved on from CMO to CRO, and you took over kind of like the full revenue, the full revenue funnel, right, including marketing, including sales, including later on alliances and partnerships. You know, today, a big majority of the CROs have kind of like a background in sales.
My question to you is, with your background in marketing, what do you think made you an exceptional CRO compared to what most CROs with a traditional sales background do or have? And also maybe what were some of the challenges that you encountered moving from CMO to CRO?
Mickael (Agicap) (12:53.733)
So, first of all, yes, I had more experience in marketing, but luckily I also had a chance at my previous startup to do enterprise sales myself. So I kind of had a foot in both worlds already. And I think there was also a third competency that we underestimate. It's like the data -driven aspect. I was also a data analyst for a few months, and this was also really part of my mindset and skill set.
Uh, to be super driven, but, but your point, I mean, um, the interesting part in coming from marketing, I think it really allowed me when I started at AgiCap to really first be focused on understanding the value proposition and try to really put the finger on why do customers buy and love AgiCap and put the full focus on, uh, this value prop.
to really then combine with the Technicity of Acquisition channel, have an explosive demand gen that will then find a way to close all these opportunities. And we had good salespeople when I joined, but we didn't have enough demand gens. So the point was, OK, how do you accelerate demand generation in a scalable way? And that's why my approach when I started at Agilent was first to interview a lot of customers.
So I did like 50, 100 customer interviews in the first weeks and months. Then, full focus on video testimonials to really like, that will also help summarize the value proposition in a consistent way and really put the highlight on what customers expect from us, what do they say about us, how do they perceive the value proposition. And then this became also the core of our demand generation engine with ads.
that were based on this testimonial. And I think that...
Mickael (Agicap) (14:57.061)
If you take it the other way around, if we did not have like this demand gen first approach and strong focus on the value prop, then it's easier to solely focused on closing to initially crack it. Cause yes, you will close the initial deals you have, but it's difficult to find scalability and multiplying by five, by 10, by 100. Your opportunities. If you don't have this deep marketing knowledge of value prop.
how to highlight it, amplify it, and how to make it super actionable through your different channels.
Anis Bennaceur (15:34.926)
Yeah, absolutely agree with you. Also one of the things that a lot of people get wrong is that if they put too much emphasis on sales instead of demand gen at first.
Deal cycles are going to be longer and things are not going to convert as more intensely as if you put in a bigger emphasis and effort into marketing and demand gen first, right? Kind of that part just unlocks a lot of things in sales. One of the other things that you just talked about was internationalization, right? I feel like you're one of the revenue leaders who really got this figured out better than a lot of
other companies. And my question to you is, can you explain how you think about creating a scalable revenue playbook for different markets internationally and what that looks like at Agilent?
Mickael (Agicap) (16:27.333)
I mean, in our case, the way we internationalized is our first focus was our home market, France. Then one year after I joined, we launched Germany, and then we launched Italy, then we launched Spain. Authorities was the other way around, Germany, Spain, Italy, UK. And now we are starting to launch the US remotely from Europe. So we had like an accelerated pace of...
international development. And luckily for us, cash flow management is a category that replicates super well internationally compared to other product categories like HR or accounting where you need to adapt your product and your approach a lot. In our case, it was like, we can talk more about it, but it was quite easy to adapt and launch. But still, the first step is really to...
re -challenge your product market fit in each new geography. And so it means that like, you need to challenge your assumption and you need to talk as fast as you can to prospect in the new target market and present them the tool and see if it fits, see if they tick, see if they see the same value proposition that you have in the other market or not.
And so at the beginning, when we launched a new geography, we don't focus too much on the basket price. So we like get the first customers, prove that there is interest, that they are ready to pay, that the onboarding as well goes well, that they are happy with the actual product once it's implemented. And like focus on learning what you need to learn. And then you focus on your business metric. Okay, now push up the basket price, improve your closing rate, et cetera.
The first step is really to re -challenge your product market fit and do it well, do it fast, talk to prospects as fast as you can. So don't be too theoretical about it. And appear like a local player. So it's also something we really put a focus on. We did not present ourselves as, hey, we're the French, we are the leader in France in cash flow management, and here we come to Germany and Italy.
Mickael (Agicap) (18:51.461)
No, I mean, we really put the focus on looking like a local player. And so that's why we tried quickly to have like also video testimonial with local companies. So all the marketing and all the communication we will do in each geography will be based on local customers in everything we do. And that also worked super well. And then once you have like this initial product market fit, so OK, same value prop.
technical requirements, everything looks green. Then you can iterate on your equation and look at your top performers and each step of the funnel to really have a scalable and repeatable revenue playbook. So how many opportunities per month do my account executives need? Where these opportunities would come from? What closing rates do they need to hit? Average basket price, et cetera, to hit their quota.
speed of activation of new customers, etc. And then these things will slightly differ from one geography to the other. So like the revenue equation in Germany is not the same revenue equation as the one we have in France or in Italy. For example, in countries like Germany and the UK, there is more focus on really pricing high and target a higher basket price because in these countries the prospects are very demanding.
but they have good capacity to pay, where like in Italy for example, it would be more volume game and less focus on the basket price. So the equation would really slightly differ.
Anis Bennaceur (20:31.598)
That's really interesting, right? So it seems like you're trying to find product market fit so many times at different countries, or more specifically, maybe like a go -to -market fit, which is kind of a component of product market fit. That being said, so as you're, let's say, going to Germany, who had, as you said, a higher...
you know, one a day higher pricing or demand a day higher pricing in a way. How did that impact the evolution of your product? Right. Because at the end of the day, I assume it's the same product that you sell across all geographies. Did you have to kind of adapt the product to specific countries? How did you have to go about that and how do you communicate this with the rest of the oracle for a ad.
Mickael (Agicap) (21:12.197)
Mm -hmm.
Mickael (Agicap) (21:25.029)
So of course there are a few things we need to adapt, but like I said, it's quite straightforward compared to other product categories. In our case, there are not so many regulatory constraints across Europe for cash flow management. So the point is to ensure that you integrate well with the banks. So when you launch a new geography, you need to make sure that you can integrate well with the local banks and local financial tools. And of course, some of the ERPs and financial tools are the same across Europe.
You have SAP, you have a Twitch, you have Sage, you know, this geography. But there are also some local players that sometimes are quite strong. Or some things like Dateth in Germany, for example, if you know about the German market, you have heard about Dateth, which is like a huge kind of monopoly in accounting in Germany. And so that's a huge topic. So you need to know these things in advance and know what you really need to deliver.
But then in terms of we never prioritize like a feature development specifically for a geography. It's really like you need to ensure that like the data integration, like the fundamentals of the product where we work pretty well. So banking data aggregation, financial data aggregation from the different financing tools. But then for the features themselves, we try to stay consistent and to make trade -off.
based on what will maximize the value for the company as a whole and not to please the Germans or the Italians or the French.
Anis Bennaceur (23:04.59)
I see. And do you have kind of a story where you went with some specific assumptions, even though, as you said, you always kind of like went in completely with a blank slate in a new geography? Did you even have any assumptions about a country where you thought, we believe this might work out this way, and you got things wrong?
and had to very quickly iterate in any of the European countries.
Mickael (Agicap) (23:35.301)
Yeah, actually in both ways. I mean, sometimes we are positively surprised and sometimes we are not. So to take a couple of examples, for example, one of our hypothesis that Agicap was really well suited for continental Europe because in continental Europe, accounting is really complex and different from one country to the other, which makes like, like there is a big gap between cash flow management and accounting in continental Europe.
So your accounting tool never does cash flow management well. There are some modules, but they are more or less like really poor and they don't fit. And our assumption was it would be completely different in outside Europe and for example, like outside continental Europe, but for example, in UK or in the US, where our assumption was, well, you know, there's not such a gap between accounting and cash in these geographies.
So we could probably create less value or there will be less of any, there will be less financial complexity. So potentially there's value for AgiCap. And actually this proved to be completely wrong. They really, the value proposition really resonated for different reasons. Of course there is not such a gap, but still the need to do like proper cash forecasting to really be able to monitor your, all your bank accounts and all your entities in real time.
All these things still matter a lot, even if there are accounting -based cash flow management existed, but still it didn't feel the need. So this was a positive surprise. And on the more negative sides, for example, we had some struggles in the Dutch market, where to us, we took it as like a small Germany, so like a high basket price, very mature country, et cetera.
And actually, uh, didn't work as expected for four different reasons, but like some things that were surprising was like companies over there were like super demanding and like everything had to be a hundred percent fully automated or there was no, uh, uh,
Mickael (Agicap) (25:54.405)
had to say everything had to be fully automated or the wooden box like okay, let's you understand that like sometimes you have some banks or some financial tools that don't natively integrate and we do the best we can. No, it's not fully automated. We don't buy it. Wow. And this was like consistent, not like a caricature. It's like, okay, well, maybe we are not fully ready for the Dutch market. So these things happen, but that's why you need to constantly explore and.
Anis Bennaceur (26:23.758)
That's really interesting. We kind of noticed the same thing. Even our scale, some specific markets are a lot more demanding than other ones. And you might have some initial assumptions, and you might be very surprised, which is always to the good or to the bad. So speaking of getting things wrong, I'd love to know, in your opinion, what do you think most
executives get wrong when they try to go cross -country.
Mickael (Agicap) (26:58.309)
First of all, things sometimes tend to underestimate or they don't explore enough the level of adaptation needed to launch in a new geography. So, I mean, are they doing it in a way that is too theoretical instead of trying to really talk to prospect as fast as you can, because they will tell you what you really need to know to adapt to this new geography.
So if you do your market research and exploration, just go talk to Prospect. Don't look for market study and so on. Just talk to Prospect as fast as you can. The second biggest mistake is on the first recruitment. These are so critical when you open a new geography and we've seen it again and again. The first salespeople, the sales leader, the first marketing people you hire, they will reset the first 10.
Five, 10 employees will set the standard as the geography will grow. And it's very hard to turn around when you had a false start. So if you make a mistake on this first recruitment, that takes a long time. It's very painful to iterate. So do it well.
Take your time to recruit the right people that have this entrepreneurial spirit, that are really also ambitious, that want to crack it at any cost. That's so important. And then I would say maybe the last one, some organization, like they want to expand internationally, but they don't really have the global leadership in place to really do it well. So either there is no CRO or there is no strong global sense leader or C -levels.
who are really in charge of diffusing these best practices and establishing this like common performance paybook across all geographies. If you really want to do it well, it takes some time. It's not like, okay, I'm the CEO, I will go one day per month to Germany to give a bit of help. No, it has to be like super intense and structured to make sure that you establish the same performance revenue foundation.
Mickael (Agicap) (29:18.853)
in your new geographies. And so that was one of my key focuses, spending a lot of time on this, to coach, to educate, to monitor, to challenge, to make sure that everything is working as it should.
Anis Bennaceur (29:31.886)
That makes no sense. I absolutely think that you're right there. And speaking of performance and making sure that local teams perform, one of the things that I believe you guys at Agilent Cap absolutely nailed is the incentive system. I'd love to hear more about your thoughts. Can you share some insight as to how you thought around?
marketing, ZR, BDR, Teams, and effective systems and their relationships to your revenue goals.
Mickael (Agicap) (30:06.053)
Right. So one of the unique things we have established at AGiCap is variable compensation that is almost 100 % aligned on MRR. That's a revenue target. So to give you, and in a quite extreme way. So to my knowledge, I don't know any other scale up where this is the case, 100 % of the variable of our BDRs is based on closed MRR.
Not pipeline generation, not volume of new qualified opportunities, no. Just based on what actually closes. So it's great. And it's okay. Even like now we focus on the mid -market, the sell cycle might take like three to six months, but on a rolling basis, it's definitely manageable. And it also makes the top performer really...
outperform the colleagues also financially speaking with this kind of revenue scheme and Same for marketing so marketing saying it's not like an actual Base Bible. It's not pipeline generation. It's based on the MRR generated from the marketing channels and And it has a lot of positive effect because it forces everyone to be obsessed about this revenue impact and
not pipeline, revenue, and to do the extra mile to make sure, because no, no, this is like a marathon, right? You're one runner in a longer race, and you need to make sure that you would put the next runner in the, not marathon, sorry, like a relay, that you put the next runner in the best position to continue the run. Also, marketing will be obsessed about the quality of leads, say, they pass.
Anis Bennaceur (31:30.83)
Mm -hmm.
Mickael (Agicap) (32:00.389)
to the SDRs and it will be also very challenging on how the SDRs actually treat this lead. And if they don't have this direct incentive on through the new generation, they're like, no, we've done our share. These are the MQLs, these are the leads now. It's your business to do whatever you can with them. No, you really get involved into the next step and same for SDRs. It really forces them to co -work very closely with the account executives as a team.
to make sure the deal close. And so they work together on like this joint closing plan. The A's will ask these SDRs, okay, maybe you can do this extra hunting and try to integrate this other stakeholder in the deal. And the SDR will do it because it's not like, yeah, I already booked my opportunity, now it's your work. It's like, no, we want to make it close with you. We are free aligned in our interest. And that, at least for us, that works.
really well and I think it's really a game changer.
Anis Bennaceur (33:02.03)
Did you guys actually transition from a pipeline plus MR incentive to full MR, or was that since the beginning?
Mickael (Agicap) (33:11.781)
It was since the beginning, as crazy as it sounds, it was crazy. From the beginning, it was all about revenue. Even my initial target when I joined as a CMO, the CMO first variable is triple the ARR and you get your first milestone based variable. So it was company -wide MRR, not pipeline generation from marketing.
Anis Bennaceur (33:38.702)
So how were people reacting, let's say, at the marketing level or the business development level saying, yes, but sure, we have control on pipeline, but actually sales controls the conversion rates, right? Did you ever have some pushback around that, and how did you deal with it?
Mickael (Agicap) (34:03.653)
Of course, there is always this type of pushback, but again, what matters is the alignment. I mean, the sales will always complain that the demos are not good enough, and marketing and BDRs will complain that the salespeople are not good enough at closing. So, that's why, exactly to avoid this kind of lose -lose situation, like say, guys, we're all aligned that ultimately we win if the revenue comes. Yes.
Yes, we agree. Okay, so just make sure that together as a team we do what it takes to make it happen. And for example, now with marketing it also forces a realignment on, okay, we are going up market, so how can we have more control from marketing perspective to only deliver MQLs that are above 10 million euros of annual revenue?
for example, and what does it take for our inbound SDRs to manage this type of leads compared to the smaller ones they were used to before? And how can we help them in this process to also create new enablement materials to align with them? So, I mean, and this type of conversations are not like theoretical. I mean, we have like in each geography every month, we have a...
So we have a monthly inbound performance review and outbound performance review. And most of the topic is this is to work on this alignment. So inbound performance review, you have marketing and you have the salespeople of this geography talking together, reviewing the path together, what worked, what didn't work and what can we do to collectively hit the target next month. And same outbound, you have the outbound SDR leaders and the closing leaders.
And we see like, okay, what was the percentage of demos going directly to close last right after the demo? What does it say about the quality? How can we adjust? So, I know it's become so natural and so part of the DNA of Agicap that now there was no pushback on the practice, but really like full alignment on yes, this is the best way to succeed as a team and to be focused on the concrete things.
Mickael (Agicap) (36:29.829)
can put in place on both sides to make the revenue come.
Anis Bennaceur (36:35.15)
That's actually why I was going to ask you, how do you make sure concretely, what are the steps that you put in place to make sure that everything is aligned? So it seems like you guys have a very thought out process about making sure that everyone speaks in a recurring pace. And.
make sure that both the inbound, outbound, everything is very well defined and everyone agrees with each other. I'm sure a lot of teams actually get that wrong and don't really have these teams communicate with each other.
I have another question kind of related to some of the metrics that you guys put in place, right? Such as onboarded MRR, activated MRR over at your teams. So kind of what led to the creation of these metrics and how do they complement traditional metrics?
Mickael (Agicap) (37:33.381)
Yeah. So I think we had this like typical issue at some point where our stock of customers started to grow at an accelerated pace where on the acquisition side, like with marketing and sales, there was a very clean and clear MRR funnel and benchmark every step of the way. And when we moved to CS, then it kind of became of a black box.
where they had a really like an account -based perspective. So we did not talk about revenue anymore. We were just talking about clients and accounts and what's the stage of this account. It's like, okay, but like revenue wise, what does it mean? Where are we at? Like we did not speak the same language and it was also not the same way to operate because on the acquisition side, we had this benchmark, the speed of execution and so on. And so...
Okay, we need to run at the same pace between acquisition and customer success and we need to have the same language and the same language has to be MRR. So instead of talking about accounts, let's talk about MRR on the CS side with two key stages. One is onboarded MRR. So I give you 1000 euro of MRR from sales. Now you need to onboard this 1000 euro of MRR as soon as...
as fast as you can. So usually within the first three months and this is your goal. And so as an on -boarder, you have a goal of on -boarded MRR. So we call it OMRR. So same like sales guys, you need to generate like 6 ,000 euros of new MRR per month. On -boarder, you need to onboard to bit less, roughly 4, 4 .5K of OMRR per month. And then...
the role of account managers, so the one taking over customer that had been onboarded. Their goal is to make sure that they are autonomous and that they can use a GCAP well post onboarding. And they have an AMRR goal, activated MRR. And that's great because then you have end to end, you have this MRR view with a complete funnel with the same metric.
Mickael (Agicap) (39:53.797)
And then of course there are like more traditional metrics like gross revenue retention, net revenue retention, that are also super critical in customer success. But to us, it was really on this onboarding phase and this activation phase of your customers that we were not happy with the account -based view and we really wanted to refocus it on revenue like the rest of the organization.
Anis Bennaceur (40:16.814)
makes sense. It's basically these sub -metrics around MRR that are actually finally aligning everything towards MRR and every team now is kind of like in the team sports just doing their best to contribute to the final MRR target.
In general, a lot of people just talk about selling to CFOs. I know that's something that you're very good at over at Agicap. What do you think is your secret?
Mickael (Agicap) (40:50.917)
So of course, CFOs is one of the key personas we talk to because usually they are one of the decision makers for a cash flow management platform like Agilent. And I think what makes us good at it, when we speak to CFOs, is that we try to segment the value proposition into three categories. So.
It's not just the ROI. Of course, ROI is an important part of it, but we try to split operational value. So how it's going to help your team to manage cash flow management in a more reliable way, faster, less manual work, et cetera, et cetera. Financial impact, how you as a CFO will be able to reduce the cost of funding because you forecast well, so you will just...
raise the debt or use factoring when you need it and not more. Or if you have excess cash, you have the possibility to place this excess cash with high interest rate and it will generate a new stream of financial revenue. So financial impact and strategic impact. Because the CFOs are also like business partner and we need to show like how your tool will help the whole company succeed.
And of course, it also has to do with, OK, they will go through M &A. So when you do M &A, cash flow management is critical because you also need to make sure you keep this 360 view on the cash flow performance of the company. You need to integrate new entities. You need to make sure that if you raise debt to finance M &A that you are in position to pay it back, to have a good cash performance, et cetera, et cetera.
So it was really like operational value, financial value, strategic value, and always be obsessed about these three components that made the strike stand out and not just be like, okay, you have like 25 % ROI on whatever metric you choose at Gcap. And the other thing is what I think people tend to underestimate when they sell to CFOs.
Mickael (Agicap) (43:09.669)
especially in the current environment where there is a lot of uncertainty, you need to de -risk their job. So you need to put them in a position where there will be less risk, not more risk, thanks to your platform. Which in our case means like you have more reliability. We sell peace of mind at the end of the day. If you have a handicap, you will have peace of mind on your cash, and that's what they want.
They don't need another chefware or some kind of fancy platform where they're not exactly sure they're going to get the value out of it. So that's also de -risking is also super, super important.
Anis Bennaceur (43:51.886)
Speaking of de -risking, how does that play with including maybe CEOs in the conversation, making sure that other stakeholders are aligned? I'm sure CEOs have a voice in these types of decisions, right?
Mickael (Agicap) (44:07.813)
All right. Yeah, I think that's another mistake we see as we did ourselves for some time. It's like to focus exclusively on what you consider as your natural persona. So, you know, okay, like the CFO. And then what's the typical mistake? You run the entire sales process with the CFO. You send your, whatever, 25K proposal for an annual license. And then boom, oh, no, go.
No -go from the CEO. The CFO did the internal presentation to the CEO. And no -go based on budget because the CEO didn't fully get the value of the platform. And it also happens a lot because sometimes CFOs will push themselves to say, no, no, this is my thing. That's my project. No need for you to talk directly to my CEO. I will take care of it. This is internal communication. So the whole point is to do it in a smart way so you can include and talk to the CEO directly. We...
while keeping your CFO as a friend and not making him feel that you are bypassing him or her by talking to his boss. And so there are different ways we do it. First of all, we try to start with a CEO. So you talk to the CEO first in your call call or in your marketing approach. So the CEO will tell you to go talk to his CFO, but then it makes it much easier to keep him updated on...
the demos and the discussion and also play it in a smart way where you know the CFO will have like 80 % of the information. But I would still like you to participate to a custom shorter demo really focused on the value proposition for you, the CEO. So it's kind of the let their team digest most of the complexity and they will hear directly from you what's most interesting part in terms of strategic impact.
for the company. And this also works really well to try to differentiate the demo. I have one demo that is like CFO focused, one demo and value prop that is more CEO focused. And I, and you manage both to take the deal to the finish line.
Anis Bennaceur (46:20.654)
What do you think are the differences in terms of values and benefits to CEOs versus CFOs? What makes CEOs tick differently versus CFOs?
Mickael (Agicap) (46:32.933)
But typically the CFOs, they will be also very process oriented. So how can you like, yeah, streamline my cash flow management process? How can you help me make better reporting and faster reporting and these kind of things? So because they are very process oriented, you need to talk about the product and the integration and the data flow and all of these things in a very detailed way.
So of course, the conversation will be also quite heavy on product and not only on the value prop. COs, they don't really care about this stuff. So we really need to talk business. Tell me about what are the biggest. And it's crazy, but we will never ask the CO, OK, tell me about your cash flow management process. So you know.
What are the three important objectives for your company as a whole in the next three years? We want to double revenue and we're going to do that through intense M &A and potentially raise funds and we want to launch this new geography. Okay, great. And so cash flow will be an important component, I suppose, in this growth strategy. How could it go wrong? And they will tell you what can go wrong. And a lot of times they will tell you what went wrong in the past and that they don't want to replicate again.
And this is where you can like bridge the gap and show them the value of a platform like yours, like AgiCap in our case, to really sell them a solid story. So not the product, but show like, well, and you talk about the peers, like, oh, we also work with the CEO of this company, we're in the same situation, this is how we help them. So more like fully focused on business goals and how you're...
your platform will help.
Anis Bennaceur (48:27.086)
Yeah, I see a lot of just even account executives, reps who just speak the same language to different personas and absolutely get it wrong, right? And don't understand that different drivers, people have different drivers and different motives and different ways they view their positions in their business. This is awesome, Michael. One last question maybe. Who are some companies who you think did an incredible job at?
Mickael (Agicap) (48:44.869)
Exactly.
Anis Bennaceur (48:57.134)
nailing their go -to -market or three revenue leaders, go -to -market leaders, anyone. It doesn't even have to be three, just anyone that you think have done a tremendous job at driving revenue for their companies.
Mickael (Agicap) (49:15.013)
Yeah, maybe to be nice to one of our French peers, I think the guys at Canton Square, they did a really great job in scaling also globally, starting from France, then Europe, now the world. And we also talk on a regular basis with some of their executives and their CRO, Pierre Casanova and their CMO, Geoffrey Dion, they help me on a regular basis to also track my own pay book.
And they did an amazing job themselves. So ContentSquare would be a great speaker, I think.
Anis Bennaceur (49:51.278)
We'll definitely reach out to them. Michael, thank you so much again. This was incredible. Have a great rest of your day and I'll chat with you soon.
Mickael (Agicap) (49:58.533)
Thank you, bye everyone.