How to build & scale outbound

Whether you're at $2, $10 or $20M ARR - if you want to add outbound as a motion, this episode is for you.

We dive into the sequence here:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (05:55) - 0-$1M - Founder led
• (09:55) - How to assess it
• (12:29) - $1-2M - The first SDRs
• (20:59) - $2-10M - Many SDRs
• (28:51) - +$10M - The factory

Mentions
Sam Blond & Ashley Kelly discuss how to dominate outbound

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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.

***

Connect with us

🔔 LinkedIn: Toni / Mikkel

✉️ Email: [e-mail]

📺 Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@growblocks 

Creators & Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Head of Demand at Growblocks

Host

Toni Hohlbein

CEO & Co-founder at Growblocks

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. You are listening to the Revenue Formula.
[00:00:04] In today's episode, Mikkel and I are discussing how to build and scale Outbound. and it doesn't matter whether you are a 10 or 20 or 50 million ARR, this episode is about building a new motion. Enjoy.
[00:00:17] Mikkel: Oh, man. So, we just had a weekend without without kids. so we could sleep, and I was like telling my wife, We're probably gonna wake up at 7, or 6 a. m. anyway. And I woke up, and I felt like, yeah, it's It's probably seven. I look at the clock it's like, it's 930 and I actually, for once, felt rested. I felt rested. and it's
[00:00:45] Toni: gotta say, you look like 5 years younger.
[00:00:48] Mikkel: I feel five years younger. I was gonna say, it's like, you feel so much, happier when you've slept. It's kind of crazy,
[00:00:54] Toni: actually. And
[00:00:56] Mikkel: of happy, we were just kind of reminiscing while grabbing coffee and heading into the studio.
[00:01:02] Toni: Der Alte,
[00:01:03] Mikkel: we got talking about uh, old school skits and prank calls and all that stuff.
[00:01:09] And it kind of made me remember something. There was a company in Denmark who got really really tired of all the sales calls saying, Oh, do you need ink for your printer? Do you need a phone book? Do you need a blah. So they found a really good way to kind of just end the conversation dead blank. And they just went, Ah, sorry we don't use that.
[00:01:29] The thing is though, sometimes people they will call and say, Hey, we sell phone subscriptions. And you're gonna go, And you're gonna go, Ah, we don't use it. And then the person on the other side was like, Confounded, It's like What do you mean you don't use it? How are we talking now? It was like, telepathy.
[00:01:46] by
[00:01:47] What ended up happening, because they did it, and it just, there's a website where you can look up some of those crazy conversations, by the way.
[00:01:54] is like, oh, uh, we sell email software. It's like, oh, we don't use that. We use Hammer and a Chisel. like, um, so what started happening, kind of, unfortunately for that company, all the call centers, who need to train their new, SDRs, call that company. They got flooded with calls. Uh, so why am I sharing that story, I wonder?
[00:02:18] I
[00:02:18] Toni: Probably, probably because you're saying that Outbound is dead and it's not going to work out.
[00:02:22] Mikkel: hey, we've had that episode before. It's not dead, it's very much alive. That was the conclusion. It's very much alive, but People kind of don't like being on the receiving end. There's this very negative impression of outbound.
[00:02:34] Uh, we all, and Especially now there's folks, you know, I feel like every day there's a LinkedIn post of someone going like, is it just me? or Am I getting more calls?
[00:02:42] Toni: I think what's also happening on LinkedIn is, uh, this whole story of outbounders is dead. It kind of doesn't jive anymore.
[00:02:48] Mikkel: No, it's done now. Now, now
[00:02:51] we need to find another
[00:02:52] Toni: know, it was pretty cool, but now everyone is back to outbounding and kind of works again. So it's, uh,
[00:02:57] Mikkel: now it's like, it's going to get replaced by AI. It's like, yeah, right. Maybe in 20 years or something.
[00:03:03] Toni: That statement is probably not going to age well. It's like in a year from now, we're going to be sitting and it's like, um, okay.
[00:03:08] Mikkel: then we'll replay it. I mean, if we're doing this in 20 years from now, still, and the show is still called The Revenue Formula, then I mean, yeah, totally.
[00:03:16] we're going to have to play it back. So, but anyway, it's like, I don't want to get into all this stuff, like it's intrusive and blah, blah, blah. But I think fundamentally there's an understanding you need to know, which is inbound, you go and find people who basically has a pain. And then you need to figure out whether they're a fit, right?
[00:03:34] So when someone inbounds, you don't know if they're a fit, but they kind of go, well, I could see myself using this potentially because I have a problem, I want to achieve whatever. With outbound, it's kind of an inverse, right? It's, you're going out and figure out, well, who would be a fit? So it's, it's, that's why we've talked about in the past that it's more targeted.
[00:03:51] And then you need to figure out whether it has, whether there's a pain, right?
[00:03:54] Toni: Yeah. And because of that dynamic, it's, um, It's largely useless for most of the receiving ones,
[00:04:02] right? So out of a hundred people, only three might be in market for you. Kind of still need to touch those 100 in order to kind of hit those three.
[00:04:11] Yes. Intense signals and blah, and everyone has those great ideas. But at the end of the day, you're going to call a bunch of people. so for those 97. They're going to be like, um, I don't care right now. Sorry. so that, that also is what I think is giving Outbound a bad reputation, uh, because you blast a lot.
[00:04:28] and then since people have realized that this is a numbers game, like, you know, what isn't, by the way, what isn't a numbers game? Many CMOs are like, oh, this is so bad for the brand and you're sending so many emails and they're shit. I read three of them and You know, they were not on point with our brand messaging, so that's not okay And they will now from now never buying because you sent this one email and now they're gonna hate our brand
[00:04:56] Mikkel: exactly.
[00:04:56] That's what's going to happen. You know, it is
[00:04:58] Toni: Yeah, that's what it is
[00:04:59] Mikkel: Yeah. But anyway,
[00:05:02] There's, plenty of companies that have been built on the back of outbound and there's plenty of companies being built right now on the back of outbound. And I also think there will be companies that will get built on outbound. So let's just maybe agree that this is actually something that can work.
[00:05:18] You need to leave all the prejudice on the side. It's a numbers game. So maybe look at the numbers instead and decide if that's for you.
[00:05:23] Toni: But hey, you know what? Actually, now that you say that, I mean, I think, um, What is it like near bound? and I think that, community led growth, I think we should all triple down on these things.
[00:05:35] They will, you know, you do this from zero, from day one, you just build a community and then you just wait three years and then inbounds going to rain in. It's, you know, your investors going to love it. You're going to love it. You just really need to believe that that's really going to happen. You know,
[00:05:50] Mikkel: If you couldn't detect it, that was sarcasm. I could see it over here, uh, from my side of the table.
[00:05:55] What we wanted to get into is how do you actually scale, how do you go from zero to one and onwards, upwards? uh, that's that's kind of the flow we want to get into today because we've talked about some of the tactics and the mechanics of it The SDR AE ratios. Now we want to talk about hey, if if you're going to go and build this function Whether you're actually at already a 10 million ARR doesn't matter, what are the steps and phases that you're going to go through?
[00:06:16] Toni: So exactly and I think the way we are looking at this is not necessarily as You open a company and then you do this, um, I think we're seeing it more as, you open the, the motion and then you do this, right?
[00:06:30] Mikkel: up a couple of desks
[00:06:31] Toni: could be, yeah, well, it could be that you're already at 10, 20 million in ARR and then starting to do some of those things.
[00:06:37] Some of the tactics will change a little bit, um, or it could be that you're literally starting out with this thing from scratch, right? Um, so that's kind of, I think what's important for everyone to keep in mind, that's kind of how you need to kind of approach it. And really the start, zero to one, I think you and I have been kind of discussing this a lot, let's just say you're a European company, you go to the US.
[00:06:55] Well, what's going to happen is you will need to find kind of product market fit again, go to market fit and so forth, who in your company could do that or could do that best, maybe kind of the founding team, someone from the founding team should go there, right? and this is really, uh, really understanding that whenever you, you know, crack open a new thing, a new motion, a new market, a new whatever, you have all of those fundamental issues again of figuring out how to kind of piece the whole thing together.
[00:07:20] Uh, together for that to work out. and that's why from 0 to 1, we're still thinking, well, even if it's outbound There could be and should be, right? If you're a hundred million heading outbound, I think that's not going to be the case. But if you're early on, that should be the case. Basically, we're calling it Founder Led, like zero million to one million ARR Founder Led outbound.
[00:07:42] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:07:43] Toni: And so what is that?
[00:07:44] That is obviously First Connections on LinkedIn, that's, that's your network. That's what you can prospect into if you wanted to. Yes, you can do that through wonderful thought leadership content, or you can just send them a message.
[00:07:56] Mikkel: Yeah. It's pretty easy. like, Hey.
[00:08:00] Toni: it's, it's pretty straightforward actually.
[00:08:02] And, uh, and it's, you know, you can do it in a way where don't burn your network or something like this. I think most of the issues here that I've seen, um, is just the, um, you know, the person itself. Deep down not wanting to do it. Yeah. I think
[00:08:17] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah. Right?
[00:08:18] Toni: Um, then another thing is investor or network intros.
[00:08:22] Yeah. So is that outbound? Is it maybe you know, more something else? I think it is outbound. It's, it's you, you know, going out. And through whatever means trying to tap someone on the shoulder and starting a conversation. Right? And I think, you know, as you scale further and later on, maybe then that wouldn't qualify as a pure outbound anymore, but in the beginning, that's basically what it is, right?
[00:08:44] You start really at the core of things. And, um, and what you do need to keep in mind, um, and this is again, different from you starting a company and you're like overall 1 million ARR versus you're already at 20 million ARR and you're adding this thing on top is you need to have an understanding, um, what.
[00:09:02] ACV, you can be achieving with your product, with the service that you're selling. And the importance here is that you need to get to, you know, I think on the super, and I think that's changing actually right now, but I think you need to get to nine to 12 K. ACV, in order for this outbound thing to work out.
[00:09:20] Yeah, there might be some caveats and some differences. If you have super conversion rates, maybe it can be lower. If you have great NRR, it could be lower. et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. if you, if you can't achieve that, then probably that, that motion is probably going to fail further later down, uh, later in the, in the lifetime.
[00:09:37] Right. And I think there's one really interesting quote from Jason Lemkin. He basically says, every company needs to do outbound. And if you don't have the ACV to do outbound, you need to get the ACV in order to do outbound.
[00:09:48] Mikkel: He's like, he's pretty
[00:09:49] Toni: it's pretty straightforward
[00:09:51] Mikkel: think he's a believer.
[00:09:53] Mikkel: That's, that's, that's kind of the tell tell.
[00:09:55] I also kind of reflected over some of the conversations we've had previously when we've discussed, outbound specifically is there's a cycle length. to it as well, right? So when you're bringing things from zero to one. How do you, how do you approach that piece? Because you want to make sure that you kind of also assess it on the right merits, if you will.
[00:10:13] Toni: So, I mean, the first thing you're going to assess and you're going to be able to assess it pretty quickly is, are you going to be, are you able to book meetings? Number one. Very simple. And, uh, and then especially when you do it Founder Led, the first thing could be, uh, that you're able to book those meetings in a soft manner.
[00:10:31] Hey, want to chat?
[00:10:32] Mikkel: Yeah. time for catch.
[00:10:34] Toni: Yeah. Uh, Versus, Hey, listen, I want to tell you something. Um, those might be two different messages and you need to shift to the second one faster.
[00:10:42] Um, uh, so this is the first one. Can you get people to show up? Can you kind of have those, uh, those conversations and then can you turn them into an actual.
[00:10:50] What you might later call a qualified sales opportunity, right? Is it actually something that smells like, Oh, wait a minute. These guys could be buying for whatever reasons they might not be. Um, but they could, right? Um, that is, that is, that is what you need to prove. Can, can you, can you, you know, drag people in front of you?
[00:11:08] Can you have a conversation that, that pushed them further down the funnel? At this point, you're not trying to prove that you can also close them. and I'm, I'm starting to wonder, uh, whether or not that even needs to be something that you need to prove, uh, you know, and at that certain, you know, point in time, simply because, if you, um, if you have a learning and understanding that you can close people in general.
[00:11:31] So through inbound, for example, of, you know, that look similar to what you're bringing to the table in outbound. The question is not whether you can close them. The question is can you get enough of them and then accept the lower conversion rates are going to come out of this. I think where this breaks a little bit is, and I ran into that problem once, is, um, you do outbound, but to a new segment, because, hey, you know, our PLG inbound motion works great for SMB, and, ah, you know, we're not getting so many big deals in through that motion.
[00:12:03] So let's, let's, let's do outbound instead. That, that is a bit more tricky, right? Because you're now suddenly you're testing two things at the same time. You're testing the outbound thing, uh, and then do you have product market fit within that segment? And that's kind of different, right? And so. If you have some understanding already, focus.
[00:12:19] Solely on, are you able to bring people to the table and turn them into an actual sales process or are you not? Right. And that's, that's what he can do in the first zero to 1 million.
[00:12:29] Mikkel: I think also one of the, so the,
[00:12:31] The really big benefit is understanding the unit economics and whether they will work out as
[00:12:35] means of kind of testing this initial motion. out. I think also you, as one of the founders or the founder will get some insights that enables you to the next phase.
[00:12:46] basically.
[00:12:46] Toni: actually, before I go there, I wanted to add one other thing on top here in general. And I think this is poorly understood by probably almost everyone in general, marketing. So inbound and outbound, they actually coexist extremely well. Um, and, uh, we had Udi on the show that basically kind of pointed this out.
[00:13:06] We have a, you know, I have a couple of experiences in that direction. If you call someone, if you outbound to someone that is already aware of the company or something else, like in your realm, it's going to be a completely different conversation, right? So especially in zero to one founder led. You can use the same principle.
[00:13:22] You can start posting on LinkedIn. You can start building up a little bit of a brand. You should read the book from Dave Gerhardt. What was Dave Gerhardt? Founder brand. Um, you should totally read that. and that will also help you get those meetings and then progress them, right? Kind of, this is basically in the, in phase one, you have outbound and inbound.
[00:13:41] If you wanted to say it like that, you have it combined in the same person. and that you should double down on that. You should totally use
[00:13:47] Mikkel: should totally use
[00:13:49] Toni: But once you get out of this, right, you basically kind of go into the, okay, let's hire an SDR.
[00:13:53] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:13:54] Toni: Let's, let's hire someone. Um, this has been proven, you know, this can be done.
[00:13:59] There's still a question mark. Well, was it the superstar founder or is it, was, is it not the case, right? Is the founder maybe the problem?
[00:14:07] Mikkel: Yeah. Can swing both
[00:14:10] Toni: Maybe, maybe, maybe you need a professional now, right? And, and what the professional will give you is focus.
[00:14:15] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:14:16] Toni: Clear focus on this is the thing that we need to do. You will start building a funnel. You will start having ideas. So the whole thing works out. You will start doing more reporting. You have more sample, a bigger sample size.
[00:14:27] Now you're learning. Um, you will need to rethink the pitch a little bit. Um, because if it's not from a founder, but from an SDR, it's going to be different. and really the trick here is figuring out, you know, what can you do once and what can you scale over time? Right. And I think going from one to 2 million, for example, you can do things.
[00:14:46] Uh, that don't scale, and you shouldn't be afraid of that, because you need to get to the 2 million first anyway. but ultimately you need to figure out kind of how you can get out of this, right? And I think, this is really where some of what we would call experimentation also happen. Um, you know, we listened to, uh, Dave Boyce talking about this, maybe from a PLG motion, but also applicable to outbound, you know, what is the pitch that works?
[00:15:09] It's not, it's probably not going to be the same headline used on the website. It's going to be something different. Uh, you want to get those people to open those emails. You want to get those people to kind of, you know, talk to you on the phone and that will need to be a different message than you have on your website.
[00:15:23] And also, by the way, different message than you have on your, uh, investor deck.
[00:15:26] Mikkel: deck. Yeah.
[00:15:27] Toni: So if you want to, did we air this already? The, um. the, the Anthony, episode
[00:15:31] Mikkel: No, it's coming. Wait for it.
[00:15:33] Toni: wait for it. Look, look forward to it. I don't know when this airs anyway.
[00:15:38] Mikkel: When we want to. Cut it out!
[00:15:40] Toni: Yeah. so this is where I do some of that stuff. Right. And then, you know, we had some cool examples actually, how, how other people did
[00:15:47] Mikkel: it. Yeah, So we had, uh, so in the research, one of the things I found was Sam Blond, he worked, at, I think it's called Brex. And he had a session with, uh, one of the uh, wonderful ladies he brought on, uh, I forget her name, we'll put it in the show notes.
[00:16:01] But they were also talking about building up the outbound motion. And one of the things they did in kind of this stage when they were transitioning from, you know, the intros and the, let's say the immediate network of folks who kind of know you, where you have a bit of sway. They kind of realized that, well, it helps that folks have some clue who we are.
[00:16:19] And they experimented with a lot of things. They send out a hundred bottles of champagne to folks, in their, local area, so they could reach out to them. They set up billboards, And it's similar to
[00:16:30] Toni: That's, uh, that's marketing.
[00:16:32] Mikkel: marketing. Oh yeah, not, allowed to touch. that's true. So you can't do it.
[00:16:35] Then you need to start an inbound motion. And then this double motion is kind of tri no,
[00:16:39] Toni: but he also not allowed to do that until 10 million,
[00:16:41] Mikkel: you know?
[00:16:42] And actually the champagne is ABM now we're at it.
[00:16:44] Toni: Ah, that's right.
[00:16:45] Mikkel: right. But, I think it's just to say like, um, and I saw another company locally, so we have, a, um, a company called Dream Data, uh, locally.
[00:16:51] I also saw at some point they also send out, I think it was Hot Chili Sauce, kind of like Chili Piper would probably also do. Um, to kind of achieve
[00:16:58] Toni: ksa KSA did the same
[00:16:59] Mikkel: Yeah. to achieve. and I think it's to say there is some experimentation happening. To see what helps you cut through, what helps you build that kind of awareness that, so when you reach out, they have some idea who you.
[00:17:10] are. If you send them a champagne, they will probably go like, Oh yeah, that's right. Thanks for the champagne. Right? So there's some justification for the call.
[00:17:17] Toni: I think what people underestimate is how much it takes to cut through in this noisy environment. and, um, you can almost do it with two or three different ways.
[00:17:26] One is, fantastic creative. Right? Doing something that's so mind boggling creative where people are like, wow, you know, I started crying watching this ad. Right? So this is, this obviously is, this is one way of doing it. Another way of doing it is to do something that's just a little bit crazy, you know, sending those champagne bottles, you know, sending, sending stuff that, um, and this is Justin Michaels.
[00:17:52] I forgot his last name actually. Kind of, he's like an outbound guy. This interruption method almost, right? You need to, you need to take them out of what they're doing right now and kind of, you know, try and find a way to refocus them. And by sending someone a champagne bottle, or we had one of those cookie management tools
[00:18:10] Mikkel: Yeah, send out
[00:18:11] Toni: they send cookies to everyone.
[00:18:12] You know, I still remember that stuff, right? Because, oh cool, don't need this thing. But I still remember, you know, having seen the cookie, for example, right?
[00:18:19] Mikkel: you actually, uh, so Uber.
[00:18:22] Different, not B2B SaaS. Right.
[00:18:24] Toni: send out, uh, free cars?
[00:18:25] Mikkel: No, but they had street crews that basically, you know, called up an office and say, Hey, can we come and.
[00:18:32] Give the office cake or cookies. And they're like, Yeah, of course you can. And it was not, you know, the cheap stuff they bake themselves or something. It was good, good stuff. And then there was a voucher for,
[00:18:40] Toni: Uber is known for cake. And then
[00:18:44] Mikkel: And then it was like, you know, there was a voucher as part of it. So they also, technically speaking, did the outbound, uh, work as well.
[00:18:49] They had some kind of vehicle to justify it, which you probably will need in the beginning. You need, People need to have some idea who you are, it's going to make life a whole lot easier.
[00:18:58] Toni: and then the third thing is just pure brute force. Yeah. Again, and again, and again, right now, right now, right now, you know, I think because, because of this being such a profession, I think 95 percent of the market ended up being the persistent one.
[00:19:18] And only 5 percent doing the creative stuff, which you could argue is not only cheaper, but also probably like longer lasting.
[00:19:26] Mikkel: So I think there's kind of a, on some level, there's a cut here, right? So you've, you've figured out what the unit economics need to look like for this to work out. You've probably also started figuring out where do you target and how and who, so the whole account selection piece.
[00:19:41] There's probably a last one missing, which is there's most likely going to be a difference between the first SDRs you hire versus which will be the next thing we're going to talk about, which is scaling.
[00:19:53] it.
[00:19:53] Toni: Yeah so I think this is actually. and I, and I almost missed it here. So in this second phase where you kind of really have the first SDR.
[00:20:01] one thing that I see many companies are doing wrong, and by the way, is it one SDR, is it four first SDRs or two, you know, it's like, yes, you know, maybe you want to have more than one. But what I see a lot of companies, uh, do wrong here is under investing in the account selection. Yeah. whom to call is sometimes much more important than what to say.
[00:20:20] Yeah. And, um, and I think a lot of people get this, you know, wrong and they focus on the pitch.
[00:20:26] Mikkel: Makes sense
[00:20:27] Toni: also, but really, you know, whom you call is, is so much more important actually. Kind of, we, we tried this actually ourselves, um, and we had a couple of, uh, we booked a couple of meetings with people because we were like super focusing on the account selection and like, uh, I didn't quite get the pitch, but this looks interesting.
[00:20:45] Mikkel: Yeah. I'm such a good fit. So let's just take the meeting.
[00:20:49] Toni: exactly. Um, and, uh, and you would be surprised actually. Right. And, uh, if you, uh, under investing there, you will just, uh, will, will, will create an issue for
[00:20:59] Mikkel: Yeah, it Waters down the whole initiative ultimately. Right. So I think, you know, that this effort totally should bring you to the two million.
[00:21:07] You now have a couple of SDRs, you know how to select accounts, you have a good idea of how to pitch this. Uh, you know, you, you know how to create some level of engagement with, with folks. And then it kind of switches, because now, now what happens? Yes,
[00:21:20] Toni: now what happens? yes, yes, um, now you're starting to go from experimentation to exploitation.
[00:21:27] Of that, of that motion, right? You're figuring the first things out and it's kind of fun and you're high fiving because you're two or three people. Um, and then you realize, okay, wait a minute, guys, we need to kind of now scale this to 10 million. Kind of this motion needs to go to 10 million really, really fast.
[00:21:42] and you will, you will run into a bunch of other issues that are surrounding this, right? I sometimes joke with people is this is the time where you're half of your company is going to turn into in high school.
[00:21:55] Mikkel: That's true. That's so true.
[00:21:57] Toni: You know, you have, um, you have those 10, 20 SDRs, all of them obviously going to be kind of young. It's a junior role, um, and, um, and
[00:22:08] Mikkel: is going to be lit.
[00:22:09] Toni: you know, there's so many cool things coming out of this, but what's all those are going to come out of this is, um, there's going to be a culture shock for the organization simply because of the, especially in the beginning you have so many smart people and it's, you know, engineers and everyone is like really brainy.
[00:22:24] Um, and suddenly you bring in. This busload of, uh, Hey, I just graduated college, uh, YOLO folks, which, you know, that might clash, but it also might bring a couple of other issues. now you need to think about. Onboarding and enablement, performance management, suddenly you're going to start firing a bunch of people really fast and everyone else in the business like, you know, since when did we become this evil company that just throw, shouldn't we give them another chance?
[00:22:50] And yes, you should. And don't get me wrong, but inevitably you will start not laying off, but firing more people than you have used to before.
[00:22:57] before.
[00:22:57] Mikkel: And the worst part is you have to figure out where they're going to sit,
[00:22:59] because they're going to sit and hit the phones. And if they sit next to either a product developer or someone writing in marketing.
[00:23:08] That's that's going to be fun.
[00:23:09] That's going to be really
[00:23:10] Toni: Yeah. And you know, so this is just the, the, the, the very simple logistics and culture pieces, right? But then you, well, you need now someone to manage this thing. you also, you know, can't forget the things that you did going to 2 million. Some of that stuff was pretty brilliant.
[00:23:28] Some of that stuff, uh, scales really poorly though. So how do you take. If some of these pieces were the reason, the ingredient, why it worked for you, how do you take them and scale them? Right? And yes, sendozo and, and reachdesk and you can send bottles of champagne to people now and, and all of that stuff.
[00:23:49] but sometimes there was probably a little bit more magic that made this work out and, and you need to figure out how can you, you know, roll this, how can you roll this further
[00:23:56] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:23:57] Toni: And because if you, if you go from a super creative. Super, uh, fun way of doing the reach out to, pushing cold calls.
[00:24:08] You, you're essentially rewriting this motion again, um, and you're kind of starting from scratch again, and I would be not surprised if that doesn't work out for you. Yeah. And it's the same thing as, uh, let's just say you are 20 million and you want to layer up on, on top doing this stuff in the beginning, you need to figure out how you're actually going to be going about this.
[00:24:29] And, and yes, for many, many people out there selling to, uh, educated buyers that have been around for a while that are maybe on LinkedIn a lot. trying to do a cold call is probably not going to work out. You're probably going to find something else there, right? So it's, you really need to watch out that some of the magic that you had from the zero to two translate somehow, not all of it, somehow into the scale up from two to 10.
[00:24:50] Mikkel: So a couple of questions. And I just want to be, mindful of time here.
[00:24:53] So number one, if someone is already running, let's say another motion today and
[00:24:58] they're at whatever, 10, 20 million, and they want to layer in. Outbound and then at this stage we're talking about now, would you start looking at things like CAC Payback to determine how much do you push the pedal or?
[00:25:08] Yes.
[00:25:09] Toni: So. I think whether or not this is a, whether or not you're already at 20 million or not, I think what you need to have confidence on in terms of before you really kind of push the, push the pedal, you have to have an idea of how CAC Payback could look like. Because At the end of the day, and this is not two or three years ago where everything was like oh, it's one more meeting from one person per month, sure, let's do that.
[00:25:34] No, this now needs to actually work out for you. So your ultimate decision criteria for this to be the next motion has to be around CAC Payback. And I think you can have intelligent conversations around it where maybe not hitting the mark yet, maybe you are, your target is 12. And you're currently looking at 15, maybe you're looking at 20.
[00:25:56] but you can see that, oh, you know, we also ramped just, you know, 10 people. So that, that always, uh, you know, messes with your CAC Payback. Hey, we have a couple of items here where we think we can improve efficiency. I think we can improve ACV because something further down the line is actually kind of broken.
[00:26:13] There, there are a couple of ways how you can have an intelligent conversation around, you having the ability to move to a desired CAC Payback. and therefore then doubling down on this thing. Right. so you should totally think about it and you should totally think about if you're not there yet, how you can get to that point.
[00:26:30] Mikkel: Yeah. So The other reflection,
[00:26:32] I also have is,
[00:26:33] you're obviously going to go on higher at this stage, right, because it's about scaling from 2 to 10.
[00:26:38] So that, that follows, you're going to go and hire. And I'm wondering about the sequencing here. Do you go for a manager director first who hires folks? And then the second part is. Do you hire just, you know, month one, 20 SDRs, boom, go. Or like, how do you approach that part of it?
[00:26:54] Toni: think number one, what I would do and have done, um, is you want to hire someone that is more senior than a normal SDR, but not so senior that they're like, ah, I don't want to pick up the phone anymore. You need to find someone between, and ideally, and it's difficult, uh, but ideally you want to find someone that also.
[00:27:13] Uh, add some kind of system thinking to the whole piece, right? You could hire, a random SDR from another company that is maybe a senior, maybe it's a team lead. Or maybe a recently promoted manager and you have a conversation with him or her and, you know, put them in the spot, that can work out for you, but here you wouldn't have the system thinking piece around it, right?
[00:27:36] You almost need to have a combination of SDR, RevOps and leadership or something like that, right? I think it's difficult to find, but I think those people can be found and you also need only one of them, right? You don't need 50.
[00:27:48] Mikkel: you need one.
[00:27:49] Toni: Um, so that, that would probably be my start in order to figure out what the engine is and to build it.
[00:27:54] and then yes, you should, you should do it in a way where you don't, just thinking about hiring 20 people, let's just say you are 80 people at this point in your whole organization, just the amount of calendar time it would require for you to hire 20 people in one month. It's just not going to work out.
[00:28:14] Not even if you had all the people that wanted to join your organization, think about the interview process, how many meetings that will be. Um, and, uh, and, and I'm sorry, you just won't have the time for that. Right. So simply from that bottom up view, you will end up having five and five and five and five and so forth.
[00:28:32] Um, and I think that's a smarter way of, of growing this piece. Right. Especially because every time you're going to be like, does it still work? So does it still work? Right. And, um, and, uh, you don't want to run into. Uh, all kinds of problems you need to fix with jumping to 20, while, uh, not having the eyes on the ball and actually making this thing work out, right?
[00:28:50] Mikkel: out. Right. Yeah.
[00:28:51] Toni: And once you're out of this thing, really this is, and we call this the factory, and I think this is a lot of fun, actually. this is really where, okay, this thing is proven, and, uh, what's holding us back? Why, why isn't this 100 million motion anymore, right? Or not yet? And what you will find very quickly is
[00:29:09] It's about hiring.
[00:29:12] That's the only thing. And that will be the piece that, you know, predominantly holds you back. It's your ability to hire, retain, and, um, Um, and promote, uh, the, the SDRs that you kind of slot into the engine, right? So that means you need to give them a clear career path of becoming AE. You need to have enablement around it to make them successful.
[00:29:31] You maybe even want to have a dedicated role that only focuses on the new joiners and the ramping ones. you want to make sure that you are hiring before you know someone is leaving because you, you know, once you have 50 SDRs, which, you know, it's. Goes pretty quickly. Once this thing works out, it goes pretty quickly.
[00:29:48] And once you had, you know, 50 SDRs, you know that 10 percent per month or so is going to leave for whatever reason. Either they didn't, uh, get out of RAM successfully, or they're getting promoted into AE roles. Or, I don't know, they found another job or they're just falling off in the, in the performance bandwagon and kind of need to be, uh, need to be moved out of the organization.
[00:30:10] Right. You know that you will have, and maybe 10 percent is a lot. People are like, Oh, five, five people per month. Yeah. It's going to be something like that. It's going to be five to 10%. Yes. and really, you know, building a engine of talent attraction that supports that. In many cases, that's what's going to hold you back.
[00:30:27] Right. And this is when, when you and I say like, Oh, you know, late hiring is the main reason for people missing target. Well, that really talks to the plus 10 million folks that basically have that issue, that's the problem here,
[00:30:38] Mikkel: Yeah. Okay. So one reflection here is now we walk through all the way to the factory.
[00:30:49] And uh, at some point you might want to do this whole thing in a new market, not necessarily change the segment, It could also be obviously changing the segment, right? Is it the same approach, almost, you go through.
[00:31:00] Toni: Well, I think unless something is fundamentally different in this market, and again I would, kinda seperate it between, are you able to generate good meetings versus are you able to close them?
[00:31:11] And for a go to market person, obviously both of these things need to be true, but in order for this motion to work out in the beginning. Not both of these things need to be true, right? Um, so the first thing is, with the current setup that you're running, can you create opportunities in a new market?
[00:31:28] And I would say the likelihood of that being true is very high. Because, you know, people are not that super different. Um, their needs for the product might be different. but otherwise it's not like people don't work in offices or don't have a phone or, you know, it's, it's just not the case. So I think a lot of that knowledge can be transferred into a different market.
[00:31:46] And again, you need to be careful about it. You should also then look at the segmented CAC Payback. For that market versus the core market and so forth. By the way, I hate all of this when I, you know, I hate all of this, Oh, this is a mature market. There's not, this is all BS. It's like, no, it's not a mature market.
[00:32:01] It's like, you know, you have, you have ramping issues here and you don't have proper market fit here. That's why it's a bad market. Doesn't mean it's a immature market. It's like, no, you haven't figured this thing out, but that's the other thing. Right. So that's why I wouldn't. Put 20 people into that new market from day one, I would start it slow.
[00:32:17] I would check with the AEs. Do we have product market fit? Does this thing work out here? Uh, and in many cases, the answer is probably going to be yes. Things where you're going to be affected is if you are doing some of the financial services stuff, if you're doing something with labor laws, if you're doing something that's super tailored, or if you're running into a specific local competitor, for example, right, those will be the things that gonna, um, you know, make it more difficult for you to.
[00:32:41] Open something and then close it, close win it, but the motion itself, I would bet, in many cases, probably very transferable. Yeah,
[00:32:49] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:32:50] that's it.
[00:32:51] That's kind of How to build and scale outbound.
[00:32:53] Toni: Easy peasy. Lemon
[00:32:55] Mikkel: squeezy.
[00:32:55] Toni: Yeah, lemon squeezy, wow. Thank you
[00:33:00] Mikkel: Oh, Thanks Toni, thanks for listening everyone. Have A good one.