Warren Zenna: The CRO Spotlight Podcast.
Hi, I'm Warren Zena, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and
welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast.
This podcast is for Chief Revenue Officers, aspiring CROs and
CEOs who are looking to hire or support a CRO to succeed.
To join me and my expert guests as we debate, discuss and tackle today's
complex revenue growth challenges, and provide practical insights
to help CROs succeed in the role.
We're really excited to have you with us now, let's get to it.
All right, and welcome to this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast.
I'm Warren Zenna, the c e o and founder of the c r O Collective.
I'm not big.
New Year's resolutions.
I find the whole thing to be a little bit silly, and that doesn't mean to say that
people that are into it are in any way.
I'm disparaging them.
I just personally never thought it really worked for me, so I tend not to make 'em.
However, I was giving it some thought, and here's what I, what I
think about this is sort of instead of looking at the new year as, oh,
what am I gonna accomplish this year?
What am I get done this year?
A framework that may be helpful, maybe try it on is maybe look at last
year and ask yourself two questions.
what did I do last year that really didn't work, and what
did I do last year that did?
and see if you can make this year, focus on the things that do work and
stop doing the things that don't work.
That instead of adding, adding new things on, maybe removing stuff that you know
you shouldn't be doing or that aren't effective, or wasting your time or habits
that you know you don't want to have and remove them and just keep the good stuff.
If you keep the good stuff and remove the bad stuff, you'd probably
see an uptick in performance even if you don't add anything new.
I think we've dragged.
More by things than we are because we're not doing enough.
So anyway, something to think about.
Um, and uh, you know, as I kicked off in the year already, I've been
having a lot of conversations and interesting trepidation about the market.
A lot of people are taking very conservative.
Stance on how they're gonna hire.
I'm hearing a lot of people saying, we're thinking a lot more about hiring
freelancers and part-timers as opposed to adding people onto our W two s.
You know, these are cautionary things.
So much of this has to do with externalities, which I'm not saying
externalities shouldn't be factors, but.
What I see, and I say it all the time, is if you have a really buttoned up
revenue operation that's repeatable and predictable, and you know what you need
to be looking for and you know who your customer is, it gives you a lot more.
Ability to make decisions than if you don't know that stuff.
And I think in the absence of knowing that stuff, people rely on externalities
a lot more than they need to.
That's just my opinion.
So that being said, um, really great to be back.
This year is gonna be great.
We have a lot going on and a lot of great guests lined up and some
other exciting things happening.
So thanks again for listening.
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And today I'm real excited to have a guest on whom I've had the
pleasure of speaking to a lot.
We have connected through LinkedIn.
And um, this gentleman, his name is Steve Sch.
He's a C R O and he's a brilliant, brilliant man.
And you know, he shares a lot on LinkedIn that I find really insightful and we've
had some really great conversations.
As a matter of fact, some of you may recall earlier last year, we did a
great S D R debate and Steve was on it.
It was a real riot.
It was quite a , quite a heated conversation.
Steve had the opportunity to weigh in there and it was really great.
But, um, tell me a little bit about Steve before I introduce him formally.
You know, Steve, uh, helped launch and execute, uh, the
go-to-market strategy now, reach for at and t and T-Mobile as well.
He was the founder and c e o of title.
Right.
Um, for a couple years.
Um, and so you know, Steve has made some moves.
He's with Reggie AI now.
Um, I know AI is big on his mind.
Uh, go to market.
It's big on his mind.
Uh, he's just got a lot of wisdom.
He's got a lot of experience under his belt.
So Steve, thank you so much for being here today.
Thanks,
Steven Schmidt: Warren.
I appreciate it.
Two things I pulled out of your intro.
I was in the meditative state, just doing some reflection.
Addition by subtraction, um, was like the theme for this year.
So that resonates big time.
Yeah.
And then in the absence of facts, you have faith, right?
And, and I think as a C R O , there, you said it, right?
And when rev ops is strong, you have facts, you have data.
And when you don't, you have faith, which can get you, you know, the,
he might get you a little bit there.
But as a c o role, I, the one thing I learned is, is certainly
not about your skillsets anymore.
It is about truly understanding how revenue functions in the organization.
and, um, baptism by fire back in 2020 for me, um, is when I first
had a chance to get into that role.
Warren and I, um, I knew very little, very little, was a good sales guy, right?
Could sell a lot and was always promoted by, by that default mechanism.
And I think the fifth time I was promoted, maybe when my mid
thirties, I started to underst.
, you know, I was like a, you know, sales leader and so I understood a
little bit of the revenue function, but I still didn't care, right?
I was still really kind of a worried about my quota or my team's
quota and didn't look past that.
Warren.
So I got my start in 2020.
Um, it's actually the story like title began because, I
mean, I sat down with my wife.
and I was hellbent on doing something in the consulting arena,
but I, I knew of fractional rev op, I knew of fractional CROs.
I just didn't know how to do it.
And I quite frankly weren't, I didn't know if I was skilled enough to pick up
the phone and call somebody and say, Hey, I want to be your fractional anything.
Um, you named, uh, T-Mobile, right?
I came from the IT and the telco space space brief stint
at, um, outreach in 2017.
Ended up in rehab shortly after that.
Hence the brief.
. Best thing that could ever happen to me though.
Dip the toes in the SAS water for seven months.
Mm-hmm.
and you get a lack of a better term addicted, which sounds counterintuitive
when I'm talking about recovery, but like that it got in my blood.
So when I got out and had the wits about me, I, I, I wanted to get into
software and funny enough, when I decided to get my first job, I ended up.
Uh, getting hired by a guy in the March of 2020.
And as you recall, that was when Covid hit.
Hmm.
And, um, he said, congrats, you just got promoted from consultant to C R O.
He said, we're gonna sell p p e, we're not gonna sell, um, video
equipment that's AI driven from China.
And I said, wait a second.
That's not my background.
What are we doing this for?
And they own five manufacturing facilities in China.
, they said, let's advertise it.
And we did.
And that was where the first 160 million of revenue driven from Title had.
Now, I mean, it's funny, I took the headline down, um, not because people,
you know, I got some grief about it here and there, but truly, you
know, I was title my bank account.
My L l C was title.
I was one person as a 10 99.
I needed the name for it.
And so I thought, okay, and we went out and hired 56 people.
Yeah, we spun up a big s d r team and, and really ran a
predictable revenue abound motion.
Not too complicated.
Uh, but I think in that, in that timeframe, we were the only ones who
sprinted out of the gates, day one in the PPE shortage, who knew how to handle it.
with a true background of, call it a revenue machine, versus
let's make some deals mm-hmm.
And, um, that allowed us to get very creative in our outreach.
And hospitals answer the phone, um, a lot, especially when they need something.
So, um, it was not shooting fish in a barrel as the adage goes, but it
was very much a, an understanding on how rapid revenue growth and margins
and understanding operating costs and, and really the return really
the first time it fell on me and.
That was a really interesting time.
I was commissioned only by the way.
Warren Zenna: Wow.
Okay.
So it was trial by fire every day.
Yeah.
So let's talk about this role, right?
This C r O role.
Yeah.
So what, what you think of a chief revenue officer in your world?
What do you, how would you describe it to someone?
Let's say like you're, like your grandmother.
Like what does a CRO do in your
Steven Schmidt: perspective?
Make sure that the piggy bank is always full of ironed.
Bills and make sure you have a couple $2 bills in there
that you hold on for a while.
Um, just making sure that everything is in order, that the money coming
in is healthy and that you're getting the right kind of money versus.
money that could leave you soon cuz you wanna hold onto that money
that's going to mature over time.
I e good customers.
So I would say that my job is, and it got confused and I will tell you that even
five years ago, I didn't know, I thought it was like a new name for the cfo.
F o mm-hmm.
. Um, interesting.
And
Warren Zenna: so cfo, F O, you thought it was like a financial sort.
focused role.
Steven Schmidt: Yeah.
The first time I heard, I saw the term, right?
Cause I wasn't in the SaaS space, but Matt Millon, who was my boss at T-Mobile,
you know, he, he went over to outreach and I saw revenue, which wasn't being
tossed around at all like it is now.
We just called it sales, right?
Yep.
And, um, I was like, well, what is that as Matta C F O?
And someone was, no, it's uh, it's the same thing.
It's just like an inflated VP of sales title.
Oh.
And, and so of course that's what the mass population thought.
Yeah.
And so I thought the same thing.
I thought, oh, That's just a way to promote 'em and give 'em a c title.
Revenue sounds fancy, but man, was I wrong?
Uh, the outbound motion, the inbound motion, the retention
motion, the operational motion all falls into you as well as timely
payments from your customers and, and really good implementations.
And so I, I'm also a big fan of rolling CX a hundred percent up through,
and I believe that Chris Walker's theory that revenue should report
as one organization isn't wrong.
Warren Zenna: I'm in.
You know how I feel.
I do.
So that's interesting.
Right.
So, and you're correct on some, some things you said, of course.
But, uh, even though I know that I've been banging this drum and other people
have too, I mean, it's not just me, but, you know, I'm, I'm sure of a loud voice
and very focused voice on this topic.
I think the c r o role is coming in more into focus over the last
couple of years than I've seen it.
However, the knee jerk is, let's take our VP of sales and promote him or her.
give this person a c title many times to keep them, to retain them, right?
Mm-hmm.
, uh, because by promoting them, they'll stick around.
They'll get a title they like, so everyone's happy.
And then the other thing is sometimes it's.
Private equity or VC wants a C R O role on the Rolodex or whatever you
call it, the, the rosters who kind of create a patina of, you know, we have,
you know, mature revenue ownership.
. Mm-hmm.
, whether or not the role is deployed correctly or not, sort of seems to
be secondary to the title and what it represents to outsiders, and I think
that's the big miss and I'd curious to know what your thoughts are on mm-hmm.
what's the way that you think that companies need to sort of recalibrate
that so that like you, it doesn't sort of like become a C by accident and all of
a sudden now you have to deal with stuff as opposed to being more prepared for it?
I think the CRO
Steven Schmidt: role is less shortsighted by a long shot than a any head
of sales role, simply because it.
even if it's a bad hire, right?
And if there's eight to 13 months or whatever, um, the statistics
are currently heading into 2023.
Um, it isn't, uh, it isn't the role that's gonna come in and make immediate
impact in one area right there.
There's gonna be immediate focus areas that have the lowest hanging
fruit or the biggest opportunity, or it's bleeding the most.
and I think CROs, if you think about like, let's just use 12 months of square number.
The first three months, you're trying to understand the environment, right?
You might get to execute for, call it three or four.
And in that example, the last three or four months are typically very
toxic relationships to the C E O.
A lot of arguing, number, why things aren't happening the right way and.
out goes the cro and they go on to go hire another one.
When really that function that they wanted to drive was more of a sales function.
Yep.
We need more outbound, we need more top of funnel.
Okay, well that falls within the CROs realm, but it's one thing.
It doesn't mean that saving money on non-used SAS components won't
make you more money than getting some more top of the funnel.
So that might be the most critical thing to drive through.
Rev ops or sales ops is a, a really thorough understanding of
the capital outlay for tech stack.
. And is it being optimized?
I mean, if you save 500 bucks a person a month and you have
50 sellers, you do the math.
To me that sounds like a pretty big win.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, that's the margin on a nice new enterprise logo in a lot of cases.
So that's the function where I think when you're fully enabled,
and that'll use the word enablement.
Cause I think A C E O needs to enable a cro r o to be able to go and, and kind
of cruise through the organization.
And really be the right hand person to the CEO E o, where a lot of times they
see it as a battle where a CEO maybe has that founder ego and they bring in a c o.
Cause like you said, Warren, the board said we want that.
And the ceo, CEO might say, well I don't want that.
Right?
Cuz this is my show and I don't like all the inspection work that's being done.
Yep.
Warren Zenna: So I'm in the middle of a lot of these
conversations with people mm-hmm.
and I'm seeing so many of these scenarios where, what happens.
Is someone's looking to move into the C-suite or they want a C R O
role, and there's two scenarios.
One is they're gonna be promoted into the role in their current company
or they're gonna go, you know, leave and go find one elsewhere.
So in the case where you're being promoted, you know, you obviously
have the benefit of having a lot more data cuz you work there.
So you know, all the bodies are buried, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
and it sort of become, the shift that's required because if people in
the company perceive you as a head of sales and then you all of a sudden
have a CRO role, you know how it is.
People are reluctant to want to view you differently.
They want to keep you in the bucket that they're comfortable with, and
they're gonna continue to engage with you in the manner that they've been
used to, and you have to create a.
Perception of yourself in within an organization and change the
scope of your role all of a sudden.
Yeah.
You know, you are focusing specifically on just one channel and now, Magically
within a week of this new promotion.
Now you're talking about managing multiple channels that weren't
previously per year purview.
Mm-hmm.
, if you don't have the support of your CEO O to do that,
it's probably not gonna work.
Right?
Yeah.
Steven Schmidt: Yeah.
And if you're, if you're CEOs part the issue, I'm seeing
the, the, um, cac, right?
I mean is the, the most infamous term in sort of how companies
are evaluating themselves.
And I think that also, . You know, I've seen bootstrapped companies really, they
start to measure cac, but you're measuring it so early on, Warren, that, I mean,
as you grow the model of, of progression through funding naturally as CAC really
inflated at first and then getting to a targeted CAC number in time, right?
Because you're gonna bring on a lot of costs at first.
Like there's a lot of companies right now, early stage call it series A
companies that have a five and a half year payback period for a customer, right?
Obviously.
But if a bootstrap founder reads an article on CAC on LinkedIn and goes the
next day and goes, wait a second, our CACs $60,000, you're fired, doesn't understand
the economics of how this thing plays out.
And that's probably what I see more than anything is a lot of CEOs are
so eager to still grow, even in this macro economy where they haven't
really buckled down and said in a more mature path, where you see a lot of the
progression of companies that I really.
I'll, I'll give an example of one of probably 10 scratch pad, right?
Mm-hmm.
kind of quietly out there growing really quietly in the background.
ORMs another one, right?
Picking up customers over time, but not racing towards a
hundred million exit next year.
Nor do they have the tam that supports that yet.
And so I think that there is so much out there now because it's still
new, uh, that really, that opens up a conversation where, , there can
be a lot more room for understanding things like that, like cac, right?
Which is a good c r o metric to, to, to look at versus a EP of sales who
can support one of the functions of.
the cost of acquisition, but doesn't own the whole cost, because now A C R O
has to look at what channel am I getting the outputs through, and if it's, or
you know, if it's demand and I'm putting a lot of money into paid, now I'm, I'm
responsible to say, let's reallocate that money and find a better channel.
Mm-hmm.
, VP of sales didn't do that in the past.
You have five sellers and one doesn't work out, you replace 'em.
Right now you're trying to get 80% of your team to hit quota,
and so you're, you're also.
Likely not to get any training from your company, Warren.
Right.
And so things like what you are doing and you know, people who are awesome,
like Mary Grothy outta Denver, who really support sort of, you know,
various movements of CROs, whether it's at Pavilion or working with you
or working with various groups, is that's really the only area they can get
education on CROs, cuz they're probably not gonna get her from their c E O.
If it's a first time C role.
Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Agreed.
And thank you for including me in those, with those people.
Of course.
So here's the way I look at it is, and you're a hundred percent correct, is that,
and what we're trying to do here, aside from supporting Chief Revenue Officers, is
to support CEOs so that they do have the, the tools needed to support their CROs.
I, mm-hmm.
, you know, I sort of weirdly, I mean, it's been weird analogy, but I sort
of look at it like your first child, you, you don't know what you're doing.
You know, you're making it up.
I mean, you read a lot of books and you know, you have some kind
of maybe empirical knowledge of what it think, you think raising
a kid's like, but you don't know.
Cause you never had one.
So that first one is the Guinea pig and it's always the third or
fourth kid if you have a lot of 'em, that they get the best upbringing.
Cuz you figured it all out, you realize you don't really gotta pay as much
attention to 'em as you thought you did.
They, they're just fine, you know?
Yeah.
And, and you know, and it, it's sort of like, um, uh, CEO's
first c o is a crash test.
for the company.
So I, I say this, I said this to a customer, my mind, client of
mine yesterday is, you know, do you want to be a crash desk dummy?
How do you sort of ensure that they don't just take a look at the, you
know, skull fractures that you have after a year and say, all right,
well we should probably buckle 'em in better this time, next time around.
That kind of thing.
Yeah.
And, um, that's part of the job, as you said already, you made
it really like articulated it.
It's a complex job.
Mm-hmm.
, and it has so many components.
It's financial, it's data management, it's people management,
it's operational management.
It's strategic, you know, I mean, very specifically sort of talented people
thrive in this role because they have a talent stack that's a combination of
art and science, and most people are kind of built either one or the other.
And the other one too is, uh, you know, having the resources and the flexibility
of knowing your profile types, that when you take the job, you're in a
position to say, okay, well I'm more of a scientist than I am an artist,
so I need to hire people that can kind of compensate for my lack of artistry,
which is perfectly appropriate, right?
It's fine.
You're not gonna find someone who's magical unicorn.
It's gonna be places that they need support, but how do you put that team
together to make sure that that person gets the right resource allocation?
And talent that they need.
Mm-hmm.
. And these are tough things because like you said, you've never
given enough runway do this job.
There's no way.
I mean, they want results fast.
And even that three month window that you mentioned to try and just learn
what's going on, that's hard to do because to dig into the data, , it
takes more than three months.
So you get a superficial understanding of what's going on.
So you don't really work from, um, the truth.
You're working from an opinion or an assessment of, of things.
Yeah.
So what do you, what, what would you suggest then, let's say
you're thinking about a C E O.
. Mm-hmm.
, who right now listening to this is thinking about hiring
their first c o mm-hmm.
. What might be a way that you think A C E O would best suit themselves to ensure
that that hire, which is expensive mm-hmm.
and risky be, is
Steven Schmidt: successful?
I would model a company I admire and call that person up and
I'd say, how did you do it?
And because I, I've learned that intuition, especially with people, and I
use people because we're people, right.
And so, um, you're, you're probably not gonna hire somebody you don't know or.
. I mean, that would be weird.
I mean, I don't see a lot of CROs hired off of a LinkedIn job
posting, I'll put it that way.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, now I, I wish, I wish there was, I guess, because that'd be a better way to
make sure everybody's being taken care of.
But you're, it's a trust thing.
And I think the trust thing is the thing that people look at today and
go, okay, now I've got the trust.
But they're not looking at the skill set and saying, oh, pardon
me, Warren's more of a scientist.
Steve is more of an artist.
Hey, they're both.
What do we need?
Yeah.
And then who do we need to surround that person with?
I am more of an artist, right?
I'm the Sierra who will go down to the trenches and focus on messaging.
Um, because I believe in that and that's where I, I know the most, Warren.
So like your New Year's resolution, like I run to the thing I know
the most and love the most.
And, and like for example, like discovery and disco doesn't mean I'm bad at it
or doesn't mean I'm bad at teaching it.
It just means that that's my area of.
I'm, I'm okay being up above average at that.
, I don't wake up and listen to podcasts about the perfect discovery call
because I'd rather hire somebody to make sure that that's happening well,
or making sure you're hiring, you know, somebody in rev op that can support
the structure of operating a person.
Uh, a great discovery call, like when I onboarded here at Reggie, it was very
apparent they wanted that disco demo done In 52 minutes, you got 13 minutes
for disco, 12 minutes on V1 of the demo.
16 minutes on b2 and then about seven minutes for conversation.
I was blown away at how they had that scientifically nailed out in
such an early stage company and, and the why behind that one, right?
Mm-hmm.
, which is, okay, so regardless of what you are addicted to from your disco demo
standpoint of it needs to be one or both combined, they've realized that that
shortens a sales cycle and eliminates a, a, a nice to have, which Reggie is
perceived as a nice to have, right?
Mm.
from getting two weeks of space between the next meeting
because it's sure to flop then.
Right.
And they did a great job of recognizing that, keep the momentum up early.
And I think that was the first time I can say the last.
two decades I've seen that done.
It doesn't mean it doesn't happen at other companies, but
that's a revenue function, right?
You're preserving the investment of the hour block of time that
you could be doing anything else with your team and that customer.
And when you really like to isolate it down, then your, the CRM goes,
well, what is a qualified customer?
And they're gonna look at you, Warren and go, what do you think?
Mm-hmm.
. And you'll say, well, how have you done it?
Typical.
and they'll say, geez, Warren, I don't know.
Like the deal stages are all over and, and, and so you'll start from scratch,
but you're in the middle of a war.
Yep.
Trying to pick up the pieces and show people what you can do with
somebody else's dead bodies.
It's not the best place to be.
So I think what I would do is articulate very strongly that for
the first three months, I'm not gonna judge you on any performance.
You need to show up.
I'm gonna judge you on your ability to report back to me the
current state of all business.
You have 90 days to do it, good luck.
And then the next 90 days I'm gonna say, okay, what do you want to change?
What are the first three things that we can actually agree on tackling?
And then I'm gonna judge you on how well you execute that the next 90 days.
Mm-hmm.
. And I would like say that first year you're really earning the next 90 days
by doing the simple things, if you have the right pairing and the understanding.
And so that's what I would do because now you sort of are looking at
seasons in Mary growth's words versus.
A forever thing where if Warren can't get it by month four,
we gotta get somebody else.
And then each season you might say, well they did terrible
and two, but really good.
And two, we should probably work on improving that one area higher around it.
But gosh darn it, let's not crush this momentum.
It's been nine months.
The team likes him or her.
And so that's the kind of momentum that I think the, you know, when you're
looking at the burn rates, they're not including the damage that that quick
hire and Unhi does to an organization.
Millions of dollars.
Collaterally.
It's a big, big
Warren Zenna: hire.
It is.
It's not just the amount of money you're gonna spend on this person, it's also the
implications of the outcomes that you want this person to produce for the business.
So, you know, if you add all that stuff up, you know it's
millions of dollars in many cases.
Yeah.
And uh, I like the formula you laid out.
I think it's, it's, it's a smart kind of framework, which is there's sort
of a discovery phase and then there's sort of a, a visionary planning
phase and there's an execution phase.
and, and I, I think that it's, that, it's that initial 90 to, I'd
say 90 to 180 days that I think the Cro o's future is determined.
Yeah.
You know, the, uh, intestinal fortitude of A C E O that allows their c to
have that amount of time to do the due diligence without pulling them
out of that and saying, all right, I need you to get in the trenches.
I, this is enough already.
Yeah, yeah.
It's pretty much over at that point, because now you're, you're,
you're essentially being told, all right, you know, I, I really can't.
I can't afford the time to give you the amount of intelligence that you need.
I need you to get in the trenches because I'm, I'm, I'm getting
screwed here by my by board.
You know, when that happens, it, it, it, it's an indicator that
the CEO sort of maybe had a loose understanding of what was necessary,
but didn't have the fortitude to stick through it and have your back.
I think the relationship between the C and a CEO is so critically important.
It's almost to the point where if, um, and I tell this to all my
clients, if you're interviewing for a CRO role, e getting to know.
How your c e o thinks and what the relationship you're gonna have
is gonna tell you every single thing you need to know about how
the next first year is gonna go.
And you can ask about 12 questions that will get you pretty much
the best answers you can get.
And you'll know whether or not this is gonna be either a, a ruck, a bumpy ride,
or you've got someone who's got your back.
. Mm-hmm.
. And then you get investors involved, you know, whom have their own agendas
and a lot of control, you know?
Yeah.
Is it a board led company?
Is it a product led company?
Is it a founder led company?
Is it a visionary led company?
I mean, these are all important questions cuz the CRO is gonna be, uh,
so more affected by that than anybody.
Mm-hmm.
. So these are critical things.
So I wanna switch gears for a sec cuz um, you know, uh, you,
you've made some recent switches.
I know you're working in the AI space.
Yeah.
I'm really curious to know what your thoughts are on that.
I mean, I, I know we're really moving to a different topic, but
I'm fascinated because the amount of stuff I'm seeing about AI, and
I've always been interested in it.
I, I think it's just mm-hmm.
, it's hit a sort of a, a crescendo recently with Jack Chief, P T T P,
which I've been playing around with.
um, I, you know, I know all the hype is there.
I understand that people like shiny new things, but you know, I am seeing some
really clever stuff being done with it, and it's only gonna accelerate.
So I'm just curious to know, like, where you are in your workings and even maybe
in the role of a Chief Revenue Officer.
What is, yeah, I don't know.
What, what are you prognosticate here that AI is gonna play in the role
of revenue operations going forward?
Well,
Steven Schmidt: I see a lot of funding going to it right now, which
is, um, always exciting to know as we're, um, Reporting better news
on the current inflation rate and the recession and things like that.
It's, it's, it's nice to see that, you know, companies are still getting funded
every day, um, especially in the AI space and, and there's no secret, right.
We all can feel the untapped potential of this.
Right.
Is, um, in, in Bostonian words, it is a fever pitch and, um, . I
think most people are as scared of it as they are enlightened by it.
I had a demo this morning with a gentleman from India, very smart guy,
very great company, awesome product.
And I said, here is what I did to prep for you.
And I brought up the personality ai, and then I talked about how that parlays into
the personalization and, and what it said was so, so good that I even stopped.
And I just said, I'm gonna be honest, this is the best generated first
line of a cold email I've ever seen.
Reggie put out and he goes, yeah, this is, he goes, I don't know
how they would know that about me.
And he's in the AI space.
And, and then we got into talking about like, so there's all this,
this information out there, right?
Wikipedia is 0.06% of it that's available in the open AI architecture,
which is now gonna be Microsoft if I understand everything correctly.
Um, what's really interesting to me is you or I today, Warren
could, if we wanted to go.
Start conditioning our own AI library.
Just go to open AI and you buy some credits.
And I did it the other day and I was like, okay, I don't know what I'm doing.
I'll never learn that, by the way.
But I was curious, I think in the function that it will serve primarily
in sales is you're gonna see a lot of what you see right now, which
is, you know, messaging, finance.
You know, can I find the easiest thing and populate it for you
in a short amount of time?
And that's gonna be enough of the magic factor chat.
G P T four will be released, which is, um, something like a hundred thousand
times bigger than chat G p T three.
And that's I think, when people are going to be wowed because people who are
prepping for that release now mm-hmm.
are giving them chat, g p t three, and they're, they're enamored and
they're going, wait a second, we haven't shown you anything yet.
Like the ability for me to be able to spin up a picture of Warren drinking a cup
of coffee next to his car in his drive.
at 7 42 in the morning with a pensive look and generating an image like that.
That's when it gets interesting.
And that's when it quite frankly gets, uh, very frightening too,
because now you're looking at how do you protect that information?
And I'm glad to see some of the regulations out there and
it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in sales.
But I know in the news they're pushing, for example, if AI generated
something, they will need to highlight that text and be very clear that
this was AI and this was a person.
So you start to understand.
AI opinions by lack of understanding and versus human
because it can be very confusing.
Now as it relates to sales, I think that um, there are not budgets today
created for AI Warren, and as you know, um, there's probably a lot of c
cvs and VPs running their boss going, we've gotta have this right now.
We've gotta have this tool.
It's gonna change the way we do business.
And fundamentally, we all know that that's not true.
Gong, which is one of the most impressive software suites out.
was a must have for me three years ago.
I said, this is gonna change the way we fundamentally do
one-on-ones in funnel reviews.
Two weeks later, I was so busy I forgot that that was a function
that I wanted to do because I couldn't fit into my workflow.
I didn't have the rev op to support that function, and we probably invested, you
know, 30, $40,000 in a software that truly we never got the value out of.
Not because it doesn't have it.
but because we couldn't extract it, and I always just remind myself, unless
the organization's able to extract the value, time to value, especially in
today's economy, and that's a great CRO term, is you better be damn quick.
It better not be a, oh, just wait Warren, it takes four to six months.
You want to implement something that can save you money as quickly as
it can make you money, and I think that's where AI is gonna have the
biggest advantage is, Hey, I could replace with this, this, with that.
and particularly in the SD R model today, you know, you're using headcount
and a predictable model in a lot of shops still knowing that I could have
the power to upload and personalize a thousand emails in an hour and make
AI voice calls and only queue up my best callers, which nobody's talking
about, that which is gonna be the real kick in the face for a lot of people.
Hmm.
Because it's really good.
I can now automate from a rev op and I could have a very successful a
hundred million company with a very.
, call it top of funnel, human flesh staff department.
And I could have rev ops running the majority of that motion.
And Conversica gave us all a preview of that about three years ago.
That's what I deployed in the p e, is we were just weaving in virtual agents and
doing handoffs to the reps if and when certain words were picked up with AI to
say, this warrants me introducing Warren because he can answer your question.
And so we looked like about 600 reps when we really had, you know,
Mm-hmm.
because we are weaving in all these virtual agents.
So I think that we'll see that and now people who want to post about what is
or isn't a good cold-call opener will have to find something else to post
Warren Zenna: about.
Yeah, you're right about that.
It is something to post about.
Yeah.
You know, we made a couple good points here I wanna chat about.
It's really interesting.
So one is workflow cuz it's so true, right?
Ultimately the more tools we get, they're only as good as our ability to fit
them into what we're doing, you know?
Yeah.
Ultimately, I think these things find their sort.
place in the system, but it takes a long time.
People are mm-hmm.
, it's hard to bake new things in.
So I think that the friction is always gonna be how do we get what we're doing
to be baked into a process so that it becomes, you know, necessary or required.
Mm-hmm.
, um, to your point that you said after that, which is that it, it
helps to, quickly and expand.
I think that's gonna be something that's going to be very attractive to companies
whom right now are saying, boy, if I can make my 20 people look like a hundred
people that sign me up for that because I don't, I can't afford a hundred people.
Yeah.
So there is gonna be a sort of efficiency play, but my concern around
this, and I'm having a lot of, that's why we even had the SDR debate that
we had last year in the first place.
Mm-hmm.
is, you know, these tools sort of become just.
Enablers of spam fests, you know?
Mm-hmm.
, I mean, if I know that I have a machine that can crank out more emails and posts
and stuff, well then I'm gonna send more emails and posts, and the customer seems
to be the last person we think about in relation to these tools, because
ultimately they're gonna be the ones who are gonna be the, uh, recipients of even.
Distracting messages, you know, and Okay.
I mean, maybe they may end up, end up being more effective or more,
more, more persuasive, which, okay.
But I, I'm sure like you, the amount of inbound I get on a day-to-day
basis is overwhelming at this point.
And yeah, um, so much of it is wrong, even if it's well-written.
It's just not well targeted.
I don't know.
, the organization formulated that I was the correct person to send this to.
It seems random at best.
I got lumped into some general mm-hmm.
profile or segment.
How is, you know, this not going to just become another, another?
Farm, you know, or sort of manufacturing plant for just more and more and
more overwhelming communications.
Mm-hmm.
to the point where customers just tune out and say, I don't want any of this anymore.
I'm gonna turn off my notifications.
I'm not gonna read my emails anymore.
And these tools would just become sort of dead because the consumers had enough.
Yeah.
Steven Schmidt: Wow.
Great question.
I've got an answer, at least my opinion is, I think what we're not
talking about, and you said it, the customer, is how can we now give
buyers the same sort of advantage in.
In that buying cycle as we're trying to give the sellers and, and, and what
that looks like, I don't know, but it might look like something where
I would be able to know, as with the advancements of AI tech, really
what Warren wants and needs, but.
What he's not, what he, you know, I, I would want to know
a pro full profile on you.
So, so I would know that if my message is gonna fall in deaf
ears, like why even send it?
Right?
So whatever that looks like, I think it's gonna give preferential treatment
to kind of shut that valve off and open up only those things that you're
interested in, which will of course open up a whole new ad channel.
And nobody's really talking in sales about the ability to, to,
to deliver, add revenue when you're parsing people's language.
And we're also not talking Warren about.
You've got chat g PT four out there and all that stuff.
But every time Warren's typing in something or saying something or doing
something, it's learning you and you are a collection of the big body.
But a real good AI tool pays as much of attention to learning you
with machine learning as it does to the generalized population.
And it marries the two up.
And that's where nobody's able to, you know, and, and this is where I.
, you know, I'm not an engineer by the way, but no company's able to deliver that yet.
So if Warren opened a company and you've got your little neural network
of, call it open ai, and then you've got the big pool of it, you can say,
Hey, um, Johnny Sales guy, I'm gonna learn you and what you would say, and
I'm just talking about messaging here.
And then we're gonna pull the best stuff that is said to those people
and now we're gonna meld those up and that's gonna be your best shot.
Like, that's about where AI is on the tipping point right now.
Preferential treatment for buyers.
Call it like, I would love to know if you have a budget for something.
Hmm.
And, and most good sellers would say, well, I mean, why
would you want to know a budget?
Because you can create it if it's good enough.
Well, you're right, but I'd still want to know.
Mm-hmm.
, I'd still want to know and then want to know your contract cycles and you
know, if you're with a competitor, if you're for another year and a half.
And so as AI can feed me more of that, I don't need to even go
outbound when it doesn't make sense.
And the outbound function today, Warren, what?
We have people.
We have people email and now we're seeing a lot of, you know, mostly
terrible content on LinkedIn.
Hmm.
That people are trying to push out there.
Good for them.
But I mean, we're not there yet where they're, you know, they're all
using chat, G p T, it's terrible.
Lots of one through 10 lists right now, , you know, um, where I believe that that
function and where AI can be enabled the best is doing research on your customers.
Well, that would
Warren Zenna: be great.
I, I couldn't agree more.
And actually hearing you say that is actually interesting to.
because I tend to, I don't know, maybe I'm cynical.
I tend to think about these things as just being other ways for people to
manufacture more content, but, mm-hmm.
man, if, if you could have an ai, real ai, you're not fake, but a real true
learning engine that starts to say, make, how do you say, correlations between so
types of conditions and certain types of actions and certain types of behaviors
and certain types of outcomes over time.
Points me in a direction to say, here are the seven people that you should talk
to today because they fit the profile of the mindset and the psychological
profile and their current circumstances, et cetera, that indicate that they'd
have a higher propensity for hearing this specific message in this way.
Steven Schmidt: That would be incredible.
Yeah.
Imagine how much that would cost.
Yeah.
Warren Zenna: Yeah.
Well, it would be worth a lot.
I mean, if it worked.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, I, but I, I could see how it could work.
I mean, we have enough data, we just don't use it.
Well, that's the problem too.
But you know, if the data is being analyzed properly and you have a big
enough organization where you're talking to enough people with enough historical
data to show some trends in the way that people respond to things and
enough customer, customers to do so.
Mm-hmm.
, um, if I had a tool that gave me a dashboard every morning, I logged
into it and it basically said, all right, you know, based on.
Events, psychological, you know?
Mm-hmm.
conditions, situations, circumstances, mindsets, roles.
Timing is that, that we've formulated as like the sort of
recipe for the right conversations.
Here's your dashboard of the eight people that you need to engage with
today that have fall into that.
Mm-hmm.
. And here's the way that you should engage with them.
And we're gonna give you some suggestions as to things you could say.
Mm-hmm.
. And you know, we think the right channel would be this channel.
It should be done through this one.
Cuz this person didn't this time of day.
LinkedIn, a lot.
This one loves Twitter.
This person opened a lot of emails.
I mean, man, that's.
Phenomenally cool, right?
Yeah.
And it might feel really natural to the person on the or other end, right?
They just get a good message in a place that they like, that
they're thinking about, and they're like, whoa, you're really smart.
How did you know I was looking for this right now in this channel, in this manner?
In that
Steven Schmidt: tone, let me give you an example of this quick Warren, that,
that would, if AI could do what this did, and I, I don't doubt that it didn't.
There's a guy who used to be a client of ours at title, and he was stuck in,
uh, Florida with his family, with the.
Okay.
And he posted about it on LinkedIn.
It was like, Hey, I'm gonna make the most of it, you know, da da da.
Just a real generic post about like his picture is kids in him at Disneyland.
Three hours later he got a phone call from a jet company that said, we heard
you and your family are stuck in Florida.
So they knew he was a C E O.
They knew his company was making a decent amount of money cause they said, we're
gonna come and get you and fly you home.
, they're gonna give him the pitch on the way home.
I mean, they know he has his wife with him and she's probably the
real decision maker of course.
And they know that they have about three and a half hours going back to
Fargo that they can sell him on doing.
Yep.
You know, asking him a lot of good discovery
Warren Zenna: questions, stuff 'em full of crunchy peanuts
and just get 'em going at that
Steven Schmidt: point.
Yeah.
And I don't know if AI parsed that out or someone who's just doing really good
research or timing, but like that he
Warren Zenna: said a form of ai.
I mean, it's what we're saying.
it's brilliant.
I mean, obviously that's really very hyper-targeted.
You're right.
I mean, there has to be someone whom is worth a flight, right?
Who knows how much that costs because that person has the potential to be somebody
who can, you know, 10 care flight.
Totally.
So that's a, that's a big cac, right?
If it works, but someone's calculated that that's the way to do.
You know, it's no different than trying to get someone in the seat of a car.
I worked at a lot of work in the automotive industry for many, many years
in that marketing, and the whole idea there, as you probably know, is you
just gotta get people to sit in the car.
Mm-hmm.
. right?
When they drive the car.
It's like you've got a certain kinda level of, um, uh, hypno, hypnotic,
you know, relationship with that person's experience behind the wheel
of that car that they're about as close to consideration as possible now.
Right.
Because it's not just a picture or a video.
Mm-hmm.
. So getting people to come in and do test drives is the objective.
Cause they, they.
that that's lot in reams of data that when people come in and you know, they
get up off their ass, they actually leave the house, they go to a dealer,
they sit behind the wheel of a car.
I mean, that's someone who's obviously seriously looking to buy.
Mm-hmm.
. Now, granted, they may go to Toyota, they may go across the street and go to Honda.
They may go across the street and go to Mazda.
Doesn't matter.
It's just that they figured out the same thing.
, right?
You gotta get someone to come in and sit down inside the car.
So if again, you can identify that activity that you know, makes that
sort of transition to a buyer and you can predict it through numerous.
Factors through an AI platform really quickly, maybe even look out
ahead into the future and say, eh, this person may not be right now.
Mm-hmm.
, but the trajectory of this person based on x y factors indicates that in four
months or five months, this person will be ready to have this conversation.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So anyway, I, I, we can go on and on and on cause I'm kind
of a wonky nerd for this stuff.
But yeah, before we sign off, you're kind of moving towards the end here.
I liked a little bit more about like what you're doing right now.
And how people can kind of work with you and what are you helping them with
and what are some ways they can get in touch with you so that they can
benefit from your, your experience
Steven Schmidt: today.
Thanks, Warren.
Uh, I'm the commercial head of commercial Revenue at Reggie, so I
oversee right now our largest segment of revenue, which is through agency
Warren Zenna: channels.
And Reggie, Reggie, I'm sorry, is
Steven Schmidt: Oh, reggie.ai, sorry.
Yep.
reggie.ai.
Yep.
And we are a, uh, we are a tool that allows you to write better emails,
develop better cadences, all with ai.
So we.
Develop a cadence or a sequence in two to three minutes, and probably
right now it's taking you at a minimum two to three hours, or like
most people, two to three weeks.
So we look at your persona, the problem or pain you're solving, and then the
value proposition behind that, and try and really balance relevance to the persona.
and then the ability to personalize it to the person and allow SDRs and full
cycle sellers and marketers to go out and really try and be hyper specific.
Mm-hmm.
. And that's what we're doing.
And the interesting part about that space, I'll end that little advertisement
with this is the reason I picked up the phone called Matt Millon.
in November while we talk, you know, once a month as friends.
Anyways, just catching up.
I was a customer of Reggie's, so title was built with Reggie
at the core as an agency.
That's how we were able to create content for 47 clients at the same time, and.
. So the, you know, I'm one of those stories that goes, I've been a part of
it before, so I get to work with agencies now who don't know anything about it
and try and not talk about myself.
But tell them like, here's what you don't know, right?
Is that there isn't a tool that's specifically built for you to
design content for your, for your customers today and have 47 different.
SDR is doing 47 different things and enabling them in the right way until now.
And so when we're doing a demo, we ingest our website in about two seconds and
spin out the first round of the cadence.
And they're like, how did you do that?
And then we say it's a framework into your point, art and science.
Like there is a human element of art, right?
So don't forget, we are not, Reggie is a robot.
Reggie is ai.
And machine learning, you still want to go in and personalize it.
Make it yours, so, mm-hmm.
, it's wild.
There's a lot of, lot of conversation.
Jasper came on the marketing side of this space.
Their average customer spends $330 a month.
They grew in 16 months from zero.
To 70 million in revenue.
Hmm.
Off of a $300 monthly R
Warren Zenna: That's amazing.
Amazing.
It's a big space.
Well, great.
And, uh, that's Reggie ai and, uh, I mean, I'll, I'll, I'm gonna check that out.
I have actually a couple of, uh, cadences that I need to start.
Drafting myself at this point.
So why not?
Well, look, I'm, as I, as I suspected, this is a great conversation.
We could probably talk for another three hours, but I wanna thank you.
I know we've had a couple rough patches trying to get this together
cause of the holidays and stuff.
So thanks for your patience and really appreciate your time being here.
Thank you Warren, and I look forward to working with you.
I'm sure we will.
I'm sure we'll find more, more opportunities.
But, um, Steve Schmidt, Reggie a I, Steve, thank you so much for
Steven Schmidt: being here today.
Thank you for being a voice and an advocate for the C R O space.
We need more people like you, Warren.
Thanks, man.