[00:00:00] Intro [00:01:07] Phil: What's up everyone. Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Mac Redden, founder and CEO of Commsor. [00:01:14] About Mac --- [00:01:14] Phil: Mac is a career long entrepreneur. His first business was a gaming network built on top of Minecraft, which peaked at 150 K users per day. He went on to create various bootstrap businesses over the course of five plus years. He created a sub stack newsletter for the community space, which eventually evolved into an actual community of over a hundred K people. [00:01:34] Uh, one day he took part in a no code hackathon and the idea of. Commsor was born initially a community reporting metrics platform. Today, Commsor is a 40 person company focused on curated introductions and building the go to network movement, Mac. Thanks so much for your time today, man. Super pumped to chat. [00:01:52] Mac: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I will say we're actually only 13 people, not [00:01:55] Phil: Oh, [00:01:56] Mac: just even smaller. [00:01:58] Phil: LinkedIn is like flat out [00:02:00] lying to [00:02:00] Mac: Oh yeah, LinkedIn has like people who people like we have people who say they work there who don't. It's like, and LinkedIn gives you no way you can like, you have to like go through one at a time, like email and be like, Hey, this person doesn't actually work here. [00:02:10] Can you fix that? And they take like six months to respond. So [00:02:14] Darrell: It's more, more impressive to be leaner, honestly. So, way to go. Kudos to you. [00:02:19] ​[00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:04:20] Mac: We're just chatting before we press record. Um, like I think chatting with amazing humans like yourself is one of my favorite parts of. Doing the podcast, but also the creative outlet and doing some of the custom artwork and the header images for the blog post version of this. [00:04:33] The Origin of the Dinosaur Brand Came From a Typo --- [00:04:33] Phil: So I'm super bummed to finally have a reason to do like a dinosaur themed a episode, uh, for folks that aren't familiar with that Commsor is all in on the dinosaur branding, maybe like a fun one to get us started. [00:04:45] Like what's, what's the story behind the dinosaurs of the Commsor brand. [00:04:49] Mac: A hundred percent an accident. But I think that's like a lot of times the best things are, right? It was, this is probably, it's probably two and a half years ago. There's somebody on Twitter misspelled our [00:05:00] name as C O M M S A U R. And someone on our team took a screenshot of it and put it in Slack. I was like, ha ha, like a dinosaur. [00:05:08] And it just. It just stuck. I don't know how else to describe it. It became an inside joke. It kind of became our internal branding over the next few months. Um, and then it was like six, nine months later, it was time for us to get rid of the crappy logo that I had made just to have a logo on day one, as you do as a founder. [00:05:26] And, uh, we all sat down and we were like, okay, what could our logo be? And I was like, well, our internal logo is this like dinosaur thing. Why not just, why not just lean into it? And we were like, And it was like, nobody had a reason why we should do it, but also nobody had a reason why we shouldn't do it. [00:05:43] So we just, we just did it. Like there's no, there's no broad, like, there's no like bullshit, you know, greater meaning. There's no like, Oh, well dinosaurs were really good at warm intros. So it totally makes sense that our logo would be, it's like, it's just fun. And that's, there's no, no other reason to it than [00:06:00] that. [00:06:00] Darrell: I love it. Yeah, I mean, most logos are so boring. Like, they're like some version of a cloud. Or, an [00:06:07] Mac: Or, or some letter, right? [00:06:08] Darrell: A letter, [00:06:09] Mac: font, they pick the color, [00:06:10] Darrell: Yeah, and that's your logo. Dinosaurs are cool. Yeah, I love that. [00:06:14] Mac: I, I genuinely think the logo is a competitive advantage. Um, people like people just get attached to it. And then we actually had someone a few months ago who booked an inbound demo. And they were like, Hey, I seen you guys like six months ago. [00:06:26] I'd looked at a bunch of competitors and then I couldn't remember your name, but I remembered the dinosaur. And I actually found, they found one of our employees who had the dinosaur emoji in their name on LinkedIn. They're like, that's the company. And then they found us again and booked the demo. So it, You know, it does drive business technically. [00:06:44] Darrell: Yeah, and it's a way to be remarkable. You know what I mean? Like, oh, hey, dinosaur, you know? So, let's um, [00:06:52] Why Your Mass Outbound Strategy Cannibalizes Itself --- [00:06:52] Darrell: yeah, let's get into Outbound. And I know you probably have a lot of thoughts on this. And for me personally, Um, a lot [00:07:00] of people say outbound is dead or, um, you know, the, the predictable revenue playbook that so many people put into place is used by everyone. [00:07:09] So it's essentially, there's a sea of sameness when it comes to outreach, yet at the same time, it's, you know, we can't kind of live without it. You know, I feel like all of us reach out cold, um, when, when we need something, you know, when we, when we need an introduction, when we need to, you know, have a guest on the podcast, like, so, so, so it's like kind of this necessary evil. [00:07:33] I'd love to hear you riff on, on your take on outbound a little bit, and, uh, especially, you know, as with the emergence of AI, how does that play into it? What do you think? [00:07:43] Mac: I think in general, there's a really, really, really big difference between outbound and mass outbound. And a lot of times people just, they say outbound and they mean one of the, like we just said, right? Like we need outbound, right? Like reaching out for a podcast guest. Ideally, though, you're not, you're not buying a list of names from like a data [00:08:00] broker and just emailing 300 people or a thousand people or 10, 000 people and be like, want to be a guest on my podcast? [00:08:05] Like it's like, that's very, very. Different than like what I think most teams are actually doing when they say they're doing outbound um and so I think like cold outreach it works right like it is a Just like a fact of life that you have to get good at selling yourself and cold outreach if you want to build a business Or succeed in a lot of different ways the problem is It's kind of like human nature that when a thing works We will find a way to do it so much that we will fuck it basically Um And it creates this vicious cycle. [00:08:38] I've talked a lot about like the Ouroboros of outbound, right? Where it's like, Hey, it works. So we do more of it, which makes buyers less receptive to it, which makes it harder to work. So we do more of it to compensate, which makes buyers less receptive. So we do more of it and like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. [00:08:52] And I think, especially in the last, last two years, the, it's sort of started to come apart at the seams. Um, and I've, I've used this analogy [00:09:00] as well of, uh, have you seen a Thelma and Louise? The movie is a spoiler alert. If you haven't, I'm about to like tell you the ending basically. But at the end, they drive a car off a cliff. [00:09:10] Um, and I feel like sales and marketing when it comes to, and it's not just out, but I think it's ads, like any sort of direct go to market motion. It feels like it's just like, we all kind of know it's not working as well as it used to. but we're still sitting in the car and we're still debating how to make the car go faster and we all kind of know there's this proverbial cliff somewhere in the distance and we're going to get there eventually but we're all like you know what it's not a problem right now so we'll just we'll just keep going we'll just keep going and very few people are like but what if we just turn the car a little bit like what happens then? [00:09:45] um So that's, I think that's like the, that's the, I don't know, surface level of my, uh, my take on Outbound. Like, it has a place. It certainly works. But I think it's just where it's, it's, it's devouring itself. And it's, it's, [00:10:00] uh, it's becoming the very thing that it isn't able to support. [00:10:05] Darrell: And is that like, because I have this on my notes, the, the, how do you say that? The Ouroboros, [00:10:10] Mac: The Ouroboros. Yeah, [00:10:11] Darrell: and is that like a Greek mythological, mythological creature or [00:10:15] Phil: Egyptian iconography, I think from my [00:10:17] Mac: yeah. And then it's, it's existed, it's existed in Norse mythology and throughout the Middle Ages. It's like a common thing that just showed up. It's like a, it's like the world devouring serpent that devours itself. And. A bunch of stuff, but it kind of feels like outbound and it feels like a lot of sales and marketing right now is this Ouroboros for everyone and like, it's like, I feel like everybody deep down with a, you know, not like kind of knows it, but nobody wants to do anything about it. [00:10:43] The Brutal Math Behind Why Your Sales Outreach Dies Unread --- [00:10:43] Phil: I feel like there's two camps of folks like you, you, um. fit into one a bit more, but I feel like you're, you're a bit more reasonable with your take on, on outbound. Like you said, like it works when you're not buying lists, like outbound has worked for like decades. [00:11:00] Um, but there are a lot of folks that are a bit more polarized. [00:11:02] They're just like all outbound, whether you buy a list or not, if you reach out to me and we don't have an existing relationship, it is spam, all outbound. Is a hundred percent spam. And those folks like distaste it. They think it's illegal in most countries. And like, They think no one should [00:11:20] Mac: outbound that people are doing is illegal, but no one seems to care. So that's a, that's a separate rabbit hole. [00:11:26] Phil: But then there's this whole other box, obviously, like a lot more of those folks are the ones that have experienced actually doing it and have been handed like budgets or like goals and like, Lead targets for a lot of folks. And they're the ones that have a lot more empathy for it. And they, like some folks try to do it a bit better. [00:11:45] Like you said, the folks that are in the car and they're trying to turn it a little bit, like, think about it differently, but like, where do you, like, how do you think about that? Like is all outbound, like a hundred percent spam, [00:11:58] Mac: No, [00:12:00] it isn't. I mean, I could see why you could argue it is like. It's sort of like, right? It's like even spam works sometimes, right? Otherwise people wouldn't do it, right? It's like, you see those like really shitty, like scam outbound, like people wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work sometimes, right? I'm not saying it should work, but they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work sometimes, but in general, I'll use another like, uh, old, I guess, like, I guess this is more Victorian era, but, uh, the tragedy of the commons. [00:12:25] Um, so I think one of the problems with outbound is that it does not exist in a vacuum. It doesn't matter if you're doing it really, really well. The fact that everyone else around you is doing it poorly is going to make it more challenging for you because it's a shared channel, right? Like, if I'm a buyer and I'm getting tons of just, I'm getting like more outbound than ever, and there's some stat and don't quote me on the exact number because I can't remember the exact source, but that the amount of outbound the average buyer in B2B experiences is four to five times higher than it was just three years ago. [00:12:55] So buyers are now more likely to screen their phone calls or block unknown [00:13:00] numbers or put spam filters on their inbox or install ad blockers and things like that because the volume has just gotten so great that they're, they're just, they're going to throw out the good outbound with the bad outbound because they just, they can't deal with it. [00:13:12] And I remember having this conversation probably a year ago with a sales leader who was like, he told me I was a bad CEO because I didn't respond to outbound. And he's like, you don't know, he's like, you might be missing that one thing that's going to change your business's trajectory forever. And I was like, okay, sure. [00:13:28] But that's assuming that like one, the person cold emailing me or calling me knows my business better than I do, which I really, really, really don't. really doubt is the case. Um, if they do, that's probably why I'm a shit CEO. If like a random person trying to sell me something, knows my business better than I do. [00:13:45] But secondly, I'm not even like a big buyer. We're a small company. I can't even imagine what it's like for someone at a 500 or a thousand person company. If all I did was respond to outbound and answer phone calls, I would probably never have time to do my actual [00:14:00] job. So I understand that people get into this camp of feeling like all outbound of spam. [00:14:04] Because there is so much of it that even if it's 200 are good and relevant. It just becomes a lot easier just to tune it all out and just say, Nope. I just will not respond to that because I just, I don't, I physically don't have time for it. [00:14:19] Why AI Will Make Your Outbound Marketing Worse --- [00:14:19] Darrell: Yeah, and how do you, how do, how do you think AI is going to like, I assume you think AI is going to exacerbate the problem and, you know, I will share as a, you know, as a, as a, as a buyer of, of B2B products and services, I don't answer the phone and I don't, if I, if I get a text message, that's not from someone I know, I just report a spam and then for people that use the in mail thing, I You know, to, to, to message me on LinkedIn, I'll just block them, you know, so, so I'm, I'm, I'm building my own little, you know, fort around myself because I just dislike outbound so much. [00:14:58] Um, [00:15:00] what now there's, there's a lot of talk about like, uh, uh, AI using, making outbound scale up even more. And do you, do you also think that it's just going to scale up the crap? Or is there actually some, like, benefit to, to, [00:15:15] Mac: just going to amplify it. Like, once again, like the tragedy, the commons problem, right? It's like, it doesn't matter if you or I are using AI to do it really, really well. It's going to make it so easy for everyone else to do it poorly. The problem is just gonna get worse. Um, and I, I think it's sort of like we go back to like the outbound that works, right? [00:15:32] The outbound that works is inherently not AI driven. It's very specific. It's very like one to one And yeah, AI can maybe do some of it I'm not saying it's not gonna help or it won't have a use and it won't have a place but I I Think it's gonna do more harm than good in the in the short term release. [00:15:50] Who knows? I guess If we have perfect AI agents in three years that just run the world, it doesn't really matter. Outbound won't exist in any short form, right? Like, AI agents will just like telepathically [00:16:00] talk to each other and buy and sell, and we won't, it won't matter what we think. [00:16:03] Intent Data and Signals Have Become Another Sales Spam Machine --- [00:16:03] Phil: One of the things I've seen a lot around this conversation of AI is this term, like signals, like signals is coming in and data enrichment. And now we can make outbound way more personalized and actually useful for people. And if you look at your inbox, it's now just become a sea of Hey, I saw you post about this or like this recent episode that you did with Daryl, it resonated with me. [00:16:32] Like it's all the same fucking templates. Like everyone's doing the same thing. What are your thoughts on this? Like buzzword of like signals. Like, is it just like a rebrand of lead scoring with a trendier label? Like lead scoring has been around like forever. Like we're both. marketing operations and like tracking engagement attributes, demographics, firmographics, product interactions. [00:16:55] Like some folks have said that the difference between signals and lead scoring [00:17:00] is like a form factor thing that like signals is a white box and lead scoring is more black box. Um, but you know, I've built plenty of transparent lead scoring models that, you know, reps could see. What led to a certain score. [00:17:14] Other folks say that like lead scoring is, is good for segmenting your book of business. Just curious your, your, your take on that. [00:17:21] Mac: I mean, in general, yeah, I think it's an evolution of lead scoring. It's, you know, some parts the same, some parts different. I think the, the internet in general has made it easier to access a wider amount of signals about a potential buyer. Um, And I also say that as someone who's like, you know, I'm pushing this go to network thing. [00:17:38] So like, I'm aware, like, listen, if you work in B2B and you're not making up a term, you're probably shit at your [00:17:43] Phil: What are you doing? [00:17:44] Mac: of, that's part of what you're supposed to do. Like, if you're not making a due term, are you really in B2B marketing? Probably not. Um, but, but in general, like, like you just said, right, it's like, let's say two years ago, before everybody was doing the, hey, I saw you like this post on LinkedIn play, that might've worked really well. [00:17:59] Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] Now everybody can do it at a click of a button. So it suddenly it's, it becomes spam, right? So it's like, is outbound spam. It almost never starts as spam, but it almost always evolves into spam. And I think the problem is outbound works really well. If you are willing and able to be at that cutting edge of like, what are, what is the new thing? [00:18:20] What is, what is unique? But if you're the follower and you're always like following after the fact, you're always going to be the shitty copy who is like, Do it. It's like anything you get these templates where you can kind of feel like this. Like I get all the time. I get the, I get the, Hey, I saw you liked Phil's post on LinkedIn. [00:18:36] Like, I'm like, that's just because I think Phil's cool and I'm supporting him. That does not mean I want to buy what Phil's talking about. Right? Like, what are you talking? What do you mean? So I think it's just like outbound. There's ways to use them. Well, I think I know a lot of teams that use signals really well to actually cut down on the amount of outbound they're doing. [00:18:49] So they're doing smarter outbound. I do think it's a bit of a, I think it's hilarious that people have started calling it warm outbound. Um, It's like, [00:19:00] just because I visited your website does not make it warm, but sure, it's, maybe it's a, you know, a nuanced thing. Um, but yeah, I think it's, it's just, it's another tool in a sales and a marketing team's stack and it can be used well, it can be used poorly. [00:19:17] Uh, but yeah. We've used it to great success, but it's one of those things as well, where I think if you over automate it and over systematize it, you end up like back at this level of it not working. Um, and at the end of the day, I think people are, people are so obsessed with writing better messages with AI and personalizing better with AI. [00:19:34] And I just don't think that actually matters. If I look at where I've bought things over the last two years, It's almost never from a personalized message or a signal based message. It's all about relevance. If you, if you messaged me a really shitty templated email, but you're selling me a thing that I'm currently thinking about, I'll probably respond. [00:19:55] And I've gotten emails and outreach where it's like, they have done their research. They've written the perfect [00:20:00] one to one email for Mac. It references dinosaurs. They've clearly done their research. Like it's so good, but they're selling me something that just doesn't matter to me. And it just. It doesn't matter. [00:20:10] People are so obsessed with better messaging. All that matters is relevance. So I think using signals to drive better relevance in your messaging, timing of your messaging is great. Using it to do better personalization is pointless. [00:20:24] Darrell: Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on this and I think you're right on. I think one of the challenges is that, to be honest, like, no one really wants to receive outbound and People only want to buy when they're ready or what, or something that they're really looking for in the moment. And, but the, the challenge is you have sales and marketing teams that have to do like something, you know, we have to like, try to get business somehow. [00:20:54] So like my theory is there, the, the intent data and all of the, the, the rise of intent data and [00:21:00] signals, it's kind of like a little bit better than nothing is what is my, my first take. And the second one is like why it kind of keeps working. is because at any given moment, there is actually maybe one or two people out of a hundred that you're going to get lucky and they're gonna be like, Oh shoot, I do need that random SAS software, you know? [00:21:22] Oh my God. This is amazing. You've reached at the perfect time, but it's like just two people out of the hundred. And so what, what, what we're, what we've been talking about is people just kind of keep going. They're like, Oh, we reached two people out of a hundred. We're going to reach 20 people out of a thousand. [00:21:39] We're going to, you know, and it's just ruining everybody's experience, but [00:21:43] Mac: of thousands, great. What if you have 5, 000 possible buyers, even 10, like you're going to go through that list real fast. [00:21:50] Darrell: Yup. [00:21:51] Phil: yeah, no, that's a great point. And I feel like the age old argument for cold outreach oftentimes compared to like paid [00:22:00] ads is like, Hey, cold outreach is free. It's free to email people like, yeah, maybe we bought a list or like, Oh, we scraped this list of emails or now we're on in mail it's free. [00:22:09] Like it doesn't cost anything compared to meta ads and whatever, but. You know, anyone who is in marketing ops, whereas the email hat knows that there is a big internal and reputational cost to cold outreach and email deliverability. And like, we don't have to get into that whole box there, but I love the, [00:22:27] Why Your Network Outperforms AI Signal-Based Outbound --- [00:22:27] Phil: we wanted to get you on the show, Mac, because like, we think that Commsort takes like such a fresh approach to outreach. [00:22:34] Um, Like you've written a bunch of content about this. Like you think that the future of sales is go to network and that cold prospecting should die, meaning that like rather than doing cold or even warm outbound, as you kind of like called out there is way better to try and get an intro from someone in your network that you know, or maybe like a friend of a friend to at least get that foot in the door and like start that conversation. [00:22:59] Um, [00:23:00] But, you know, comparing that to what we just talked about, like feeding signals to AI agents and automating research and prospecting on your behalf, like, let's say a rev ops team is debating one of these two options, like signal powered outbound versus. Automated network intros like console or helps with as their next investment. [00:23:20] Like, how do you make the case for those rev ops folks that they shouldn't even bother with like signal based stuff and they should focus on network over signals. [00:23:31] Mac: So I, I don't think it's quite as clear. I'm like doing my own business at this service by saying, okay, it depends. There's, I think there's, there's a, there's a place for both. Um, I would say a lot of our customers leverage both in, in parallel. Um, like I think signals can help tell you when is a good time to reach out to someone, like, is someone thinking about what you're selling? [00:23:51] Um, we've got a lot of customers that use signals to inform who should they be looking for intros to, and it's like, and they use that. So like, I, I always like to say, we sell you. [00:24:00] We sell you a warm intro check. It's like, it's like a check, but it's like, before you send that cold email, before you make that cold call, check if you can get a warm path, because if you can, why wouldn't you? [00:24:09] And it's like every salesperson marketer knows that a referral or a warm intro is like a better deal, more likely to close. It's faster. And like, but you know, it's, it's not a silver bullet. Like a, a go to network motion is not going to magically get you every single customer you want, or maybe it might help you get your goals, but it's not, it's not a one stop. [00:24:27] You know, solution to solve everything. So it's really more about like, how do you go warm when you can? And yeah, you're going to probably have to fall back on cold outbound because it's very, very, very unlikely you can hit 100 percent of your target accounts with warm intros and warm messaging. So it's more about adding that nuance of, of like, why go warm when, or why go cold when you could go warm? [00:24:49] You might have to go cold, but you At least be knowledgeable about your options. Um, and a lot of what we say is we, we help you pick a better messenger, right? So like all those AI tools and single [00:25:00] tools, they're all obsessed with how do you write a better message. But as we just talked about, like the message is sometimes less important, um, than the messenger and the timing. [00:25:09] Darrell: I love that. That's that's so right on because Who is reaching out to you is more important because they could send a really crappy message actually, and I've gotten many like, Hey, you know, are you free for 15 minutes? You know, but then like, it's literally my peer at another company, same size that I [00:25:30] Mac: You know them, you trust them. Yeah. [00:25:32] Darrell: yeah. I'm just like, of course, you know, or like, uh, the CEO of demand base wanted my opinion on something. And he's like, Hey, can we talk? And I'm like, yeah, you know what I mean? I was just like, Oh, of course. You know, I also think that the, the concept of warm or like your networking out, um, a networking outreach is stronger than intent. [00:25:53] Um, because there's a, I was thinking about this. There's kind of like a social peer pressure kind of, [00:26:00] uh, Reciprocity at work. So let's say your friend or your coworker, your colleague says like, Hey, I wanted you to introduce you to someone. You automatically feel like compelled by your friend or colleague to like, Yeah, okay, I'll, I'll take the call. [00:26:18] It's I'll take it for you. You know what I [00:26:20] Mac: We also, we also [00:26:21] Darrell: it [00:26:21] Mac: even if they deny though, it's also a good sign of like, Hey, I asked you for an intro to Phil. Phil said, I'm not interested. Cool. I'm not going to bother wasting time emailing Phil. Like he's already said, he's like, I got an answer. Right. And like nine times out of 10, the hardest part about outbound is the silence. [00:26:36] It's the, you're not getting a no, you're not getting a yes. It's just, you're just getting ignored. So you have no idea if it's good, bad, relevant, good timing, bad timing. Um, it's just. You're just firing shit out into a black box and hoping that two to three percent fire back something. [00:26:52] Darrell: There's also like a, a, some, another person I would say, like, that doesn't have, like, that is a [00:27:00] little bit more objective, has validated your outreach. You know? Cause if I say like, Hey Phil, like, Mac wants to talk to you about something. Phil knows that like, I'm not going to purposely waste Phil's time. You know? [00:27:13] So like, there's that additional level. So I think there's multiple factors that. Makes this, this idea of go to market via networking and warm intros and connections much stronger than intent, which I've already kind of talked badly about. [00:27:28] Mac: I will say that I think go to network, So Commsor as a tool is a warm intro referral tool. That's what we are, but go to network as a philosophy, as we've built it and we're trying to like run it ourselves is so much more than just like asking people for things. And I think that's where like, I think a lot of it's a mindset shift. [00:27:46] A lot of sales were like, cool, I'll just ask people for shit. And you're like, okay, but like, you have to also like create and build a network. You can't just like take, take, take, take, take. And that's a very hard thing for a lot of salespeople to understand because it's. Sort of like anti what they've been taught [00:28:00] for the last decade on how to sell and what to do So really that's like that's why That's why we like we like to call ourselves a go to network platform Not a warm intro tool because it is there is this broader mindset shift where it has to be like a company wide Initiative to both create network and to activate network. [00:28:17] You can't just do one [00:28:19] Phil: Yeah, I feel like your perspective on that comes from your background in building communities because community one on one is you don't want to be the person joining a community and just like asking other people for shit. Your first post is like, Hey, I need feedback on this. Or like, Hey, can you go like my LinkedIn post or like promotional ask, ask communities. [00:28:39] Mac: we've all joined that Slack me where that's all it is. It's just people posting that shit and you're like, Whoa, shit, delete, get out. I'm out. Nope. Not interested. [00:28:46] ​[00:29:00] [00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:31:00] Phil: And [00:31:00] Transform Your SDRs Into Network Development Champions --- [00:31:00] Phil: you've actually written about like, how do we start to transition? Uh, I forget if it was like BDR SDRs into customer development, rep roles, folks that focus on like building that network of fans and people that have like a set Similar problem. And we just kind of like band together and we like talk shop and we share solutions and maybe organically we discover certain tools. [00:31:25] Cause like I've purchased SAS software from those communities, like dark social communities, where someone is just like. Hey, I want advice on like finding a tool that's really good at lead scoring. And I actually look at the recommendations, like I'll join a Slack channel and I'll like search for certain keywords or something that I'm looking for pain that I have, and I see folks organically recommending stuff. [00:31:46] Like I value that a lot more than, um, you know, some of the other channels there, but yeah, maybe chat about that a little bit like that, like transition from SDRs to CDR. Yeah. [00:31:58] Mac: people [00:32:00] realize how much of their sales and marketing initiatives are working because of that dark social stuff. Like, Ooh, the ad worked and you're like, no, no, no. The ad worked because the person had already asked in the community and heard about you and the ad reminded them. [00:32:14] But they did not just, they didn't just like see an ad and go, Ooh, I'll go spend 50 grand, I saw an ad, cool, right? Like, that's just not, that's just not how humans work. And I, I can't remember the source. I'll, I have to double check it and like add a little like voice note into this after the fact, be like, Oh, this is the source. [00:32:30] But, um, that 84 percent of B2B purchases start with some form of referral. Some form of reference referral, like you post on LinkedIn, you see a recommendation, you ask someone directly, you get an intro request, whatever it is. Like if, if anybody listening to this thinks back with the last 10 things they bought, like really think about like, yeah, they might have cold called you. [00:32:51] They might've cold emailed you, but what was the actual thing that led you to pull the trigger on that purchase? I, I bet you eight out of 10 of [00:33:00] those, it was someone in your, someone you trusted said something and that led to actually being worth, you know, being interested in doing it. Um, so anyways, I know a bit of sidebar to the, the, the SDR to NDR. [00:33:12] So we actually, we used to call it a community development rep, which is where the CDR came from. And we've, we've evolved into the, the network development rep, mostly just to stay on brand. Um, and I will say when I, we shared that playbook like six months ago, um, a bunch of people were like, This is just what good SDRs and BDRs do anyway, and I was like, yeah, that's that's that's kind of the point Like the the branding is really like I'm not saying you should go actually change the titles of your roles It was really just like if I had written a book saying like here's the end the SDR playbook you'd be like, oh Cool, whatever. [00:33:46] But like the NDR network development, be like, huh, interesting. Like it's a marketing stunt. It catches your attention. Right. But it kind of goes also back to this idea of like, should you be leveraging network or should you be leveraging intense signals? Um, and I think what we wrote about in that is [00:34:00] that basically there's two halves to an NDR job. [00:34:02] If somebody is like, Hey, I want to buy right now. Yeah. Sell to them. Don't try to just like build a, go, go sell to that person. If they fill a website form, if they, if they indicate like an actual intense signal, do not beat around the bush. Cause you will lose that deal. [00:34:14] Phil: Yeah. [00:34:15] Mac: But like the classic, right, like only five to 10 percent of your buyers are actually doing that at any given time. [00:34:20] So with the other 90%, instead of trying to sell to them, and like you said, hope that two of them are like, cool, yeah, I'll buy and you just rinse and repeat. How do you actually build a network that compounds on itself? And the thing I always like to share is what happens if you stop paying for ads? Stops working. [00:34:36] What happens if you stop paying to make cold calls? You get no results. You stop paying to make cold, do cold emails. You get zero results. What happens if you stop building a network or a community or whatever you want to call it? What you've built already exists and it'll keep growing. It'll keep compounding on itself. [00:34:51] It's like it builds on itself. So it, it is a thing that can take longer to, to, to pay off than making the cold calls or doing the cold [00:35:00] emails or the outbound. But it's one of those things like once that flywheel gets going, man, it's, It's just, it's, it's borderline magical. It's like, it just, things are a lot. Easier and even like, and even if you are still doing cold calls and cold email, if you've built a good brand, you build a good community, you built a network that recognizability is going to make the cold stuff a lot easier. [00:35:24] Darrell: And what, what do you mean like network development representative? Like, like what, what does their day to day look like? Are they, so they're not doing mass outreach, buying lists and whatever, you know, but on it, are they more of like having these discovery conversations? Are they like educating people? [00:35:43] Like [00:35:43] Mac: So I think this is, this is the hard part is that it's like the SDR has been relegated to this like junior role, right? Get a list, make calls, good luck, have fun. And NDR, I think, I mean, they could be a junior role, but it's not a role. You can just be like, you can't train them in like a week and say, good luck, have fun.[00:36:00] [00:36:00] Um, I think an NDR has to be given space to actually understand the market, understand the buyer, have conversations, like not conversations to sell, but just just go out to have conversations with customers, learn them, actually understand the space. Um, I will say, I think an NDR is better off sitting under marketing. [00:36:17] I think honestly all SDRs, BDRs are more of a, they're a marketing function, not a sales function, but that's also a Hotly debated topic I think right now um Their their day to day is is really about starting by being able to like Segment who's a buyer and who's not right now Once again, that could be a combination of signals intent stuff Whatever and you have two different places if they're buying go sell do your discovery calls do your normal stuff if they're not It's all about how do you build relationships at scale? [00:36:46] So that could be if your audience, if your buyers are on LinkedIn, how do you social sell? And not necessarily in a way that's like, um, I was just chatting with someone who sells to HR. They're a salesperson. They are not an HR rep. They are never going to post thought leadership [00:37:00] content on LinkedIn. [00:37:00] That's going to get a, uh, an HR person to like trust them. Right. But what they have found is they've spoken to enough HR leaders. They understand the problems they have because they've given been given the space to actually become like. At least like an adjacent subject matter expert in their space, which by the way, is what all your sellers should be able to do anyways, regardless of what you call them, what their day to day looks like. [00:37:22] And what they have found is they create memes, memes about HR and the pain points that recruiters are having. And like, so they're like, they're like, I'm never going to get a recruiter to listen to me about how they should implement their recruiting strategy, but I understand them enough that I can post humorous things to build relationships and get their attention and do that sort of stuff. [00:37:41] So they're essentially finding ways to connect and build relationships in a non salesy way. It could be stuff like when we were a community company. We had a huge community. We had our SDRs. The first touch point was just inviting people to join our community not talking about our product. Just like hey get in touch community. [00:37:58] We're doing this event next week. Do you want to come [00:38:00] in? They would like. And we actually had them own that relationship. Their job was to get someone into the community and get them engaged within 30 days. So they were almost like the, like the community onboarding expert. And then guess what? When that person in six months is like, you know what? [00:38:12] I want to buy CommSore, they'd be like, Hey, John SDR who got me into the community, built this relationship with me, like, I really want to learn about the tool now. And now they go back and they start a buying process. [00:38:22] Darrell: Yeah, I like that. I like that. And, and just like you said, it's kind of like a hybrid marketing role a little bit. And I'm thinking that like the skills of like, there's so many things you have to do as a marketer and it's more of like the social interactive talking to people portion of marketing. But there's, there's a whole nother skill set of marketing, which is like create ads and look at the analytics and, you know, um, create the website, send emails. [00:38:56] Like that's kind of a different skill, even though many of us have both, [00:39:00] but there's this other skill of like going out into the community, talking to a bunch of people. So preferably you're probably extroverted, right? It's like, you're talking to a bunch of people, you're hosting like round tables or something, right? [00:39:11] And just getting people, [00:39:13] Genuine Connections Beat Mechanical Outreach --- [00:39:13] Darrell: it's almost like a mini version of, um, Have you both heard of the evangelist role? There's like evangelists. It's like a, it's like a mini evangelist [00:39:21] Mac: It's like an evangelist development role, [00:39:23] Darrell: evangelists don't enroll. Yeah. Like evangelists I see as more of like, they're definitely doing more thought leadership and like maybe keynotes at conferences, but like, [00:39:34] Phil: hmm. [00:39:36] Darrell: NDRs are doing that in their local, You know, whatever territory in their industries. [00:39:42] And so they're evangelizing, but also they're saying like, well, when you're ready, let's talk, let's do this. I [00:39:48] Mac: Another, another example I love is uh, It's a seller, uh, who sells to cybersecurity professionals. They are never going to speak the language that makes a cybersecurity professional trust them as a peer, right? That's just, they are probably, if [00:40:00] there's an audience that distrust salespeople, it's probably them, right? [00:40:04] Like they, they're not going to enjoy their cold calls. So what they did was they. They, uh, they started a local pickleball community for cybersecurity people in their city. Cause that's who they were selling to. Cause they love pickleball. And they like did that. They now have 50 people cybersecurity, like their target buyers come together every month to play pickleball. [00:40:26] They are now the person who's like, they're there. They're meeting them. They're getting to know them. They get this like positive affinity of like, I know you now you create this cool thing for us. So a lot of it is really figuring out also. The best sort of like sellers that I've seen adopt this NDR mentality is how do you inject your own personality into what you're doing versus becoming a script following robot, right? [00:40:46] This seller, she loved pickleball. She wanted to sell to So cybersecurity leaders, she combined those two in a thing that is like very natural for her to do. The guy doing memes, he likes memes. That's like a thing that comes naturally. So he figured out his [00:41:00] thing that works there. I think that's where leaders struggle with this because it's, it is not a give people a script, have them follow it. [00:41:08] Everyone on your team can do the exact same thing and it'll work perfectly all the time. But at the end of the day, if you look at the best sales reps in my experience, at least in my history. They are rarely, I won't say never, but they're rarely the ones who follow the script. They are not the ones with the most activity. [00:41:23] They're not the ones making the cold call. They are the ones who are getting creative, thinking outside the box, figuring out how to connect with buyers outside of a sales conversation. Like my, my sister was, uh, A BDR for a while, and her first job, she was the lowest. Performing BDR by activity for all eight quarters. [00:41:41] She was there lowest number of calls, lowest number of emails. She was the highest performing BDR by conversion to closed one conversion to meeting ACV seven out of eight quarters. She was there and she tells a story of like their CRO coming by and being like, like, I can't remember. I was like, you know, probably three or four quarters in being like, Why are your activity [00:42:00] metrics so low? [00:42:00] It was like, why does that matter if it quota all four quarters in a row? Like why do you care? So I think it's really like the NDR role is is is there's an element of creativity that is hard to teach but it's about giving people the space to build relationships and connections and understanding that listen like there is a whole world between closed one and closed loss and if you think the world in this if you Approach the role in this binary like you're either gonna buy or you're not You You are not going to enjoy what you're doing. [00:42:28] There's a, there's this whole world in between that you can unlock by, by thinking in this network driven way. [00:42:35] Phil: Such a cool perspective. Yeah, I really appreciate that. There, there's almost like a couple of different acronyms that we can name the role. There's, uh, we said like, uh, evangelists, like EDR, CDR, NDR. There's also MDR for meme development reps. There's the whole world of memes there. [00:42:50] Mac: Like let each of your SDRs pick their own letter and figure out what it means for them. Are they the pickleball development rep, the meme development rep, but I think in general, I think the NDR, whatever you want to [00:43:00] call it, To me is sort of the counterbalance to the rise of the GTM engineer. If the GTM engineer is the really technical signal based, you know, data driven sales rep, the NDR is the relationship side of that coin. [00:43:14] Phil: Very cool. Yeah. GTM engineer. We don't, we don't have to go down that, that rabbit hole there. There's a whole episode on, on that new buzzword. [00:43:21] The Most Valuable Marketing Happens in Spaces You Can't Measure --- [00:43:21] Phil: But I did want to ask you about measurement because I look, we said when in the intro that the initial idea for Commsor was helping communities use data to prove the impact of their work. [00:43:32] I'm really fascinated about this space. We chatted a lot with like data scientists and like measurement experts on attribution and MMM and incrementality. And you were kind of like focused in this space for community managers. And I'm always having a struggle with measuring the ROI of marketing because of this like black box of. [00:43:55] Like dark social, right. And then community is a big piece of that. And [00:44:00] I'm curious to get your take on this. Like you said that the quest for perfect attribution is completely false and it's a waste of time and money, but also that like companies would be way better off spending like a quarter of their time and budget on things that you will not be able to track. [00:44:15] How were you able in the first early days to track the impact of a community and the folks that were participating in that community? Maybe just chat about that a little bit. [00:44:26] Mac: yeah, first, first I want to say like the, the quest for perfect attribution as, as you, as you quoted me, there is, I do, I'm not saying things shouldn't be attributable. I'm not saying we shouldn't measure things, but I think this, this, this goal of trying to be a hundred percent measurable one. That's impossible. [00:44:42] Like I just think anyone like it's just not possible like it's We are humans, right? Like there is stuff. We're never gonna be able to measure, right? You're never gonna measure that someone talked about you in a slack community. You don't have access to right? Like it's just not gonna happen And I think a lot of teams Miss out on really good [00:45:00] marketing and sales ideas because they always start with how are we gonna measure it? [00:45:04] And if they can't answer that up front, they don't even bother trying. And sometimes the best things you can measure by just, and I know leaders are gonna tell me that's not a valid answer. Sometimes you just know. You just know it works. Right? Like, how do I know the dinosaur brand works for us? Can I measure brand love? [00:45:21] Yeah, I could probably hire some consultant to build some bullshit study to measure it for me. But you know what? I've never been on a podcast where it hasn't been brought up. So you know what? I just, I know it works because people talk about it. They asked me about it. There's just. Sometimes you just know and you have to be comfortable with that being the only thing you'll be able to measure. [00:45:40] Um, specifically for community though, we measured a bunch of stuff. We measured like community qualified leads. We'd measure like someone joining our community and then becoming a lead and like measuring like that journey of like they joined the community first. We had data that showed that people were three times more likely to buy if they had been engaged in our community in the six months before a sales conversation [00:46:00] started versus if they just went straight to a sales conversation. [00:46:02] Which is why we also made our. Our BDR outreach was get them in the community first. Don't try to sell them. Don't get a meeting Get them engaged in the community build the relationship um I think I can't remember the exact number but Our data was saying it was like 75 percent of our revenue came from deals that were Touched by our community in some way shape or form like people engaged in the community before they bought they were better deals They were faster deals. [00:46:25] They were more likely to buy and it just uh, So I think a lot of it is like you're measuring the incrementality, right? It's like, is it better if someone engages in the community versus doesn't not like not, you're not trying to measure this absolute number of just like the community drove a billion dollars of revenue. [00:46:41] Therefore, I'm glad we invested in it. It's like, you're really trying to measure, like, are the, are the numbers going up right direction when this thing is involved? And as long as that's happening, keep doing it. [00:46:54] Create Value First, Measure Second --- [00:46:54] Darrell: That's exactly, that's my thoughts exactly too. Because I think that companies get too caught up in trying to, [00:47:00] Measure everything. And like the, what is it, the popular one, what's the return on investment of this piece of content, like people or, or like this single email. So that's, that's the, the granularity that people are trying to measure. [00:47:13] And, you know, when in reality, a lot of, um, you know, organic marketing and then just, uh, you know, things like PR, um, it's not necessarily like finger in the wind, but just like you said, you can tell. And generally if things. If things are getting better in terms of numbers going up, like up into the right, like you said, things are generally getting better for the company, you know? [00:47:38] And I think that the, the, the, the, the hard part is it's like a down the road or down the stream kind of thing, you know, it's, it's kind of hard to measure every single step, but you know, it's going to, it's going to happen. And, and that's why, like, you know, for events, um, you know, I'm a bit, I'm a big fan of event marketing conferences and stuff. [00:47:54] You can tell events are doing well when more people come, right? And they keep on showing up. And like, [00:48:00] to not, you know, to always try to push, Hey, what's the return on this event? What's the return on this? Like, I think you're doing a disservice to, to, [00:48:10] Mac: think that that mindset pushes marketers and salespeople to do the very things that make buyers Not be interested, right? It's like they put it's like what's the return on investment on this content? Oh, we gotta gate it and follow up with every single person who downloads it great I don't want to download your damn content anymore, right? [00:48:24] It's like the the the the quest for attribution gets in the way Of the marketing and the sales and the relationship building which is the actual thing That drives it. I mean we did this thing You But a year, year and a half ago with these purple hoodies, which is like long story short, they were a mistake. [00:48:40] Suddenly we had 400 hoodies. We didn't know what to do with them. Um, was actually, it was 300 hoodies and we'd spent like 15, 000 on them. There's a, I wrote a blog post about it. I like the whole story, but, um, yeah, they didn't have our logo. They had the wrong dinosaur on them. So like, this is a whole [00:49:00] nightmare. [00:49:00] Um, and we, we sort of accidentally turned them into a mark. We just started sending out to people and we didn't, there was no like, Come to an event to get there. People didn't know how to get them They just started showing people like how did that person get a hoodie? How I want a hoodie it became this like this thing and I remember two things one I remember a CMO like I wrote a post about like how it worked for us. [00:49:20] We drove like I want to 2 million LinkedIn impressions with these hoodies and like we were just getting started with our pivots or like it really put us on the map with the sales audience like it really kind of like Kick started the the the comps were 2. 0 for us I remember CMO being like, you know, you would have been better off spending that 15, 000 on LinkedIn ads. [00:49:39] And I was like, why? Like, I, first off, if I had paid for 2 million impressions on LinkedIn ads, it would have cost me like significantly more money. And each impression would have been worthless less. Literally just today, like before this, I was on LinkedIn and I saw a video of someone was just made a video talking and they're wearing one of our hoodies. [00:49:57] Like it's been a year and a half and those hoodies get mentioned [00:50:00] every week. And once again, this goes back to like someone. It's probably, probably two months ago on a podcast, someone was like, but how do you know it worked? How did you measure it? What's the attribution? I was like, it's been over a year and I'm on a podcast right now where you're asking me about it. [00:50:16] Phil: What does that tell you? [00:50:17] Mac: you know, I just, that's, that's all I need to know. And that's, and I'm not saying every marketing or sales thing should fall into that category, but it's okay if 10 or 20 percent of stuff actually actively 10 or 20 percent should fall into that category because otherwise you're just, you're just, you're just, you're just, you're just, you're You're ending up in this, uh, this like checkbox marketing, like, Oh, we gotta have a newsletter cause it's measurable. [00:50:34] We gotta have, it's like, people have lost sight of like the, the fun in marketing. And I think especially B2B, it's just lacking this ability to just get creative. Like we've fallen prey to like, we gotta put a form on it. We gotta checkbox it. We gotta measure it. And it's just like, it's bland. It's not fun. [00:50:52] It's not exciting as a buyer. You tune it out. It's just, it, it puts you in this box of like, I just don't care about [00:50:58] Revenue Teams Short Term Thinking Hurts Company Growth --- [00:50:58] Phil: Yeah. I think that like one of the [00:51:00] root causes of this isn't just this like quest for perfect attribution, but also this like obsession with short term thinking in revenue teams, like it's probably doesn't apply to every company and industry, but like marketing, sales, revenue teams. They're often the team with the highest turnover rate, like pipeline targets are off, let's fire some of the BDRs or NDRs. [00:51:24] Our ACV is slipping. Let's fire some of our AEs. Like, I think this is part of the reason that revenue teams have such a very short term way of thinking. Our turnover is, is super high, like more cold outreach probably does more harm to the brand in the long run, like you've written about, but you know, I won't be around to worry about that. [00:51:42] So let's hit the phones and it's easy for a CEO to say, like, my team needs to think long term because the CEO is going to be there for the life of the company. But most of the folks on the team, like probably won't like, how do we change that mindset, Mac? What are your thoughts there?[00:52:00] [00:52:00] Mac: I don't know is the honest answer. I wish, you know, I wish I could say like, oh, I'm perfect plan. Just do this obvious. Um, I mean, it starts from the top. I think fundamentally, like you said, it's like the, it comes from the top, the expectations and people will like, people will follow those expectations, right? [00:52:15] If you set these aggressive quarterly goals and you fire people when they miss one quarter of goals, like, It's just, you know, it, it, it, it's not just the CEO's fault. It comes from the boards. We're pushing for like super unrealistic growth targets grow at all costs. I, I do think we're seeing a little bit of a shift in like a post pandemic era, a little bit away from growth at all costs. [00:52:32] We're seeing a little bit of like the, you know, efficient, you know, sustainable growth is, is more important. But I also, as I say that, I feel like I see more people talking about that than I see people actually doing. Um, so yeah, I, I don't know. I don't know how you change it. I think it's, there's a lot of deep seated problems in how we build companies in general. [00:52:57] Um, that caused this and it goes [00:53:00] like, you're going like, you got to go back to like the entire way companies are built and the purpose behind them and how they're funded and the expectations around them. It's, it's a lot of stuff. It's one of those problems that you don't solve it by like implementing a new policy or changing a little bit about your teamwork. [00:53:15] So I, I know it's a bit of like a terrible answer, but I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of, I don't know the answer. I'm not going to bullshit something. So, um, but it definitely comes from the top [00:53:26] Darrell: there's, yeah, that's what I was gonna say too. [00:53:28] Culture --- [00:53:28] Darrell: This is a big cultural thing, you know, and like, uh, it's, it's, uh, the way we work too, because you've got people on MBOs or quarterly targets, like even marketers sometimes are on quarterly targets, so they have to do stuff. And then, and then I was thinking too, like, How do we get people to, to, to not think that way? [00:53:49] I also think it's who you bring on and who you decide to work with. You know, you have to, you have to work with people or hire people that are passionate about what, what it is that you're, you're, [00:54:00] you're, you're working on, you know? [00:54:01] Mac: and I will say it's more fun when you do it that way and hire that kind of person too. And I've also, people tell us that they can feel the fun in our marketing. They're like, wow, your team is clearly having fun with it. And it creates this infectious energy that like, It's more fun for you. It's more fun for your customer. [00:54:15] It's more fun for your market. Like I just I don't I think the whole I feel like unfortunately marketing is adopting more of the sales mindset more than sales has been adopting the marketing mindset and like sales has this mindset of like, if it's not a grind, you're doing it wrong, right? If it's not painful, if you don't need to take your ice bath and be like, I made 400 cold calls and I got yelled at like there's like this weird like badge of honor around like my job is so hard and it's like, And I think it's really hard to convince people to change that behavior, because they're just like, they go into it expecting it to be hard. [00:54:48] And obviously it's hard, if it's worth doing, it's gonna be hard, but I feel like a lot of what happens in GTM right now is the wrong kind of hard. [00:54:56] Phil: Yeah, the hustle, the grind, like people just wear that[00:55:00] [00:55:00] Mac: The like, the sales bro culture, it's like, [00:55:02] Phil: Oh, yeah. [00:55:03] Mac: I have no interest in that. [00:55:06] Phil: Uh, sweet Mack, we're, we're getting close on time. We had two last questions for you, Daryl. I'll let you take the happiness question, but, uh, [00:55:12] Build a System to Activate Your Network In Your Sales Cycle --- [00:55:12] Phil: want to give you a chance to plug the product, um, a little bit, Mack, like I, Myself have been really curious to like, check out, um, like what the product actually does. [00:55:22] Like I get the movement and I get that like warm intros work better, but like, how does Commsor actually help you with that? Like when I was chatting about this with a few folks, they're just like, okay, yeah, cool. Like warm intros with first degree connections. Like that's pretty cool. Probably not going to get me super far, but you guys go a lot deeper than that. [00:55:40] And you show like paths to like possible intro paths, like, uh, plug the product of it, walk us through it. [00:55:46] Mac: So I will say for starters, you don't have to go that far for the impact to be that huge, which is I think one of the, once again, we're a quality play, not a quantity play. Um, so like our data shows that we have a bunch of data on like the impact of like deals are more likely to close, they [00:56:00] close faster, ACV is higher, churn rate is lower when they come in this way. [00:56:03] And with that average data, if you just took, if you had last quarter, take whatever you did last quarter. However many meetings you booked, whatever, let's do the exact same quarter. Like literally nothing changes this quarter, same number of meetings, same customers, same price points, everything the same, except 10 percent of those meetings come from intros and referrals. [00:56:20] Now that has a 10 to 20 percent impact on revenue, a lift because those meetings are more likely to close, like all that stuff. So it's like, that's just 10 percent of your meetings coming from this motion and you've made 10 percent more money, not more meetings, not 10 percent more meetings, just A change. [00:56:37] So I think it's like, there's a, there's a, it's always fun when people push back on that to me. Cause they're like, yeah, but like, it doesn't always work. I'm like, but you made 200 cold calls to get one meeting. What do you mean? It doesn't always work. Like the entire thing you're doing is based on a model of it doesn't always work. [00:56:51] So that, that argument just seems ridiculous, but essentially at our core, we, we map your network and we do a lot of work around connection strength, not [00:57:00] just like, Hey, Mac and Phil are connected on LinkedIn. Like, good luck. Have fun. Cause we've all seen that. We go, Hey Phil, I saw you're connected. Daryl on LinkedIn can make an intro. [00:57:06] And you're like, I don't know who Daryl is. I don't know why we're connected. I have 10, 000 connections. Like what? So we do a lot of work to try to map that out. We do. I'll spare the details. We look at like, you know, employment overlap and like go as deep as like, Hey, if you and I both worked at a 10 person startup. [00:57:20] We probably know each other you and I worked at Microsoft for two month overlap That probably doesn't carry as much weight and then we look at a bunch of other stuff And there's like it's a huge data science nightmare It's it's definitely not a perfect problem Like if you and I were best friends in real life or next door neighbors like that That's not going to show up. [00:57:36] We look at professional overlap only. Um, and then we handle the entire like intro process. So we actually turn the intro request into a trackable action, which makes managers happy. So we can track it. Hey, your team asked for 42 intros. 36 happened. These may turn into meeting like that. So just like your cold call activity or your email activity, you can create sort of like an intro. [00:57:57] Um, but [00:58:00] we also do a lot more than intros. We do, uh, intelligence and influence as well. So maybe I'm not asking you for an intro to Daryl because I already am selling to Daryl, but I know you used to work with him, so I'm asking you for insight because you used to work at his company, so maybe you can help me figure out how the procurement process is going to work so I go in more educated. [00:58:15] Or I'm already at the, I'm at the, you know, 10 yard line or 90 yard line, shows you how much I know about football, With, uh, with, with Daryl about to close the deal. And I can say, Hey, Phil, you're one of my happy customers used to work with Daryl, can you just reach out and be like, Hey, I heard you're on the, you know, about to buy comms or it's awesome. [00:58:31] You should totally do it. So it's, we're really building a tool of like, how do you leverage your network across the entire customer journey? The intro part is really like the, the door opener for us though. [00:58:43] Darrell: Yeah, I also feel like there's like a, uh, a low hanging fruit part of it, you know, like if these, if, if, if these are like ripe opportunities for, for, to make connections, why not use them? And then the other thing is like, you're kind of leaving money on the table if you don't, [00:59:00] right? If you have these warm connections, if you have this network, why aren't you tapping into it? [00:59:04] You know, why, why do you prefer. The, the two, two out of 100 probability cold outreach. Like there's there, I think there's something to be said around that [00:59:15] Mac: We, we don't replace cold outreach. We are a step before you get to cold outreach. That's like, we, we sell this step of like check for the warm intro. Great. If no, yeah, you know what? You're probably going to have to cold call an email from time to time. Still. Our goal is to just reduce your reliance on that and get you warmer, better deals. [00:59:33] Phil: Very cool. [00:59:34] Darrell: Yep. All right. I better, uh, we better wrap up and get you to the last question. So [00:59:40] 3 Essential Pillars for Sustainable Entrepreneurial Success --- [00:59:40] Darrell: Mac, you're a founder, serial entrepreneur, CEO, dinosaur lover, cat dad, home chef, runner, boulderer. One, one question we ask everyone on the show is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while still staying happy? [00:59:58] Mac: I think for me, it comes down [01:00:00] to, to three things. And I think I learned this. This is my fifth company. So I learned this a while ago. Basically. As long as three things are true, I'm good. If one of these three stops being true, it's time to revisit something, everything, partially whatever. And it's basically, I want to work on something that people want to buy. [01:00:18] So am I building something worth building? I want to build it with people that are smarter than me, that I have fun doing it with, that are like, that are worth doing it with. And I want to have fun while I'm doing it. If those three things are true, honestly, 99 percent of everything else, I'm good. Will figure itself out or be figure out a bowl. [01:00:35] Um, if one of those three things stopped being true. Yeah, that's like, that was three. Like, that was the wake up call that we had to pivot the business two years ago. It was like, those things weren't true anymore. We were no longer selling a thing that people were willing to spend money on. The team we were building it with was not the right team to build it with. [01:00:50] And I wasn't having fun anymore. Great. Something's gone terribly wrong. Um, I'm, I'm like, I'm a classic workaholic founder type. Like I like my work. I don't feel like I have to go and [01:01:00] search for a work life balance. So yeah, if you have up days and down days, but in general, like, you know, it's for me, it's just, I'm, I'm building a problem, building a thing to solve a problem I care about that I can talk about for hours on end if you let me, and I know we're at time here, so you're pretty close to letting me over talk about this. [01:01:16] Um, and then it's just, yeah, just. I don't know. I think obviously that's a good recipe just for life in general, like do things worth doing and have fun doing them. Everything else will figure itself out. [01:01:28] Phil: Awesome answer. I love those, uh, those three rules there. Mac will, uh, will share out links to all the stuff we talked about today. Uh, the, the, the, the books and the guides that you've written that are ungated, uh, by the way, folks, uh, you can check this out without needing an email. Um, this is [01:01:44] Mac: And are any of you do download them? Our sales team is not going to hit you with 600 follow ups afterwards, so don't worry about it. [01:01:50] Phil: Yeah, folks in the audience are definitely familiar with the drip campaigns of post ebook downloads. [01:01:56] Mac: no, thank you. [01:01:57] Phil: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time today, Mac. This is [01:02:00] super [01:02:00] Mac: Thanks for having me. [01:02:01] Darrell: Thanks, Mac.