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If you think outbound is dead, you’re either lying or you’re bad at it.
Quotas keep rising, your people are grinding, and the pipeline isn’t growing. It’s an equation that drives you mad. While everyone wants more opportunities, only a few know how to build an outbound culture that delivers.
I’m Todd Busler, former VP of Sales, now co-founder of Champify, and I’ve spent my career sharpening how to build a company pipeline that’s self-sufficient.
On this show, I’m talking to sales leaders who have cracked the outbound code. They’ve built an outbound culture beyond their SDRs and scaled repeatable systems that drive real pipeline without relying on hacks.
We’ll break down the winning plays, processes, and frameworks behind growing that outbound muscle to help you get results faster.
No fluff. No hacks. Real strategies from real people who have done it so you can stop guessing and start opening.
[00:00:00] Em Daigle: No accountant is ever gonna be upset with an AE for not understanding how to run a specific report, never going to be a not.
[00:00:09] Em Daigle: But if you try and answer it or you try and like twist it some other way and you don't know what you're talking about and the value, the questions to ask, that's where you're gonna start to lose some of that trust and that will impact you negatively.
[00:00:23]
[00:00:53] Todd Busler: Hey everyone. My guest today is Em Daigle. She started her career as an accountant. Very rare for people in sales leadership.
[00:01:01] Todd Busler: But with that deep understanding, she eventually joined an accounting software firm that was later acquired by category leader Zuora. In this episode, she explains why her non-traditional background was a benefit, not a ding, and how that helped her lead and build large, successful go-to-market teams.
[00:01:20] Todd Busler: Recently, she started her own company and she explains the logic behind it, what's been happening in sales, and why she's excited about the next couple years. Enjoy.
[00:01:28] Todd Busler: Em what's up? Welcome. How are you?
[00:01:31] Em Daigle: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to do this.
[00:01:34] Todd Busler: I'm really excited to have you. We met probably three years ago when we were really just getting Champify off the ground, and I think you were an early believer in what we were doing, which was awesome.
[00:01:43] Todd Busler: And now knowing what I know about Zuora and that sales motion, I think it makes a ton of sense. They've been a super successful customer. But the reason why I'm excited to have you on is your background is fascinating, started in accounting, very operational, heavy build, a bunch of sales teams, now doing this automation, AI trend.
[00:02:02] Todd Busler: Explain your background to the audience specifically, your journey, how that transition to Zuora, what you're doing now.
[00:02:09] Em Daigle: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely a little non-traditional, especially for starting out, way back when it was the Big five, uh, accounting firms. Started in public accounting. So I'm an accountant at heart. Spent a number of years doing that, both in public and in industry. So went through and have the basis understanding of accounting and business and, about the time that SaaS and subscription was really, well, I wouldn't say new,
[00:02:35] Em Daigle: It was always kind of there. The concept was there.
[00:02:38] Em Daigle: Exactly. As companies were kind of like figuring out how to use it as a true go-to-market motion. I decided to start my own consulting business where I was helping to advise companies in how they could actually account for that because ERPs weren't working.
[00:02:53] Em Daigle: So like what else could they do? So either I was building some crazy spreadsheet for them or trying to find [00:03:00] some automation tool. across RevPro, which then, was acquired by Zuora. And so at that time I was talking with the Zuora folks and went over there to try and help crack this code on. Really how to sell to accountants, because being an accountant, I can say this, but, little introverted, definitely risk averse. so it's tough to really likedo some outbounding there. And we did that. Of course, you guys at Champify helped us, with that smaller community trying to track where everybody was going and it's hugely helpful. Loved doing that. Did a little over six years. Ended up going to Clarity, which is like a document AI company, doing something very similar. So running all things sales, marketing and partners trying to figure out that go-to-market motion to help accountants. Loved doing it with both of those companies.
[00:03:50] Em Daigle: felt really passionate about automation for accountants and, so rather than working with one particular vendor, I took the opportunity to [00:04:00] pursue this. I'll say it'sit's been a passion project for a while, but decided to launch automates, which pulls together accounting and finance professionals and also the vendors and service providers in the space that can really help them uplevel what they're doing. but in a way that is. safe, transparent, not salesy at all. but allow everybody the chance to explore and create some relationships, which as you know, it's those longer term relationships and as people move, can be really beneficial because I don't think there's a perfect tech stack at any point in time.
[00:04:35] Em Daigle: I think they're sort of like the right solution for the right problem at the right place, at the right time. And that changes if you're in the same company or if you jump to a new company and now your challenges look a little different. So.that's exactly why. You know, I think Champify is so huge to be able to help in that way, to be able to come back and help connect everybody on the backend when they do come across a problem that they wanna solve.
[00:04:59] Todd Busler: So much to dig into here, Em, but I wanna first say I love the name of the new company. I think it's super clever and catchy. And secondly, I think you're ahead of a trend that we're gonna continue to see, which is a lot of industry experts, people with real deep industry chops starting to be the quote unquote, enterprise salespeople that are actually trusted advisors, and I think as AI makes a lot of the,
[00:05:23] Todd Busler: “How do I get in touch with people?” And, “how do I actually do a lot of the sales process?” Like people are gonna want that. And I think, like, you were very early on that trend, which is interesting. How did you make the first jump into, kind of go-to-market? Because I look at your background now and it's like, look, I've built big sales teams, I've figured out how to crack big accounts.
[00:05:42] Todd Busler: I'm sure you've been a part of massive expansion deals. Like how'd you originally go from accounting professional to now like go-to-market expert?
[00:05:50] Em Daigle: Yeah, so I think having the basis of that finance and accounting background is hugely helpful. Like I had spent so many years helping to operationalize a lot of that stuff, that is the back office. And so I had kind of a front row seat in helping the teams do that, and I saw where it worked really well. And when the go-to-market team works well with the finance team, it, everything just happens a lot more smoothly. but I think my opportunity at Zuora to really kind of like break in and have the opportunity to be a little bit creative with how we did that. Helped me to get deeper and deeper into the go-to-market side. Working with a marketing team that was, you know, we were trying different things. We were iterating on campaigns, we were trying Champify. It's so easy for me to just pull you guys in because it was those types of things that maybe felt a little out of the box at the time, but we needed to think of a new way to do that, to help sell to accountants.
[00:06:50] Em Daigle: And then I just got deeper and deeper. Ended up building out sales teams, ended up, creating those partnerships with alliances teams because you need that, right? To be able to pull it all together, especially to create those trusted relationships with the accountant. So it was organic, but by mistake.
[00:07:08] Todd Busler: Interesting. Talk to me about the biggest changes, Em, from when you first got there, what seemed like, “Hey, let's take some good industry chops and relationships and a different way of selling to this audience”, to, you know, that's a big scale team. Went through an IPO, went through a bunch of different investors.
[00:07:27] Todd Busler: Like what was the biggest, either changes or like step function improvements that you either led or were a part of in that go-to market journey over those six years?
[00:07:39] Em Daigle: So I think one thing that Zuora does really well is takes a look at who they're selling to and takes a step back and like, okay, how well is this working? And if it's not, let's fix it. you know, like thinking about the messaging, thinking about the ways in which the internal teams are set up.
[00:07:58] Em Daigle: I'll give you two examples of
[00:07:59] Todd Busler: [00:08:00] Yep.
[00:08:00] Em Daigle: One, on the, former, messaging. And I will fall on the sword for this one. It's not a story that I'm proud to tell, but I think it's a really good learning because it doesn't show me in the best light. But, when I went there, I was a few years in, so a little bit stepped away from the accounting world, hands on keyboard. And I really thought that if we did a campaign around IPO and like IPO readiness, that was gonna be the thing that would hit. It would be the compelling event for people to have conversations with us. Well. Turns out it was a huge flop. People don't actually wanna spend money to get ready to go an IPO and then go through a whole implementation and then get their teams up to speed only to then go through the due diligence.
[00:08:42] Em Daigle: So, huge fail on my part. However, we realized that was a fail and then we could quickly change and iterate on different messages, try to find those compelling events. But what we did was, did that through. Interviews with buyers, whether they bought from us or not. [00:09:00] So we had some customers that decided to buy from Zuora.
[00:09:03] Em Daigle: We also went out and people who walked away from us and chose a different solution, we went and interviewed them too and like, what hit, what didn't, all of those things. So really trying to understand who the buyer is. On the other example that I gave you around like the internal structure of the organization. So we tried a bunch of different things over the years when I was at Zuora, and some of them were. focused on industry. So like having teams focused by industry. Some were focused by product, some were- so we tried different things. but I think that allowed us to really like, make sure we were aligned with the buyers and allowed us to, again, that iteration to be able to say like, “okay, this particular setup didn't work, but why didn't it work?”
[00:09:48] Em Daigle: And then try and figure out what we were going to do differently. So by the time I left, I had the benefit and honor of being the general manager for the Zuora revenue side. [00:10:00] Of the business. I was on the go-to-market side and then I had a counterpart on the product side. So he was the GM on the product side.
[00:10:08] Em Daigle: Karthik Ramamurthy. He was actually one of the co-founders of RevPro back in the day before I got acquired, which is awesome. but he and I could team up as both go-to-market and product and be able to come up with types of campaigns, the different types of motions. where we wanted to put our marketing investments and how we wanted to enable sales teams to sell because we had that tie in for the Zuora revenue product, which was like really, really exciting.
[00:10:37] Em Daigle: Learned so much in that year. I like, that was drinking from a fire hose, but gosh, in all the best ways.
[00:10:42] Todd Busler: Three good learnings there for everyone listening. If you didn't catch that first, what I heard was just experimentation and iteration, I have more campaigns that I've helped organize that I would bet my house on that have flopped. But you learn quickly and you say, okay, here's what we're gonna do differently.
[00:10:57] Todd Busler: Staying really close to the customer from a [00:11:00] win-loss analysis standpoint and deeply understanding. I've heard this from working with Zuora over the last couple years, just really close to what was happening in the business to kick off an evaluation. Not to mention why did we win or lose and what could we have done differently, but what is the changes that is leading to, “Hey, we're ready to finally look at this thing.”
[00:11:19] Todd Busler: And then the third part, I think is actually becoming more popular too, which is like these pod oriented structures or like business units where product and go-to-markets really close, especially for an enterprise type of sale. Because it's, A, the products are moving and changing way faster, and B,
[00:11:36] Em Daigle: you can't just have a go-to-market on an island. Like it doesn't work. Yeah, I think that alignment is super, important and critical because when you have everybody speaking the same language, everybody tied into what the objectives and goals are, I feel like there's a lot more motivation behind it. But then also just like the alignment makes everybody's day to day work [00:12:00] so much better, and then you get those results on the back end.
[00:12:03] Todd Busler: What was it like, and leaving Zuora public company at the time, very mature business, kind of category leader in different areas of what they covered to go into a much smaller, less known company. How did you approach go-to-market there? What were some of the learnings? Where do you think you made some mistakes that are relevant for other people.
[00:12:23] Todd Busler: 'cause, you know,a lot of the people listening here have spent time at bigger companies going smaller, and it's very different.
[00:12:28] Em Daigle: Very different. So I mentioned the iteration at Zuora that we had the, I'll say luxury of doing. However, the pace of that iteration accelerated astronomically when I went over to Clarity, much smaller team, as you mentioned. Much more invested in like fail fast. I think without having that public company, I'll say responsibility, and delivering on certain things, I. ability to experiment can be a little more creative and [00:13:00] there's a little bit more flexibility, in what that looks like. I'm not suggesting that you should run wild with it. but certainly over there, I think Clarity wants to work fast. They want to see what, what's going to succeed and what fails.
[00:13:15] Em Daigle: And if it fails fast, that's okay. You can move on to the next thing and see where something is successful. For example, at Clarity, the events are wildly successful. I think we took on a, it's kind of reminiscent of what I'm doing with automates a community focused approach to be able to create experiences for accountants that they might not typically have. And, maybe do something outside of the box so it's not your typical. to an accounting conference, I'm going to stand with a bunch of people that all have their suits on and they are at the ready with their notebooks. And instead it was, you know, we had one of the summits at the MoMA in San Francisco.
[00:13:54] Em Daigle: We had a launch of a new product that, at the Exploratorium in San [00:14:00] Francisco. We had another summit, the first one in New York City at the, and I'm gonna get it wrong, it was like Exotic car club , luxury car club. Some I'm forgetting the exact name of the place. I'm not a car person.
[00:14:11] Em Daigle: Apologies for anybody listening that
[00:14:12] Em Daigle: is. But, it was really cool. They had great cars there, but just like different experiences and that really seemed to, attract an audience that felt that community, which I think was like really,like a smart move. And I've been tracking them online and it seems like they're continuing to do the same.
[00:14:27] Todd Busler: Did you try and fail or did you slash they try and fail with more traditional events? Because I think like the bar for getting someone to show up to an event is significantly higher and like you have to be way more creative or there has to be such a big reason for them to show up. So like.Did you have to get that wrong first to be able to figure out like, “Hey, this is what a good event looks like.”
[00:14:48] Em Daigle: Yeah, I can't take any credit for that because I think that team probably experienced that. So when I came in, it was like with the motion of, “okay, let's figure out how we can leverage this sort of more, I'll say experiential type of approach.” the nice thing is we did have the ability to go out and try and find some stuff, like we got real creative and we had like. I don’t wanna make it sound like we were booze hounds there, but like we did a tequila tasting, we did bourbon tasting, like all kinds of different drinks. But you could probably do sparkling water tastings, but it just happened to be, yeah, it might be a little awkward. but it was really cool to be able to try those different things on different scales.
[00:15:30] Em Daigle: I think one of our reps there even did like a pickleball tournament, which was like a very cool outside of the box type of thing to do, and pulls a crowd. The nice thing is too, when you're doing something interesting, there's probably a lot less attrition for those events as opposed to like,know, the traditional dinners where you try and pull everybody
[00:15:48] Todd Busler: Yeah.
[00:15:48] Em Daigle: and then. Two people get stuck in traffic. You're already down 20% or whatever it might look like if you have an intimate dinner. so it gave us the ability to try some of those different things. And then we just kept growing. I [00:16:00] mean, even there just, you know,just shy of a year and we were growing our events and our summits exponentially at that point.
[00:16:07] Todd Busler: Em, I wanna dig into what it's like selling to accounting, right? Finance and accounting. I think, look, there's a bunch of huge companies that have been built selling to it or the office of CIO or CTO or even the CMO, right? They're used to buying tech. They know how to evaluate tech. They have pretty set budgets.
[00:16:28] Todd Busler: I think that's very different in accounting. Like, and I think people underestimate some of that complexity, like why do you think there's unique challenges there or why it's uniquely challenging? And how did you help your teams break through?
[00:16:40] Em Daigle: Yeah, I think the, again, I can preface saying all of these things about accountants because I am one at heart and was one for so many
[00:16:49] Em Daigle: years. first and foremost is, everyone's risk averse to an extent. However, when you are dealing with financial systems. Financial records, all [00:17:00] of those things that get audited that, have to follow certain controls, all of those things, the risk tolerance is, or the tolerance for risk goes down significantly and they are like high alert to make sure nothing's going to put any of those numbers at risk. So that right there is like your problem, number one. I think the second thing is, Accountants tend to be creatures of habit. “If it's not broke, don't fix it.” I'm not saying that all have that approach, but a lot of times you're so busy month to month trying to do of those different tasks, right?
[00:17:34] Em Daigle: We're all being tasked to do more with less. The back office always feels that crunch because it's not a necessarily a revenue generating department. So there's always that cost. say, focus, that's on those teams. So they're just trying to like, stay alive, get their jobs done, do it as quickly as they can, but then onto the next. Whereas, you know, if they had the luxury of stepping back and [00:18:00] being like, “okay, let me evaluate this process.
[00:18:02] Em Daigle: How would I like to do this differently?” A lot of times. There's not that luxury of time to do that. So it's sort of like if somebody's calling them up and saying like,Hey, we've got this solution that's gonna make your life better. They're like, yeah, really? You think you know what I'm going through? Like,you've not sat in my seat for 30 days.
[00:18:18] Em Daigle: try that first and then see how willing I am to answer that call or jump on a demo. and the cool thing is too, with automates and the members that I have, some days I'll just like literally scroll through my member list and do the whole like, close my eyes and pick one and I reach out and like, “Hey, would you be open to me just talking to you a little bit about just in general, like what's top of mind for you?
[00:18:40] Em Daigle: How do you want to engage with some of these solutions? Like what does a good experience look like for you?” A lot of times they're like. I don't wanna jump on a call. I don't wanna have to like, take a demo just so that I can see if it's even something that they're going to be able to solve for me.
[00:18:57] Em Daigle: And then by the way, I'm gonna get hit up every week [00:19:00] for the next 18 months. no thanks. And so instead they're like, I just wanna know what some of these companies without like alot of lift, like what is it that they do? How can they help me? And then what does it look like for an implementation?
[00:19:11] Em Daigle: Like I don't wanna have to go through five different hour long meetings to figure out this thing is way more than I have budgeted for, or is gonna take, 14 months to implement whatever it is. I need something for 7K and I need it implemented tomorrow. Those are very different sales cycles, as you know, that can exhaust people. So I think it is something really interesting to just trying to figure out how these accountants actually want to buy because they're hungry for making things better. But it's really just, it gets back to understanding your buyer.
[00:19:41] Todd Busler: I get all of what you just said. If you are the new head of sales, new enterprise rep, new CRO that's selling to this audience, or a similar audience, which I'd say like little less mature in terms of how they buy typically, like smaller budgets in [00:20:00] terms of how they buy. Very mission critical projects for sure.
[00:20:03] Todd Busler: What is the right approach? Did you experiment with different offers or, lunch and learns or what did you do here and what advice do you offer folks? I.
[00:20:13] Em Daigle: The lunch and learns are huge. Accountants are always hungry to learn like they need to be challenged. Wanna be thinking about ways that they can do things better. So lunch and learns, that educational approach I think is really, a great way to start creating some trusted relationships. Which gets me to the second thing, and I swear this isn't a pitch for automates, but it's gonna sound like it.
[00:20:37] Em Daigle: But it's why I actually really created automates is, I believe that to sell to accountants. You need to be able to create trusted relationships, and that can't be done when you're going in there to try and point out that somebody has a compelling event. That compelling event needs to be the reason they come and talk to you, and they already trust you.
[00:20:57] Em Daigle: They already understand. So I know that's not [00:21:00] every go-to-market member's dream response, because that obviously means time. but I think there's a huge unlock there that if these accountants. Who, to your point, maybe aren't the most mature in the way of buying technology? Don't have the time to invest.
[00:21:18] Em Daigle: And really do value that trust because of the mission critical systems that you're touching. If you can create those relationships, leveraging partners, educating them, doing those types of things where it's providing value and not just asking for the call. And not just asking for information, but understanding what their pain points are and not wasting their time
[00:21:40] Em Daigle: if it's not a great fit, because I will say this, if you can go in and effectively say to somebody, “Hey, this isn't the right solution for you right now”, I guarantee they will remember that you saved them the time. It was a good experience, even though you didn't go and work with them. And then the next time they go either into a new role at their [00:22:00] existing company. Or into a new role at a new company, they're going to come across a problem that either they will come back to you for, or it's such a small community of, or, ecosystem of accountants. Their friends might be experiencing something where they do need you and they're like, oh, I was just talking to X, Y, and Z.
[00:22:19] Em Daigle: They weren't a great fit for me, but sounds like it's perfect for you. It's like a big reunion whenever we all get together as accountants. We talk all the time. We're always sharing like what works and what doesn't. So I would advise these new CROs, these folks trying to crack the accounting code on how to sell to them is really like, establish those relationships now so that almost like pay it forward. You'll reap the benefits by doing that because then the message in the market amongst all these accountants is gonna be, “oh, it was a great experience.
[00:22:51] Em Daigle: They really do have my best interest at heart.” They will recommend that to others rather than the opposite where if there's a negative experience [00:23:00] that's gonna spread like wildfire and you don't want that.
[00:23:02] Todd Busler: Yeah, the long game is very real. I think that's an awesome nugget you dropped around. People think about compelling events and hey, we've had this opportunity, what's gonna be the compelling event to actually get them to sign or get them started? But it's really on what's the compelling event to actually kick off some interest more than anything.
[00:23:18] Em Daigle: Exactly. You can't create a compelling event for someone. It's either happening or it's not. So don't try and create something that's not there. Back to my IPO readiness, example of the crash and burn.
[00:23:29] Todd Busler: Right, right.
[00:23:31] Em Daigle: Not a great fit.
[00:23:31] Todd Busler: Talk to me, Em, about what you learned on the rep profile. 'Cause I'd imagine like you can get a very senior tenured rep that has been selling enterprise software for a while and they get laughed out of the room because they don't know about rev rec and tax codes and all that other stuff.
[00:23:47] Todd Busler: I would be one of them. Right? So like, how did you, at your time at Zuora, like, figure out what the right rep profile was? Where did you go wrong? What would you have maybe done differently there?
[00:23:58] Em Daigle: I love this question. [00:24:00] think first and foremost, curiosity is beyond critical. Regardless of however seasoned that rep is, regardless of what huge logos they've closed. It comes down to curiosity because you need to constantly be understanding what that individual is struggling with to be able to connect the value of what you can provide to them. Otherwise, it's never gonna work, and I think that curiosity helps in picking up on the nomenclature so you don't get laughed out of the room. I remember standing and I was doing an enablement session for a number of our employees at Zuora. And I just got up on stage. I asked the question, who knows what it means to close the books?
[00:24:40] Em Daigle: And one raised his hand and it was funny. He was I can take a book. I can close it. I was like, oh, that's funny. That's not it. but then I startedasking people like, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you? Not one person could really answer it in a way where I felt like, gosh, if I'm an accountant, you're coming in trying to pitch me that I can close my books faster, but you don't know what that means?
[00:24:58] Em Daigle: I'm like, hold on, let's take [00:25:00] a step back. So doing like. Rev Rec 1 0 1 and literally what does a day in the life of my buyer look like? And once those reps who are curious enough to understand what that really was, ask the second level questions because. We can give them a list of questions to go ask in a discovery call.
[00:25:20] Em Daigle: If they don't understand what that answer is, how are they going to ask the next question? How are they gonna be able to quantify what that pain looks like and how are they going to be able to make that evaluation, a valuable use of that person's time? So I think that curiosity is huge.
[00:25:38] Todd Busler: How did you weight that enablement track in terms of understanding the persona versus understanding the product, versus understanding kind of the general landscape? How did you approach that? 'Cause there's a lot happening there, and you're right, you had, and still have a smaller list of target accounts that pay a lot of money and like first impressions mean a lot that, how did you approach it from an enablement perspective?
[00:25:59] Em Daigle: So I think, product, you wanna know what that looks like. You want to understand what it is that you're selling, obviously. However, I think the biggest piece is less on the capabilities, less on being able to answer every last question about like, does your product do this? Does your product do that?
[00:26:15] Em Daigle: Tell me about what the waterfall looks like. Like you have solution consultants as your partners to be able to handle those types of questions. And it's always okay to be like, you know what? Great question. I don't know. Let me come back to you. In fact, on a very quick side note, I sometimes would fake that I didn't know
[00:26:36] Em Daigle: Yeah. And I'd be like, let me get back to you, because I just wanted a reason to be able to reach back out to them.
[00:26:41] Todd Busler: and it builds trust. Definitely.
[00:26:43] Em Daigle: Anyway, sorry, sidetrack.
[00:26:45] Todd Busler: Yeah. I'm with you on that one.
[00:26:46] Em Daigle: I'm always like, even when I was hiring people, I'm like, give one question that is an I don't know, and give yourself a reason to reach back out. But I think the product piece, you do wanna be familiar with it. You wanna be able to speak intelligently, but understanding the [00:27:00] value of what that product does is so important. And I think understanding how to link that to the pain points. So it's just really truly understanding the value that is there that you can connect those dots because that's what really matters on a phone call when you don't have a solution consultant, no accountant is ever gonna be upset with an AE for not understanding how to run a specific report, never going to be a not.
[00:27:29] Em Daigle: But if you try and answer it or you try and like twist it some other way and you don't know what you're talking about and the value, the questions to ask, that's where you're gonna start to lose some of that trust and that will impact you negatively.
[00:27:42] Todd Busler: That makes sense. Were there any big pieces of tech that helped you scale the pipe Gen motion or any specific training or enablement where you felt like, okay, when we rolled this out, here's something that had meaningful impact. And I'm sure you think a lot about [00:28:00] like tooling and strategies in your new role, which we'll get to in a minute.
[00:28:03] Todd Busler: But anything specific come to mind across SOA or, clarity?
[00:28:08] Em Daigle: Definitely standard ones that I think everybody
[00:28:12] Em Daigle: either aware of and or has used if not using currently, but certainly Salesforce certainly HubSpot. the one that I also really didn't, that I actually got to know them at, Zuora and I didn't use at clarity, we just weren't big enough is similar, oddly, Clari. and that was really beneficial when we could use it for seeing what our pipeline, what the history looked like, and figure out what was going on in the business at the time so that we could replicate the things that were going particularly well. And then make sure we weren't repeating things that weren't going well. That tool, once we figured out how to use it, was really helpful. I tried to create [00:29:00] at least a business process that we could use at, Clarity to try and mimic that until we got to the point where it made sense to employ something like that. But it just, we weren't big enough at the time, but Clari's a very slick tool for anybody who hasn't used it, I would highly recommend that tool.
[00:29:16] Todd Busler: Yeah, Clari's done an amazing job with really senior revenue execs. I've heard many times quotes like, I will not work somewhere without Clari and they built an awesome community around like CROs and boards, et cetera. You're not the first person I've heard say that.
[00:29:31] Em Daigle: Yeah.
[00:29:32] Todd Busler: What would you say the biggest challenges selling at a big kind of public company like Zuora versus Clarity?
[00:29:39] Todd Busler: Where were things the same? Where were the biggest differences?
[00:29:42] Em Daigle: So some of the things that were the same, I would say, you've got similar buyers, so you're up against the same sort of pain points. They're trying to drive attendance to events, trying to get people to answer emails, trying to like open up that funnel. a little bit. I [00:30:00] think, I touched on this earlier, but. The iteration at Zuora was there, but slower. The iteration at Clarity was very fast. But conversely, at Zuora we had a lot more investment dollars to be able to put into our customer acquisition costs. Like we could try things that were a little more costly to see if they would work, whereas, you know, at a smaller company. They did do some great fundraising, but you also have to weigh a little bit more about where you wanna put your investment dollars when you don't have as many of those dollars and as many customers and as much recurring revenue. I think there's pros and cons to both, for sure.
[00:30:43] Todd Busler: I want to transition. I think this has been awesome for like, A, selling to what I would say is like a more technical niche audience, right? And like really understanding the buyer. And I think you've dropped a ton of nuggets here that I've been taking some notes on.
[00:30:59] Todd Busler: I think there's [00:31:00] also this interesting track of like bigger company versus smaller company.
[00:31:06] Em Daigle: Were there things at Clarity that, maybe, were considered norm or functional or working at Zuora, such as, hey, we're gonna have to do very deep discovery before we show the product. Like what big adjustments did you have to make to like traditional sales practices moving to a smaller company?
[00:31:22] Em Daigle: At Zuora, we had reps that were so excited to show the product that we basically had to push them out of the room and be like, don't sign us up for a demo yet. Let's figure out what those pain points are, what is their challenge? Because Zuora has so many great capabilities across billing and rev rec, and you can go far and wide with a discussion and you can give them what I call the Harbor tour of a demo. And so we tried to like really be intentional about what we showed so that it would connect with what they were ultimately challenged with the [00:32:00] most, again, to drive that value, message home. So we were constantly trying to push off the demo a little bit. at Clarity, AI, everyone's like. Okay, we know we need to do something with it. We like what you have, we think, but we don't really get it. So this was also, about 18, 20 months ago. So it was even newer then as well. People know a lot more, but people were going through this, and this is accountants, but everybody. Everyone was going from like this, skeptical stage to curious. And then adopting. So we are kind ofbetween this like skeptical and curious land where we actually had to do a bit more explaining of what clarity actually did. Not necessarily that it wasn't a clear message, but like I think practitioners were just having trouble like, help me understand how AI works.
[00:32:55] Em Daigle: Like what is this thing? And so when we would talk about it and try and do the [00:33:00] discovery. It was almost like too much, like they didn't understand why we were asking questions or they couldn't figure out exactly where we were trying to go. And so I feel like we weren't creating those trusted relationships in the beginning, but what we ended up doing is shifting our approach so that, in that first call, all of our reps could actually give a high level demo and we would encourage them to, so like get in, introduce yourself a little bit about clarity, a little bit about who you're talking to, and then just kind oflike baseline set, set some understanding as to what we were even going to be talking about.
[00:33:35] Em Daigle: Like kind of showing the art of the possible so that the conversations and those discovery conversations that still had to happen. We're more informed on both sides and I think with newer, more emerging technologies, sometimes you have to do that.
[00:33:51] Em Daigle:And I think it's just being flexible in like what you're selling, who you're selling to, all of those things.
[00:33:56] Em Daigle: there's no perfect way to run the sales cycle. It [00:34:00] really does depend on what it is you're selling and who you're selling to.
[00:34:04] Todd Busler: Yeah, I think you see a lot of people that have come from more traditional, bigger brand companies that say like, no, we're not gonna do this. That it's like you have to, you're in a new space, new category. You have to train. Your buyers and educate the buyers on why you even should have the right to have a discovery conversation.
[00:34:20] Todd Busler: I think a lot of people don't realize it. Em I want to take the last couple minutes here to explain what drew you to start auto automates. What is it? What are you going after? What's the problem? How's it going?
[00:34:31] Em Daigle: It's going. Um, I'm very grateful for the success we've had in just a few short months. It's been, let's see, just five and a half months, which is exciting. Five, five months. but we've grown over 340% already in our memberships, which is awesome. But really what I wanted to do, you heard me kind of reference it
[00:34:53] Todd Busler: Yeah.
[00:34:54] Em Daigle: but, truly believe that there is something to creating those relationships, but [00:35:00] they have to be trusted. I don't believe vendors can create that space because there's always that bias towards wanting to sell something. I want this to be an unbiased space. I want accountants or our members to have access to all of this information.
[00:35:16] Em Daigle: I want them to be able to learn. I want them to be able to create relationships. Ask questions of these vendors in a trusted, non-salesy way where, you know, they're not getting in on some weekly email that's going to exhaust them over the next 18 months. and be able to really start to understand what's out there and be able to identify where that solution would work well and help their peers.
[00:35:43] Em Daigle: And so it is, it's peer led. It's about collaboration, it's about trust. It's about bringing everybody to the table so that when those compelling events present themselves, everyone will be able to move forward in a productive way with a lot less wasted time, [00:36:00] no wasted conversations, and it's gonna be a better experience for everyone, right?
[00:36:04] Em Daigle: Accountants are going to feel heard, they're going to have a say in how all of this works, and they're going to be able to also, choose who they wanna talk to and who they trust and all of that. And I think vendors then can also understand better what accountants want and need. That's how they're gonna be able to present better at the table.
[00:36:23] Em Daigle: They're gonna be able to come in and make those conversations more valuable for everybody. And I also think there's one other area where I mentioned as well, because it's such a tight knit ecosystem of accountants, when something negative gets out there, it can be detrimental because it spreads like wildfire. There's not a lot of opportunity for those vendors to come back and right the wrongs. And I think this is an opportunity to do that, to be able to say like,oh, okay, maybe, know at one point in time it was like Zuora has these. Die hard reps that go out. This [00:37:00] was when I started at Zuora in 2018.
[00:37:01] Em Daigle: But they have these die hard reps. They won't leave me alone. They're listening and that's not their approach anymore, you know? So it's really interesting to see a shift when you have the ability to have these trusted relationships and do it in a way where the compelling event isn't creating this angst amongst everybody.
[00:37:18] Em Daigle: Instead, that compelling event is leading to those very productive conversations.
[00:37:23] Todd Busler: I am sure you work with businesses that are like, super mature on the automation, AI adoption side, and then others on the other end of the spectrum. What are some of your early learnings there in terms of the right way to approach a bunch of AI automation adoption?
[00:37:40] Em Daigle: I think it comes back to education, like educate yourself. It's interesting, I've had a number of conversations recently where the back office, accounting, finance, HR are kind of like lagging in this AI adoption space, like you see marketing flying because there's content creation and
[00:37:59] Todd Busler: Yeah.
[00:37:59] Em Daigle: that [00:38:00] you can create efficiencies there. But there's not as much risk in marketing as there is in finance, like we talked about. There's also just more. use cases that present themselves, I think, in what AI is really good for. And I think being able to learn about where those efficiencies can be created on the accounting side and be able to like, really figure out what are the use cases and start low, like, I would not suggest going all in and ripping out a system and replacing it with something that is fully AI enabled or run on AI. I think there's something where AI can be a great, not substitute, but addition to your team. I love this agentic AI stuff coming out because it's literally like having a new accountant on your team that you can teach how to do something, but it needs to be taught.
[00:38:53] Em Daigle: It needs to
[00:38:54] Todd Busler: Right.
[00:38:55] Em Daigle: Massaged a little bit, just like a new accountant would need to be trained. it's very [00:39:00] similar. So I think if it's starting with baby steps and getting in there, but not being afraid to try things out because I really think those that are so averse to it are gonna fall behind very quickly.
[00:39:10] Todd Busler: You just have to jump in. I feel the same way in a lot of the go-to-market tech, you're right, it is much lower stakes, but there's a bunch of people that are like, ah, I'll get to that. I'll try that. And it's if you're not. Toying around with a lot of this stuff, I think you're gonna be in trouble and you don't have to start with replacing a human or fixing an entire business process.
[00:39:29] Todd Busler: So I couldn't agree more. And I think that's across the board and this was awesome. I really appreciate you sharing some of your learnings. And I've had a lot of, you know, more traditional path go-to-market leaders and sales leaders. They have the playbook, they've seen it multiple times and. As I said, to kick this off, I think we're gonna see a trend of a lot of folks with deep industry chops leading big organizations, being the most successful enterprise sellers.
[00:39:54] Todd Busler: Much like some of the big consulting organizations. Like I think that's the trend and I appreciate [00:40:00] you sharing your story. It's super inspiring for people that may be thinking about sales and go-to-market, and how you can go do that. So, wishing you a lot of luck with mates, I appreciate you taking some time.
[00:40:09] Em Daigle: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.