10 Years of Building an Agency: The Lessons Nobody Sees | Belkins Podcast Episode #24

Speaker A: Imagine you're a client and you are told by the vendor this is not working and then two weeks we're doing what like just charging them for fun, right? Yeah, we have all a fancy task management system, multiple QAs and checks. But if at the end it leads us to the moment when the client waits like two weeks to actually get something done, uh then we go back to point A. Hey, let's cut some of the bullshit and start working and start delivering and if we need to kill some process that we were building for years, okay, let's kill them. Yeah, whatever. The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of like a big problem part of success of like for example like outbound or even inbound. Whatever marketing you do is done before you actually start the marketing. So it hurts. Yeah, outreach just amplifies what you have.

Speaker B: It's very difficult to build a functional outbound if you treat someone like Belkins or anyone as a, like as a vendor that needs to build a pipeline.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. The client who comes and says you're professional, I don't want to be involved. How many specifically minutes and hours I'm going to be spending on this because m, I'm really busy so just guys just schedule meetings. I can bet on this with 80% chance unless they have an amazing cutting edge product that's not going to work.

Speaker B: You know what's the importance of the personal brand for people in your position?

Speaker A: It's high time I should have done it earlier. It's definitely critical, definitely important. The profile of the client really has no exposure, nothing happening, no any pr, no posts whatsoever. It makes the task for the team like five times more difficult.

Speaker B: I think like the number that I have is like 1 out of 20 people actually do it. What do you think Belkans will be doing in 10 years that people don't expect us to be doing?

Speaker A: We've been finishing uh what we call like Belkans home. So this is a system that actually unite pretty much all outrun effort we've been doing. I really want to see how the game can change and you know, how it may look different. I hope will change it.

Speaker C: Alex Sribny is the managing director at Belkins and has been with the company for over 10 years joining as employee number three and becoming its first SDR and account manager. Alex started his career in lead generation working his way from SDR and SDR manager to to customer success manager and team captain. At ah Belkins he grew alongside the company first building and leading the account management team, then taking responsibility for the entire delivery organization. Over the past decade, Alex has managed hundreds of SDRs and account managers, helped shape strategies for thousands of B2B clients, and played a key role in generating thousands of meetings and hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to for companies ranging from early stage startups to global enterprises. Today, Alex is focused on one of the hardest parts of scaling a B2B business. Retaining clients, growing accounts, and turning great delivery into long term revenue.

Speaker B: I'm very happy that you lost your podcast virginity with me. Um, why or what's the, in your opinion? The uh, the importance of personal brand for C level executives, especially when you connect it to lead generation. Because we obviously, you know, we work with clients, we're asking them to, you know, provide us with the profiles and they need to be well built. And so it needs. But then, you know, you've been doing this for what, like 10 plus years and this is the first podcast you're doing. So you know, what's the importance of the personal brand for people in your position and uh, uh, are you, you know, the position that you have, did

Speaker A: it change or it's high time, you know, like it's, you know, I should have done it earlier, lose my virginity with someone, you know, podcast virginity, obviously. So uh, as we see, as you mentioned with the clients is whenever we have a client and we want to do something connected with any like social, like even LinkedIn. Yeah, the profile of the client who really has no exposure, nothing happening, no nepr, no post whatsoever. It makes the task for the team like five times more difficult. So it's like you start from the point zero or you start already from somewhere that you just amplify what was done before. So it's definitely critical, definitely important. So if you're leaning towards uh, the fact that I should be more active everywhere. That's true for sure. And I've mostly been thinking last year about our clients and you know, how we can squeeze more from our clients, you know, branding and profiles and their exposure. But yeah, it's high time to think about, you know, mine as well. So that's a good one.

Speaker B: We were just talking off camera the fact that um, one of the account managers who is leaving us, uh, you know, um, shared the feedback that uh, you know, uh, she should have been working more on building her personal brand as the account manager. And I think that that was my uh, focus even in the last few months. Like how do I, you know, build the tool for this, how do I uh, encourage people and you know, throwing different training sessions and personally encouraging people to post more, to be active more. But, um, you know, like, the. I think, like the number that I have is like 1 out of 20 people actually do it. Um, and, um, you know, whatever you read and whatever you say, like, everyone, like, oh, yes, we need to be. To have more employee activation, we need to have more thought leadership. People need to be more active, yada, yada, yada. At the end of the day, no one does that.

Speaker A: It's like everyone understands that, um, in this, like, noise and, you know, pollution that we have, you kind of, kind of should stand out. The problem is that it's always seen as a. Not secondary, but something is good to do, great to do, but you're always defocused with your main things. Even the account manager you mentioned, so she definitely brought up a good point. Uh, I asked her why we, or you haven't done it before, why you didn't bring up before yada yada. And the answer was I was so swamped with clients, with daily routine, with weekly routine. And that's fair. So both are fair. So you write that, uh, is, you know, it's always like, deprioritized. And then in the retrospect you think, uh, I should have started earlier. Yeah. Ah, And I saw your, uh, somewhere, I guess in some Slack channel when you mentioned that when people leave us and then they need some personal brand, then they start like, boosting it and posting actively, but that's a bit too late. So, uh, in that way. So kind of almost everyone understands it. But the problem is when you are in the, you know, in the, in the flow, in the routine, you just, you know, just keep focusing on main things and I guess, you know, have either energy or they feel this is like a disruption of whatever they do and they just don't have enough like, I guess, like motivation in a way to like, really push the, you know, push the needle. Because, um, the kicking it off is always the most complicated. I guess if she had started, you could just, you know, as you, as you had before, you had, uh, some rule that you needed to post two times a week or something. So whenever you, you commit to this, you do this. But, you know, to start is the most, you know, difficult one.

Speaker B: So bringing this back to you, um, you know, you definitely have so many things and so many nuggets of wisdom to share to people. But, you know, it's been, what, 10 years? And this is the first podcast you have.

Speaker A: Let's call it a beginning. So from this point on, you'll See me more often.

Speaker C: Um,

Speaker B: we never had this conversation off camera, but, um, I think I would be a very good start to this interview, um, because I'm very curious to hear your opinion on this. Um, why do you think, um, among thousands of lead generation companies that exist, uh, Belkin's name, uh, shines more or outstands them or what do you think? We made it work and our brand made it work.

Speaker A: I have 10 answers to this and I don't want to make it a question that we're going to talk about for the next 20, 30 minutes, but,

Speaker B: but,

Speaker A: uh, for once, I guess, first of all, uh, I don't know if you remember this, but, um, a few years ago when we had top talent mapping in the company, I go way back, it's not that far. Uh, surprisingly you remember, we were betting on which one is going to win, what our top talents are, what's the one thing that unites them. And we were betting, I thought it's going to be multitasking. You thought it's going to be some hard working. And at the end we saw that most people who are like top talent, that both you and I and everyone agrees they have curiosity things. So it's like they are curious. And I guess, you know, like, besides all obvious answers that I could have, you know, like mentioned, we worked more where, you know, we're pushing more. We had like, creative approaches, yada, yada. We collected the team, you know, like on, you know, on high level, mid level and even, you know, junior level of folks who were like, really curious, they were thinking a lot, you know, outside of the box. And that's what was. And especially without AI, without the engine, like 20, 17, 18, 19, 2021, uh, it's just that all the knowledge was just here. So we had a lot of people that we. And again, it's also, um, not a coincidence. So the hiring process, the atmosphere, the ambience we created and we collected so many smart, curious people under one roof. So it's like exponentially. We were just collecting this and then it gave the result in the retrospect in a few years.

Speaker B: Folks, if you're enjoying the interview so far, I would appreciate if you spe a second, like comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast on the platform where you're watching this. I'm trying to get my show listed in the best podcast and a couple of seconds of your time would really help me a lot to do that. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the interview. All Right. So probably people listen to lots of really, you know, nice and exciting conversations about how great, you know, agencies are and how great Belkins is. But, uh, from your perspective, what's the um, uh, uncomfortable truth that, um, agencies like us are not usually publicly saying? And uh, I'm trying to get some kind of dirty laundry here because we need more clickbaits and more things to get. But so we're not going to just talk about, uh, how great. Not necessarily we are, but how great, uh, appointment setting, outsource, as your agencies are. Right. But like, what's the, you know, the uncomfortable truths and dirty learner, uh, for

Speaker A: a lot of us, um, specifically for our industry. And again, this is the question that could, you know, like, that it can unfold in many, many ways. Because for sure, as you said, like, dirty laundry is again, you always see the facade. You're still thinking, okay, they're professionals and we are. They have like, lots of case studies. Great team, as I've said, a lot of curious individuals. But you know, whenever you, if, you know, if you can join our internal meetings, it's not that perfect. It's not like blue sky and green grass and everything. So, uh, I guess from the client standpoint, I'm going to answer again for delivery. Yeah, for client standpoint is, uh, uh, I'm not sure if I understand how often the team is, um, not that doesn't have a clue where like we gonna, you know, what direction we're gonna choose. So client thinks they have a plan. And clients often say you're a professional, you know, just. Just do your job. And often internally, again, it's not like we're, uh, we uh, are unprofessional or something. But then you have that much input from the client. You have like noise from the industry, have multiple ways to play this with AI without AI, with omnichannel, different, uh, industry geographies, yada, yada. And the client always expects they're going to come with a great plan. And quite often we come to the point when the plan becomes great. But a lot of conversations, I guess clients would be shocked if they saw what's happening. It's like us just brainstorming. Okay, we have all this, what do we do at all? Where are we moving? What are we doing? So I guess it would be surprising for a lot of clients. And uh, this is something we try to, you know, again, we try to avoid this as much as we can. But still, sometimes it's that complicated when you work with, you know, like 40 industries and you uh, think you saw everything and then the client comes and you're like, wow, what would we do with this one, for example?

Speaker B: So what you're saying is like, um, the expectation from client is always that whatever strategy we come up with should work. And very often we end up with a strategy that works. But the first or the second one that we've built quite often, uh, is something we just need to try because there's so many variables and options to come up with. And we sometimes, we very often just have no clue that this specific one gonna work or not. We have a feeling that it might, but it's uh, just the testing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Another thing is like timing. So this is. You look at something again, maybe in the same context, but that's fairly complicated. That, for example, the product niche, et cetera. And you know, you're going to need time and you're not sure if you're going to have it and you just try to balance it with the client. So you cannot like, you know, blatantly say it's going to take us half a year. So you don't say this, you say we're going to try to speed up it as much as we can. But internally, you know, you can do this. And this hurts a lot internally. This is something we don't talk about. I guess, you know, this is the biggest moment, frustration when I talk with the team and they say we knew we could make it work, just the client didn't give us time. So the goal often is not just to make it work, it's also, you know, like speed it up, but at the same time win some time, you know, in front of the client. So like persuade them. It's not just like testing for the sake of testing, but there is some idea behind. And sometimes the battle is lost as all battles. Sometimes, you know, we win this and uh, whenever, whenever we lose, we're still in there and we know we could have done some, something here. We just needed time. I tell the team, okay, guys, you know, it's uh, his marketing, sales. We were on the right track, which is, you know, we didn't have an extra month. So we just, you know, easy. It didn't go further.

Speaker B: Do you think like this, um, and maybe this a little bit more philosophical, but like, do you think like the fact that we were able to build this kind of curiosity asset within the organization was obviously, you know, uh, the timing of it or where the industry was and now with like AI, you know, came in and generally like where people are and the Remote work post Covid and that it's more difficult to ignite that type of curiosity into people. Maybe it's just kind of the um,

Speaker A: you're asking if we're going to replicate the. If we started now, we can replicate. I guess theoretically it's possible, but much more difficult. So I don't know, like igniting is good one. So I don't know if remotely you can gather the core team and maybe give them the boost. Same energy, whatever amount of energy the sea level has, uh, there is a limit to what can be transferred through the monitor, through the zoom call or hangouts call. So it's possible. And I guess we're going to see. And we see companies now and even the unicorns that are born online working remotely only and they are bragging about how nice atmosphere we have, what teams we created. So it's not like it's unfathomable. But still, at least I guess for us, for where we were, it was just easier for us to make it. Uh, the moment was right, the team was right, the ambience was right. So I guess we could. Maybe it would be more difficult now. But uh, it just, you know, just we. We had the right team and the right moment, the right place.

Speaker B: What stills make, um, makes Belkins a special place. Um, just if you were to, you know, kind of pitch it, uh, to people listening to this, uh, you know, from obviously, uh, from the perspective of someone who built it and you know, built the delivery team and you know, who've, um, who can provide the, um. I would say like more like a client experience perspective in a way. Right. Because I always come in from you know, marketing, sales perspective. You know, when we had. When I had Vlad, uh, sitting in your chair, you know, he talked about like innovation and you know, division of it. But I really like to kind of just uh, better kind of understand like why, you know, you know, we have curious people and you know, Belkin is a special company. But what kind of makes it special for, you know, uh, from the. From the perspective of like people working with clients and the clients kind of coming in and kind of embracing this environment.

Speaker A: This. You know, my answer is different every time I'm on the interview and like pitching this to different persons. Sorry, to everyone who heard a different variant of this. But imagine I'm Nicole with sdr, so definitely they want to hear why the SDR department is special. So, uh, but from the standpoint that you just brought up for like, you know, from more. More general one. So, uh, again, I always Want to go back? It's like, uh, feeling old here. But when, uh, remember was a moment when it was like all chaos started up. Uh, and then at some point we were sitting together and just talking that we need some structure, we need some processes. It just cannot go like this with hundred client or more, with hundreds of people. It's just a mess. And it was, uh, a big part of that mess was on my end because delivery was just like, everyone's creative, everyone's smart, everyone's doing whatever they want. But then at the end you want to structure somehow and it's just a pure chaos. So then we had a rough year, I guess 20, 21 or something. Uh, then we went too much into um, like bureaucratic processes and optimizations and operations and we really went like deep dive there. But then we could balance it. So what I see these days is actually that, uh, we didn't lose what I was bringing up before the curiosity part. So I still think that we genuinely care about clients. It's going to sound like banal, but still we genuinely care about clients more. And whoever worked at Belkins knows that every internal call, when the client is unhappy, you were in the call, then you jumped off and it's never like again. It's always like, hey guys, it was really frustrating. Let's, let's really, you know, like, think what can be done for me not to attend that, that same call, like in a week, in a few weeks, and open atmosphere. Any ideas, stupid ideas, crazy ideas, let's just think out of the box. But at the same time, when the clients come, they see this, hopefully most of them, but they still see we're much more mature. So it's not just, oh, we have more AI process, good, who doesn't? It's everything from the hiring process to internal, uh, center of excellence to, uh, tools, internal, external. So we found our balance, that we are mature. Clients see this, they see it's not wild west, and still they feel that the team is not, um, enterprise level. When they just charge you, uh, per meeting and they sit with stone faces and they are just, okay, you are one of million clients. Just tell me whatever you want to tell and let's finish the call.

Speaker B: And the art probably is to learn how to balance between the both.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, right.

Speaker B: And then it's like one year, you can be more startupy, more kind of create and break stuff, one more mature, and you're always kind of going back and forth between the two and then trying to find the perfect balance. But, uh, you know, uh, just finding that balance is the actual job, right? Probably your job just to uh. Because sometimes when you go from one end to another end, it feels strange, right? Like uh, you know, uh, again for people listening to this, like the, you know, the more mature you are, uh, sometimes you might have the feeling then you know, whatever new task you start to work, you know, they start getting kicked off in a week time or two weeks time and you're like oh my God, our corporation.

Speaker A: I literally had this conversation like a few days ago. If that person's got to listen to podcast. Sorry, but that I was joking. Are ah, we already some delight level or something that the client. I was asking how can we win a competition versus in house team if we have a call on Monday where account manager basically confirms this strategy is not working. And this is one of the definitions of insanity that you just keep doing the same stuff, hoping it's going to work. Why? So the client and account manager were aligned. Yes. It's not work. Not uh, going to work, going to change it. And then it took us weeks, like two weeks literally to actually implement a new approach. So I was asking the question. So imagine you're a client and you are told by the vendor this is not working. And then two weeks we're doing what, like just charging them for fun.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And you're right. So this balance, like yeah, we have all fancy task management system, multiple QAs and checks. But if at the end it leads us to the moment when the client waits like two weeks to actually get something, you know, like done, uh, then we go back to point a, not like 2018, but still we go back somewhere to say, okay, let's cut some of that bullshit.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And start working and start delivering. And if we need to kill some process that we were building for years, okay, let's kill them. Yeah, whatever.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But the opposite to this, when we have either newly created agencies or you know like this kind of um, hyper ignited, uh, young talented people that come in that are less mature, you know, they come up with all these ideas and they just kind of create like oh, we can do this and that and let's try. And then they start and they try something and then, and then it doesn't work. So instead of trying and refining the same idea to be better, they are moving and doing something else. So that kind of immaturity also shows. Right. Uh, so I think like again that just proves the point of um, the

Speaker A: balance between the both Even I learned I don't want to go Deep into that. But I learned, you know, over the years to balance teams that we are hiring. So the idea years ago was, was just let's hire as many, you know, like high level, high energy, I'm sorry, high energy individuals, uh, you know, like, who are just pushing working nights and days and you know, they're just like crazy and they have that much energy that we cannot contain it. But at some point, yeah, there is a limit to this. So, uh, even, you know, even on the profile of SDRs, you have like, you know, very good callers who are like aggressive callers, amazing colors. But then if all your teams are just that there are clients that require something else, even internal, you know, like, uh, vibe is like, starts shifting heavily towards something else, like let's call it hunters, as you know, yada yada. So balancing both, like on high level, balancing it between the teams, balancing for the clients is critical. And you know, it's not like we're always succeeding at it, but we're trying.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I have this kind of on top of my, um, on top of my mind. One of other uncomfortable kind of arguments, uh, that we don't usually talk about is the uh, the fact that some, very often companies are not ready for appointment setting or outsource as they are. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like.

Speaker B: And we don't talk about it because like you, you know, you, you, you rarely can. You know, it's like when you're selling whatever you're a HubSpot or salesforce, you know, you don't tell customers. Oh, you know, you don't buy salesforce because you're not ready for it. Right. Like you've got. There's always signs that you're kind of ready, but not.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. It's like the uh, again, the uncomfortable truth is that a lot of like a big part of success of like, for example, like outbound or even inbound, whatever marketing you do is done before you actually start the marketing. So it hurts. Yeah. But if you're, you know, uh, whatever. We talk a lot about like SDRs and AI yada yada, but the uncomfortable truth is that outreach just amplifies what you have. And if what you have is not like responding to some immediate market need, if what you have is just raw and not ready, so you're just simplifying, something's not working, you maybe can play it somehow so you have some results. But yeah, and this is the most difficult conversation for account managers as well. So you come to the client and if internally we see that it's just a matter of, you know, them not being ready. Imagine that conversation to have with the clients. So you want to, they came to us, they want leads, they need leads. And you need to somehow tell them that they were not ready and they need to do A, B, C, D before they're going to come back in half a year, one year. So a lot of clients react positively, but some, they just cannot accept it. So that's why this is uncomfortable, as you said, because, you know, they want to hear it.

Speaker B: They just want to just to draw some examples. What, what are usually the, um,

Speaker A: you

Speaker B: know, what usually clients blame SDRs for. But uh, you know, the real problem

Speaker A: is somewhere else again, uh, not having meetings, not having traction, uh, not uh,

Speaker B: so where the problem lies, it's more around like, okay, uh, our product sucks or we don't have unique, uh, value

Speaker A: proposition or even in terms of a competition, objection handling, for example the client just recently from real examples, I guess you want to know real examples without names. So like month ago there was a call when the client was asking SDR, like what? How come we have like 100 responses or ish and we just have like three appointments, three SQLs. So you're doing a poor job. That's when was my first thought, we are doing a poor job here essentially. Then I started checking the channel we have with the clients. So we have multiple ways of communication. But for example, like Slack is the one that we just exchange uh, messages every day. You know, for some, you know, um, just question from Prospect, etc. And whenever SDR had a really substantial question from a client from a prospect. So how, uh, you're better than those guys are. Why your pricing is so weird, uh, why the solution doesn't do ABC or we heard about you before, but you were not integrating with our system. Do you do this now? And clients mostly were just, you know, they didn't have answers to a lot of those questions. So the answers were just, uh, tell them, you know, jump on a call and explain everything. Or, you know, it's not like we're better than competitors, or it's not like we cannot change budget for them. And then blaming SDRs for saying, not converting responses. So again, when you step into this, another uncomfortable truth is, you can call it uncomfortable truth in YouTube section is going to be that when you're stepping into this, you uh, should have some prep done before. At least you should know that you can answer questions you're going to be asked. Uh, it's not like you should have like, uh, 20 pages doc and just give it to SDR and enjoy it. You cannot predict everything, but, uh, those questions often when we ask them, I feel like clients are stuck, like, oh, we need to help with this. We have never thought about it, so we're going to have objections, for example. So that's another thing that hurts. But again, we try to work with clients, we try to make it work. But then, uh, uh, there is a limit to what Azure can do.

Speaker B: When another thing that I thought of is around, um, you know, we are always blamed that deals are not closing. Although you, um, know sales executive team who are handling the meetings or who are handling the conversations or who are working with that channel, um, you know, are not doing an amazing job with that. Right. Like, usually it's very basic job or very, you know, like people still don't understand there is a difference between outbound and inbound meetings. Or the fact that most of the opportunities we've been getting were from word of mouth, which are super hot. You know, it's easy to convert. You don't need to play the, you know, the competitive advantage playbook. You don't need to know, you know, uh, have a very well developed, uh, enablement sales enablement campaign or something like that. Right. So it's kind of doesn't work. So what happening is, um, you know, you book a meeting, you book 10 meetings, you book 20 meetings, you book 50 meetings, and then in six months you're getting only one deal closed or zero deal closed. So three proposals. And then the question is like, why the quality of opportunities is that poor right here? I think you had this many conversations. I think most of the conversations you

Speaker A: had were like, I feel like this is like you're Sigmund Freud and I'm in the session and you're just basically, Alex, can you please tell how many conversations you had? And I had a lot. I had a lot. So just to be like, honest and not just blame clients, it's, uh, always, oh, clients didn't do that. And that there is like, you know, this is like two fault situations. So there is our failure, and there is a, uh, let's call it a failure on the side of the client. So, for example, how we fail, as you said, uh, there may be a situation when we book like 50 meetings. Then the client is leaving us. They're not m happy. They want to have a call with me. And before doing that, I go, uh, for internal meeting, I talk with the team, and they're like, we have so Many meetings. And I say, okay, yeah, but what's the problem? They're not converting. They have, like, one deal out of it, and it's not. There is no roi. I say, okay, fine. But, um, it's a sales cycle long. So, uh, when did we know where we told that, uh, this is not working? Oh, we just. One week ago, before the cancellation node, the client told that we're actually, uh, we lack deals and we have array and they had a board meeting and they were canceling us. And my question was. So we didn't ask before or something. So we were just scheduling meetings. We're happy. It's like 2019. You just cross fingers. Yeah, we're gonna schedule a lot of meetings. And in the end you're like, oh, they were not converting. So it was a poor job in this specific case and a lot of similar cases from.

Speaker B: So you mean, like the feedback loop wasn't there? So we had to identify this early on and say, okay, after five meetings, if they're not closing, how do we

Speaker A: push the quality, Push them for feedback? It's like our job is, you know, like, I guess it's like 50, 50. We do the job and then we make sure it's valued and it's actually, you know, bringing some fruits, you know, on the. On the, you know, receiving side. So any answer I get, I'm not satisfied with. It's like, oh, we're going to have their sales on the call. Like, like, okay, like, invite them, send them an email. M. Do whatever it takes just to at least hear, like, at least something big. They're good. They're bad. They're generally good. They're generally bad. So you've had like five meetings in your example. Just hearing that most of them were good. They moved somewhere in the pipeline already. I feel relieved. I feel like, okay, this is going somewhere. And again, uh, people think often that the problem is just scheduled meetings. But often, uh, it's better to have one meeting that's converting instead of 10. They're just not converting. But at the same time, on the flip side, as you've said, clients. And surprise, again, like Sigmund Freud topic that is 20, 26. And a lot of clients, they still, uh, don't get the difference between outbound and inbound. And I'm honestly frustrated when we are told, um, we're leaving you. We have some deals closed, but from inbound we had. Or from referrals, we had whatever, like, 20% close ratio. And from you guys, we have five. Uh, and I have More questions to those clients that I can list. Uh, here. So like first is like for how many years you've been closing referrals inbound, how you treat your sales process differently, if at all.

Speaker B: Uh, have you developed a new sales process for outbound? Right. Or it's the same as it's a call.

Speaker A: When it's tough for me to not lose my temper, I'm just, okay, okay, we're doing this. Uh, uh, unfortunately that's true. But again, a lot of clients, when you work with them on this, there is like education curve and they're great and themselves a half a year ago. Now with us it's very different. But some clients that just cannot accept it and they just decide to cut off the channel, for example.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I always say that it's all about a collaboration in a way. Right. So, um, it's very difficult to build a functional outbound if you treat someone like Belkins or anyone as a vendor that needs to build the pipeline. And so their job is to build a pipeline. If they do good job, the pipeline will be built. And now our job is just to convert the pipeline that was built and this is it. Right. That's what our in house. So if that's when you put it in a way where there are two parties instead of like it's a joint effort and we all are building the pipeline and we're focusing on the outcome, then.

Speaker A: But it's not necessarily only when their sales, uh, sucks, for example. It also may be that their sales is good. They even understand outbound versus inbound difference is fine, but still they don't have this cooperative spirit. And one answer I always give when I'm asked what differentiates good client versus bad client, uh, you would have thought it's like good product for example, but no, it's actually whenever the client comes and said, okay guys, I know this is going to be, you know, like bumpy road. We ready invest time, effort. We're here with you. Let's, let's make it work again. If we're not delivering, sure they, at some point they leave, unfortunately. But uh, the client, the client who comes and says, you're a professional, I don't want to be involved. How many, specifically minutes and hours I'm going to be spending on this because I'm really busy. So just guys, just schedule meetings. I can bet on this with 80% chance, unless they have an amazing cutting edge product that's not going to work. And our team, whenever they see this, uh, they always think, okay, this Is not going to go good. So even they may have all processes polished and tuned and everything still when they are not Latinos partner and just you book meeting somewhere in your vacuum and we are here going to be in the recipient and just converting them. Uh, very rarely it works.

Speaker B: I think that's the problem or the challenge with when you want to build something very complicated with curious people is that if you don't give enough support and you don't kind of funnel that energy in the process, then ah, the fire gonna just die out.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And uh, no one will be trying anything like, uh, just to reconfirm what you just said, um, so many people in our team were very excited and eager to work with clients and put it like extra time, extra hours if they felt that there is a, um, feedback loop with clients, if the clients appreciate what they're doing and if they're treated as the part of the team and not just an outsourced team that does this.

Speaker A: And it was a surprise for me how many people. Uh, that's something I learned from like people management side of things is I thought, uh, that money is the motivator, career growth motivator. And uh, I was honestly surprised with people saying, I just need a good feedback from the client. I feel like I'm cherished. I feel like I'm appreciated. For me, it's uh, I know, you know me, I'm not burning out, I'm just working. I'm fine with. Even if clients are not happy and they're not giving me any, or they're happy with not telling me, oh, you're good, Alex. Yada, yada. But a lot of people, they, you know, they have, they say, I want to stay with this client, I want to have this client. And they say, you know, it's like equal client, same industry, same results. But then I understand, okay, this client is really, you know, saying, oh, good job, you know, you've done great. I feel like you're a part of my team. Another client is just amazing, amazing. You know, like we booked a meeting, um, that's it. Uh, let's continue the contract. So, yeah, so they feel like they are part of the team in a way and not just, just like vendor, you know, being treated as a person who does some task and then it's done.

Speaker B: So just a quick sum up, um, on this, um, companies, um, who have a good, um, people, policies, who have a good culture, who have a good collaboration within their team, usually are more successful working with vendors and thus, uh, campaigns like outsource SDR or point me setting are more successful with them because they can draw more energy from the people they work with.

Speaker A: It's like, it's just not more, like two times more successful, three times more successful. So it's. It's not like, oh, yeah, it's gonna help with some minor thing. It's actually changing everything.

Speaker B: So what brings me to the next question? What. What kind of clients still, uh, excites you personally?

Speaker A: Um, I'm gonna. I'm gonna answer for. From, like, um. I'm gonna answer, like, differently. Why I'm still excited at all after 10 years. This is essentially the same question just for. For. For different. Different. So, uh, it's, in a way, uh, as I've said, like 20 minutes ago, I guess, that, uh, there are a lot of, uh, you've been here with you for, like, you know, for 10 years. Ish. And you think you saw everything and you think, okay, this is just, you know, this is gonna be some, like, I'm gonna come up with some template. I'm just gonna do my routine. I'm good at it. And this is a good and bad thing at the same time because, you know, this is the. Know that it never works the way you thought it was going to work because of the variety of moving parts here. So, uh, still I'm brought to the calls when I'm listening to the client or the team, and I'm like, I've never, ever even thought that first a product like this existed. I haven't even heard about that, that industry, like, this would be, you know, would relate to this product and would need it, and there would be a demand here. And then obviously I've never thought how to sell it and how to successfully sell it. And I feel like I'm, you know, I'm just starting. I'm like, uh, you know, graduated from university, and this is my first day. It's not, like, excited. I'm stressed. I'm like, okay, what would we do? Uh, and I check all our playbooks, and none of them matches. None of them matches. And this is a fun part for a lot of people, by the way. This is the burnout, uh, side of things. So they say, oh, I want to get to the point at my job when I'm so confident. It just, you know, it's just like you're doing, like, uh, something for four years and you just, you know, just keep doing this. But that's. That. That's not it. It's like, very different. So you may have some foundation but then at the end, uh, every time I go for a call, I'm either negatively or positively surprised when I see a new client, a new case, a new problem to solve.

Speaker B: So as long as, uh, you have new clients, new things, new industries, new ways to come up with this. That's.

Speaker A: And new ways especially so with, uh, again, you know me, for years, I wish I could have said when the AI happened, I was the first early adopter. I was not.

Speaker B: But we're going to talk about it in a minute.

Speaker A: But even how we do this changed. So I guess when people say it's like fast paced industry, we always keep saying, oh, blah, blah, blah, it's face based. But this is really face based. When you're in the trenches or when you're even somewhere on the, um, orchestrating the work, uh, for years, the pace doesn't go, you know, like, that doesn't decrease. It actually increases. So that's, that's something that people who, you know, who probably think about career in this should think of.

Speaker B: Um, can you summarize for me, uh, in one sentence, um, ten year, you know, one sentence, a kind of, uh, you know, ten years of Belkin's, you know, delivery lessons. Uh, what would that be? That kind of one sentence.

Speaker A: So the, the lesson we learned from, from.

Speaker B: So it's like delivery lessons of Belkin's 10 years in one sentence for you.

Speaker A: Delivery lesson Balkans, 10 years.

Speaker B: Or like, let's say Balkans delivery or Balkans clients or you know, Balkans approach playbook. Um, and say, um, if you had to summarize a ten year, uh, playbook of Belkins working with clients in one sentence.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I'm not good with one sentence. Answers.

Speaker B: Uh, a short, like, uh, you know, what, what kind of the notion that you have, like if, like a short synopsis of like the um, you know, like an overall description of it, of the process. Um, not necessarily. So what I'm trying to get is like, because it's been. We as the company had different, uh, periods in time, right? Um, ups and downs and different, uh, phases of transformation, different approaches. Right. But across kind of the entire span of the organization, there is a certain, like a silver lining, right. That was kind of. We were drawing from the first year to now. Right. So in your kind of experience in your universe of the ten year with the company and the team, like what would be that one short, I would say like description or elevator pitch or a notion that, or kind of the feeling of this is what Belkin's delivery is in one kind of you know, key, short kind of sentence. Like what through throughout the entire. Kind of, um, you know, the entire cycle, I'd say.

Speaker A: Okay, so this is easier. So what Balkan's delivery is sentence? Uh, Balkan's delivery. Um, maybe, you know, like, oh, let me think about this. I don't know, possibly. I have a good question to answer this. Really, I don't want one sentence answers. Uh, I cannot come up with something that would summarize 10 year experience here, honestly.

Speaker B: All right, I'll help you there. Maybe, um, for me, it's, uh,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: you know, a clickbait, uh, answer. Like love for clients. Uh, or like love, love for clients. Or kind of going, uh, all nine yards for clients.

Speaker A: Because, like, I feel like customers always right.

Speaker B: Customers always right. Or like some. It's one of the points where, like, you know, I always were, like, fascinated with the fact that we first do things and then we calculate how much it costed us to do it.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: So, you know, that and just for those listening is that we start calculating how much we're spending per specific client. Only, like very nine years after we spend. So most of the time we're like, oh, you know, it's not working. What do we do? Um, account managers or SDRs can, oh, let's just add 2,000 more leads. Let's just add more mailbox, let's just add more users. Let's just spend more time. Let's just add more sdr. Because everyone wanted to make it work, right? So I think, like, just the, so the notion of making, uh, it work for clients and then after the fact, calculating how much did we spend on it. Yeah, I think that's all about.

Speaker A: That's a good one. Yeah, that's probably the answer, you know, like I was looking for is like, we do whatever it takes, you know, even on the call with the client. When it comes to the call with the client, you think, okay, what can we do to make it work? And then at the end with the team, you're like, okay, so how can we do this? How much is it going to cost us, etc. Etc. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, all right, so moving, um, on,

Speaker A: um,

Speaker B: I think a lot of people

Speaker A: who,

Speaker B: you know, who are following us and our brand and, you know, listening to this, our clients, EPOCs, uh, you know, head of sales, uh, people in marketing or generally people that are around kind of SDR space or in SDR space. Right. They all are either work in SS SDRs or have SDR teams or are looking to build an SDR Team. Right. Like there's anything around, like we need sales development. Right. So I wanted to ask you, someone who've you know, interview thousands of SDRs and train hundreds of SDRs yourself, like, what is one SDR skill that is overrated? Overrated, yes.

Speaker A: Uh, uh, my answer is, you know like years ago would be very different to what it is now.

Speaker B: What would be years ago the answer,

Speaker A: I'll say what it was now. So now we're looking for, I guess, um, what means a lot now is timing and targeting. Uh, and whenever I feel like, oh, good writing skills or good emails, for example, they are crafting or good pitch, that's just script written, this becomes less and less important. Especially again with AI, with the millions of tools you have. And years ago it would have been, you saw immediately the quality of the sdr, even you know, behind the scene you just see, you know, their LinkedIn responses, the email responses calling it different because you hear the person. But you saw this and uh, you wanted to have that SDR now with, you know, like everyone writes good, uh, especially with AI, you know, good messages. Yeah, as if you could just go to like ChatGPT or Claude and ask, uh, craft me. The template is going to convert me 1,000 deals, you know, and then everyone would have a million deals and would already be like, you know, like a trillion, uh, dollar, you know, like industry or something. Uh, and now it's more like about uh, what, why this message? Why this message? Why now? What audience been targeted with that message? And that's more like I have a feeling that SDRs in a way are more like um, elevated. So before they had too many things to do. And again those things are critical. So if your messaging was bad years ago, you were done. So your job, whatever you do, doesn't matter now it's more like um, SDR. Even like junior level SDRs. What we ask from them, what we require from them is a bit more level, like strategic orchestrating, like operating process. When they use everything they have and they try to think about like intent signals, timing, et cetera. And that's very different to what the SDR was like five years ago.

Speaker B: So now uh, just the matter of dialing or the volume or just the process, it's not going to cut it right. You need to have that strategic targeted because what you mentioned is you can send thousands of emails. But then what if you're going to book that one or two or three meetings that are critical, that are good opportunities that you can convert, you just

Speaker A: amplify failure if you just increase volume as you've said. And again, leads are another problem. Data is not the problem. Uh, again messenger is not the problem. So if you just want to go with volume up, uh, what's the end plan? What's the plan here? So just burn out all your uh, total addressable market and then uh, to make sure that everyone after you is going to work in the Tumbleweed that just completely burn out. So no, you're right, it's not about just volume. And data can be about volume. If you found the right approach, you can scale up. But that's a different question.

Speaker B: Have you recently been impressed by an SDR talent or did any of the SDRs recently were impressed you with where

Speaker A: you're like oh wow, this is like I'm impressed. You know Vlad, you had Vlad here. So Vlad uh, had this, always has this idea that one man company can be created. And this is obvious of what Vlad means, you know, is from standpoint of a founder and vision. So it's like really a company can be created. But what I've been impressed like for example recently with uh, I had an um, interview with an SDR and it's a junior SDR who you know, who uh, didn't have that much experience. And uh, what they did with like their like six month experience, they had Claude set up with uh, Gmailino, MCP and Apollo MCP and they had Claude and they had an ICP that they've given to Claude. And then like two times a week it was uh, you know like crawling, uh, and just finding for like companies that would fit some criteria, then they would find some intense signals. Then you know, like uh, through Apollo, deletes would have been added. Then through Gmail, drafts would be created and then the pink would get a notification. We have some cloud has some drafts for you. And when I looked at this I thought uh, me, after six months in sdr, I didn't even had canned responses. I was typing manually. So I was impressed not by the SDR skill per se, but by the way of thinking that SDR thinks okay, surely he heard about this somewhere. Obviously it's like he read on LinkedIn or somebody told him. But uh, that complicated setup, uh, uh, from a person who works in the industry for six months, I thought okay, we're going to hire this one. Because again the person without much external help and with our resources, I thought okay, what can he do with our resources, with our knowledge base, the center of excellence with our AI tools. So that's something that impressed Me and made me think, we need more people like this.

Speaker B: So it's more like an out of the box thinking where you were not asked to think.

Speaker A: Yeah, he stands out. His approaches would stand out, uh, you know, in 90% of cases. So he would do better than just, uh, create me a sequence cloud or create me a message.

Speaker B: Yeah. Now I agree that it's like, yeah, it's definitely impressive, but I have the feeling that it's very similar to any random post that I see on LinkedIn with like, create this workflow and this works. And I always, uh, thought that it really sounds sexy on paper when you have that. Claude, msp, Apollo, this is drone. And then Nezar, like sits there as this kind of, you know, Terminator and just kind of like operator and like all that. But in reality, like how many meetings would that. What kind of results you can land from it?

Speaker A: That's for sure. Uh, it's like over relying on this. It's a different thing. It's like everyone thinks, okay, let's just automate it. Everything's going to be automated and then at some point everyone's going to automate everything and everyone's going to be doing the same, like having the same intense signals and everything. So without the core understanding. So, okay. Another example of SDR I was impressed with, maybe more from the, um, it's not like you're going to like, but that's more that you less hear of. So we had a client with, uh, a fairly complex and sophisticated industry. And then, um, I saw, let's put it this way, the client was not happy because the SDR was challenging him. And that's like an escalation. And I was, I was, okay, I need to hear what, how much, what we were costing the client or what we were doing? Obviously not. But, uh, I was listening to the recording and the sdr, who has been working with the client for two months, actually was battling with the client that, you know, that this objection is not going to work because he was on the call with phone with a lot of prospects and he learned the product to the point when he really could challenge, uh, just on the objection side, not the whole cohesive understanding, uh, challenged the client. And at the end he won this battle because he was so deeply into before started calling. He learned that much about the industry and the product that the client said, okay, I give this to you, you can try this objection. I give you the green light if it's risky, but it kind of makes sense. So that's another thing that cannot Be neither automated nor, uh, what can you do? You just need to be smart and uh, think about what to do and learn and yeah, just be curious about it.

Speaker B: I really love that. So it's, you know, the whole automation piece, as you brought it up early, is, Definitely has a place. Right. In a way and it's um, impressive. But without that second part, without your understanding and without your kind of deep knowledge of how do you deploy the system, it's not going to work. So if you have a surface level knowledge of the thing and you have this very shiny automation, then even not

Speaker A: just the thing, but the audience, that this was critical, so that the conversation was listening to and, you know, smiling on my own because it's always fun to listen to the calls of others and just being like an observer. Uh, I thought he was saying, but the prospects don't relate to this. But people, you know, what you're saying makes sense, but people I'm talking with, they don't, don't care. They give a shit about that. And I've read once, um, uh, you know, I'm not talking with you often about professional literature, so that's, uh. But there was a book that I was reading once by, um, I guess it's called Storybrand, uh, by Donald Miller. I'm not sure if you heard about it, but why. I liked it because he was saying that a lot of companies try to position themselves as like heroes. So what we do, our product is like hero in a way, but instead, you know, like, let's position your audience as a hero. The challenge was solved for them. I was thinking finally, as, you know, as if it's a Virgil from, uh, Dante's Divine Comedy. So you're just, just a guy, somebody who guides them to their problem in a way, like de. Risks the path for them. So. And what the SDR was talking about is like, actually you were saying things that make sense. But from my perspective as a guy who talks with people who have problem, they just don't. It just doesn't relate to them. So they. This, this, you know, like pain point is, is, is not working. So I need something else from you so I could persuade them better on the call.

Speaker B: Yeah, all right. So, um, I love that. So you mentioned AI. Um, so, um, what was your first honest reaction several years ago when AI came into market?

Speaker A: I wish I had this podcast with someone else. As I said, minutes ago, like, oh, yeah, I was, uh, the first adopter in the company. I was not. I'm a, uh, bit of a conservative person. In a way, uh, that's good and bad. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. And I thought not useful at all. Uh, that was wrong for sure. Uh, to be honest, at the beginning was uh, less effective than it is now. So that's to my defense. Then I saw real use cases and those use cases kind of made me think, okay, I do, or we do a lot of repetitive tasks, maybe this is the time. So I'm also a lazy person. So I'm conservative, but m. I'm lazy. I thought, okay, uh, let's kill some repetitiveness here. And the more it evolved, ah, empirically especially so I'm not um, as you've said a lot of things on LinkedIn, specifically like, oh, we built that. Oh we built that. Oh we did this. It's always, it's like you have like fomo, you think everyone's built so smart sales engines. I'm like, we're the worst company on the market. They built some uh, Andrew, like RoboCop machines machine that creates them like millions of meanings. That's not true. So that's why, you know, I don't like uh, opening LinkedIn, uh, you know, like uh, too much on this topic because of whatever I'm reading. But I saw an empirical evidence. Somebody did that, we did this. That saves some time, that saves some money. So it didn't like substitute completely, you know, like everything. It didn't substitute like we still have people who do like manual research. We have people, Obviously we have SDRs, they're calling, doing email link that we have pretty much all positions that we had before. But um, the way AI, um, amplified it and sped it up in a way even myself being conservative in the past, I'm daily working with Claude, with ChatGPT and it's not just working for the sake of work. And I come to people and say you should use tokens, use more tokens or you should be doing this more often. It's just that it's already to the point when it's a bit weird to me when I'm asking somebody on a uh, hiring interview, like how use AI and when the person says I don't use it, I kind of can accept it, but it's already seed some thought like he's an SDR and never ever had the situation to use AI. So yeah, now I'm much more of a fan of AI as an extra tool, uh, versus just doing things all the way.

Speaker B: What are the core use cases you discovered for yourself and for the team that are really kind of again amplifying the entire game,

Speaker A: searching, uh, for information became much faster. So this is the first thing that SDRs, when we talk about delivery, they use on a daily basis. So people think you can just like type Claude, create me the sequence that's going to, uh, that's going to create 1,000 leads. And if everyone does this, so there are not that, not that many leads, it's like, create me the business idea. I want to be a millionaire. So it's not working. Yeah, but, uh, before all the prep you did so you had two options before. Either you don't do any preparation and you just go like shotgun approaches, just go blindly, etcetera, or you spend a lot of time on something, on, uh, each objection before each phone call. Now really good SDRs, they leverage this on a daily, on a weekly basis. So first, uh, uh, pretty much on every stage. So from the client onboarding, how much you can get to know about their industry and what's good. With the AI, you can ask dumb questions. So what people are afraid of. With the client, I saw this million of times. It's like you're in the call with the client and our AM is listening and the client explains something like some super complicated like irrigation system. I'm not an engineer and I'm like, I don't have a clue what he's talking about. And I ask a question, like super dumb question. I'm sorry, but can you explain to me as if I was like a kid, like stupid kid or something. But often our amps are just like nodding. And then I ask what was the product? And somebody says, it's a cutting edge technology that boosts something. And I say, but who really uses it? How do we use it? And she's like, uh, company use it or something. I'm like, do you really? So we don't understand who really clicks the button and what's the value of it. And AI is great at that. You can ask. I am, you know, like I have zero knowledge about the industry. Explain it to me and then explain it more simple and more simple. And then, so this is an onboarding stage. And then when you work, um, uh, with prospects, the first thing you do, like on the prep, on the objection, handling on the content, writing on the script, you just work with AI plus, um, working with big chunks of data is amazing. The analysis it does. So you have all tools in the world. You have CRMs, you have outreach, um, tools, you have everything. But then at some point you feel like I gather so much information. So there is something I'M missing. So you can feed AI with everything. And quite often, um, the conclusion it has, it's not like it surprises you, but it really gives you the clear picture that you can come back to the client and say, okay, we've been analyzing everything we've been doing for the last two months and this is what we've learned and please help us to improve it or something.

Speaker B: Um, okay, so the part with kind of analyzing the data, the sourcing for information, the analysis, uh, makes sense. Um, ah, on the prospecting side with regards to data quality enrichment, data research, um, like, what's your take? Is it already good? Is it still not good enough? Is it like, what are the main use cases you've seen that worked for

Speaker A: here, my conservative side comes to play. Uh, uh, it's not good enough, uh, uh, for the clients that value one, um, hundred percent accuracy. So we have clients who really say, these are my like 200, you know, like, um, companies that I want to target. I want to go like, really like with ABM approach there no mistake can be done. And I've seen too many, too many mistakes from AI to be honest. Uh, to just. And then, you know, like, what do you say? The client you come and say, oh, it's AI failure. So good luck with saying that. I tried. It didn't work. So, uh, it's good with like supplementary data. It's good when you already have a core. So you have a core, you have some people working with tools or manually, you gather it and then you can say, okay, AI, can you enhance it somehow? Maybe some additional data intelligence for personalization. But still, uh, it's not far from great. It has hallucinations more often that I would want it to have. And it has, uh, data, uh, that you use AI as well. There is some data that feels suspicious to me, especially how I check this. There are some industries I've been working with as uh, an account manager, because that's where I started and I know them really good. And then I check something and it gives me some information. Oh, this company did that. Or for this industry, this is really a good idea. Uh, and I know this is not true. And I just try to challenge it and say, really? Oh, yeah, you're right, actually, this is not like this. And I'm like, okay, good. What does it do for other industries where I have no clue what we're doing? So what I try to say is, uh, if you lean towards, if it can completely at this point substitute a lot of things from data research, from preparation for the outreach and some things not 100%. So I would not, especially with high profile clients, I would not rely on it.

Speaker B: Right. Um, yeah, definitely. Um, I know there are brands that um, value a lot, um, their image and uh, they have a very small tam.

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker B: And most of the companies either know of them or they've talked or somewhere on uh, the periphery, but they don't necessarily talk with them right now. And they wanted to engage with them and they're very concerned about their positioning and their messaging. And as a result of that, they really need this hands on, very targeted experience. Right. And most of the time even the messages should be very unique from, you know, kind of between themselves. So. Um, absolutely. But then again, um, and right now, as far as I know, we still don't have that many AI use cases that would help these clients. Right. Because you need to do a lot of manual work.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's like we talk about AI because this is, uh, again this is a hot topic and I'm just. You know why we talk about this? Because it's always like something fresh comes to the game. You're like, whoa, there's some disruption happening. But still, you know, it's not like uncomfortable truth. But the, the other side of it is like we talk about what AI changed like 10% of the game, 20% of the game. But it didn't change, didn't touch like 80% of the game yet. So that's the thing. So why would we talk again about things that uh, did work in like uh, 10 years ago and work now? So if you ask those questions, I will keep repeating same things I was telling like 10 years ago. So we talk about what changed, how it influences. But the thing is, yeah, it's a big part of process, still the same. It's not especially manual, but it's like human centric, I would say human centric. And from there, um, this is the battle I had you brought up a good point about like clients, um, you know, like with limited time that we have this battle with our, with some of our team members. And when they tell names it's like, but the clients need meetings at the end m. They need, you know, a ride. This is true. But a lot of clients, they don't want to have meanings, you know, like whatever the cost is. So they want to, don't want damage their rent, their reputation. They know they are local. They know their customers. They don't want to sound ridiculous. They want to, they want to sound personalized and that's the value we bring because, you know, it's uh, we're still, as I said, like human centric with AI help.

Speaker B: You know, the thing about the innovation is that uh, you need to break a few eggs with it. You cannot have, you know, something really automated, you know, or like, like powered by automation or like uh, uh, you know, like innovative, effective, like AI based, whatever that is not hallucinating or is perfectly working. It should have bugs, right?

Speaker A: So people also have bugs. You know, people also can make mistakes. It's okay, it's just the amount of mistakes, their scale and their impact on what you're doing.

Speaker B: Uh, but then while we discuss this, um, and we say that, okay, there should be a lot of human centric, you know, more, um, manual labor in a way, if you really wanted to make it very nicely. We still come up with a lot of AI based smaller use cases that really help us to enhance the manual game. For example, the fact that we now can, um, um, analyze each company based on their value proposition, based on the client profile. So now you're not just adding a company in the list because their industry match or their size match like we've had several years ago, but now you can match whether this is a great client or not, or whether a person uses a certain channel, like, oh, are they on LinkedIn? Or they're not on LinkedIn, or like verifying the phone numbers, whether that belongs to that person or not. Right. And I think that this is just the beginning of coming, um, up with these use cases. But they, but this is all, I would say, AI, Right, because that's part of the AI.

Speaker A: Oh, it's very good with repetitive tasks. It's like these times are great for people like Vlad who, you know, had a lot, have a lot of ideas and they just don't have hands. You only have like 24 hours, you know, in a, in a day. So we have, as you said, lots of small things. And it doesn't mean the impact is small. No, it means the impact is huge because it's like you just keep amplifying things. Five minutes you saved there, 5% quality added there, yada, yada. And then at the end you surely have a very different result. But it's not like AI is doing the job. It's like you do the job. And as I said half an hour ago, uh, people became more strategic. So they have all the tools. It's a good time to be alive. You have Internet, uh, for decades now. You have a system that does the job. But again, if you're not choosing the right strategy and if you're not moving the right direction, all tools in the world is not going to help you. So it's human centric with a huge AI impact these days.

Speaker B: Um, what do you think the lead generation going to look like in three, five years from now?

Speaker A: Uh, it already started looking differently. So like uh, before it was just before the conversation was always about deliverables. So how many emails you're going to send, how many LinkedIn connections you're going to make, how many cold calls you're going to make, yada yada. Ah, now it's already became much more sophisticated so you don't see a clear difference between um, um, sometimes approach inbound, approach in outbound, it all starts being entangled and merged in a way. So I would say the companies like belkins in five years for sure, maybe not in three but five and especially like 10 years and further they're not going to do like outreach per se, they're going to build uh, how to call it growth systems maybe when it's like, it's going to be like automation, use of AI outbound, inbound intent and everything is going to. So it's going to essentially be the same marketing and sales but a very different, you know, the COVID Uh, will

Speaker B: the SDR still exist in its current form?

Speaker A: The teams will become leaner, but yes, with the SDRs, as I've said, who are more like operators who uh, are um, building the strategy with the help of tools. So yes the SDR will exist. The role is going to be much more senior. So what's now the senior SDR is going to be the junior SDR in three, five years. Uh and as I said the team is going to be leaner but yeah, the role will still exist I guess.

Speaker B: Uh, what do you think would be um, this new or updated expectation of um, Belkins from clients? What would client would kind of expect more in the future from someone like us? Would it change or would it be the same?

Speaker A: Uh, I guess uh, if we're not talking about the clients who are not willing to cooperate, those who kind of forget the expectations from clients that we love is already, already like you know, you should know more about us, about our audience. You should work more closely with our teams, you know like and not just myself but you know, marketing, uh, team with our rev ops with our sales. So what I mean is like it was possible, was really possible like three years ago or five years ago or 80 years ago just to, as I've Said before work in some time of vacuum. So you just schedule your appointments. Amazing. You just schedule appointments. You have one point of contact, you're passing them, and you don't know what's happening. Ah, there now with clients start understanding that if they're not building it in house, they should still treat the teams like hours a bit like in house, they should have the bar already. A lot of them have bar higher. They don't tolerate mistakes that, uh, five years ago I could have told, oh, we just vendor.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, like, we don't know your product that good. So the toleration mistakes is lower, the expectation is higher. And uh, they really want you to, you know, build a relationship as if you were the part of their team. And, uh, it's going to be more of a, uh, I don't know, like deeper, um, m. Much deeper cooperation with them. Yeah.

Speaker B: I have something definitely to add on this. I feel like that from the, you know, show expectation standpoint, clients, um, would expect, um, for us, not just they already, you know, if before the expectation was, we have a strategy, guys, we just need you to, uh, deliver on the strategy. Just do this. So now it is. We don't have a strategy. You guys need to develop the strategy for us because, like, without the strategy not going to work and we don't know how to do it. So you do the strategy and then you deliver for us. Um, I think in the future,

Speaker A: clients,

Speaker B: um, would also want us to, um, say, hey, we're paying for all this bunch of tools that no one is using. We want you guys to replace all of these tools or like, you know, we want to cut costs. So we don't want to pay for the things we don't, you know, we don't want to use. We don't want to use zoominfos, Apollo outreach, all of this. You know, maybe we don't need a HubSpot in Salesforce. Like, we. We need you guys to clean the house.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you know, like, make sure that, um, you know, we're not overpaying or overspending or anything that doesn't kind of make sense. That is not impacting then based on. Then you need to help us to. Based on our numbers and projections, you help us to render the strategy that would lead us to that, and then you will tell us what kind of resources we need to put in and then do this actual work to make

Speaker A: sure they would actually, to sum it up, what I see already and what you just said, and it's like they want us you know, be more consultants than before. So before it was just like book us meetings. Now you know, like with the go to market with every sim saying just advise us, help us, help us building this. If needed, integrate with our marketing team to build it. But just yet just make it work and bring some ideas that you know, that we can implement.

Speaker B: Um, and so the impact would be not just on a, um, you know, on, on, on, on outreach or lead generation or sales, but the impact would be also on the, on the P and L, how much we're spending on uh, the actual kind of strategy and the resource allocation and just kind of overall more kind of strategic direction. Because again at the end of the day like uh, you know, like the growth, um and how to grow the business would be key and is the kind of the key, right. For many companies. And um, I personally think that players, uh, like us would be playing a major role. And again because of how complicated things gonna look like, right, everything gonna be so entangled and overlapped that it's gonna be very difficult to tell the difference. Which tool do you need or which person do you need or how do you. Where the attribution lays? Like do we attribute this for this team or for that team?

Speaker A: It's like you have too much, you have, you have everything. The clients, they have this like form. There are all the tools, you see everything. But where I start, what I do, as I said, what tools I cut off, what tools I desperately need for my case, what people I need. And you're right, you know, the impact on P and L and everything is going to be. It's not like we didn't do this before. It just. You say the scale is a bit different than it just amplifies.

Speaker B: Most of the companies are. And what we've done as well is like how to cut everything to the bone but make sure that it's optimized but at the same time it's still effective and delivers. Right? And when it comes to you know, lead generation, um, especially with the mid market or bigger companies that have lots of things happening, it's one of the most difficult decisions to do, right, like cutting to the bone.

Speaker A: But the one thing here is like, especially with AI and what we just said about effectiveness, uh, is like. And efficiency. I'm sorry, is that a lot of clients, they already have this conversation with us and they all talk about efficiency, especially with AI, what can we cut? What can you save? How we can be more efficient. And they uh, forget the effectiveness part. So they all focus on efficiency. And uh, they kind of forget the other part of the puzzle. So yeah, balance is good. So between cutting something, be more efficient, but still it should have some effect at the end. It should pay off. The results are still the name of the game. But yeah, with AI and everything, conversation about efficiency is also huge. 1.

Speaker B: All right, closing question. Um, what do you think Belkins, um, will be doing in 10 years that people don't expect us be doing?

Speaker A: Don't expect us be doing? Um, I would hope, first of all, I would hope that when we talk about how the lead generation is going to look like 10 years from now, and I said that the company is not going to do simple outreach and everything, they're going to be building a growth system and everything. I hope, I hope we'll be doing this because it would be weird if I wasn't hoping I was doing this and other companies would. Where would we be? So that's uh, maybe people expect us doing, but uh, I know, but uh, we'll, you know, and I hope, you know, we'll be there. Uh, and for what people wouldn't expect us doing, I don't know. I guess uh, even we don't know uh, where this path is going to lead us when we started it. I would never say, you know, this is, you know, we're going to be disappointed in 2026. I surely think we're gonna touch the niches of uh, inbound, uh, or outbound that we haven't touched upon yet. So we're mostly been talking about email and LinkedIn outreach and outbound. I guess people don't know our potential in the areas that are still untouched for us. I would love us to master um, with uh, everything we've discussed with AI and uh, some things that people yet don't know we were cooking for them. Master this part and like polish it to the way where we can move further and maybe expand further. But that's yet to see. So that's a bit of a secret for the future.

Speaker B: What's the one big thing that um, um is coming up that you're excited about, um, in belkins in 2027 that uh, you want to spoiler for the listeners or something that you're cooking or the big thing that you're working on or a big thing that you're excited about.

Speaker A: So this is going to be a spoiler for external, uh, audience, not for internal. But we've been finishing uh, what we call like Belkin's Home. So this is a system and I don't want to unfold it, you know, like, in too many words. But this is a system that actually would, uh, unite pretty much all outbound effort we've been doing. So we're gonna have the data lake with everything. We're gonna have all channel in one place. We're gonna have, like, inboxes and leads and AI and, you know, and strategies and clients. So it's been happening for like one, two, three years since we started cooking this. And this is going to be huge because client's going to have clients portal, uh, internal work is going to change. So a lot of changes are happening. So I'm really excited about it. Not just from the standpoint of, like, cutting costs or efficiency or everything, but just from the standpoint of I've been here for so many years and, uh, uh, I really want to see how the game can change and, uh, how it may look differently. So I hope we'll change it.

Speaker B: All right, well, thank you so much for the great conversation and, uh, I really appreciate, uh, you for sticking for this for 10 years and, uh, helping me and Vlad and, uh, just building Belkins, obviously without you and your work. Um, Belkin's not being the same company as we are here, so it's absolutely thanks to you and for your work. So, uh, yeah, appreciate for that and appreciate the conversation.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me here. Thanks for the questions and. Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh, for another 10 years, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Guys, hope you enjoyed the interview. If you haven't, like, comment or subscribe to Belkin's podcast, I would appreciate if you do that. It's just gonna help me a lot to get even better, um, guests and interview them on your behalf. Thank you so much and I'll see you all in the next, um, interview.

Speaker A: Sam,