The "Upmarket" Trap: What Actually Moves Enterprise Deals | Belkins Podcast Episode #22

Narrator: Jan Sarfati is the co founder and CEO of UserLED, the platform that helps B2B marketing and sales teams break into key accounts with one to one personalization at scale with targeted ads, personalized microsites and real time sales insights that help reps create better conversations and close deals faster. Userled is trusted by teams at Canva, Elastic, Pigment, Entrust and Affinity and it's raised £4 million to push its AI powered approach to account based growth even further. Before founding Userled, Jan built his career on the revenue side, most notably as sales leader at Incident IO and in enterprise sales. At Salesforce, Jan understands what actually moves the pipeline and he's building a product that makes personalization real without turning teams into a content factory.

Michael Maximoff: So I'm curious to start off with um, just a little bit back, um, from your days of um, being part of the corporate sales team at Salesforce. So what made you sort of like change and move from a corporate sales at Salesforce to a more kind of startup life working with smaller companies and then that eventually led you to start Userled and be a co founder yourself?

Jan Sarfati: Um, yes. First of all Salesforce was a great school. Uh, you know it teaches you how to a lot ah, about selling in the SaaS world. They have a very defined playbook. Um, and my years at Salesforce helped me go from solution engineering to sales, uh, and try to understand exactly what is um, a great sales enterprise process. And I had the chance to work with the largest brand in Europe. Um and then at some point I knew I could keep on growing at Salesforce and I had promotion very often and it was a great career and I could still be there today and probably make much more money than what I'm making today. But I felt at some point that um, there were parts of myself that I was forgetting. Um, and I was not thinking about new ideas, I was not thinking about um, what could be uh, outside of the Salesforce bubble. And I started missing that. Um, and at some point Covid hit and I found myself in Costa Rica stranded and I could not come back. Were no flights. Yeah, yeah that was, that was quite.

Michael Maximoff: So they locked down Costa Rica basically

Jan Sarfati: they locked down Costa Rica after I arrived.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Jan Sarfati: Um, and I was like either I'm going to see this as, as a problem or it's going to be a nice opportunity to potentially fulfill some over career path that I'm thinking about. So I called my manager at the time and I was like look, I'm studying in Costa Rica. We had a very good relationship So I kept working for Salesforce and during these three months I started being able to come back to my roots that were more about ideation and so on. And at that point I was like, you know what, uh, this is the time to launch something by myself. And I felt like I could leave Salesforce, uh, in a natural way. Uh, I don't know whether without Covid I would have started this entrepreneurial journey. Um, but it was kind of a good um, suite of events. Mhm.

Narrator: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I've never worked ah, at the corporate job and especially this large company, Salesforce. I think when I was coming up, um, it was something outside my reach in a way. Companies like Google, Salesforce was like, wow, right. So can you uh, you know, can you get me back to kind of those days of your corporate life? Like what, what the, you know, what the day look like for you in sales? Like you mentioned, they have the very kind of predetermined playbook. So walk me through sort of like someone that is um, you know, in corporate sales, in Salesforce at that time, pre Covid, you know, you, you, you, you just mentioned that you didn't um, you were not as much dreaming or generating ideas as you hoped for. So what you've been focusing on.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, so at the start of my career there I was focusing on understanding the pain of very large businesses. Uh, it's not about trying to sell anything. Uh, when you are in solution engineering, you go to the client like the Dyson, uh, the Danone or the GSK of this world, uh, you sit down with their team for days. Sometimes I would stay for a month and I would try to understand which process was uh, broken. Um, and that was very interesting because I was acting as a consultant and really trying to go deep into problems. Whether it was about solutioning, uh, with Salesforce or with something else, that was my focus. Um, and then very often it turned out that we could use parts of the Salesforce platform in order to fix those issues. And starting my career this way was really interesting because uh, you face uh, very interesting challenges uh, that come with enterprise, how enterprise run. So for example, you go into a call center and you see that the manager doesn't have his dashboard. Right. And doesn't know how to, to monitor specific people that have good response rate and so on. So at that point you start productionizing these issues within the Salesforce platform. And then the sale becomes so much more natural. Um, and that's the power of Salesforce, right? The ability to really go in, understand and then sell Based on an understanding that's very clear. And when I started moving to sales, for me, I just kept the same exact mindset. I was never selling. You never sell directly. Uh, you really understand all of those problems in the enterprise world and answer with a solution. So I wouldn't need to have a consultant with me. I would just do all of that by myself, which created much more of a bond with the client. Um, and also bear in mind that probably all of the Fortune 500 companies work with Salesforce already. So you need to find new, need new problems, understand the platform very well in order to have those add ons and go extremely deep. And I've always liked that. I've always liked to get to the cause and the root of problems in order to bring solutions that are extremely needed. M. So yeah, that was really my time at Salesforce and I managed to, you know, like in the span of three, four years, sell um, some of the largest contract I've ever sold in my entire life. But um, it was selling the right thing for the right people. Uh, and that's what I liked.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I think that from the outside, the culture, the sales culture in Salesforce can kind of suck you in very deeply.

Jan Sarfati: Mhm.

Michael Maximoff: Right. So can you kind of give me like a, like a feeling or a sentiment of what that kind of sales culture looked like? Was it like, uh, you know, like just go, go, go. You know, we're all the team, we're at the best or like just motivation, you know, targets, you know, we're here, the wolves of the, you know, and so on and so forth. Or it's more, more, more like kind of laid back. I feel like there's like, if you're selling like corporate or in Salesforce, then it's just like lots of a players, like lots of guys that just know what they're doing.

Jan Sarfati: Um, it can suck you in. Yeah. Uh, it's a culture that's, that's very sales driven and you need to hit your quota otherwise it's not going to go too well. Yes. Um, but I never really fitted that mold. I've never looked at my number as you know, I need to do 300% or 400%. It was always about can I deliver a solution for the clients that they actually like and use. Um, even if, uh, for most of my coworker it was not exactly the point. It was how do I sell more of Salesforce on a day to day. And that's when I understood that I wasn't really the best fitted person for that job, even if I was smashing my quota year on year. And it was a great, great, um, way to make money. Um, but that's how you start separating between one world and another. Um, but you learn a lot. And honestly, when I'm building my sales function right now I'm following most of what Salesforce taught me, most of the playbook, uh, which is go extremely deep in discovery, uh, go to the client as early as you can, um, do not save on expense for the client in order to build the best possible relationship. Uh, to get started with the implementation is the best moment, uh, to build trust. All of those things, they stick with you. Um, and also the element of storytelling, uh, Salesforce is extremely good, ah, at creating a story around your brand and theirs. Um, and it sounds very naive what I'm sharing now, but for every single customer we would create something that's called a holodeck. A holodeck is like, uh, I wouldn't say a Disney movie, but almost right? You have demo engineer that spend weeks and weeks and weeks before you go and present to the danone of this world with a story around why service cloud is going to save you this amount of money and whatever. But it's more of a journey with videos and narrative and um, animations. Um, and that's how you realize that those folks have understood something that most SaaS haven't. And that's why the Salesforce stock is still going strong year on year. All of these people are trying to disrupt. And I've been inside and I can tell you Salesforce is not going to disappear tomorrow. Not at all. Um, so. And that's one of their superpower.

Michael Maximoff: So cool. So at that moment when you've been in Costa Rica and you decided to leave Salesforce, um, during that kind of early times, um, did you feel more free or more exposed after leaving? Kind of moving from a corporate Salesforce into more like a startup world.

Jan Sarfati: I felt like, I felt like I could do anything, uh, when I left Salesforce because you live with such a big logo that has such a strong reputation that you believe you can do a lot and then you take a big slap in the face because no one cares. No one cares in the startup world that you went to Salesforce. They actually see you as someone that had it easy because everybody buys Salesforce. So your job was probably simple. Uh, and honestly, he was m. It was compared to what I faced when I started building my own company and facing issues that, ah, never in a million years, uh, would I have faced if I Stayed in corporate. Um, so it was kind of a high and low, a very big disillusion, uh, that came, uh, a few months after leaving, where I was like, oh, shit, maybe I should have stayed in a safe boat. Um, yeah,

Michael Maximoff: um, when this feeling kind of disappeared. So you were high. I can do everything. And you went down for a while. Like, when was the kind of the first, uh, win that you kind of felt like, uh, you know, all right, I actually can do this myself. I don't need to have a large brand behind me. I actually, you know, I know what I'm doing was, Was the, you know, what was the first company you've been part of after you leave Salesforce?

Jan Sarfati: Uh, I built a company called Revive. I was helping people getting mentored during the COVID years to find.

Michael Maximoff: So you build a company also co founded?

Jan Sarfati: Yes.

Michael Maximoff: Okay.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Did you guys solve this business or just close it up?

Jan Sarfati: Uh, we closed it out. It didn't go as well as we hoped, of course, but it was, uh, it was an amazing journey. And that's how I met my co founder today.

Michael Maximoff: Right?

Jan Sarfati: Yeah. Um, but coming back to your question, how did I start feeling that I could do that myself? Um, I started feeling that. I think you start feeling this way when the pool starts to be strong. Uh, a lot of startups are lying to themselves when they say, oh, yeah, we fill the pool. There is a need. Uh, people care. Most of the time, no one, no one, no one cares. Uh, and I started feeling the pool at Revive. When we hit, in a matter of two months, 500 mentors that were on the platform, thousands of people that wanted to be coached. Um, and I had no monetization strategy behind it while I came from Salesforce and the SaaS world. But I could feel a pool. I could feel like I was doing something right. And then monetization came in. I was like, shit, you know what? Like, I have no idea, right, how I'm going to monetize this thing. And it's a beautiful thing. And I kept, you know, pushing it and pushing it, but I was like, if you start m monetizing mentoring, is it really what I want to do? Do I start going into the recruitment space? Is it what I want to do long term? And I had built such strong connection with my co founders and the people who started working with us that I believed we could do that at a grander scale for something that was probably more profitable. Um, but that was a journey that I will forever remember because we were extremely free. Extremely free with no money, but very free. And it was probably one of the most, uh, the most rewarding moments of my life because we really helped hundreds of people find jobs during COVID while they were getting laid off. People were graduating out of tech boot camps, were competing with engineers from UCL and so on to find the right jobs. And that was very hard. Um, but overall, I think the element of freedom came from the fact that we were traveling every month to a new place all together, all in the Same House with 12 people, uh, and 12 people who just believed in the mission. Um, and at some point the party stopped because monetization wasn't there.

Michael Maximoff: It wasn't there. Was that the time when you realized when we started this, uh, you said that, uh, you don't necessarily need to like the space that you're in or be obsessed about it to do it good.

Narrator: Right.

Michael Maximoff: Was that also the time when you sort of like, started realizing that maybe, you know, I need to go back to the roots, like larger customers, enterprise more profitable, this where I'm stronger, rather than trying to build something that is outside the realm of what I've spent my last, like, five, you know, a

Jan Sarfati: shares, I would say. So that's actually a good point. Because the reason why I started this company Revive at the time was because I wanted to go back to cinema myself. I was at Salesforce and I was an actor in France. And then I, you know, I, uh, was speaking to my dad when I was 16. I was like, actor is not really a career, and cinema is not really a space where you should develop. Uh, bless him, it's great. But, um, but at that point I was at Salesforce and I was completely losing the. The artist part of myself. I wanted to go to movie production and so on. And I thought, why not? Changing career path. And I realized it was impossible. Well, it was probably possible, but it was not possible for me at the time. And that's why I started Revive. I was like, all these people want to move to engineering, to design, to product, uh, coming from completely different, uh, careers. I want to help those people. And he came from a place of. Of, uh, deep, deep care, uh, from my side and a lot of, um, um, naivety. Um, and I think. Yeah, coming back to your question, absolutely. I think at that point I was very naive and I wanted to build in a space that I love and do good in that space. Um, but is it connected directly to, um, ah, a strong profitability? Probably not. Probably not.

Michael Maximoff: All right, I like this one. Um, what drives you more? Um, building Something big or proving something to yourself.

Jan Sarfati: Do I have to pick one now?

Michael Maximoff: I can add the third option. Um,

Jan Sarfati: it's interesting because neither of these answer, um, really fit what I, what I want. Um, what is big? You know, what is big? Uh, for me, what I want is build in depth and be considered as the best solution within a market. That market can be very narrow and niche. I don't care. I just want the company to be recognized as one that crafted a, uh, very nice product and a very nice solution in a space that people did not like that much before. And when they think of it, they're like, oh, yeah, these guys, they really care and they really put in the effort. That's my objective.

Michael Maximoff: I relate with you because, uh, you know, one of the reasons I'm sticking in this kind of, um, appointment setting, SDR space is that through all this time that I've been in this space, everyone is telling that this model doesn't work. You cannot outsource your sdr.

Jan Sarfati: Right.

Michael Maximoff: And for me, it's more like a sport, like competition, just to actually do it, to kind of prove everyone and, uh, sort of like just the industry and know that there is a team on the market that cares and can make it work. So you can do so much effort and energy and time put in to crack it. Right. It's like a big problem that no one else solved it, but there's someone who wanted to solve it and cares and doing that every day to solve it, to make it work and to kind of get a dent on the industry. Even though your category might be not the large ones. Right.

Jan Sarfati: But I think that also comes back to what you said earlier about the secret society of abm. The barrier to get in are extremely high. Extremely high. Like, no one cared at the start. No one wanted to hear about a new player. They were very much like, oh, uh, wait, no, those guys are so little, they don't matter. And I loved hearing that. I really thrived on that. I was like, wait and see, right? Wait and see. And now they see and they're like, oh, shit. You know, something, something pretty cool is coming from a small team and that was just in London now that's based also in Canada. And that's exciting. That's very exciting. To prove them wrong. That's always something I, I enjoy.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah, it's competition, right? That's kind of sport at its purest, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, if you lose everything tomorrow and you have to start with $0 again, what's the founder move? You're going to make first.

Jan Sarfati: Really. It's funny because you said that it made me smile a lot, uh, because this idea before was very frightening. Um, you know, I have all my eggs in one basket. A lot of people say, oh yeah, you should diverse and whatever.

Michael Maximoff: I'm like, I'm saying there's so many people like that.

Jan Sarfati: Not at all. Everything is in one thing. I believe in one thing right now that I can do well. And I will make it make it well. Now, if I lose everything tomorrow, my first founder move will be to chill for quite a while, uh, and respect my, my body and my mental health. If you go straight at it again, um, you burn out. I've been depressed in the past. I, I went deep into a hole. Even during that journey at Userland at the end of the first year, I know how bad it can get. Uh, and no matter how much how big the failure is, I'll always respect myself first. So I'll relax and I'll probably, I don't know, I'll probably go on an island and work in a coffee shop, uh, and come back to the very simple things and maybe you never know. Like, I love it enough that you'll be okay. It will be okay for me. Um, but I think what I'll do after is I'll try to help someone that is better than me, uh, and has proven something I couldn't prove in a space that I knew or that I don't know. But join a journey which is impressive to me in order to learn. Uh, you know, when I, when I failed revive, uh, I went to incident and I learned, I just watched and learned and I built a sales motion and I sold a lot, uh, in order to help them get to where they are today. But I just was watching people were better than me at uh, products, uh, and it also helped me understand engineering much more in order to build now an engineering team. Um, that's excellent. So yeah, I think I'll just do the same.

Michael Maximoff: Um, I love that you mentioned that, um, you don't necessarily need to be the number one all the time, but you know, you can join someone else journey and it's always a privilege to be the number two. Because I feel like the best leaders are those that want to follow someone that just don't want everyone to follow them. You know what I mean? So you can, you know, and I feel like that's, that's so true because usually, you know, a CEO of the company or a founder is not usually that. You know, you choose this, you Know, you happy to share the responsibility with someone else who can step in and do job and you can learn from them. Right? But, uh, you know, um, yeah, so that's super smart. Now you mentioned those kind of dark days that, that you had in your life. Um, what sort of like what helped you? What was your kind of action plan or what, you know, what was your, um, jobs to be done that helps you to get out of those dark days that go back to the light?

Jan Sarfati: Um, yeah, I think for me was at the end of year one, um, we, you know, I sold all of those POCs in order for people to get started with the product. Uh, we had, I think 25 design partners all, uh, ready to pay, all excited about, uh, our second product. Um, and we had the biggest incident, one that you can't really recover from. Um, and after that, so all the design partner disappeared. Uh, and they all didn't trust us anymore for good reasons. And then I kept pushing. You know, I kept pushing. I kept trying to bring more customers, but I couldn't. I had no air, I could not breathe. I was like. And I was actually physically, I had no air. And that was the beginning of the startup. So every foundation was completely gone. Uh, you go to your investor and you're like, guys, I don't have answers, right? I just don't. And everybody is looking at you for answers.

Michael Maximoff: And

Jan Sarfati: yeah, at that point I just wanted to quit so badly. I just wanted to hide. Uh, and my co founder, who is also probably one of my best friend in the world today, Tristan looked at me, was like, you need to go. You need to leave right now. And at that point, he had stronger shoulders than I had. He was like, don't worry, it's going to be okay. Leading the ship just now, you need to go. And I went skiing, I went to Portugal. But I could not sleep. It was impossible. I could not find sleep at all. I was at the point where I was delirious. I was imagining things. Uh, everybody around me was getting quite worried. Um, and I came back to London. It was the beginning of, uh, the year. Uh, and at that point I looked at my team that was still going to the office, still pushing, still being strong. And I was like, I can't not push. You know, we still have money, we still have Runway. I'm, uh, still here. Um, and I went back every day. I made the effort to go to the office, even if I was tired, even if I had no energy. Every morning I was doing my gym at 7am I pushed, I Pushed, I pushed. And, and I got medical help. Um, and after two months of really dark days, maybe three months, it came back naturally. He came back because I followed a very strict routine. I was going to bed at 10. Even if I couldn't sleep, I was in bed. I woke up. Even if I could not work out, I still went to the gym. Uh, and that's what helped me. It sounds very basic, but, uh, when I have friends going through that again, I'm just like, go back to the very simple things. Go to work, work out, eat well. Um, and that's something I will always live and die by. From that moment that I faced. And since then, yeah, it's been a very happy journey. Very happy journey. It makes you very grateful as well.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: For the times you had.

Narrator: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: You know, sometimes when you've been, um, you know, you started a few companies and you've made a few mistakes and just, uh, kind of know the, you know, know what is good, what is not. Now you. Every time I have a new idea, I always think about like, you know, or like someone like, of my friends, like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, start a restaurant or I'm just gonna do a coffee shop or something. And I start looking at calculating their margins in my head. I was like, yeah, I don't know how much coffee you need to make to kind of actually make any good money. Right. So usually it's like a lifestyle business. And I feel like, uh, with a lot of very kind of mission driven products, um, only a handful of them successfully grow to a level of a scale where you can say like, oh, this is like, great company. And a lot of them are just lifestyle brands or lifestyle companies where you can make for a living with small team, but you cannot make, uh, that, my, that might, you know, that sort of kind of impact in terms of like the global scale. Right.

Jan Sarfati: I think it's also because we're seduced and we're shown, um, success stories that go in that direction.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Jan Sarfati: Uh, if you think of the Airbnb or the Facebook or Snapchat, these are success story, like, first day, like they launched, they had hundreds of thousands of users. It never happens. It never happens. So, yes, you can go and chase this unicorn that everybody says is the best in class. And, uh, and that happens, but it really doesn't. It really doesn't. And I'm not here to break people's dream. Not at all. If you have something that you care about, you should definitely build in that space. But you need to have in your mind, how am I going to be uh, profitable and profitable quite quickly even if I love the space and I'm ready to dedicate my life to it,

Michael Maximoff: uh, and be realistic. Right. Like uh, maybe I wanted to stick in that space for 10 years and I'm not going to make a lot of money. Mhm. So I need to say okay, I, I'll be making money as you know, an average salary, although I'm a founder and I can make you know like be successfully solving someone but I'm not going to be rich with it. And uh, maybe even I'm not going to even sell the business or I'm not going to raise capital or something like that. I'm just going to be, you know.

Jan Sarfati: Absolutely. There is another thing that I was thinking about the other day. Um, first time founder or second time founder that haven't really made it, maybe they should wait for the business out after to make it about passion and care and all of that. And the first one should maybe be about uh, making it uh, and be your blueprint so that afterwards people trust you more. You have the ecosystem around you to build where you want to build. Uh, again it goes against quite a few principles. Um, but that's the way I think about it more and more myself. I have uh, quite a lot of passions, uh, when it comes to sports, when it comes to cinema, uh, when it comes also to pain management. I've always been passionate about that. Um, and I think my next startup is going to be in that space because hopefully I will be able to at that point.

Michael Maximoff: I read somewhere that um, after 40s or 50s, the success uh, ratio of uh, startups and companies just grows tremendously high. Yeah, just so um, you know we always think that oh you know, I need to start a company in my 20s, in my 30s, but actually you can spend 10, 20 years building yourself up, you know, as um, you know one of um. I'm um, you know I like um, kind of um, as probably any, a lot of men, um, like Roman Empire and sort of like the emperors of the old. And uh, you know I'm reading the kind of, lot of kind of stoic books and stuff, you know. And um, you know one of um, the most famous kind of stoics of, of the all time. Senica. Right. He, he said that um, you um, need to, you know, what makes a man man. Right? It choose to always work on your virtues and your values and kind of develop them. And it takes time to develop them. That's why probably Romans, they They didn't count youth as something that they need to be uh, kind of um, you know, um, they need to count a vote of. So like if you're a youth then it means that you're reckless, you're head on and uh, you know, you don't have a say. You need to get an experience, you need to be older and then we can kind of talk about this. That's why probably you don't see a lot about you uh, know Roman emperors when they were kids. There's no like they're literally like oh now I'm in my 2000 and 30s. Ish. And now I'm like so anything below that is Right, right. So I think like it also comes with like uh, experience. And uh, when we say like oh you need to make a few mistakes, you need to fail, you don't necessarily need to do that. You just need to stick with something for a long period of time for like 5, 10, 15 years. Get to a certain point develop this virtue sensor like yourself and uh, your hard and soft skills and network and, and then maybe pursue your passion and say like oh now I know what I can expect and I can make the decisions faster and maybe you could be in your 40s and you could do this. Right.

Jan Sarfati: So Absolutely.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. Um, what's the most ridiculous corporate habit you've had to kill once you went from to with. With a startup mod? If you had any corporate habits?

Jan Sarfati: I'm thinking oh, I can't even remember but I would think um, one to ones.

Michael Maximoff: Right.

Jan Sarfati: Never really understood them.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah,

Jan Sarfati: um, I think when you build a place where people are free to express themselves, where the culture is strong, where people feel at home, um, you don't really need that. Um at least for me right now I'm leading this company having these one to one sometimes but I kill most of them because we don't really need them. We don't really need them. Like there is a, a trust element that when something is off we share it. When something needs saying we organize a meeting. Um, but having a sort of weekly um need to share things by playbook. Right by the playbook and follow a particular frame. Uh, that I don't believe in it.

Michael Maximoff: If a um version of you, a salesforce version of Jan would see um a um startup version of Jan today, uh, what would his think? Impressed, confused or worried?

Jan Sarfati: I think worried. Worried. Uh, there is always this element of, of anxiety that comes with the founder lifestyle. M. Um and if little uh Yan saw me today he would be like oh wow, that's chaotic. Um, but I think when you are building something, you need to be okay with chaos. And you build up a level of,

Narrator: um,

Jan Sarfati: acceptance to chaos that becomes very strong year on year. So, yeah, uh, Jan would probably be worried, uh, some days. But that's the beauty of it. Uh, you know, some months are terrible, some months are exceptional. Sometimes you have real big disappointments and you need to be okay with that. Ah, yeah, you need to. You know, it was my previous CEO that came up with the term okay with chaos. And it stuck with me, uh, quite deeply. We face moments at User Ed where two times where we thought we lost the company, um, and your heart stop, you can't sleep, you start really spiraling. And I think it leads me to the other thing. And maybe that wasn't your question, but how much you m. Need to care for your own mental health, physical health, all throughout that journey. Uh, I'm deviating slightly here, but yeah, um, yeah, composure.

Michael Maximoff: So it's like, yeah. So, you know, you, you live in the chaos all the time. There's lots of uncertainty. You literally can start your next day and you don't know, right? You don't know whether you're going to close these customers. You don't know whether we're going to, going to build these features. You don't know whether, you know, there's a new, I think AI will come up and then you're going to kill the company. Right. You literally always earn that, but you build up yourself into sort of like being able to navigate that chaos with the composure. You're composed, and it means that you're kind of disciplined with your mental health, physical health routine daily. And, you know, like, when you were saying this, I was like, you know what? It also taught us how to celebrate small wins. I feel like very often when you, um, work corporate or generally any job, you feel like the win is like, oh, um, this is a big step in my career. I was promoted or get this bonus, or I did this. And I feel like for the founders, we know how to celebrate smaller wins very often because when you're always focusing on the long things, then it never works, right? So you start being like, oh, I've, like, was a good day. Oh, we lost this one customer, or we released this feature, or I had this amazing call or this meeting. So start kind of just, you know, celebrating and thanking for, like, this is actually cool. And it gets you going for a long period of time, like a marathon, right? Because you, you need to be kind of on top of your Game for a very long period of time without drops.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah. And it's, it's also. Do you have the right energy around you?

Michael Maximoff: Right, that's true.

Jan Sarfati: Do you have the right folks around you? Because there are periods, I mean, I had periods where for six months there was nothing. No small win, no big wins, just loss on loss on loss on loss. And startups are built on momentum.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Jan Sarfati: Uh, yet sometimes there is none. So what do you rely on? You can't just rely on yourself and your co founders. You need to have people around you that have bring this sunny energy. We believe we are going to make it. And very often, you know, I describe this, um, when I share how we hire at Userled, we hire four skills. Endurance and energy. And endurance and energy are the hardest skills to find. You know, when I think of folks in my company, uh, they are very sunny personality. Uh, and that's the thing I'm the most proud of personally because when I look at the folks, you know, we have lots of people that get promoted and, and it's, it's a beautiful culture. Uh, but the people that, that really make, um, the difference are the ones that in the hard time, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, don't worry, it's okay. We have the base, we have like all of that everywhere we are at right now. It's because we've done all of these things we, we are on. You know, you didn't win that deal, but you were on that deal, you were still competing. So people are seeing you as a company that is in the space that people respect already. Uh, that's a big thing and some people don't even notice that. Um, and when you go from the who is your company to why should I buy this company? Why should I buy their product, then you already know that you've done something right and it's worth celebrating. But, um, you're right. You know, celebrating the smaller is very important. But having the people who can stick around in the hard, hard times and are not looking straight away for a new job and you want to, it's hard.

Michael Maximoff: It is hard. And um, you know, I know that the sentiment and the feeling and um, you know, we've um, um, a few things about me and you know, my team, you know, we've um, we've been rolling, um, and growing for like, you know, like 50%, 100%, you know, year over year for like a long period of time and lots of wins, a lot of celebration when you're growing and you have lots of wins. It's easy to be the company culture, right? Because like everyone is great. Like you just bring on great people, like uh, great energy. You hit your KPIs, you're growing all the things, right? But then this kind of stopped. Um, you know, I think it was like 2023 where um, you know, we've hit a ceiling in terms of our business model and uh, we couldn' grow. So we've spent, you know, all the profits we made into acquisition and um, it allowed us to acquire the customer, then churned and you go between churn and acquisition all the time and you kind of, kind of hit the plateau and we plateau for like, like six to nine months. And it's kind of grinding to the team, right? The team was grinding and nothing happened. And we felt the tension, like, okay, well if we don't change something, if we don't redevelop the business model, if we don't pivot, then you know, we're not going to be able to grind another year because like we don't, we cannot free up the budgets or something and the market is not getting better. Right. So, so what happened? We sort of like changed the business model. We went a bit mid market upmarket, sort of like just started working with large companies. And to do that we've had to rediscover and sort of like transform our entire company literally from marketing, sales, client delivery. And in service business, you don't do that. So if a already established professional service firm decides that, oh, now we're going to increase the pricing, you know, X2, and then we're going to work with all the larger customers and all, uh, then it's like, oh shit, like, you know, like, so what do you do with the customers that are not able to, to pay that or whatever, right? So we've kind of started losing. So you lost some of the customers, you lose some of the people that are not, you know, that doesn't match the skill set and some other things, right? So the point is that although you as the founder have the energy to keep going because you believe in the mission and you believe that this is the right way for the team, if you are not winning for a long period of time, like six months, one year, year and a half, whatever moral and the kind of the culture and the spirit you built, like, it's very difficult to maintain the same energy level across the team because they don't feel like. And then whoever small wins, you're bringing the small wins. No one cares because they are in that kind of cycle of loses all the time. So, you know, kind of few years back, now we are in a much better place, but we're still living off the results of those decisions, and we still are not where we were in terms of the energy and the culture. And this year, it's funny that you brought this up because this year, a few days ago, my founder reached out to, uh, me. We were just chatting on messenger, and he's like, listen, Michael, we have these values, we have these principles that we're hiring people, but we don't have the kind of positive energy as the part of it. And I want to add that because we need to do something with this kind of energy level because you and me and a few other leadership is not enough to replenish that volume of energy that we had before. So we literally need to just to change our playbook and start looking for more people with that, uh, endless energy in them and appreciating that more than before to get out of this kind of energy pitfall. You know what I mean?

Jan Sarfati: Big time. And I can. Yeah, I think. Thanks for sharing that because it's something that people overlook so much. I, uh, love hiring people that, uh, are one year, two year out of university because they have that grind, they have that endless amount of energy that they can bring. When you find a gem, you know, a real gem that's not yet crafted, uh, that's when you can do beautiful things. I have this makes, uh, me think of a woman in my team. Uh, she's just 25, um, and she's the most energic person I've ever seen. Uh, she's called Jenny, uh, Genevieve. And, uh, I tell her that she has the genergy. Yes. And, and she. So, for example, last time we were at an event, uh, we hadn't booked any call in the morning, maybe one call, and I call her, I'm like, come to this place, uh, at 1:00pm we ended the day at 12 calls or 13 calls. Uh, she booked seven. And she brought the energy for the team to then feel like they have to follow her lead. Um, and I didn't have to do that as a founder. I didn't have to push. I didn't have to get tired because she could bring that. And now each time I see this, I would hire 10 of her. 10, you know, because it's not just about the skills. It's about the motivation. It's about how, uh, how pushy out there. Like right now. Like, she's, um, a bit behind the target. But I have no, no fear that she's gonna hit this. Um, so, yeah, finding these people, when you. When they are lacking on some level and on the paper. On paper, they're not perfect. Hire them. Hire them.

Michael Maximoff: What do you think about, um, the, um, fact that I kind of felt that there are less people or less, um, generally those who are caring more and they're more practical and a more sort of like just either you need to do this, you need to have this, we need to do this. Sort of like more like putting themselves in the box. But there are less those people that are like, like, motivated to do great things, um, and don't expect to get a return very fast. So there's no quick wins in there. So it's like, uh, as everyone is kind of expecting the quick wins and then they're caring and there's no quick wins, then the caring is not there. So do you agree that you had the feeling like that? And again, you know, I'm, you know, when you are. Stick with this industry for a long time, like, I'm with my. For like 12 years now. I am Start talking like I am, uh, you know, back at my days when I started, that was weird. Like, so, like, uh, is there. Do you feel the same? That was like last that. Or I'm, you know, it's. I'm just mistaken. And there's no.

Jan Sarfati: I think you're right. I think there is this need for this new generation of talent to see quickly improvement, pay raise or promotion of all these things. They are very, um, they're very much after the things that are happening quickly. Uh, but at least in my team, we find still those people with a kernel of something really impressive. Ah. And that's why I said before we assess for endurance, we, uh, look at whether they stayed in their previous role. What have they done that, uh, they were so passionate about that. Um, they kept building for a few years. Did they have a project that kept going throughout uni? Um, because I strongly believe in someone's craft that takes a long time to build. And you still have those student athletes, uh, that then go to, um, cooperate. And those guys, generally, they know what it takes to go to the kernel of something incredible. And that's what we are assessing for. Uh, they're rare, but they do exist. They do exist. Um, we use quite a few, um, platforms to help us with that. I think one or two of the very strong, uh, young candidates that we have in London come from the same platform. Uh, it's called Jumpstart. Uh, and it's been very helpful in finding those guys.

Michael Maximoff: You use that platform and gem stars, right? You hire through it through them?

Jan Sarfati: Yes.

Michael Maximoff: Oh, interesting.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah. For the young talents.

Michael Maximoff: All right, so I mentioned that uh, one of my personal decisions was going up market and working with larger customers. Uh, um, what's the biggest lie companies like my are telling, uh, ourselves about going up market?

Jan Sarfati: That can happen quickly.

Michael Maximoff: How many years?

Jan Sarfati: I think, uh, it's really the problem is like people go up market and after three months they don't close a big logo and they're like, okay, it's not for us, we're not good enough or um, our product is not fit for the market. Wait, be patient. Do you have enough Runway to be that patient? Um, be very honest with yourself. Uh, at the beginning of the year we changed our ICP and we had two quarters that were hard to go through and everything happened in November. October. November. Huge. We closed more in those two months than we closed the rest of the year. So be patient. And uh, you know, this procurement process with enterprise, they're going to drive you crazy, you know, for weeks. You're not going to hear back. Nothing's going to happen. You're going to put, can I do anything to help? Uh, but the reality is that those businesses are the ones that once you have them, they stick with you. Uh, they're not going to challenge your three year contract because realistically that's what, uh, they take so much time to bring you in, then kicking you out is going to take them so much money and effort. So yeah, patience, patience is the number one thing, if there is something else as well, is don't sell yourself short. A lot of companies going up market, they have a very wrong understanding of what it means to work with enterprise once they are in the business. Um, and how much time and effort from your cs, from your creative, from your designer it's going to take. So don't underestimate, uh, this effort and don't sell too, uh, short, um, because it can hurt you very badly. You sell for example, to a global company, believe me that you will need an extra CS resource to help them out because adoption is going to be key. Uh, all of those metrics they will monitor, um, and also be ready for your product to change significantly because you have all the security layers, the approval when you launch a campaign, for example, in your space, um, the element of this person can see this, can't see that. Maybe they could see this. A lot of people underestimate when they go to enterprise what it means from a product standpoint, uh, and your product will not have changed. The UI will stay exactly the same. You will not make product improvement. That will look back and be like, oh, that was extraordinary. No, uh, but you need to make this concession in order to get to enterprise level.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. Um, that second point about don't sell yourself short. I think my, my sales team needs to see this because, uh, when we went up market. Right. Um, one of the things that I'm trying to kind of teach them is the fact that when you're presenting your offer and you're creating this custom proposal, custom solution for a customer, you shouldn't be pricing, uh, or creating it as a. This is what we're doing for SMB and we're just doing that bigger. You need to be more creative and you need to be more sort of like customized to what they're looking for. And don't be afraid to go bigger because, like, sometimes when salespeople used to sell to SMB and then you send a proposal for like a few 50 or $100,000, jumping to a half a million dollar or a million is like, for a lot of salespeople is like, they're not going to buy this. Right. Like, they kind of are. Uh, you know, it's not possible. Like, I don't feel that our product can do that. But they don't understand that if this product solves the problem that those people have the cost of, like the, of the problem solution or the outcome of it, it's much more impactful for them and they can generate much more revenue than sort of like, than what they're spending with you. Right. And it just, you know, it's just logically. So I think, like, that's one of the reasons why, you know, I'm still as a founder, uh, you know, trying to be part of that kind of salesforce to work with those customers and sell to them, to, you know, for at least several years until we feel confident that we have a playbook where we can sell that. Because if I'm bringing anyone outside or a senior sales executive who'd been with me for like five years, and they're great, they cannot sell it. It's just literally they don't have a vision, you know.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah. And there is also these four things that come to mind. Um, the first thing is how much people are you going to dedicate to that account? So that in itself increases the price.

Michael Maximoff: Yes.

Jan Sarfati: The second thing is professional services. A lot of people underestimate how valuable that is for enterprise Businesses to say, all right, you're not going to do all the creative by yourself. You're not going to build all the workflow by yourself. We'll have someone that builds it with you and for you, that in itself, you can increase the envelope by 33% if you have someone dedicated to that year. Um, and then there is the presence a lot of people forget. And that's what I was sharing at the start. Go to their office for two days, understand the pain very deeply and then sell. You would be surprised by how many clients will be okay with that. They will be okay with you coming in and trying to understand whether the solution you're selling is actually relevant. Um, because at the end of the day when a client is buying something, most of the time, yes, they would have done their research. Maybe we need this, maybe we need that. Where does that come from? Is it the CMO that had the light bubble idea, oh, we should do abm. What does that even mean? So, uh, they are looking for guidance, they are looking for you to help them and be honest enough when you're not the right solution. Um, and lastly I would say delight. Um, in enterprise, especially in enterprise marketing, you look at most of the solution and I won't name them. But have you been in the UX ui? How awful is it? So if you bring the element of delight, even if you have the same product, you win, you win big. Ah. And it's even, I think today it's even more important than innovation because you don't have this product like the coupa or the HubSpot of this world that are non negotiable anymore and can have a shitty UX ui. Um, and right now if you are on top of this platform, if you build on top, you need to delight, you need to delight. And a company, you know, I came from Incidentio, uh, I shared that at the start. And one thing that they do well and they do many things well, but one thing that they do well and the reason why they win a lot is because they delight. They're saying that incident management, which is honestly not that sexy, right. Becomes something fun to do because becomes something where you have a great experience, where you come in the product, you feel at ease. While it's for fighting incidents in a company, if you bring that feeling on top for enterprise client, that helps tremendously. That's right.

Michael Maximoff: All right, so, um, you specialize um, on abm. So what would you say is, uh, misunderstood about ABM at the more philosophical level or fundamental level?

Jan Sarfati: Because lots of things come to mind. I'm trying to find the one thing that is the most interesting. Um, I think the main thing that's misunderstood is what do you care about when you do abm? Um, some people come for more call booked with enterprise. Some others come for um, engagement. Some others come for accompanying the sales cycle. Some uh, others come for closing the deal. Uh, and I think the part that's the most misunderstood is the reasoning behind why I'm starting this strategy in the first place instead of saying I'm doing abm. All right, cool. But which part of the funnel do you want to optimize with those three words? And that's what's misunderstood today. And that's when generally clients fail because they are not focused on one aspect. If you have a client that has three year sales cycle, what do you care about most for abm? Do you care about the call booked or do you care about accompanying the sales cycle with a journey that's going to be catered rolling out the red carpet for these folks all throughout so that at the end you become the solution of choice no matter what. Uh, and I think that's probably the reasoning when you have such long sales cycle. So you need to really be honest about what do you do? Like what's your company icp. What are we talking about in terms of deal length? What are we talking about in terms of um, the people that we have on the deal? Do we have the resources in order to support deals? Um and a uh, lot of people do not do this exercise in the first place and aim at the right thing with the ABM strategy.

Michael Maximoff: Um for me a corporate ABM or ABM at the large enterprises sometimes feels like this kind of secret society in a way. So um, what actually happening behind the curtains uh, when um, a large company like you mentioned, Danone for example or any other. Right. If they're deploying their IBM. Mhm. What's happening behind the curtains usually I

Jan Sarfati: think you're right to describe it as a secret society because it would be how, um, I don't know. Let's uh take the example of a Nike is going to sell to a uh, Walmart. That's pretty secret, right? Uh, that's not something that the most common folks would see on the day to day. How do I target those execs?

Michael Maximoff: That's right.

Jan Sarfati: How do I make sure that they remember uh, us and our brand specifically? And it's a messaging from one company to another company and they're not going to cater the messaging the same way for one that's outside of it. Um, and I like that, I think it's very interesting, um, because you help companies with their one to one messaging, uh, to another. And you can be extremely experimental, uh, on that front. You know, some people, uh, go to such important contracts for them that they would put billboard in front of the headquarter, uh, and call out the cto, uh, why not? But you can go even beyond that. Uh, you can have a strategy where you really understand, uh, the passion of somebody and send him a golf club that's going to be with his name on it for a particular event. So yeah, there is the gifting. All of those things that you can think about that are outside of the realm of what you would do in one to many or one to few, uh, ABM strategy.

Michael Maximoff: Um, yeah, uh, what's one ABM tactic that is so good that uh, you almost don't want to tell me about it?

Jan Sarfati: One that's so good and I think no one knows how good it is. Well, no one. Only our clients, uh, is the one to one ads on LinkedIn. That's crazy. Like the increase in terms of click through, in terms of engagement, in terms of call booked, I mean it's second to none. And we have um, at userled a bidding mechanism that helps you reduce the cost of those ABM ads from $10 that you need to spend with LinkedIn to 2, 3 and an engagement rate that spikes. So for us, uh, that's our secret sauce. All our clients, all our prospects, all our deals, um, that are ongoing, they see them all the time. Uh, and you need to be very smart with those because uh, when you push them at the right time, uh, then you know when they come at the booth at an event they're like, oh yeah, yeah, we've seen you, we've seen you guys. Uh, sometimes it's annoying, sometimes it's too much, but it works.

Michael Maximoff: One to one ad. How does it look? It's like, um, you have my kind of my name or just kind of my photo or something or.

Jan Sarfati: No, no, like that would be at the account level. Most of the time you select 300 people within the population of the target account and you target that account with a very specific messaging. So for example, right now we're going to deep after the AI companies like the um, 11 labs.

Michael Maximoff: Sorry, yeah, Polish guys.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, absolutely. Um, the mistral, uh, the OpenAI and so on. And we catered the messaging for each one on LinkedIn with something that we understood from the news where they might need Our help, for example, Lovable, is going more and more enterprise. They release case studies with more companies like those. Why not doing more? And why ah, not uh, having a messaging that resonates with all your ICP enterprise in order to grow even faster. So yeah, that starts to be very interesting, uh, when you do that, uh, for those companies and they remember you.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. What's the biggest myth about ABM that you wish you could delete from LinkedIn forever?

Jan Sarfati: That you need an army of folks to do abm. You don't, not anymore. Not in the AI era. You don't need an ABM center of Excellence or these sort of things. Um, I don't believe in it anymore. I think right now you can do a lot of scale. And we talk about ABM at scale. It wasn't possible three years ago. It is possible today. A lot of people are going to tell you, no, that's not the way ABM should work. And the incumbents are going to say that in order to protect something that's very secret. But today, um, if you have the right process and the right product to support you, you can slim down uh, quite significantly, um, and you can remove the overhead, uh, to do ABM and ABM at scale. And a lot of companies that also work well with us are ah, mmsmb companies that have one person to do ABM for the entire org for a time. That's a thousand accounts. Uh, yes. It's not going to be as crafted letter by letter, word by word as uh, what an enterprise company would do. But um, it still moved the needle significantly. And I think it's like, do you want to have an A or do you want to have an A? Right. And that's more of the comparable that we're looking at now.

Michael Maximoff: What's um, uh, the entry point in terms of the budget that um, one would uh, want to spend if they want to run a proper kind of ABM motion. And I know you might say, well, it's different from company to company, but it should be some kind of like an entry point in terms of CAC. So like, if I am ready to spend $20,000 on acquiring that customer or deploying that, you know, ABM to help me to do the sales enablement for the course of my two, three years. Like, would that, like, is there any like, number or the budget or something

Jan Sarfati: that it depends on the size of your target? Right. Like if you tell me I want to target a ousand accounts with 20k is probably not going to be possible. If you say I ah, have 20k for 50 or 100. Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Maximoff: Okay.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah.

Michael Maximoff: But then now with all technology like the, the entry point is uh, the kind of, is lower. Right. Because you don't need that many people. So you can use technology to do design, to do copywriting, content targeting and you just need to want someone to manage that properly and just make sure.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, yeah, you need one. But at the end of the day you still need one person to manage it properly.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah.

Jan Sarfati: So that person is not going to cost you less than 70k early. Right. So uh, and if you run a program that's outside of one single ABM person. Yeah, uh, it's going to cost you probably 20k in order to have the basis. Right. And then you will want to scale with a person that's managing that in the background. But it doesn't have to cost you hundreds of K. Not at all.

Michael Maximoff: Uh, if you look at the kind of Fortune 500 or just large famous corporations, how, how many of them do ABM? Well, 10%, 5% or more like over the years.

Jan Sarfati: I mean the ones that do ABM best, uh, I don't have the number for you, but the one that do ABM best are cybersecurity companies. Um, companies like Snowflake also. Uh, they are very, very known to have the best ABM motion in the game. Uh, companies like Datadog, because the size of the contract means that they have to go deep, ah, that they have to create very um, thorough customer journeys for each one of those accounts. When you sell contracts that are north of 2 million average, you have to, it uh, means that you need to be so close to your AE and make sure that each time there is a change in the dynamic of the deal, uh, we need to push something different to that client. We need to invite a different person to an event. We need to make sure that they receive content that's extremely catered. Based on the last discussion, you need to look at the core company and those guys, they have mastered this and what we've done and we've used it is that we packaged a motion that was already created by all those companies in order to give that to the rest of the mortal out there. Uh, and that's what we do. Well, yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Um, do you think uh, like in this kind of large enterprise, kind of uh, selling uh, motion, do you think like tier A company are, they're called, they are tier A because they know how to do proper ABM or because they're tier A and they're like, you know, like the Nvidias of this world, they don't even need to do that just because everyone will be buying from them. And then the tier B company that are just a bit lower before below them are better at ABM because they need to, to sort of like to grind to get it. And then they might be much more efficient than those kind of tier A, uh, and that so kind of does it make a tier A company with a good ABM or um, or you need to do a good ABM to become tier A company in that way.

Jan Sarfati: I think I'm always thinking back about this word and that's what I share with my company daily and I annoy everyone. Delight, delight, delight, delight. Always on sales, in marketing, in cs, in engineering, in product. Delight. So for me, the companies that are the tier A company, they delight throughout the journey and that means that they're going to give you a sales cycle that's so clean, so catered, so personalized that you have to say yes. So uh, when you think of these companies like the Nvidia of this world, I'm pretty sure that when you go into a sales motion with them, they care. They put in the work, they put in the effort. At least when I was at Salesforce that was the case. Right. Remember what I told you about uh, creating these stories, these narratives behind each client, going to the client, they did that. I don't know what they do today. Whether it's the same level of uh, uh, delightful sort of experience or better, uh, maybe better with AI? Yeah, yeah, maybe. Absolutely.

Michael Maximoff: 1.5 hours or like Christopher, uh, Nolan movie.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, perhaps, perhaps. And I think that's where ABM is going next as well. Why not? Uh, but I think the theory company, they are the one that makes sure that every single part of their company is focused on being customer centric and creating delightful experiences.

Michael Maximoff: All right, now be honest with me. How much of a innovation of ABM right now, uh, or how much of um, AI in ABM let's say right now is actual innovation versus just pure hype?

Jan Sarfati: I would say most of it is hype. Yeah, I would say most of it is hype. You need to hit hard where it's really needed to have AI. Uh, AI in ABM is mostly not needed, uh, still. But it's getting there. It's getting there. I think AI is very much needed to help you craft a message for an organization saying, I'm going to sell to John Lewis, I'm going to look at their latest news, what the exec care about most. All of those uh, information that are out there about your target in order to then create the best microsite, the best ad, the best uh, experience for that prospect at the contact level or at the account level. Extremely useful. Extremely useful. It slashed the time uh, of content creation by 70% and we see it and that's where we use AI. And the other part where AI is useful is really understanding the engagement on this content to then reframe after that. So this sort of loop of engagement in order to make it better. Um, and lastly, AI is very good at telling you this industry, this Persona, this company, um, has been engaging well with this content. Therefore this company is going to engage well as well. So these are the three parts where AI is useful. Content creation, um, understanding the engagement very well and telling you where else should you have a similar messaging? Who else should you bring in that campaign? Anywhere else? Right now I think it's smoke and mirror. Yeah, I think it's smoke and mirror. And also when it comes to content creation, whether it is, um, how do you say, um, imagery or video or whatever, most of the enterprise companies, they're not going to let you generate images that are catered based on their brand. But we're getting, not far. We're getting to a point right now with AI where my clients can bring into the platform their imagery and say now I want this sort of uh, with the same branding, an asset that is for fmcg, um, whatever. And I'm going to generate something. Is it going to be 100% pixel perfect? No. Would I use it? Probably at my stage, I'm um, small company. Yes. But we are, I would say seven months to a year ahead of it being very good, Very good.

Michael Maximoff: Um, what's one part of ABM that AI will never touch?

Jan Sarfati: What do you think people, abm, most of it is in person, uh, is making sure that you are where your clients are. You go at events. And I think that's the reason why you have a rise of events right now. Because people are seeing very naturally that when you have a deal over 60, 70, 100k, you're not going to close it. If you, if you're not with the people, uh, how will a, you know, how will AI change that? Uh, I don't see it. I really don't. Do not see it. I think there is still a lot of um, appreciation for people who show up. Uh, and that's why I think, you know, the jobs that are going to remain extremely important are the folks that go in to their office understand the pain salespeople that go to, to their clients, um, at events, that's never going to change.

Michael Maximoff: Yeah. Um, kind of AI in ABM probably can also can kind of create the motion where they know your brand, they heard about you, they can recognize you. But to move the deal across the finish line, you need to have people, as you say, right. Like to do that, to take client by hand and just walk them through this kind of the fitting slide. Like, you cannot do that with, uh, AI, with automation. Yeah. All right. Anything. The last one, just so we can also finish on a very good note, um, because again, it's a business podcast, right?

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Maximoff: Today, what scares you the most about the GTM space?

Jan Sarfati: The noise. The amount of noise. Um, if I was a marketer today or a salesperson or leader in sales, I wouldn't know where to look because you have hundreds of thousands of solutions and they all preach the same thing. Even sometimes I'm hearing these companies that say they're competitor of ours and I'm looking at the product is night and day. There is nothing that's comparable. Even so you're like, okay, so if there is so much lie out there about, uh, GTM tech, how do you expect our customer to trust us? Um, so for us, we carved ourselves in a very small niche. Personalization within abm. We stay there, we know our competitors and we know that our product is better. Uh, and that's it. But this noise is, uh, something that's annoying. It's very annoying.

Michael Maximoff: Um, what makes you ridiculously optimistic about the future of gtm, ABM and I and all of this technology

Jan Sarfati: that AI now pushes people to be more and more, uh, catered. It pushes people to go beyond the basic and simple. You need to show that you go, uh, there is not just the AI talking behind it, that you actually care for the craft and that you really want to delight your clients. And that makes me extremely optimistic about the space we're in, because that's exactly what we're preaching. Is that from a journey that was one too many. Pushing, pushing, pushing, uh, a lot of noise. Now you really need to make a lot of effort in order to stand out. And that's what we are, uh, offering to our client. Helping them stand out, helping them roll out the red carpet, uh, to their clients.

Michael Maximoff: Jan, it's a wrap. Thank you for your time today. It's being part of Belkin's podcast. Appreciate you, man.

Jan Sarfati: Yeah, likewise. It was a pleasure.