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Even if you don't run high velocity sales, there's much to learn from vendors who do.
We talked with Frank Nardi (CRO at Cin7) about how they manage short sales cycles and proactively manage their funnel.
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We talked with Frank Nardi (CRO at Cin7) about how they manage short sales cycles and proactively manage their funnel.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (02:21) - Meet frank
- (06:02) - Tuning the engine
- (13:36) - Selling to SMB
- (21:56) - Short cycles, short term?
- (26:54) - Longer cycles impact capacity
- (28:34) - Managing multiple points of failure
- (32:29) - Efficient growth
- (38:27) - Build leading indicators
- (41:31) - Having plays ready
***
This episode is brought to you by Growblocks. Finding and fixing problems in your GTM shouldn't take weeks. It should happen instantly.
That's why Growblocks built the first RevOps platform that shows you your entire funnel, split by motions, segments and more - so you can find problems, the root-cause and identify solutions fast, all in the same platform.
***
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Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, 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 from Growblocks.
[00:00:02] You are listening to the Revenue Formula with Mikkel and Toni. In today's episode, we are talking about the hidden practicalities in high velocity sales with no other than Frank Nardi, CRO at Cin7. Enjoy.
[00:00:18] Mikkel: Oh man, that almost felt like the intro. And by the way, I almost wanted to ask you. So, I mean, we're obviously just all of a sudden going to transition into the effective episode by the way, Frank, just so you know. But I kind of been looking at this and the listeners, they won't be able to see it, but you have a photo in the background and it looks like an astronaut on the bike.
[00:00:42] Is that
[00:00:43] Frank Nardi: So, so, so there's, there's a theme,
[00:00:46] uh, what you guys don't know about me is I'm very theme oriented. So, I have three astronauts,
[00:00:52] Toni: so also, you know, just for everyone to be reminded, those pictures are pre AI gen, you know, gen AI, right? Those Oh yeah, this is an artist. Yeah. Yeah, this is an artist in New York James Blank or something like that. That, uh, does these photos and he dresses somebody up in an astronaut outfit and goes to New York and takes these real photos. So.
[00:01:16] Mikkel: And he's like, who's this frank guy? He's buying all my photos. Actually
[00:01:19] Toni: the question is, Frank, when will you be one of those, you know, dressed up in the astronaut costumes in New York City and taking a picture of?
[00:01:28] Frank Nardi: Man, you know, it, it can happen. It can really happen. And it's not, it's not that far away. It's, it's, it's an actual reality that the hard part, the thing that no one talks about is actually packing the astronaut suit and getting it to New York. Right? Like you got this big helmet, you're gonna wear that on the plane. You know what I mean? You're going to put it in, you know, you're going to put it in, in cargo. It's going to scratch out. Like no one has like, people have like dog cart things they travel with. They have all, no one has an astronaut helmet bag ready and
[00:01:59] handy.
[00:02:00] Mikkel: you're also being silly about it. Why not just wear it? I mean, what are they gonna say? They're,
[00:02:04] Frank Nardi: wear it on the plane.
[00:02:05] Mikkel: an astronaut outfit. Yeah.
[00:02:07] Frank Nardi: Yeah. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. Can you lift your, can you lift your
[00:02:11] visor? We need to, we need to check your ID.
[00:02:17] Toni: mean, Mikkel, you haven't been to the US, neither have you been on an airplane, so maybe you don't know those rules.
[00:02:21] Mikkel: I have been to the uS, but, uh, yeah, let's, let's, let's talk about that in another intro because we have a guest with us today. Frank, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Welcome Frank.
[00:02:33] Frank Nardi: Thanks guys. Thanks for having me. This is exciting stuff.
[00:02:37] Mikkel: So you are currently CRO. We kind of, maybe you got that clue already from listening to the introduction CRO at Cin7. Very quickly, just for the listener, what does Cin7 do? What, can you tell us a little bit about the company just so the listeners know the background?
[00:02:52] Frank Nardi: Yep. So Cin7, we are connected inventory performance. So we are an inventory solution for the modern day product seller. Um, so we help them not just manage their inventory as they scale, but we sell, we help them sell in more channels. Uh, we help them grow with efficiency as they, You know, as they, as they reach these milestones as a business, right?
[00:03:15] And so we're in this battle, this big battle against inventory inefficiency. and it's a real issue. Like there's a 163 billion dollars a year problem and it's one of the top five reasons a small product seller will go out of business and never reach its full potential. So we help them not only avoid these scaling issues, but we help them thrive and achieve their best selves through Cin7.
[00:03:38] Toni: The keyword here also is, you know, small businesses, right? Kind of, this is an SMB setup, right?
[00:03:43] Kind of the motionless SMB, high volume, lots of, uh, basic kind of high velocity sales, right? Is that, is that how we can imagine that?
[00:03:51] Frank Nardi: Yep, that's right. So, we have two different customer profiles. We have these first time buyers that are reaching that first point of scale. They could be doing, like, a million dollars worth of revenue, and they're, and they're using spreadsheets, and it's not working for them. Or they, unfortunately, make this big mistake where they're, they're, can't, they lose track of some inventory as they sell on multiple channels.
[00:04:10] Um So we have them come into and, um, those deals can be, you know, anywhere with 4k ACV, right? You know, 4, 000. And then we have the, what we call the second tire time or multi time plus time buyer that's coming from a competitor or coming from, you know, um, a big ERP and they, and they're just not seeing the results that they want there.
[00:04:32] And so they're coming over to us and they get more efficiency out of that. And those deals can range into the, you know, maybe 12k a year. So. And we're closing hundreds of those a month, and we're doing that in a 30 day sales cycle. So it's a very fast, transactional, inbound motion.
[00:04:48] Toni: So maybe just to kind of, uh, for folks to get a grasp here, how many deals is that per seller per month? Like ballpark?
[00:04:56] Frank Nardi: in the teens, for sure, right? Like, so we have different ranges and such, but it's certainly in the teens. Um, we have reps that have closed up to 20 25
[00:05:08] Toni: And I think this, this kind of creates this nice, okay, you know, this is, this is the setup that Frank is running, which I think is going to set up the rest of the conversation actually in a pretty nice way. So thank you for that background. And, you know, jumping right in there, we, we already talked about astronauts.
[00:05:23] Like that's, that was pretty key. So Formula One next. So thanks Mikkel. So the next thing is actually, you know, because I heard a rumor, that you might have listened to a show, you know, on, on Spotify, on Apple, and they talked about the Formula One, uh, uh, analogy on tweaking and tuning your revenue engine, basically.
[00:05:44] And I think the specific piece was the, uh, the pit stop, right? The pit stop going from 60 seconds or one minute in the fifties or sixties. I'm not sure when they started down to what it is now, but two, two seconds. It's like a bad, it's like a bad result
[00:05:59] Frank Nardi: Oh, I, yeah.
[00:06:01] Toni: Sorry, go ahead.
[00:06:02] Frank Nardi: No, it was, it was really good. I loved that episode. So, the setup of all this, I'm prepping for our revenue, leadership offsite, right? So I'm doing the whole revenue org presentation. It's a big day. It's one of those days where it's all day sessions. All the Cin7 execs are there, and we're planning for that next phase of growth for Cin7.
[00:06:21] So we always talk about revenue engine of people, process, and systems and how it's all in alignment. So you have this engine theme, right? Um, so the night before I'm trying to go through the Prezo, I don't have the theme nailed. I want to fully click on the message, but it's not hidden. So I go, I start working.
[00:06:35] It's like late, it's like midnight. I'm going, working out, and I'm just listening to my pods, you know, rotation. And you guys come up and it was the Pablo Dominguez what Unicorns know from Insight Partners. So he talks about this, Efficiency and effectiveness and how Formula One is the pinnacle and how it's about and I'm like boom.
[00:06:52] That's it right, but it's late So I'm like, how do I hit this home? So I throw, you know, obviously change up the the presentation but on the way into work I'm walking and I'm like man, I wonder if CVS because I'm walking to work and I see a CVS. I'm like, I wonder if they have matchbox cars So I go into CVS and lo and behold they have 10 matchbox cars and we had 10 Leaders, so I'm like You know, this is perfect.
[00:07:17] Grab all them and I start my presentation by handing out a bunch of matchbox cars, all these little race cars to everybody and I'm like efficiency, effectiveness, revenue engine, future of Cin7, you know, how do we think about effective and relentless execution at scale. So it just hit home.
[00:07:36] Mikkel: so, so if folks ever wonder what, what do executive leaders do at offsites? Well, they play, they play with cars.
[00:07:42] Toni: Yeah, that's what it
[00:07:43] Frank Nardi: Oh, it's a thing now. It's a thing now. People are asking me, like, what do you bring into the next one? I'm like, man, that's, that might, it depends. It depends on what Toni and Mikkel come up with on their podcast next time.
[00:07:55] Toni: yeah, yeah, absolutely. We'll do our best. So walk us a little bit more through if you can the, okay, this was then the presentation and hey, we need to think about fine tuning this whole thing. and I'm, I'm almost on a, I don't know, like almost a cultural level. Did, did people start thinking differently suddenly about the sales engine and what is, what needs to be done in order to get it where you guys wanted to get it?
[00:08:18] Frank Nardi: You know, I, I think it's, it's, um, it's always, it's, these things are always a process, not an event, right? And so I've always talked about ruthless priorities. And the one of the things that we've tried to get to is like, We need to do less to achieve more. Like, it's not what we want to go do and be and all these big innovative things.
[00:08:37] That's great, but it's also what we need to shed to focus on the right things so that we're, we're continually, um, uh, being effective. I, I learned in a prior role, and it's something that stuck with me, is like, efficiency only gets you so far. Like, we can't cut our way to growth. You just can't keep taking things either out of the sales process or just making things more efficient.
[00:08:57] Because if you go too far that way Then you become super stale, right? Every customer gets the same email, every customer gets the same response by a sales rep. You have to have some personalization in there to be effective. And so, that's, that's the first thing there. So, it was an idea of like, continued focus on ruthless priorities to go, uh, achieve our goals.
[00:09:18] And then the other thing, um, I think it helps is, um, we, we continually focus on, and have been focusing on breaking the traditional silos. Like if you think about our process, we have a free trial motion into our inbound and we have a demo request. If you look at just a free trial, right, it really is tough.
[00:09:37] It is somewhat of a sales led model, but it is really tough for us to just say marketing hands off leads to sales, sales hands off deals to onboarding, onboarding hands off deals to CS, right? Because our product is one of those products where the interactions between sales marketing and onboarding within those products, it's actually Um, folks are getting in, they're trying the trial, and they're actually starting to onboard, right?
[00:10:00] Usage of a trial is setting up products and watching those products move through. That's kind of an onboarding motion, right? So, there is a overlap of marketing, products, communication, touchpoints, sales, where do the sales interject, where they don't, where they let the product sell the product, right? All that stuff has to be, um, intertwined.
[00:10:20] And then we work on improving all the gaps in between because that's where all the inefficiencies can lie. That's where the, the, the challenges can be.
[00:10:29] Toni: Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about this, right? Because, I think for many people out there, and I think this is a, this is actually by now a general, uh, it's, it's a known fact, I feel. Everyone wants to be more efficient. Everyone talks about it all the time, but everyone at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, to actually do something about it, they kind of struggle.
[00:10:47] They struggle with, Having good ideas, what could be done. And then they do like a brainstorming sessions and they have a thousand ideas. Um, and then kind of figuring out what to prioritize and how to go about it. How did, how did you solve this riddle? How did you, you know, solve, you know, seeing exactly where the next big pressure point is that, that needs, that needs your attention.
[00:11:07] Frank Nardi: So we talk a lot about visibility and traceability all the time, right? If we can't see it, we can't impact it. So, um, we have our entire, uh, process mapped out. I, I love the winning by design model. Like I said, I'm a student at heart, um, and I've been using that bowtie, uh, For a long time, right? And so we look at all those moments that matter across the inbound funnel and you can't do that unless you have a connected data and systems layer, right?
[00:11:37] So it's very important for us to make sure that everything is connected across. And then on top of that, we're starting to add now a lot more on the buyer journey experience layer. So if you think about it, we have these, you know, big hero metrics that each department has, right? Like, Marketing has them, sales has them.
[00:11:55] And then we have those secondary metrics like conversions on, you know, how many ops are you creating? How many of these? All the standard stuff, right? But then we take it a step further and then we look at the buyer journey and all the interactions, touch points, email four, call seven, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[00:12:11] And then we we layer on an experience layer there. So we're watching those metrics and then we begin to look at them as leading rather than lagging. So we're looking at them in real time and And then we're able to understand, um, if something's not working, right? And then begin to sort of A, B, and test out of it.
[00:12:29] And for the most part, how you find those, you know, biggest impacts, um, you know, if you think about all the outflows that can happen. Someone signs up for a demo request, but they don't show. Or someone signs up for a demo request, but they show, but then they're not as active as maybe someone else.
[00:12:44] Like, all these different flows, we map them. and then we just A B test our way through it. I think the thing is we, find is, in our process, and I love this quote, I heard it the other day, there are no silver bullets, there's only like a thousand golden BBs. Um, and that's, that's kind of how we think about it.
[00:13:01] Which, actually guys, maybe that's my next leadership offsite. I'll just spray paint a bunch of BBs and bring those in, like handful of BBs and hand them out. And everyone's like, why am I, why, what are you doing? Um,
[00:13:12] Toni: I love that. I really, I really do love that actually. The, so the, um, kind of thinking through this, I'm just picturing this, you are super focused on this. Product led sales motion, which probably technically that's, that's what, what the cool kids call it these days. and it's only that, right?
[00:13:30] You don't have outbound, you don't have any of the other stuff. You basically only have that one revenue stream that you're focusing on?
[00:13:36] Frank Nardi: We have a, um, we have a partner motion, right? So that comes in. Our partners are a big part of what we do. and, and they're great because they create an awesome ecosystem for our buyers, right? So if you think about a first time founder, an entrepreneur, like, our customers are awesome because they have this entrepreneurial spirit.
[00:13:53] They want to go disrupt something, right? They want to create a new product that's going to break the cycle of what's already out there. and and they want to grow. So. Um, our partners come in and they help them with their tech stack, they help them with their either implementation or they help them like, you know, put all these pieces together.
[00:14:09] Um, and we're a part of that journey, so we do have that motion. Outbounding for us is super interesting because a lot of times, um, our, you know, our customers don't have a lot of that data yet. Right? Like if we're going to go and create an ABM motion, I've had people try and pitch me, we've tried a couple of times.
[00:14:27] It's just never been a bread and butter for us because like, um, there's, there's, you know, if it's, it's four guys in Texas who are creating a barbecue sauce and they just hit a million dollars of revenue, um, they're not, they're not going to be, uh, well known by the big data systems, right? So it's like, how do you target them and how do you find them?
[00:14:46] Um, so for us, it's very much a demand gen. Um, tell our stories through our website, tell our stories through social, tell our stories through, um, how they find us when they say, Hey man, I'm hitting this barrier. I need to go find a solution for this problem. Here we are.
[00:15:02] Toni: almost kind of my point, right? Because you have the. Um, you have no other choice than to ultra focus on this thing. You know, you know what I mean? It's, this is the one way you generate cash and sure there will, there's some other areas as well, I'm not going to ask into distribution of those, but that kind of gives you this, um, you know, it's fortunate, it's unfortunate, but it gives you this focus.
[00:15:26] Where you can go to this level of, and you kind of jumped over this, Hey, you know, email for meeting six and so forth. Other people that are listening is like, wow, what is he talking about? You know, I thought, I thought he's running sales reps. Sounds like it's robots, but, that kind of focus enables you to, uh, to be so detailed and so focused and, uh, then start doing this A B testing, start being You know, as, as Dave Boyce would put it playing, playing scientist here a little bit, right.
[00:15:54] And being like very kind of specific on what do you tweak and how and what will be the expected result.
[00:16:00] Frank Nardi: Yeah, so two things there. I think it is necessity is the mother of invention, right? If we want to meet our customers where they are and where they are in their journey, we have to do it this way, right? They're ultra busy. Um, there's not a lot of people that work at these companies, right? They're just starting out, um, so we have to find them and meet them where they are.
[00:16:19] But I think to your point about the fun part of it is, we, we do have, you know, um, some really cool, I think there's, there's certainly a lot of science to it, but there's a lot of fun in that we can move so fast in that when we make changes, we can see and have a quick impact, right? So if we're seeing a trend we love.
[00:16:40] 5th of the month of April. We can make a change that affects April, right? If we see something that we don't like, we can make a change that can kind of adjust and improve April, right? And so that's how we think about it. We think about like, what can we do and what can we impact so that we continually do, do the best to maximize our output and performance.
[00:17:05] And the cool part about it for me is It is, I always have to wake up and think about, and our team wakes up and think about a balance, right? There's never like, um, people are, are bigger than, than, than process and systems. It's like I'm balancing these three legs of the stool. And it's always about like putting our best people in the right positions to win.
[00:17:28] Continually streamlining those process to cut out anything our customers don't value or just helps our team execute. And then. Our systems need to be interconnected. They need to automate steps and they need to also aggregate data, right? So a good example is like a lot of folks use conversation intelligence.
[00:17:45] We use it all the time. Um, our, some of our reps have five to seven demos a day, right? So like, you know, they could have a busy day, seven demos, right? I, I can't listen to hundreds of calls. Our teams can't listen to hundreds of calls, but those themes in those calls, we can spot trends over time and aggregate that data.
[00:18:03] Um, now with a lot of the tools and tech out there with AI and stuff, we want to start to continue to lean into that so that we can start having those systems tell us, you know, help us see around corners, help us tell us what we don't know about the themes and things that are popping up and how fast we can respond to those as the behaviors change or the market changes.
[00:18:24] Mikkel: I think what's, what's super interesting, just, just listening to you is I also wonder how do you, how do you manage growing and closing that pipeline? Because it's so different. Usually when you have. like a lower ACV doing any kind of sales is just a non starter because of the unit economics. But you have high velocity.
[00:18:42] And I think that can also bring quite a few challenges. You know, do you run a forecasting session where we sit and, you know, prioritize deals and can we get the CEO's involvement to help close it just doesn't make sense anymore. So I'm just wondering how, how do you manage that side of, of the business as well, when you have such short, uh, sales cycles and, you know, the leading indicator as well.
[00:19:02] Next week, that's, that's going to happen.
[00:19:06] Frank Nardi: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's true. So, and I've talked a lot about those, that first time buyer, right? But we also have the second time buyer. We have a little bit of the larger kind of scratching that mid market, a little bit of mid market deals. Um, we still do a lot of the fundamentals in sales, right? Um, there's pipeline coverage.
[00:19:24] Uh, we do have our forecast calls. we have a cycle every month. Um, Right? And so if you think about it, we have this interesting, consistent rhythm that I, that we really love to tap into. So for pipeline coverage, we want 3x just like everyone wants 3x, right? Like, you know, like that's kind of how we think about it.
[00:19:42] Um, but it's a cycle, right? So if you think month end closes just like a quarter close for a lot of maybe enterprise deal, like there's this mad rush to get all the deals in, right? So everybody closes up and then a week or two we're building that pipeline back. So by the middle of the month. I'm looking for all the reps to have that 3x, right?
[00:20:00] And then they kind of, like a bank account, they withdraw by the end of the month and then they're building it back up and then they withdraw by the end. So there's this like rhythm that, um, we continue to watch. And then on the, on the, on the system side, we're constantly looking for, um, by rep, by region, by lead level, by lead source.
[00:20:21] Um, our marketing team does a great job of iterating lead sources and paid media and constantly adjusting. So if we see a drop or a gap, we're, we're adjusting that. Our sales enablement comes in and, and kind of like, hey, we're seeing a, um, an increase here. A customer's, uh, buying behavior is improving. Um, again, you know, one of our modules or there's a need for, for us to lean into something that we weren't needing before, spot trends.
[00:20:46] Um, and so. It's, it's this interesting rhythm, um, that, um, we can take action on, and if we can execute quickly, which that's some of the most exciting things that I've seen us do, is we can move the needle in that month or in that quarter.
[00:21:02] Toni: Yeah, that's, I think that's pretty crazy. And it's also pretty cool. Um, and talking about the, the short term ism of it, um, which is exciting because of the immediate impact, you have, you know, input outputs, you know, correlate extremely nicely, kind of almost get this dopamine hit, you know, when you see something working out, right.
[00:21:22] I can almost see it in your, uh, in your face and kind of hear it on your voice. But at the same time. The board and the exec leadership team is still going to ask you, so Frank, um, what about in a four and a half month from now? Are you going to hit that target? Or by the end of the year, how, you know, how is that working out?
[00:21:41] And, and that then suddenly becomes a little bit harder to actually talk about because of the, the short term stuff that you're running, right? So how do you, because I imagine as a CRO, you will be asked that question, right? And you need to sit there and have like a strong answer to that. So how do you manage that?
[00:21:56] Frank Nardi: I think everyone kind of deals this, right? Like if you're in the big enterprise world, and I talked to some friends and some folks out there that, that are in that space. You know, they're still, they're still trying to do that with a big deal. Hopefully it lands in Q4, maybe it pushes to Q1, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[00:22:12] So it's like one deal misses, it could, it could really mess up. We're, we're in the, in the space of, of looking at and how we project is about matching trends and matching traction and how we, um, look to adjust. So a good example is like, As marketing is doing what marketing is doing and continually refining lead sources and spend and all the little adjustments that they're doing there and how we go up funnel on there, continue to do some great stuff with our content and our messaging frameworks.
[00:22:42] They're looking to increase their lead volume. We're looking to increase conversion, right? And then on conversion, we're also looking to say like product is also releasing some new great stuff. So we're also looking to capitalize and share with the market all that great stuff that's happening. And so, There really is this operational rev build that we look and if we think about it, it's like, yes, we have a budget, and that budget, annual budget is going to be like, here's our North Star, this is what we're going to go get for 2024, and that's there.
[00:23:12] But, um, you know, like, like driving to Canada, right? You know what that North Star is, but you're going to take a whole bunch of left and right turns and there could be some traffic or there could be this freeway that no one's on, let's speed up and go. Like there's, there's all these kind of little nuances that we're going to make along the way.
[00:23:32] So I think, I think for us, um, it is, we do see, you know, months out because we're tracking these trends months back. Um, but it's always, it's, it's always the same challenge of, you know, how do you, How do you project a forecast, you know, 12 months away as the, as you know, the market, you know, what is the market going to be then and how
[00:23:56] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:23:57] Frank Nardi: to adjust?
[00:23:58] Mikkel: Yeah. I think another, another dimension of this is also, I imagine you will get hit a lot quicker by a gap. in your funnel because of how high velocity everything is. And I think especially these last couple of years, it's been, uh, you know, a different market to put it in a, in a nice way. Right. So I'm just wondering, like, maybe share an experience there.
[00:24:21] Have you seen any kind of gap appear and what did you do to kind of fix it? Just given how different the, the business operates.
[00:24:29] Frank Nardi: You, you touched on it. So, um, it's been a few months back now, but we, you know, I think a lot of SaaS felt this. We started to see a lot of latent versus active buyers, right? So if you think about, um, COVID coming through COVID, a lot of product sellers had to. had to move online, right? And so moved to new channels and, we were, we were there for them to help them through that process.
[00:24:52] And, so a lot of folks were super active, right? And so now, um, in SaaS, like there's just more latent buyers out there, buyer behavior shifting, you know, in every stage, SMB, mid market, enterprise. So we have a more cautious buyer. Deal cycle are extending. so for us, when we think about deal cycles extending, let's say it extends 10 days, right?
[00:25:11] It doesn't mean that nothing's happening in those 10 days, right? It doesn't mean it's just 10 days of silence, right? There's three more demos that have to happen. There's five more calls. There's, and so we have to look at that. Not only like, okay, what's the buyer behavior to solve the gap, but also what's the, how does this impact the capacity of the team?
[00:25:29] Because if we have reps taking on three more demos and five more calls on a deal they would have normally closed 10 days ago, like that Right? So we're, we're looking at that and trying to get ahead. and, and using that data to be able to then go say, Okay, what do we need if the buyers need more convincing?
[00:25:49] Um, or what's their hesitation? How quickly can we mobilize, change our process? So like, uh, one of the things we did, which was, you know, uh, we used to have an SDR AE process, right? That's what, you know, we grew through. We changed that so that our AEs would move just further up into the conversation to be able to talk to the buyer, to meet them where they are, right?
[00:26:15] We had to change our enablement there. Our product team did some great in app actions, right? So customers, if they're in the free trial, like, okay, this makes sense. Okay. Yeah. I can talk to somebody now. Like, um, how do we, how do we adjust and shift to, um, improve the buyer experience? for that more cautious, you know, latent buyer. we always want to, you know, we always want to grow Cin7, we always want to, you know, but we also want to create a better experience for the buyers at the same time, right? And so if we're approaching a blatant buyer and an active buyer the same way, their experience is not going to be as great, right?
[00:26:52] And so we want to look at that differently.
[00:26:54] Toni: So just want to double down on something you said there, because I'm not sure everyone caught it fully. So you said our sales cycles are pushing out. That will have an impact on our reps capacity because you're now running more deals at the same time, basically. Right. Um, and that will be an issue because, Hey, there's only so much time left in the day, and now we ask them to do more.
[00:27:21] number one, I think very few people think about the world like that, like period, so massive kudos there. And number two, it also speaks to me, like if in another company. Sales cycles are pushing out a couple of days. Number one, people might not actually realize that it happens. So like that's number one.
[00:27:43] number two, if they do realize it happening, they won't realize that there's a, there's a second order impact they need to take care of. and number three, because maybe the engine isn't as finely tuned as yours in this case, they might not even. They might not even have to, right? They can comp, because there's so much slack still in the engine, they can compensate by not doing anything because then yes, the reps will be a bit more busy in your case, because there's more fine tuning going on is way more, uh, way more stringent, so to speak. And I think you and I discussed this once, like a couple of months back. There's so many points of failure actually, right? Because the, the system is so tight. and you know, every, every little thing that goes wrong. Could actually topple some of the other things further down further down the stream and how do you how do you sleep at night actually kind of?
[00:28:34] How do you how do you do that right when there's so multiple points of failure And and you know, you know conversely kind of how do you manage this
[00:28:46] Frank Nardi: Do you remember in, uh, Las Vegas, in the Formula One when they had to stop the whole race because there was like a, a a bump in the road? Yeah. A pothole in the road? ? Uh, yeah. No, I think, uh, so here's what I'll say. we have an exceptional team. our marketing team, our ops team, our product team, our partnership team, uh, onboarding.
[00:29:07] Like when, when we think about like how we do this, it is, it is certainly like. Everyone's focused in the same direction. And when I think about, uh, velocity for us, it's, when we, when we look at building this at scale, we know that we can't, you know, if, you know, marketing starts to land a whole bunch more leads, I just can't go and throw head count at that problem, right?
[00:29:33] If I get 300 more leads, I can't go three more heads, right? So when we know that, we, I think a lot of companies are going to start adopting some aspects of this model, right? Because it's not that growth at all costs mindset anymore. It's that, you know, uh, peg or profitable efficient growth. Like we want to be, um, super efficient moving forward.
[00:29:55] So, so it really does take a team and it does take a bunch of folks looking at this from different angles. a good example is like, I don't just wake up and think about this, but our ops leaders come in and they go, Hey, we're seeing a trend. You should think about this. Right. And I say, okay, great. Um, marketing's like, Hey, we're seeing, we're seeing a lead source that used to be great for us at high conversion start to shift.
[00:30:19] We're going to start to, to divert from that. We're going to start to go talk to them and figure out what's happening. Like this is, this is certainly like not a only me thing. This is a whole bunch of folks, including our finance team that does a great job. They're, they're building the rev builds and they're looking at it and they're saying, okay, how are we trending?
[00:30:37] How is our headcount, you know, sales headcount to performance and all that kind of stuff. And they're providing me that data too. So, Yeah, I guess I would, I would just leave it at that. Like, I think it's, um, it's certainly a team effort.
[00:30:50] Mikkel: This conversation is super interesting because I think it was yesterday I was sitting on the train home. And I read one of David Spitz, uh, posts. So he, he looks at a lot of, uh, publicly traded SaaS companies and, you know, analyzes them basically. And he said, so for the majority of companies, they basically overpay for new ARR.
[00:31:08] And just one case was, I believe it was Salesforce paying two and a half buck for a dollar. And it's just, that's not going to be sustainable in long run. It's, and I was always just thinking, wow, it's going to be pretty difficult for them to shift that whole engine around to be efficient all of a sudden.
[00:31:24] So basically this whole shift to efficient growth. And I heard you talking about working closer with, you know, working closely with finance and that's kind of part of it in my head as well. There's just a need for you to be more efficient and maybe even almost profitable with how you're acquiring customers.
[00:31:42] And I'm just curious to hear what is that, what, you know, shift has that led to for you as a business thinking about the latent bias? How
[00:31:48] Toni: it looked like, kind of, was it initiated by finance? Do you not have that problem? All kind of, what's the, what's the story that led to it? Because ultimately it's also Um, and I think this way, a lot of people get lost in this whole efficiency conversation is they talk about CAC Payback and ARR per FTE and all of those fancy things.
[00:32:07] But at the end of the day, it's at the level that you and I are, we are discussing it right now. It's like, well, how many deals can this one rep run? And how can we, you know, while, while we know how many opportunities they can run, how can we get them to close more of them or for a higher ACV and kind of do that operational stuff?
[00:32:27] That is actually driving the financial outcome.
[00:32:29] Frank Nardi: So for us, it was a progression to this point, right? Like it wasn't like one day we turned this on and poof, you know, rolling forecasts and iterations, right? We, you know, this is a pace we've built over time as we've grown as a business. Um, and, the goal then was always to say, Hey, how do we create more alignment and how do we remove the silos and how do we have the interactions be cohesive and continual, right?
[00:32:55] Like, for us, set it and forget it is over, right? Like, it's gotta be this continual state of how do we iterate forward together. And so, when we think about like that latent buyer, right? There's, there's aspects to that that we go and we say, um, you know, um, hey, what is our discovery looking like? Are we asking the same questions that we did 12 months ago?
[00:33:19] How do we adjust that? Um, and then finance is coming in and saying, hey, we've got this, um, we've got this annual budget. So Northstar, this is what we're going to go hit. But we're looking at trends monthly, and that rolling forecast monthly to understand like, how do we, how do we maximize what's working.
[00:33:37] And how do we improve and fill what's, you know, where those, where those gaps are? So we still have, like, and I think operational cadence is huge in this, right? Because, because you can't just have a whole bunch of meetings where everybody's just sitting around, like, when you're talking about, like, removing silos, that doesn't mean you become inefficient in meetings, right?
[00:33:56] You have to be super efficient there too. So our operational cadence is, you know, we still have the annual budget. That's our North Star. We have our goal to go. We're going to continue to work on that. We're going to, we're going to meet weekly and look at the iterations and changes. If we, if we were seeing something that's working really well, we're going to lean into it.
[00:34:13] If we go off track or we're seeing something that's not, that we don't like, um, then we, you know, we look at that monthly and then quarterly review everything, right? Like how did the quarter go? What does a quarter ago look like? Um, and so, and then within that we have the marketing team cadence, the sales team cadence, The operational team cadence that's looking at their individual metrics along that buyer journey and saying, Hey, we've got something that's really working, go after that.
[00:34:41] And so the goal is to create this smooth, ongoing, continual rolling, um, forecast and operational cadence that gives us the ability to execute quickly with the idea and this mindset that, look, we want to get to, to get there. You know, to our North Star, but that road isn't straight, right? There's always going to be changes and shifts.
[00:35:06] Toni: You had this example, of the marketing team changing something or delivering 300 more leads or something like that. was this actually a conversation that was brought up in the go to market session or in the, I'm not sure what you kind of call it, but in, in the, in the wider session, basically, that was flagged by them as, I don't know, like a good thing, but also a watch out, was a basic kind of flag like this, right?
[00:35:31] Because that requires just so much awareness on the marketing team side to understand, hey, this is actually a good thing going through, right? More leads is always great, right Mikkel? Totally. Um, but, uh, at the, on, on the flip side, there's also then the awareness of, wait a minute, so there's a downstream effect I need to be aware of.
[00:35:49] Um, I need to have that communication and we maybe need to, you know, move some things around because we're now having the spike, right? Was, was this how you caught it? Basically kind of in, in, in, in a session like that.
[00:36:00] Frank Nardi: So, We have a dashboard that we're constantly reviewing that'll show, how many leads we're getting today, how many ops are being created with those leads, what is the latency of opp creation to leads coming in, right? Are we starting to see that speed up or, or go down? And then what we do this week actually impacts next week and next month, right?
[00:36:20] Um, and so we're always looking at capacity for sales rep performance to leads and how we can shift. So a good example is like, Hey, someone. someone's new or they, you know, how do we, how do we balance that capacity on the sales side? how do we, how do we shift by regions? And our team is, is super, we have three regions we really work through and our team is super, um, comfortable with like taking leads across regions and things like that.
[00:36:47] Toni: I think what many people listening, they will have a dashboard that shows something. They will have a meeting once a week where they talk about some of those things. But I think what's the difference here is that you take all of these data points, um, and they actually lead to like clear action on the, on the flip side of that meeting.
[00:37:11] Right. Um, and it's, I think it has to do with a couple of things and I'm just guessing. How things work in your organization and sure, there's, you know, dashboards and stuff, but it's also. Marketing is aware and has an understanding of, you know, the limitations and capabilities and capacity and what have you on the sales side, right?
[00:37:29] there's an understanding of, Hey, we're seeing this metric going up. Let it be a sales cycles to our earlier example. And Oh, wait a minute. This is going up. This will now have this consequence here. Now we kind of need to react to it over there and, and shifting these things around. Right. And I think what is happening in most organizations is they have all of those dashboards.
[00:37:52] They're looking at, you know, those numbers here and there. And then they may or may not do a QBR, then they're backward looking, it's like, Oh, sales cycle went up. Uh, and then, Oh, we should totally do something about that. And everyone around the room is like, yeah, we should totally do something about that.
[00:38:07] And then you check in the next QBR that may or may not happen. And it's like, actually guys, what did we do about this sales cycle thing? And everyone's like, what sales cycle? I don't, I don't remember. Right. Not my responsibility. And in your case. This is like hyper focused on that stuff, but also coupled with actionability bleeding out of this, basically.
[00:38:27] Frank Nardi: So one of the things, I think that's exactly right. One of the things that we always try to do is turn everything we possibly can into a leading indicator, right? Um, uh, and so one of the, one of the maybe the best examples we have of that is, is our ghosting rate. We call it a ghosting rate. A lot of folks call it a stick rate.
[00:38:45] So, you know, when you sell to SMBs, um, a lot of these folks are founders, they're super busy, they have the best intentions, they want to get on a demo with you, they book a time for tomorrow morning, but something comes up, they've got a fire to put out, and they can't make it. Right? And so, you end up having this ghost rate.
[00:39:01] We watch our ghost rate as a leading indicator for how many opportunities we can create next week. Right? So if they're starting to ghost this week higher, how does that look next week, and what does that look like for next month? Right? And so, what we've done, so a play that will run there, and it's kind of one of my funner plays, is like, look, maybe that buyer's less active, maybe they're shopping, or maybe that got busy, right?
[00:39:22] And so, we actually shifted our SDRs to work exclusively at times on this, with special cadences and plays we call the Ghostbuster Strategy, where they'll come in, they'll come in, and they'll, their whole deal that week is like, how do we bring the ghosts back into the funnel? What additional enablement do they need?
[00:39:39] What additional information? Uh, can we set up like webinars or little like, you know, here's the value that you may be missing, um, with a product like ours. Um, so that, that's kind of maybe one of the things that I would say is like a really good leading indicator. So if I wake up in the morning and I start to see, you know, our dashboard, I'm like, hey, how many leads are we getting in a day?
[00:39:57] How many did we turn into opportunities? What is our trend for ghosting? Is our trend for ghosting coming up? Oh, it's summer. People are starting to go on vacation. Okay, the trend's going up, how do we start to bring that back in so we create more of a forward thinking, leveling out of opportunity creation.
[00:40:12] And if we can create that, then we create the consistency, of our close rates.
[00:40:19] Toni: People are throwing this word leading indicators around like crazy all the time, right? Because it sounds cool and everyone knows like, Oh, you know, I know I shouldn't be looking at lagging indicators. I should be looking at leading indicators.
[00:40:30] but in your case, what are you doing there is. The definition of leading indicator is not that it's early in the funnel. The definition is that it can do something about it, right? Kind of, that's, that's almost how you're flipping it around. And, something cannot be a leading indicator, unless you can take action on this, right? Which I think is extremely interesting. It's because that then becomes a. Um, a process wherever that indicator is going in the wrong direction. It's like, okay, Frank woke up, look at the dashboard.
[00:40:59] Ghosting is in the wrong direction. Boop, triggers like three, four things that need to be executed coming out of this. Right. And I think this is really, this is really how you can use this thing. Right. And, and the, the other way to think about it is almost a programmatic way to say, okay, something bad happens on this.
[00:41:19] Report on this dashboard. What are the three things, whatever three plays we usually execute. And let me think about which one is the most appropriate today. That's almost how it thinks you guys are running this, which I think is extremely impressive.
[00:41:31] Frank Nardi: Yeah, so, I appreciate that. The thing that we talk about all the time is, um, you kind of have to have the plays ready to do this. Um, we always talk about innovate before we need to, right? Because, um, if we're trying to do this while that's happening, it becomes very difficult. It becomes very difficult to mobilize.
[00:41:53] But if you know you have a ghosting play ready, if you know you have an op creation play ready, if you know we have a, maybe there's a regional, um, there's a regional, uh, thing that we're trying to overcome, or we see something hit, right? You know, that's the other thing we see a lot of. We run plays and we're like, Hey, this is working.
[00:42:10] People are really liking the new module we released. let's go lean into that because this messaging is working better than maybe even the original messaging we thought. Um, and buyers are starting to stick to that. So how do we, how do we mobilize and get that to all our sellers globally and be like, Hey, if we talk about it like this, it's really resonating with customers and they're super excited about it.
[00:42:30] that's the kind of stuff that we want to do, but you have to have that ready. And you have to have those plays there, before you need them.
[00:42:38] Toni: So the, you know, innovate before you have to, I had this experience, we were behind somewhere, and we figured out, oh, let's do this spiff. And then, oh, that worked. And then that became the hammer. And then every time we were behind was like, Oh, let's just do a spiff.
[00:42:54] Let's just do a spiff again. And, you know, And that is at some point, obviously that, you know, grows stale and stuff. But did you, did you actually have sessions where you and the team sat down and it's like, okay, if this thing goes south, what could we do about this? If this thing kind of turns here, what could we do about this?
[00:43:12] Or was it more organic? Right. Kind of how, how, how prepared almost did you approach this?
[00:43:16] Frank Nardi: Uh, so we're constantly doing, trying to do two things at once. We're trying to get more visibility into what next month and the month after looks like, right? And so that we're kind of doing that in the pipeline creation. but we're also trying to understand like, um, how what we can do today affects those coming months. And so we will spiff, like I think everybody spiffs. But I think one of the things that we talk about a lot is, um, I think we all think about like spiffs as, as, as potentially a positive, um, for the reps, right? Oh, spiff this new module or spiff this new thing. But what, what starts to happen is, um, they end up being overwhelmed with all the different things that we're asking them to do.
[00:43:59] And it's like, Oh, I gotta remember, I gotta remember to sell this thing a certain way. So what we try to do with this is continually look at what's providing the most value in the sales process in the buyer journey. Where do we see we can affect that most? Where can we get ahead of what we're trying to do?
[00:44:18] And then where we know we can get ahead of it, try and be proactive against it versus reactive against it. Right? Because I think you said in another, in another podcast, you were talking about like, we always spiff from a defensive position. Right, and I think we do that too sometimes, but how do we, how do we, how do we accelerate through up through an offensive position?
[00:44:40] Toni: I think this is really interesting. Honestly, Frank, I mean the you had like two things in there Actually, one is the hey, you need to have the play ready before you actually need it. And then secondly, you also have this Hey, we were looking into the future.
[00:44:56] So we also have a little of time before we actually execute the play. Right. And those two things put you basically on the, in the front foot and going about this. And I think this is probably some of the reasons why you're able to run. this, this setup in this way and, and, and be so, I'm sure, I don't know the numbers, Frank, but it sounds very efficient, what you're doing there.
[00:45:14] And, uh, thanks for sharing, you know, some stories and some, some experiences and some, you know, ways of thinking about how you actually kind of got there. Um, so thanks, thanks a bunch for spending some time with us here, Frank.
[00:45:26] Frank Nardi: Appreciate it guys. It's a been a great conversation. Thanks for having me on.
[00:45:30] Mikkel: Nice. Take care. Have a good one. Bye
[00:45:32] Toni: bye guys.
[00:45:33] Frank Nardi: Bye bye.