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We've talked with a bunch of great folks. To help you improve GTM performance, we've distilled it into 4 things top teams are doing today.
And... we've added a bonus, so it's really 5.
And... we've added a bonus, so it's really 5.
Creators and Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
[00:00:00] Toni: Hi everyone. This is Toni Holbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula. Today, we're going to talk about four plus one things that revenue teams are doing right now to optimize their go to market.
[00:00:11] Enjoy.
[00:00:16] Mikkel: Okay, okay. I don't know. I don't think that was the intro
[00:00:20] Toni: No I don't think was not
[00:00:21] Mikkel: No, that wasn't the intro. It's not good enough. It doesn't meet our strict criteria. So
[00:00:26] Toni: you watched, uh, The Martian with your kid
[00:00:28] Mikkel: Oh yeah. We watched it. Also because we had a Dane fly into space not so long ago. I think it was last week or something.
[00:00:37] Toni: What, like on Virgin Galactic, or?
[00:00:39] Mikkel: No, they were going to the International Space Station.
[00:00:43] Toni: You didn't
[00:00:43] Mikkel: No, I didn't get the reference. It must be a German reference.
[00:00:46] Toni: No, it's just a, uh, you know, it was a tourist, not someone doing actually something
[00:00:51] Mikkel: Ah, no, I think he's doing stuff up there. I don't know. I mean, I'm not monitoring his performance or
[00:00:57] Toni: you do know where my Martian thing went, right? No. Because it's a great segue into,
[00:01:03] Mikkel: for like top sales teams.
[00:01:05] Toni: yeah, just imagine, I mean, he is stranded on Mars, no more resources, get it. He needs to be like, really, okay, how do I do this? How can I plant some potatoes here and get, you know, get the stuff done? Is
[00:01:16] Mikkel: here and get, you know, get you doing segues and me doing the chunky middle of the show? Yeah. I mean, we could, we could, we could.
[00:01:23] Toni: fun for a change actually,
[00:01:25] Mikkel: Okay, so let me tell you. You know,
[00:01:27] Toni: he had to figure out real quick because the funding dried up.
[00:01:32] Mikkel: yeah, yeah.
[00:01:32] That's a good, great segue, Toni. Uh, let's then hop
[00:01:36] Toni: to be the intro?
[00:01:36] Mikkel: no, I'm going to edit this shit.
[00:01:38] Toni: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Mikkel: No, it's like I told
[00:01:43] you. I was,
[00:01:44] Toni: Sam Adams said that.
[00:01:45] Mikkel: I was like, uh, walking dead zombie in one of the sessions last week. And now I'm back. Now I'm like, everything is reset, energized,
[00:01:53] Toni: was the thing with Sam Jacobs. So I'm really excited. Uh, I've, uh, do I have ads up now? Well,
[00:01:58] Mikkel: I
[00:01:58] do. Hahaha. Hahaha. Because I need to go home and sleep.
[00:02:02] Fine. Great. It's also because we're dedicated to this show, which, by the way, is growing super rapidly.
[00:02:08] And, uh, I don't know, maybe it's because people are leaving tons of reviews. If you haven't, then, obviously, you should. Otherwise,
[00:02:14] Toni: it's a great segue for you to stop this here right now and go into your Spotify app or your Apple something app and rate us right now.
[00:02:22] Mikkel: Yeah, that would be wonderful. And then go back and listen because you're not
[00:02:25] going to want to miss out.
[00:02:26] Toni: five out of five.
[00:02:27] Mikkel: Another long review, like 500 words minimum. That's the entry level requirement.
[00:02:32] Anyway, we're going to talk about, uh, some of the things that the great teams out there are doing right now. It's really coming from a bunch of the conversations we've had as we started bringing on guests to this show, as you probably know, we've had some great folks on.
[00:02:46] And while some of this stuff hasn't aired yet, we actually felt we had to share some of these insights now in a distilled episode to help people potentially fix performance or improve it.
[00:02:57] Toni: Yeah, that's, that's exactly what that is, right?
[00:03:00] So we talked to, and maybe I'm just going to, you know, name drop these guys now. Uh, as some of this is already released, we talked to Jacco van der Kooij from Winning by Design, that's out. Uh, we talked to Chris Walker from Refine Labs, that's out. We also talked to Sam Jacobs from Pavilion. that's not out yet. And we talked, uh, with David Kellogg that, uh, he's, uh, an executive in residence at Balderton.
[00:03:22] He does a couple of other cool things, speaks at SaaStr by the way. and you know, some of the, some of the conversations, they had some really, uh, nice points that we just want to summarize up and, uh, and give to you today instead of, uh, instead of waiting.
[00:03:35] Mikkel: Yeah. So I think we should hop, hop into it because there are four things we kind of wanted to hop into.
[00:03:41] Yes. And the first one is from Sam.
[00:03:44] Toni: so Sam Jacobs, um, first of all, if you haven't already follow him on LinkedIn, he puts out some fantastic content. I also just joined Pavilion, by the way,
[00:03:54] Mikkel: Oh, you ended up doing it.
[00:03:55] Toni: I did do it. Yes. Um, and it's fantastic. Uh, but what he has, or what we discussed with him. And really the topic was around efficiency with him to a large degree, and he can see it from both directions, one being a startup CEO himself, so pavilions, you know, approaching 20 million in AR, but also he's talking to a bunch of people all the time, right?
[00:04:18] Kind of, he's, uh, you know, flying around the globe right now, talking GTM Uh, 2023, kind of this thing there. Um, and here's quite some really cool insights. And, um, the top insight, I think that is really applicable here today is really looking at, um,
[00:04:35] Mikkel: um,
[00:04:36] Toni: you deploy and use your account executives in a different way. And, um, and that new way really is. Uh, and, and, you know, he talked about how you can do all kinds of complicated math, all of that stuff, or you just do the calendar trick. And the calendar trick is you go into the calendar of one of your reps, and if there's too much white, then you know that's a problem.
[00:05:01] Uh, if you subtract all the internal meetings, like, you know, one on ones and forecast meeting and all hands and all of that jazz. if there's, um, if there's also like lots of white then or even more so. Um, so that's the problem. And he was basically saying, uh, again, you can do the complicated math version, or you just say, okay, every day my raps should be Uh, having three external meetings and that doesn't need to be three new external meetings every day.
[00:05:33] It could be that one or two of them is new and one, the other one is like a, you know, prolongation of a sales process and so forth. So three slots where they are working on things that they're actually being paid for. Yeah. So that, that, that needs to be the approach. That needs to be the idea. Sounds super novel, you know, when we kind of say it out loud.
[00:05:51] Mikkel: we Jakob had the thing with, uh, I want to see expense reports, right? You need to hop on a plane, submit expense report. I need to see that you're out meeting
[00:05:59] Toni: Yeah. Well, that's a different thing that
[00:06:01] Mikkel: Oh, sorry,
[00:06:01] sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
[00:06:04] Toni: but the, um, uh, in, in Sam's, in Sam's world, right. It's, it's too large to be overlapping with some of the things that we've been talking about. It's really. It's not that you hire more AEs and then magically more money appears, um, they are there to process something through, they're taking opportunities and turning them into cash, that's a super valuable skill to have, um, but really, you know, when you take this calendar approach, um, it actually should be allowing you to figure out, well, do I need all of those folks?
[00:06:33] Right? That is the number one thing you should be potentially thinking about is like, are they having two or three meetings a day? Uh, with external folks, nothing internal, external stuff, sales related. and if the answer is no, then yeah, there might be, there might be an opportunity for you to actually shrink the team, um, or increase pipeline without adding to the team, delaying a hire or something like that.
[00:06:55] and, um.
[00:06:56] Mikkel: I think
[00:06:56] Toni: that's a very powerful way to look at this. And I also think it kind of changes the paradigm for people when they're, when they're thinking about their sales team, it's really not, how many can I have? It's how many do I need? Yeah. And, um, and what goes with it, it's also a bit the, this whole OTE to to ARR ratio and all of these other benchmarks.
[00:07:17] You know what? There are things that you look at after the fact, once everything is set up, and then you figure out, is this the right thing or not? but, you know, the much easier way to get to that in the first place is like, are my reps fucking busy? Right? And once they are, then you can kind of scale this out.
[00:07:32] And, um, the truth is, with, uh, pipeline inflating for many, many of us, and with even a wrong kind of approach of the AEs going into this, you know, this year, and even, you know, late last year, there might be some room in your team where you can say like, you know what, actually, I don't need all of those reps at the
[00:07:50] Mikkel: team where you have a excess capacity, some of those metrics, whether it's CAC Payback or something else, they start look, you know, not so great. So when you make that cut, obviously they improve and you'll free up the resources as we've discussed in recent episode that you can then redeploy, right?
[00:08:05] So, so what you're saying, it's really about, you know, looking at what balance do you really need between the inputs and outputs?
[00:08:12] Toni: Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:13] And, um, so the Sam Jacobs episode, I'm not sure when it's going to come out, but in the next couple of weeks, uh, I'm, I'm thinking everyone will enjoy it. Another teaser there was, he predicted soon we will be ordering babies online. Um, we talked a little bit about the future. Uh, that that came out there as well.
[00:08:31] Okay. so this was Sam, fantastic guy, by the way. Then we talked to Chris, Chris Walker in this case. Um, again, you know, CEO of Refined Labs. He built a fantastic following online talking about the demand gen. Demand gen is really his thing. and one of the pieces, uh, that he, You know, that he really kind of contributed, you know, profoundly kind of when we talked about this, I think he had one quote where he said, it's not a model problem.
[00:09:00] It's a goal setting problem, right? So when he was referring to this whole thing of, uh, we are 20 million. We want to grow to 50. Um, we have a model and the model doesn't get us to 50. And then everyone goes into the Excel spreadsheet and tweaks everything until then, you know, until one sells as 50 million, done.
[00:09:21] and he's basically pointing out, well, and in his case, right, he is a, um, he's a, he's a CEO obviously, but he's still kind of goes to clients and kind of helps them figure some of that stuff out and he sometimes needs to be the bad news bear and it's like, well. Yeah, no, just because you wish it to be 50 million, it doesn't make it true.
[00:09:40] I'm sorry, it just won't. Right. and it was really fun him pointing out. It's not a, it's not a model problem. It's not the model's fault that it doesn't get you to 50. It's the goal to begin with that that's a problem. Right. And I think, this really was an outcome of our conversation where we asked him about, well, where do you think this, this MQL thing is coming from?
[00:10:00] Right. So one of his big things is. Um, Hey, you should be investing not in, um, uh, demand capture too much, right? So things like Google paid and so forth, they like
[00:10:10] Mikkel: Very bottom
[00:10:11] Toni: very bottom funnel, right? You put more money in, but there's not more coming, uh, coming your way. So instead you need to, you know, take this money and go somewhere else.
[00:10:19] Right. And, and some of the symptoms of doing it the wrong way is really have those, uh, hundreds of thousands of MQLs. That each are converting, you know, 8% of the time or less. Uh, but for that to happen, you need to employ. Hordes of SDRs that are plowing through those, you know, thousands of leads to, you know, book one meeting from, uh, I don't know, a hundred or 200 or whatever it's going to be.
[00:10:43] And then, you know, once you have that meeting, they don't convert into revenue anyway. Right. So if you think about that funnel, first of all, all the money that you spend on those ebook downloads and you know, the white paper, Google paid search promotion, um, and on that turning into lots of kind of trash leads.
[00:11:03] and then you deploy all those folks working through this, you can just, you can just see how this is adding up a lot of cost that is not leading to much money in the end.
[00:11:12] Mikkel: And I think to make it very real, I was, um, looking at a colleague over the shoulder who did a GTM analysis, uh, not so long ago. And you saw basically an unblended funnel where you had the regular inbounds. So demo requests and all that went fine. Uh, good processing metrics and everything.
[00:11:26] But then lo and behold, there was, you know, another stream of. Uh, you know, air quotes inbounds, which was, you know, webinars and stuff like this. And this was like equal to the other amount of, so we're talking 10, 10, 000 of each, right? And they got, you know, I think 50 meetings out of that. And I was just dumbfounded because one thing is you spend a truckload of cash getting those leads.
[00:11:49] But then when you start peeling, you know, the onion a bit and look deeper, you could see that they didn't have specialized, inbound roles to tackle those. So they were just being passed to outbound SDRs. And their efficiency was just, you know, immensely low. So the unit economics were
[00:12:03] Toni: know, but the thing is, if you look at it through the channel lens of, let's just say that that stuff comes from Google search. If you look at it through that lens, you will actually not see what's going on. You need to kind of, at the same time, you need to blend it into the different CTAs, follow them through, see what their conversion rates are. and then you might be able to actually kind of see this out. And, and that was a cool thing. So this is a really cool team that we're working with. They're super sophisticated already. Uh, but by showing that to them like this, there was a little bit of, ah, okay. I think, yeah, we, we kind of knew that was going on, but good to see it right now.
[00:12:37] I think it's also, to
[00:12:38] Mikkel: What you sometimes fail to realize is the collateral damage it causes, right? One thing is you're wasting money in the top funnel, but also downstream impact on sales, um, to Chris's point, you know, it's taking away their time from working on those ICP, you know, great fit accounts that they should be working on.
[00:12:54] Right. And so, so it's not just bad math and marketing. It also impacts sales.
[00:12:58] Toni: And to be clear, I think people should create white papers and, you know, gate them or not gate them, do webinars, gate them, not gate them.
[00:13:05] It's not about that. You know, the tactics are correct, but it's a tactic that you use for the very top end of the funnel. And, you know, no one, no one there that shows up to webinars like, Oh, I want to buy. And then you plow them with phone calls, um, they still don't want to buy,
[00:13:19] Mikkel: want to
[00:13:20] Toni: So, and anyway, so this was kind of Chris's takeaway.
[00:13:23] And, and this is again, something that, you know, in a, in a, uh, current state of scarce resources, you should be looking at your funnel like this, you know, unblended, see what's going on and, and just do a rough, you know, um, back of the napkin calculation of how much money you might be wasting on that revenue stream, right?
[00:13:39] And that money, you know what, you could use on some other stuff, you know.
[00:13:43] Okay, so this was Chris Walker. Now a bit more salesy. Uh, yes, we had Kooij here from Winning by Design, but we also had, um, Chris Orlob here, which is going to be aired, you know, soon as well. Um, and he's like formerly Gong and now, uh, P
[00:13:59] Mikkel: Club,
[00:14:00] Toni: I think President's Club IOS, P Club IOS, something like this,
[00:14:03] Mikkel: I don't know if that's right.
[00:14:04] Toni: Um, and, uh, what those two gentlemen talked a lot about is, um, you know, if you wrap it really, you know, short, I think it's about. Uh, well, yes, the current climate has changed, but really all these successful reps are still successful. and you know, one of these, uh, one of the takeaways, there's like, well, the past has just enabled so many.
[00:14:28] mediocre or simply, you know, not well trained, uh, reps to succeed and now that has changed. So guess what? You know, those, um, not fully up to par skill wise reps are struggling, right? and obviously both of them, they're selling kind of... You know, uh, enablement services, if you will, and training services.
[00:14:49] So always kind of, that's, that's the point here. but it does make a ton of sense. Right. And, um, uh, Chris Orlob really much focused on the discovery part, you know, that, that is super key. You need to nail that. You need to understand that you need to figure out, uh, what is an inbound conversation, what is an outbound conversation.
[00:15:05] And, you know, uh, and you kind of train your reps on making sure that this works out right. Because if you, um, especially if you, if your inbound is drying up, which is something that we've seen across the board, uh, some people were like, Oh, cool, let's do outbound now. Um, and if you do outbound suddenly, but you don't, you don't upskill your reps to be able to hold outbound conversations. You can book as many outbounds as you want.
[00:15:28] The AE is going say you to say all of this is shit quality and it doesn't, outbound doesn't work for us. Um, and it's, you know, you will end up wasting a lot of, a lot of money, right? So making sure that you, um, teach your folks to, uh, you know, to be able to do the discovery kind of in those different scenarios is, um, extremely key.
[00:15:45] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:15:46] Toni: And I think then Jaco was also talking about the, uh, the expense report thing. Um, so which is, um, which, which is, A little bit, you know, it comes, I think, a little bit from this approach of, um, Hey AI. Lots of emails being sent. There's no, uh, barrier anymore to just blast everyone. And, um, his point and to, to a degree also Sam, Sam Jacob's point is like, see more people face to face.
[00:16:13] Stand out, you know, fly there. and we would, that's, that's where Jacco's expense report is coming from. It's like, You need to see those people. And obviously then you're going to incur some, some expenses. And we were challenging him a little bit and we're like, well, you know, maybe this is a cool solution for those 50K enterprise tickets that you might be selling, but what about the rest of us?
[00:16:34] You know, the, the sub 20, sub 10, we even struggling sometimes to have an SDR motion running and now you want to have our reps fly out. That's ridiculous. and, um, you know, his answer was both like, well, try and get your ACV up. It's like, thanks.
[00:16:47] Mikkel: Just I'll work on that.
[00:16:49] Toni: But the other thing was also, well, uh, you don't just take one plane and stay one night in an hotel and fly back for one client.
[00:16:56] You need to just, you know, package it up. You need to see multiple of them. You have breakfast with one, dinner with the other. You go jogging with the third and stuff. And, um, there are different ways to, to load, uh, you know, face to face engagement into. Um, into, um, kind of a, um, kind of a travel kind of thing.
[00:17:13] Right.
[00:17:13] Mikkel: I think the cool point was also like, Hey, you need to pick, if we, if we believe that the skillset is the issue, that's where you need to go and work and you need to pick one area that you work on in a sprint to improve it. And then you can move on to the next, right? Just pick, you don't start everything, right?
[00:17:31] You don't start working on all the dimensions of sales. Um, and I think also the other, some of the bits we talked about is, you know, a new rep starting out of school and all they get is a laptop, maybe a phone and then, and then some swag and there's like, good luck. And then the training is the kickoff, right?
[00:17:46] That's the kickoff.
[00:17:47] Toni: the training is the login to Gong. Go listen, go listen to some
[00:17:50] Mikkel: and I mean, that's just not going to cut it, right? And I think we've been used to that working. We've been used to that, but it's not anymore. So go listen to the Jacco episode and watch out for the Chris Orlob.
[00:18:03] Toni: So next one, uh, Dave Kellogg.
[00:18:06] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Toni: so he's a, he's a funny and funky guy. Um, and we were asking him some, it was actually, he's, he's kind of a, uh, an ex CMO. He was CMO of, what is it called again?
[00:18:19] Mikkel: it was, uh, Business Logic.
[00:18:22] Toni: Business logic.
[00:18:23] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Toni: He was the CMO of BusinessLogic and he took it from, uh, he said 10 million in ARR to a billion in ARR.
[00:18:34] Mikkel: Yeah. Not,
[00:18:36] Toni: not this capitalization thing, not this valuation thing, no, in revenue. Um, and, um, and then later he was the CEO of a couple of other teams actually. So kind of, he is a, he's a cool CEO, CMO perspective on things.
[00:18:50] Mikkel: And
[00:18:51] Toni: were actually asking him because, I mean, he's a, he's a, he's an experienced dude, which means he went through the dot com bubble. He went through the, uh, 08, 09 thing, and now kind of this, this one here and maybe some in between that I forgot. So he has seen a couple of those things before and we're asking him like, Hey, you know, what are your learnings from all of those crises that, that apply now?
[00:19:11] How should people, how should people work through this? Obviously, we're in the middle of this, so, you know, some people have figured this out already, um, but he had, he had a, I mean, he's also so American, he had this, parking lot approach where you basically fire your whole company.
[00:19:28] Everyone is, you know, being, pushed out to the parking lot and then you go like, okay, whom do we want to have back?
[00:19:35] Mikkel: Yeah. I think he, he put it a bit softer, but yes, that was the
[00:19:41] Toni: he's a bit more eloquent than I am. and, and he was applying the same thinking to marketing this case. Um, and he basically said like, okay, tomorrow you're going to fire all of your campaigns.
[00:19:52] Like, you're going to, you know, stop everything. Yeah. Your newsletter, your, your book, a demo, a webinar, whatever, you're gonna stop all of it. What do you wanna have back? Right. And then he was talking about this onion approach. You know, what is the core, what works all the time, and that we bet on, we know it works.
[00:20:10] You know, that's the stuff you put in, you know, back first. And then as you go out on the, uh, on the layers, you basically have this realization that, okay, and now I'm outta money. Um, and, um, and what was really cool, I've never seen this used like this before. He, uh, referenced a wishlist. So there's a GTM wishlist, um, that every GTM leader kind of can put things on.
[00:20:33] Uh, literally this is how you and I manage our kids.
[00:20:36] Mikkel: Like,
[00:20:36] Toni: It's want to have car. No, well put it on the wishlist.
[00:20:40] Um, and then he said, well, uh, we can't afford this right now, but if you're able to beat the plan. then we collectively can go to the wishlist bucket and can take something out. You know what?
[00:20:53] I think this is better incentive than any money on the planet that you, you know, that you sent, sent to your people in terms of commission checks or something like this. It's like, Oh, really? I can have my, my podcast. And, um, uh, you know, it's, it's a really cool approach. And obviously the, the, the key here, the efficient bit is really have a, and I think in accounting is probably called zero budget approach, let everything go and then figure out what you actually really want to have back of this, you know, loss aversion trigger.
[00:21:25] I don't want to lose this. Get over this by pushing it out and then pulling it back and specifically for marketing, kind of look at the whole thing that you have set up and then instead of figuring out what you want to cut first, figure out what you want to have back first and what you want to have back last.
[00:21:41] If
[00:21:41] Mikkel: I think it's also an important exercise. Like, I've gone through that myself where... If you look at the team, you will go, Oh, no, I can't, I, I need to keep Greg because I like, I like Greg,
[00:21:51] if you just, but no, exactly. But if you look at, if you just look, okay, this is what I have, what do I really need? Then it really changes things because then you might realize that, Hey, you actually need something that you don't have on the team.
[00:22:03] And then once you've done the exercise, you can look at the team that you have and say, Hey, okay. And I think this was one of his points, maybe, can you move someone? Actually, right. and I think that's, it kind of changes your mindset and remove some of those potential biases that you might have when you just look at the numbers and kind of put everything out on the parking lot.
[00:22:22] Um, so I think that's, yeah, that's a, was definitely a great one.
[00:22:25] Toni: Yeah, no, exactly. and on that one, actually, I think there's, and this is maybe, you know, part of a customer story, potentially, I think it's really important, in this, in this parking lot approach and this, this overall approach to number one, not only look at the different channels that you have to this previous example, um, but also not only look at your, uh, ROAS, so return of ad spend, because if you have a fairly sizable team below that.
[00:22:51] you know, your fantastic ad spend, uh, return of investment on that might still actually not be good in a, in a, you know, fully CAC kind of world, right? So it's, it's, it's really important to when you make this assessment, also the parking lot, what do you want to have back to look at in a fully loaded fashion, uh, in order to make.
[00:23:10] True decisions, right? Um, otherwise the, and I think this is the fallacy here. It's so easy to look at a return of ad spend. It's so easy to do that, right? Here, this is the credit card bill here, and that's my tracking there. Um, but really the pieces that tie them together is the team, right? And all other stuff that you spend on it.
[00:23:27] I think it's sometimes super easy to forget that. And in this kind of parking lot approach,
[00:23:32] Mikkel: lot approach. People make the mistake that they take a metric you use to manage campaigns within a team versus let's look at the team performance, right? Then it's two very different things because then you do need to account for all the costs and elements in there.
[00:23:47] Um, but yeah, ROAS make total sense if you are a team managing paid advertising and you need to make decisions across channels, then it makes complete sense to use that metric, right? But when you're assessing the overall team, different story.
[00:23:59] Toni: So, and since we still have a little bit of time on the clock, I decided to add one more. Um, Pablo Dominguez. from Inside Partners. I think he's going to air later this week,
[00:24:12] Mikkel: Before this
[00:24:13] episode, probably. before this episode.
[00:24:15] Toni: and he talked about the craziness of what continuous improvement can achieve.
[00:24:23] No,
[00:24:23] Mikkel: Ah. Everyone thinks it's so
[00:24:26] Toni: I know. I feel like I lost
[00:24:28] Mikkel: lost
[00:24:29] 20, listeners,
[00:24:30] Toni: right just by
[00:24:31] Mikkel: all two them.
[00:24:33] Toni: improvement, um, and, um, um,
[00:24:37] Mikkel: sell it. Let's sell it.
[00:24:38] Toni: so, I think the way to sell this is exactly how he started his book or they started their book. forgot who the co author was. by talking, I mean, there's a bit corny about this whole, you know, Formula One thing Pablo if you're
[00:24:52] Mikkel: He also, he also called it out himself,
[00:24:54] Toni: but really, really cool, really cool. Um, they gave one example about Formula One, which I was, I felt in the book was mind blowing. He kind of, we, we kind of recited it also on the show. So, in the sixties or something like this, a while back, uh, Formula One was already going, um, and, uh, back then they also had a pit stop, um, the pit stop on average took something like 85, 58 seconds.
[00:25:25] a minute, let's say a minute. Every pit stop took like a minute, right? today, the average pit stop and the way they have achieved this. is by continuous improvement, boring. But now the average pit stop is something like three seconds.
[00:25:40] Mikkel: 3 seconds.
[00:25:41] Yep, and I think to make it even more key, he said when all the laps, you know, all the races even are done, the difference from 1, 2, and 3, it is, we're talking seconds. So it matters quite great
[00:25:53] Toni: about the, um, it's almost like the, the, what do you call it in Tour de France? The general. You know this, you're Dane, you have like a Dane winning this twice
[00:26:01] Mikkel: the Classement.
[00:26:01] Toni: Yeah, exactly. The general classification, you know, if, if, if, if you do this for Formula 1 or the whole season, it's, they're, they're a couple of seconds apart, really.
[00:26:11] And uh, so yeah, those, those seconds that you shave off on the pit stop, they're really, really important. And the way they have achieved this is not by, okay, we're today at one minute and tomorrow, boop, we're at three seconds. No. Like. They improved it a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and the team got a little bit better, the got a bit better, Um, I think they're now not gasing the car anymore, but that wouldn't be a, you know, a limitation anyway, anymore, because it's so fucking fast anyway.
[00:26:37] Um, but, you know, all of these little steps... Boring steps, boring, boring steps, they added up over time leading, you know, what is it a 95% improvement or something? It's insane. Um, and, um, if you want this happen to your company, well, you know, continuous improvement, that's the thing.
[00:26:56] Mikkel: to your company, well, you If you're, you know, let's say from just customer signing to being successfully onboarded. If you beat the average, that is massive. If you have a faster sales cycle, that is massive. And, you know, just, it means you can go and buy cheaper.
[00:27:18] Toni: the actual example that we chewed through on the episode, I don't want to take too much away Um, but it really was, I think it was the Gainsight example. And, um, they basically decided, okay, we want to shorten our sales cycles and we want to shorten our, delivery Oh, you know, time to value.
[00:27:37] By what? 50%. So Nick Mehta. Waltz into, I see it front my eyes, Nick Metha, waltz into a meeting, says, Folks! It's going to be 50 50 on both sides. Um, and you know what? They pulled it off. Uh, Pablo was going to talk about, you know, that a little bit more, but the thing here is not that, oh, you know, theoretically we know so much more pipeline because we shorten everything.
[00:27:58] Actually much more strategically, this enabled them to move into a different market and enabled them to go from enterprise to mid market and, you know, larger SMB. of which they already had leads, of which they already had interest. They just couldn't put the pieces together in order to service them in a proper way.
[00:28:14] and see there, they turned from, you know, leads that they had to disqualify, uh, to leads that they could turn into money. Guess, I mean, that's also a thing for everyone out there. It's like, okay, how can I make more with what I have? Well, figure out. Potentially how to, in this case, maybe go down market, but that will have big, big knock on effects for the rest of the organization.
[00:28:32] Well, through continuous improvement, you can, you know, can unlock those strategic moves. Right. And I think, um, that, that was kind of pretty, pretty fascinating, you know, listening to that story from Pablo there.
[00:28:42] Mikkel: Yep. So continuous improvement. I mean, we've talked about in so many episodes, we're still fans. QBRs, that's a way to unlock
[00:28:50] Toni: Well, no one talked about QBRs.
[00:28:51] Mikkel: No, no,
[00:28:52] Toni: can't, put it on the list here.
[00:28:53] Mikkel: No, it's not. It's not what the great teams are.
[00:28:55] They're probably doing it, but it's not what was voiced. Let's put it like that. Let's put it like that. Great. So, uh, Let's, uh, bring it home then.
[00:29:05] Toni: So if you got to here, no. So, uh, what did we talk about today? We talked about, um, instead of four was ended four plus one,
[00:29:17] Mikkel: exactly, so 5.
[00:29:18] Toni: four plus one. Wonderful. Oh, that's right.
[00:29:20] Mikkel: 5. Yeah.
[00:29:20] Toni: um, uh, takeaways from some of the conversations we had around. what top teams, GTM teams are doing out there right now in order to just optimize and, you know, cut the fat away and, you know, do, do the best with what they have.
[00:29:33] and those are some real examples. And, uh, if you haven't already, please listen to the Jacco and, Chris Walker and potentially Pablo episode. Otherwise Sam Jacobs and Dave Kellogg are coming up. Thank you.
[00:29:45] Mikkel: And then, by the way, what some of the top listeners are doing, they are obviously dropping reviews.
[00:29:50] I mean, this is a double CTA episode, so we did one in the beginning,
[00:29:53] let's
[00:29:53] Toni: on how cut it.
[00:29:54] Mikkel: that's...
[00:29:55] Toni: yes,
[00:29:56] Mikkel: Okay, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:57] Toni: you've gotten to here, you know, maybe you should uh, and give us a, give us a review. We would, we would really appreciate
[00:30:03] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:30:04] very
[00:30:04] Toni: really appreciate it.
[00:30:05] Mikkel: So it's been so wonderful to have these guests on and uh, looking forward to have some more this episode.
[00:30:10] Um, I hope was super helpful. Thank you so much, Toni.
[00:30:13] Toni: Thank you so much, Mikkel and have a good one. Bye bye.
[00:30:15] Mikkel: Bye.