Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
How do you orchestrate revenue motions at scale? And how do you successfully go from one to many motions?
This and more, we talked with Alina Vandenberghe (Co-founder & Co-CEO at Chili Piper) about.
This and more, we talked with Alina Vandenberghe (Co-founder & Co-CEO at Chili Piper) about.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (06:33) - When a motion stops working
- (08:34) - Going from motion to motions
- (10:36) - Involving the team
- (13:17) - The outbound motion
- (17:59) - When was brand ready for outbound?
- (20:38) - Remote + Outbound = ???
- (27:07) - Getting motions to compound
- (30:19) - Accounting for new motions in the plan
- (37:59) - The 1 thing
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: Hey everyone, this is Toni Hohlbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we are talking to Alina Vandenberghe from Chili Piper and how she deployed new revenue motions at scale. Enjoy.
[00:00:17] but it was more like the, the banter introduction. Oh, the banter.
[00:00:20] Mikkel: Yeah. You just push the button and then expect me to go with the banter. Yeah. No, but I can tell you that, uh, so before I went on holiday, uh, I didn't get a lot of sleep.
[00:00:31] And you still don't get it off. No, no, now it's flipped in the opposite. We got back from holiday and now back to work and all of a sudden I'm sleeping in for like 45 minutes and the kids, they just get out of bed and start playing and all of a sudden you walk into the living room and everything's a mess.
[00:00:46] It's like, why didn't I wake up sooner? And you still feel completely wrecked.
[00:00:50] Toni: Now, now the following, the following question, how are you going to Shanghai this into introducing our wonderful guests?
[00:00:56] Mikkel: Well, let's just say the mornings have gotten a little bit more spicy. Ah, wow.
[00:01:02] Toni: That brings me to the other question, why is there a chili sauce and a chili pepper on the table?
[00:01:07] You might
[00:01:07] Mikkel: have seen this, uh, emoji, I mean, you're listening to the show most likely right now. So you can't see it, but I'm holding a red chili pepper and you've probably seen that emoji on, uh, LinkedIn. I at least have, and for me, it's kind of a part of, uh, this wonderful company called, Chili Piper.
[00:01:22] And today, uh, we have Alina Vandenberghe
[00:01:25] from, uh, Chili Piper joining us. Uh, welcome Alina.
[00:01:28] Alina: So Mikkel, are you telling me that in
[00:01:29] the past couple of mornings you've tried hot sauce in your, in your breakfast coffee?
[00:01:34] Mikkel: Yes. No, I haven't tried that. Uh, I've, I've not gotten that crazy though.
[00:01:38] Toni: It's a Danish thing,
[00:01:41] Mikkel: but I am,
[00:01:41] Alina: Always with the pickled sardines.
[00:01:44] Mikkel: but it's a true story. I'm always the one putting spicy stuff on the food at home and then joke with my five year old son. Like, so how much chili do you want? And he's like, no. Yeah.
[00:01:53] Toni: That's funny.
[00:01:54] Alina, thank you so much for being here, for spending some time with us and chatting with us today about scaling, scaling motions, uh, really looking forward to it.
[00:02:02] Alina: Always up for some humor.
[00:02:05] Toni: Yeah.
[00:02:06] Mikkel: There you go. So I read, by the way, I think this was on your LinkedIn. It said, Chili Piper and then dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, powered by espresso and hot sauce.
[00:02:15] So it's, I guess, uh, chili and hot sauce is really deeply ingrained in the culture there.
[00:02:19] Alina: Hehehe. So, the hot sauce comes from me and the espresso comes from my co founder. He drinks, I don't know, maybe 10 espressos a day and he decided to gift everybody because we were remote, he sent espresso machines to everybody. Just to make sure that they have their dose of caffeine, you know.
[00:02:39] Toni: And did you send then hot sauce to everyone?
[00:02:41] Alina: And I am the one
[00:02:42] sending the hot sauce, Yeah.
[00:02:44] Toni: Yeah. There you go.
[00:02:46] Mikkel: Okay. So, but, uh, one of the cool things, I've seen, uh, I, I saw a graph of your growth, uh, really the path you went, basically bootstrapped to 3 million, which was really cool. And I'm, I mean, we're going to get into some of this stuff, but then went to, uh, 7 and 35 million and really grown super fast, uh, in the last couple of years.
[00:03:06] I also heard you have a really high net retention rate, which is. pretty excellent. So some of this stuff we'll get into now, but really what we wanted to talk about with you is how do you orchestrate revenue motions at scale? That's really the interesting piece. Uh, especially considering your, uh, you have a distributed team remote.
[00:03:21] But first off, I think it's just really helpful for us to level set a bit. When we talk about motions, what does that actually mean to you?
[00:03:28] Alina: It's been a wild ride from the bootstrapping years. Even when you said it, it transported me back in, uh, such a different time, uh, where our motion was just one. Um,
[00:03:40] Toni: Yeah.
[00:03:41] Alina: um, what I mean by that was the lever to growth. In the early days, the main, uh, growth lever was events, in person events. I'm still very bullish on that.
[00:03:54] I know that we're selling SaaS software and I know that it can be sold anywhere in the world and we're distributed everywhere. We're in 40 countries. And yet there's something special about meeting people in person and connecting them in real life and touching them. I don't know, maybe not touching them, but you know, uh, knowing that they're around, um, it's, uh, forms a kind of connection that, um. Are hard to describe, but are a lot more powerful than an email, are a lot more powerful than, um, a call, are a lot more powerful than a video. And, um, we managed at that time to get to 3 million just through that, just through events, so that was a motion. Um, all the way until my co founder, we were 6 at that time, was managing to close 100k by himself with no support, all from our presence at events.
[00:04:48] And now... The levers are so diverse in our team that, at scale, I'm feeling that, um, without that diversity, it's really, really hard to put your eggs in just one basket because You don't know if COVID hits and then you no longer have the events as a lever. You don't know if Google is going to change something in the algorithm and you're no longer going to be able to have the same low acquisition costs for your, uh, uh, pipeline.
[00:05:17] So I have, uh, a lot of, um, actions and a lot of levers these days that are contributing to our growth.
[00:05:27] Toni: And, and maybe kind of just kind of double clicking on this for a second. So really a motion for you means, you know, other people would maybe call it a revenue stream or something like this. In your case, you mentioned starting with events. So events was a, you know, face to face events was really a, a starting point for you.
[00:05:45] And then it might be online marketing driven, maybe by Google, or then it might be online marketing driven by. Uh, let's say LinkedIn or Facebook, wherever you do ads, it might be outbound, it might be partners, it might be product led growth and so
[00:05:56] Alina: And all the above, yeah.
[00:05:57] Toni: you know, when when, when we're talking about emotions, that's, that's how you, that's how you would separate a emotion from another, right? I think, I think what's really interesting, maybe kind of to tap on first is you mentioned the events piece was really what, you know, got you to 3 million, you know, first, and then COVID did in fact hit, I mean, you, you just mentioned it as a, as a byline actually, tell us a little bit what happened in the organization when suddenly your, your main motion, your main revenue stream in that sense, suddenly broke away.
[00:06:27] Did you already have? Something else built up that could step in or, you know, how did, how did that situation unfold?
[00:06:33] Alina: Yeah, by then, uh, we were, uh, diversifying in our levers. Um, there were two bigger, um, motions that could take over the events. One was LinkedIn. In that time, we were the early ones on LinkedIn that were making a lot of noise. And, um, that helped a lot. And the other one that's... Still been like a, I still consider it a very, um, strong driver for us, might not be quite, uh, What one would call a marketing lever, but I do, uh, which is, um, a lot more customer support than one would assume for a company like ours.
[00:07:24] So when you buy the software, you expect that you're going to get an implementation that matches what the product says and what you buy on the website. However, I didn't feel that was a differentiator because everybody can copy a product and I've always felt that by going beyond with our customers, above and beyond, we can make them a lot more happier than what they expect.
[00:07:54] And as a result, they could tell a friend, Hey, look at Chili Piper, they're doing things for us that are helping us beyond this product. And, One could call that customer marketing, one could call that customer experience, one could call that, uh, I don't know, above and beyond the customer love, but, uh, we've been a lot
[00:08:15] more, um, bullish on that because your customers and our customers are our best marketers, our best growth lever.
[00:08:22] If they're happy, they're going to tell someone. It's a lot more powerful when it comes from a friend or someone you know than if it comes from an ad or a place that you, you are less likely to have trust in.
[00:08:34] Mikkel: so I was thinking, um, when you had events kind of going, that's one motion running, some companies that don't even get to the point where they have one motion running, by the way, um, but I think then you kind of mentioned, well, then you had a few other things to rely on. What were the steps from going, you know, from one motion running to then getting to two and three?
[00:08:55] What was that process like for you?
[00:08:58] Alina: Very difficult for me personally. Um, I'm a first time founder and, Before Chili Piper, I was an engineer and I was building products and I was very happy with not getting any attention, and I'm a very typical introvert where I would go to an event and I would be the one in the corner avoiding people's eyes and being a little bit awkward. So, all the steps and all the motions have been very difficult for me in that they would require me to completely change my, uh, way of being and, um, I guess it's the extreme forces that makes one to change. But every LinkedIn post has been difficult. Every YouTube video has been difficult. Every, um, event that I went to has been difficult for me, at least at the beginning, now it's gotten easier.
[00:09:57] because it was so contrary to who I was. obviously after I discovered the benefits of being able to have conversations with people in person and having those social conversations and having that kind of impact, it gave me the strength that I needed to change. But. I was completely uncomfortable and I continue to be completely uncomfortable and I feel completely, uh, stretched at all times. Um, but I'm the kind of person that finds a lot of comfort in the discomfort because I know if I am comfortable, then there's something wrong.
[00:10:36] Mikkel: I think they also say very popularly when you're uncomfortable, that's when you're kind of learning and growing right out of the, out of the comfort zone. Was it, um, so when you went from the one to two, two to three motions, I'm guessing you also had a team that needed to support here and be involved. Uh, can you tell me a little bit about how do you get the company on board as well to build some of those new motions?
[00:10:57] Alina: Every motion requires a very different skill set and a different type of, um, energy behind it. on the social impact, for instance, not everybody feels comfortable being in the limelight and not everybody feels comfortable posting on social or on YouTube or on TikTok. Um, it's been... Interesting, because once people start, they understand the benefits, but the starting point, it's what's a little bit tricky.
[00:11:32] we've had at the peak of growth about 250 employees and, um, the, um, the ones that managed to create a brand for themselves and create a strong LinkedIn following with our help. Have been the ones that have, um, seen the impact of their work. For instance, um, we have at least two or three that have started, uh, SAS companies and they're doing well.
[00:12:04] Um, there are some that have gone and now they're very successful freelancers and are the kind of micro, the fractional, uh, expert that, that manages to charge a lot. Um, so every motion had a bit of a. It required a lot of push to get started, but once things get started, it's a lot easier to explain to the rest of the team and to make things happen, because it's not so much about one person. The entire, team has to align behind it and everybody has to help. For instance, for events, it can never be one person.
[00:12:42] Uh, you're going to send several people at the event and they have to... understand the kind of things that they need to bring as part of the toolbox to be able to be successful, to create pipelines, to create connections, to create content. Um, so I would say that it's the beginning of the each motion that required a lot of push, but the adoption is a lot easier after two or three people kind of understand the main components of things and what the drivers and the metrics that can make that motion successful.
[00:13:17] Toni: And so, I mean, you guys had pretty explosive growth, right? So congratulations, uh, on, on that one. did you, I mean, typically, let's just say it like this. Typically you would see companies, uh, go the SDR and the outbound route, right? Was, was that a, was that a motion that, that you also tried and played with, or was this something that you avoided?
[00:13:38] How did you, how did you think about, you know, this motion, which usually supplements? There's
[00:13:44] marketing orchestration that also is going on.
[00:13:47] Alina: We have a very successful outbound motion as well. they're very profitable. Our team is amazing. and, the reason why we decided to do it when we decided to do it was because that, because we knew that we had already created a brand. So we already had the power of the brand when someone would reach out, Oh, Chili Piper kind of sounds familiar, and I'm curious what they do.
[00:14:14] It only started, uh, we only started being bullish on it when we know, when we knew that the brand was known. Um, so I don't think that outbound can work. Otherwise, But yeah, that's how we, that's how we thought about it.
[00:14:30] Toni: I think, I think that's a really good point, actually. Um, really needing to have some of the. Brand background radiation in order to make the, the outbound motion work out. I think some other folks would probably say like, well, um, really it's just an efficiency driver if the brand is in the background, it might help you, but really to make that, you know, to make those unit economics work out, uh, I totally agree with you, right?
[00:14:50] There's, uh, it's, it's a much, it's a much smoother conversation and much higher conversion rate and all of these other things. If you're, if you're ending up, uh, having a, Oh, wait a minute, Chili Piper, I heard about that actually. Can you tell me a little bit more? Right. I think, I think that makes, um, uh, that
[00:15:05] makes,
[00:15:05] uh, that makes a bunch of sense, actually.
[00:15:08] Alina: It's a very interesting, uh, I have observed that in Europe founders tend to spend or think less about brand. whereas in the US it's a very, uh, top of mind for many founders. The, um. Brand concept was very esoteric to me as a first time founder. the only thing that I could put a finger on in terms of brand was the fact that in order for myself to grow my career before I started Chili Piper, my own internal brand within the company was important to my ability to get promoted because.
[00:15:52] When a manager has to push a promotion, that person has to have a kind of brand that allows for no detractors from that promotion, right? And, um, I was thinking that how I built my brand and how I managed to grow my career fast, it's a very similar concept in companies. And the main thing that I was focused on when I was building my own brand was it's what people talk about when you're not in the room.
[00:16:22] What people remember when you're not in the room, it has you, have you done something to help them? Have you done something to impact them? And, um, it was the same thing. I was thinking, okay, what would people say about chili Piper when they're not there? And I was a bit maniacal about that because it's very hard at the beginning to create a brand.
[00:16:47] When the product is not that well known, when there's a such a hard time to grab someone's attention and now it's like becoming impossible with the C bots of content. so I really focus on the things that could stand out at that time. The things that could be top of mind for people, that could be, uh, uh, levers for, for, for brand.
[00:17:12] And even to these days, I measure brand awareness a lot and brand impact a lot. Despite, um, having a clear coefficient of, um, return of investment on it, I still think that without having that focus on things that elevate brand, you just become like everybody else and you just can't stand out. You know, it's, uh, you, you can buy a million tools to your, to your stack.
[00:17:46] You can pay attention to thousands of tools that, that, can become part of your, um, growth levers, but, uh, you'll only remember the ones that are top of mind. So it's an important part. We
[00:17:59] Mikkel: I think it's a key part of not becoming just a commodity, uh, essentially, right. Especially depending on what space you're in. I think you also said something really interesting that I want to kind of double click on. Um, you, you said, Hey, we, we had to get the brand right before we could actually go and build outbound.
[00:18:15] So when was it you, you kind of knew now we are at the point in time where we, we have sufficient awareness in the market to then go and build outbound and what were the initial steps you took? Uh, to kind of build that,
[00:18:28] that motion up, uh, over at Chili Piper.
[00:18:31] Alina: were lucky because, uh, our ICP was a head of sales dev at the beginning. Um, so we were, um, constantly on calls with, uh, people that were driving that outbound motion. And we learned so much from them. We learned so much. Um, how the great ones were doing it, because we were... Basically an enabler of meetings for SDRs, and that's how we started.
[00:18:57] We were, um, allowing SDRs to book meetings for AEs in a, um, equitable, uh, fashion. So there was fair, there was fairness involved. There was a lot of routing and complexity as soon as the team grows in size. And, um. We're basically exposed to the best SDR teams in the US. Um, and we're seeing how they were organizing their teams, how they were organizing their scripts, how they were organizing their cadences.
[00:19:26] it's been an unbelievable crash course in, uh, outbound. So we took those, uh, lessons from the top SDRs and we, uh, put them in motion, uh, ourselves at the beginning.
[00:19:38] Mikkel: So when you say ourselves, you and your co founder,
[00:19:42] Alina: Myself my founder. At the beginning, we were
[00:19:44] splitting the responsibilities very differently than we are now. Um, I was, um, in charge of product and customer success. So I was still, when I was implementing the tool, I was still having those conversations with them. at that time, we also thought it was a good idea to blend customer success with account management.
[00:20:06] So I was kind of like an account manager to some extent, and my, uh, co founder was doing the top of the funnel parts. So he was doing the SDRing and the account executive. Um, now we have different, uh, areas of focus. But, um, we were approaching the, um, the learning from the lens of that full funnel. And he was focusing double funnel.
[00:20:32] I was less, I was more, um, customer, um, marketing customer success.
[00:20:38] Toni: we, we've been kind of spending a little bit time on this outbound thing and maybe we want to stop this after this next question here though. But, uh, no, we love, um, you have, um, You are fully remote, right? It's a fully remote company. Um, and has been from, I guess, day one, right? This was not a COVID thing.
[00:20:56] This was a, from day one thing. Um, what we have seen is that a lot of folks struggle with a distributed or remote SDR setup. Um, do you have any, Hey, here are the three learnings we have and in terms of, you know, making this work or what's the, is there such a thing? I'm just, I'm just wondering what's your perspective on this?
[00:21:15] You're asking for the silver bullet. Yeah, well, no, you know what, to be fair, they're three silver bullets. Yeah. Mm
[00:21:21] Alina: Um, when
[00:21:22] we, uh, decided to, uh, do SDR remote, everybody thought we were completely nuts. It's like, uh, you cannot, uh, create the energy that goes into a sales room when people are in their bedrooms,
[00:21:39] next to their beds. Um,
[00:21:43] it's, um, interesting because, um, when we started Chili Piper Remote, the goal was to attract the kind of talent that loves traveling and loves being in different places and exploring things.
[00:21:59] And it was a novel concept, but I didn't have a choice when we started because I didn't have the budgets to hire people in New York, people in New York were too expensive. So we were going to places where, where talent was, uh, affordable, but still amazing talent. And, um, it takes a kind of personality that might not work for anyone.
[00:22:26] The kind that wants to be driven for success. Even if they might be traveling, even if they might be in a certain place. So because we have that culture from the beginning and we're seeking that kind of talent that's self motivated, um, it works. I do want to put an asterisk to it because it works to a certain extent.
[00:22:49] You still need that proximity to your colleagues to some regard. And we Adjust for that. For instance, we have um, perk at Chili Piper that if you travel to a colleague, we pay for Airbnb and the food. Um, so it allows people to kind of go from Portugal to Spain to France to the Canary Islands. So people travel to see one another, to Amsterdam, and to get together.
[00:23:22] And because they're getting together for a brief moment of time as opposed to an ongoing basis, there's that... Fear of missing out on the opportunity to connect to the best possible way. So they have a beautiful experiences together that are bonding them in that way. So that's one of the asterisks on that.
[00:23:40] And we also have, um,
[00:23:42] things that have broken the internet before where we get, uh, together and we do crazy things. so it can't work without that, uh, additional proximity. It cannot work if you don't hire for those kinds of people. And even if you do hire for self driven people that say that they can work remote, the reality is that once you get into the grooves of things and you realize what there's like a Perception that people have of what remote work is versus the reality, because after three months of being with the computer, with a square, with just you talking to a square, it becomes a little bit deflating.
[00:24:26] So we have an asterisk for that also in that, um, I really think that it's, um, important for those that work remote to get and be surrounded by others like them, even if they don't work in the same company, like in a remote office that could have, um, just proximity to, to other kinds of, other kinds of people.
[00:24:49] So, there are a lot of asterisks, and I think that there's... One silver bullet is that it's something that has to come from the type of people you hire. Otherwise, I don't think it's possible.
[00:25:05] Mikkel: I just want to go back to one thing you kind of subtly skipped over. You said you did a lot of crazy things that broke the internet, and then I just want to hear, what did you do?
[00:25:15] Alina: What did we not do?
[00:25:18] That was more like the crazy question. So, I really have a passion for traveling and discovering new cultures and, we always picked as our locations to get together. places that might be a little bit unusual. So, the first company trip, when we were six of us, we went to an ashram in India, and, uh, we prayed to the gods of, uh, Indian cultures to help us with, uh, uh, with a contract, uh, that we were, uh, trying to get at that time with Facebook, and we got it, so we thought that it's really working, this.
[00:25:56] This is meditation and, and, uh, ashram, uh, practice. That was the first one. It wasn't as, uh, interesting, but it was still a lot of fun. We were in a van, we couldn't afford staying in fancy places. So we were in like, uh, we were in interesting places, you know, driving with a little van with us. Um, afterwards we, uh, got a little bit more capital.
[00:26:19] So we managed to go to the opening of clubs in Ibiza. We've also had the beautiful, uh, experience in Tulum. Tulum is a magical, uh, place. Um, And, uh, we take our employees and we make all sorts of contests around, uh, playing music and we make it all about fun, not about work. I think life is short and, you know, if we're not celebrating now, God knows if we're ever going to get to celebrate, you know?
[00:26:49] So we're kind of making it, uh, uh, about celebration. The thing that got us most attention was a trip in the desert, uh, in Morocco, where we chartered some planes and got to, uh, the Morocco desert. It was completely wild. Completely wild.
[00:27:07] Toni: I think I saw that LinkedIn post, by the way, really well, really well done.
[00:27:10] Um, so the, you know, maybe going back to, you know, some of the things we wanted to kind of cover here today. So really the orchestration of revenue streams, right. Or the, the orchestration of those motions. Um... It doesn't really only mean that, um, you know, things are happening in parallel or happening at the same time.
[00:27:30] They actually also need to play together to a degree, right? Um, and, uh, do you have any specific examples or ways to kind of look at this, how to integrate all of these different, you know, motions? And we, we talked about events, we talked about outbound, we talked about, uh, basic customer advocacy. We talked about a couple of others.
[00:27:48] And how do you, how do you see all of these things working together? And you know, what, what, what does someone need to keep in mind in order to make sure that, uh, that this really, you know, produces music and not just, you know, noise in
[00:28:00] Alina: The conductor. being an orchestra conductor in this kind of complexity is tricky because at any point in time you get some additional instrument that you might not have heard before and the economy has this humor on us where it keeps throwing stones and pebbles that we've not heard the sound of before.
[00:28:31] I'll give some examples. So one big driver for us is partner, um, we have two motions around partners. So we have a channel partner and we do have product partnerships as well that we do. And for both partner motions, social and content play a big role. Um, so when we, uh, onboard a new partner, we try to be creative in the ways where They might be included in a content piece, or they might be included at an event, or they might be included in a social media campaign.
[00:29:11] And, um, it becomes tricky when you have hundreds of partners that you might be integrating with, or hundreds of partners that you, are getting to market, from a channel perspective. And as a result, it requires a lot of, creativity for, ahead planning on the type of things that you can do together to highlight the best things that they, uh, they can't, uh, they can't be put into words.
[00:29:38] Part of, um, so for instance, SaaStr is coming. We have a party at SaaStr with many of our partners there and we're bringing common prospects and customers to get together with us and it requires them to have a certain kind of DNA that matches ours so that we can create the similar experiences. so, I would say that it does require a lot of, um, pre planning and for, uh, people that are working on these motions to know each other well enough and have very well defined goals in order to find ways to work together well.
[00:30:19] Mikkel: I think another thing I was really curious about is where, you know, most companies are now starting to look at next year in terms of what are they going to do, that there's always going to be targets and a budget. And part of that will require a lot of companies to develop new motions. And I'm sure with the scale you're at now and the trajectory you're on.
[00:30:37] You're also considering what additional motions do we need to build out from, from basically bringing them from zero to one, right? How do you, how do you tackle that when you look at the year, uh, and you need to deliver onto a target is, you know, do you kind of take it as we don't include it in that part and, you know, because there's still going to be a cost associated with it as well.
[00:30:58] So I'm a bit curious how you deal with. basically the developing motions and, and putting it into the
[00:31:03] plan.
[00:31:05] Alina: The answer to that is that I'm a lot more focused on skill sets than I am on, um, anything else. And what I mean by that is the execution of these motions is highly dependable on the people on the team. And, um, the people on the team are only, um, going to figure out things and things change all the time in, in, in our industry.
[00:31:34] If they have certain skill sets and, um, Now that With all these AI models, there are a lot of things that you can automate, and there are a lot of things that you can take out of the day. Because you can have an image in a blog post, you don't have to spend a few hours with a designer, and that designer can focus on other things.
[00:32:02] I'm putting all my energy into developing the right skill sets for this era, rather than focusing my entire energy on the motions of the era. Because I feel that if the people have the right skill sets, they will figure it out. And it's a game, the game of adaptability is a lot more important than the game of predictability.
[00:32:26] the, the predictability is a bit out of the window, um, when it comes to The speed at which we're throwing AI tools, um, so I would say that I'm a lot more focused on skillsets than anything
[00:32:42] else.
[00:32:44] Toni: Very interesting. Do you, just a quick follow up on this one? Is this, uh, I mean, this could be applied to both, right? The, the go to market piece, but also the product piece itself, right? Is it, um, that's almost, that's almost to your point. Hey, the team needs to have the skillset, how that this then is going to be applied.
[00:33:02] It's almost up to them, or at least then it's an option for the organization to apply it in the first place, right? But it's basically, uh, um, you know, using this understanding, using those new tools, um, is actually
[00:33:14] both for the go to market side and for the product side eventually.
[00:33:17] Alina: We do have, obviously, we have some high level goals and high level drivers for the roadmap and for everything that we do. It's... Very complex because we have such a broad persona in our case, because we target marketing teams, we target sales teams, we target CS teams, ops people, and because the buying cycle becomes complex, we don't target just the demand gen person, we target the CMO, and we target the marketing ops, and we target the product marketing, sometimes even, or the growth marketer. and because we're the kind of tool that sits at the intersections of these, uh, teams. Because we're all about that, um, efficiency in between the handoff that happens in the teams to make sure that the customer experience is, is, is paramount and it, that there's no lead left behind in that full end to end funnel.
[00:34:17] We have to pay attention to so many personas and to so many levels of, um, seniority. And at the same time, our product has evolved from one product to many products that are now part of a platform. Every product requires a little bit of different messaging, a little bit of different value prop. We're targeting even the CFO.
[00:34:40] And, um, the aim for instance, for, for us is to create a PLG motion that allows every one of these personas to try the product before they do anything with Chili Piper, and because our product is so complex, it's so freaking hard to do that, to achieve both the. Create a product that's so complex that, um, can satisfy all these business needs and yet be able to create that wow moment from the time, time, first time they try and such a different entry point for, we going to have a PLG even for individual contributors that are, um, SDRs, account executives and CS, we have some metrics in place that we want to achieve with, uh, this PLG motion per persona and per product.
[00:35:32] but how to figure out how to solve for that, those metrics is very complex and it's very hard to figure out. So as a result, as a founder, I can't figure out every path and I can't figure out every answer. What I can be maniacal about is how I can support them to figure out things on their own by developing the right skillsets.
[00:35:50] That's how look at it.
[00:35:53] Toni: I think that's, uh, that's a pretty cool, uh, pretty cool. And I haven't heard that approach so many times, by the way. So I think that's a pretty cool way to, to look at this. Problem, challenge, but also this opportunity that's either at the doorstep right now or will be, you know, part of the expected
[00:36:08] playbook in the, in the couple of months or years to come.
[00:36:11] Alina: Uh, I actually published a skillsets map for our marketing team on our website and it's probably one of our top performing, uh, article. I, uh, didn't expect that.
[00:36:22] The reason why I spent so much time thinking about it is because I was the first time... Right now I'm an acting... I'm acting CMO at Chili Pepper as well.
[00:36:32] And it was the first time that I was taking this role and I was so amazed of how... Misunderstood marketing is in every organization in that every organization treats marketing so differently and the role so differently and even ownership for a landing page is a battle sometimes because if you have like an integration page, is it the product marketing job? Is it a demand gen job? Is it a partner marketing? And things are so gray area in every possible thing that you do that I felt I was so keen in understanding all the mechanics of it and I felt it was all down to the skill sets of the people and the distribution of the tasks and emotions was very dependent on the skill sets and I wanted to understand better how to break them down and how to Create a map for growing those skill sets and for people to understand what it takes to be promoted and what it takes to be in a senior level versus a junior level.
[00:37:41] So I'm still working on it, but I have developed like a blueprint of a V1 and it's one of our top particle on our, on our website.
[00:37:52] Toni: Pretty cool.
[00:37:54] Mikkel: Nice. I think we've covered quite a lot of ground already. I
[00:37:59] Toni: would, I would like to ask kind of one, one other question that we have actually on this. if, if you knew, if you knew one thing, Back then, in time, before you went from a very straightforward approach of maybe it's events, or for others it might be outbound maybe first, or whatever it will be, if you, if you knew one thing that's gonna come up and, and be difficult to, to execute and, and, and therefore good to kind of think through before.
[00:38:26] Going multi motion, so to speak, kind of multiple channels, or in your case, even multiple products. It's very, very similar almost to that, what, what would you, what would you have given yourself as an advice and said like, Hey, watch out for, for this one thing before you consider making everything so complex, everything so difficult, but obviously that's necessary for, for achieving scale.
[00:38:47] Alina: Whenever a new product. When we're launching a new product or we're starting a new motion, we pick one thing that could measure the success of that motion and we don't try to boil the ocean to get there in that we don't try to come to deploy complex tools or, um, do complex things. I'll give one example.
[00:39:16] The, um, this is a decision memo that was written last week. The decision memo was about, and anytime we make a decision, there's a document and everybody adds the problem and the solutions and everybody contributes to the solution. The decision memo was about whether we should, um, as we're preparing for PLG, whether we should ungate the demo on our website and create like a self service demo as well.
[00:39:42] And, uh, there was a lot of data to support that this is a good idea and a lot of tools and pricing for every tool that could aid us in that. And, um, the conclusion of the decision memo is that in order to, uh, show efficiency, you don't really need a tool. You don't really need, uh, something fancy. You just needed to do a video that shows the demo and, uh, the best way to see if, um, the experiment is successful, you do an A B test and you have a flow that goes directly to, uh, QHMs with qualified held meetings or sales qualified meetings.
[00:40:19] And another path that, um, Includes that as part and see if you still get to that qualified meeting and with the same level of, um, conversion rates. So it's a simple experiment that you can do without spending money, without boiling the ocean, without having a lot of resources to test it out. So every experiment and every new motion, you pick one thing that you test and, uh, you try to achieve it with the minimum.
[00:40:48] That's been my mantra from the
[00:40:49] beginning.
[00:40:51] Toni: There you go. I think that's powerful as well.
[00:40:53] Mikkel: I mean, I think it, it fits perfectly into also a bunch of the things we've discussed. Previously on the show. I mean, true story. When we started this show, we were sharing a microphone, uh, you know, we didn't have all this fancy equipment from day, from day one, because if we didn't know how to talk, once we hit record or it was terrible, what was recorded?
[00:41:12] No one wanted to listen. Yeah.
[00:41:19] Toni: Alina, this was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending the time letting us, um, and, and everyone listening, having part of your, of your wisdom, the best of luck with Chili Piper going forward, obviously. And, uh, this was, uh, this was super insightful. Thank you, so much.
[00:41:33] Alina: Thank you, Mikkel and Toni for having me. I would do a little asterisks because I like asterisks.
[00:41:40] Toni: Yeah.
[00:41:40] Alina: don't think that wisdom comes from, um, obviously wisdom comes from being exposed to many things. at the speed that you feel uncomfortable. However, I am a lot more bullish on the importance of, um, finding wisdom in in peace of mind and joy.
[00:42:04] So I'm really, uh, happy that both of you are paying attention to the joy part. So delight was all, uh, all mine.
[00:42:13] Mikkel: Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you so much,
[00:42:16] Toni: Alina. And, uh, thank you everyone else for listening. Have a good one. Bye bye.