Ep 115 Autobooks Connecting Sales with Marketing (with Derik Sutton and Kyle Bazzy)

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: The Business of Software podcast sharing sessions from our conferences and discussions with software people that will make you think. Find out more@businessofsoftware ah.org.

Speaker A: Okay folks, hi, welcome, it's Mark Littlewood from M Business Software. And another happy episode of the Boss podcast. Uh, this one's one with a bit of a difference. Um, in our upcoming Business Software USA in Raleigh, uh, second to fourth of October, uh, we're doing something that I uh, don't think any conference has really done before in any meaningful way. Um, just because it's new doesn't mean it's great. Uh, but I think this is going to be really interesting. Uh, we're spending a whole afternoon uh, digging into a company case study and that company uh, is Auto Books. Uh, they uh, went from being a interesting, uh, high potential, exciting venture backed startup of 25, 30 people uh, a few years ago, um, to really retool and rethink um, everything about the way they were operating and running their business. Um, they've made a huge amount of changes and in the case study, uh, we're going to be hearing from various people in the organization. Engineering, product sales, all those sales has um, morphed into something much more interesting. Um, customer success, um, marketing and uh, all of the other bits and pieces that uh, go into uh, pulling the company together. The thinking for them originally, um, and uh, we'll be talking about it uh, in a lot more detail uh, shortly, um, was that they couldn't scale in the way they wanted to scale, um, and they wanted to find a way that could uh, make the business work, um, and all the different parts in the business work together more, um,

Speaker C: more

Speaker A: efficiently, more effectively and uh, therefore lead to longer term sustainable, profitable growth which really is what Business Software Conference is all about. So you're not listening to this to talk to me, uh, or if you are, I'm really sorry, you should see someone about that. We've got two um, fabulous people joining us today. Derek Sutton and Kyle Bazzi. So uh, first of all, welcome people.

Speaker C: Hey Mark, how's it going?

Speaker A: It's great, thank you. Um, hi Kyle.

Speaker D: Good morning, good afternoon.

Speaker A: Um, shall we start alphabetically? Derek, could you uh, introduce yourself and just say who you are?

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. I'm Derek Sutton. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of Auto Books and um, you know, I think today, you know, excited to get into the conversation and really talk about my transition actually from you know like kind of leading product and being, you know, coming from our product design into the marketing role. Um, but that's me.

Speaker A: Great. And where are you?

Speaker C: I'm in Dallas. And so my 10 day forecast, I would actually take yours Mark because we're not going to get below a high of 103 for the next 10 days. It's right now.

Speaker A: Wow. And 30 seconds on why you got to where you are today.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the 30 second uh, clip would be that I, I joined Auto Books to run product and design, had a product and design background. We hired Chris Speck into the business who's a way better product owner than I ever thought about being. And so I had to find my way into the business like how to make a difference. And so um, basically out of necessity uh, for myself personally and the business, I transitioned into a marketing role and thoroughly enjoy it.

Speaker A: Great. So Kyle, next on the rack.

Speaker D: Yeah, uh, Kyle Bazzi. Uh, I'm currently the senior uh, Vice president of customer Success but primarily a background actually in um, revenue growth and enterprise sales and so bringing that kind of lens to um, how we view our engagements in our journey with all of our customers. Um, I came into Auto books actually um, after running uh, sales and growth at the founders prior company Bill highway that they sold off um, and then started Auto Books. So kind uh, of came up through uh, helping sell with our partners financial institutions. Um and as we evolved and started to scale we just recognized and really had uh, this kind of uh, reckoning around um, all of our small business customers and how do we um, create a journey for them and really view it from a lens of growth and revenue rather than a cost center and just something that we had to do in the business. So um, yeah excited to kind of talk about those stories.

Speaker A: Fantastic. And I can't wait to uh, see you and the rest of the team in uh, Raleigh. We'll have the um, some of the other, all the other people in um, uh on this uh soon. But uh, so should we start by um, asking you to kind of explain where you, where you started and where you wanted to go. What was the problem, what was the challenge that you wanted to solve? Um, and then let's talk about how you went about thinking about that and uh, making the transition across.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'll start us off if you don't mind Kyle. Like I'll just kind of intro it uh to you up. So I think like the summary of it Mark is really this um, as I said like I was coming into a new role transitioning out of like background and product building and scaling Internet mobile banking applications into Auto Books. Needs somebody to lead marketing and kind of go down that path. Kyle came at the company was brand new at the time and was traditional enterprise sales, you know, B2B, uh, sales leader, had built and kind of scaled the group to go sell, you know, trade and labor organizations, but was coming into a new vertical for the first time. And so we were both coming out this problem from like, you know, brand new first principles, foundational setup to say like how are we going to build this thing? Me being brand new to marketing and you being brand new to the, to the industry. And so at that time, you know, as I said earlier, Chris Beck had joined our organization Elite Product. Steeped in jobs to be done, you know, uh, worked closely with Bob Mesta for four years. And so we got to tap into Bob. And Bob at the time was writing demand side Sales, who, you know, which I know he spoke, spoke about at Business and Software.

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker C: And so Bob was wanting to really look for an environment, uh, petri dish if you will, to put demand side sales operationally into an organization. And so Kyle and I just said hey, you know, like we're, we're, we're clay, you know, let's mold this and let's see where this goes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And I think the origin story too, like where we started, um, that you know, I think is really interesting is transition at Auto Books from founder led sales. I think at the time, Derek, there was maybe 17, maybe less than 17 financial institutions under contract, um, and being brought in really for that, that scale phase. Right. Unit economics and um, the codification of sales and marketing processes and frameworks and kind of pulling it out from, you know, Steve, our CEO and co founder, you know, leading all of those sales and trying to figure out like how do we, how do we take this to a, to the next level. So I think that was you know, kind of the origin story of where um, we started to um, you know, really bake in not just how we built, uh, and thought about product, uh, and shipping it, but also how does that extend out to the rest of the organization. Um, rather than having a disconnect of, you know, why customers hire auto books, um, to really ingrain that into what we believed, you know, just kind of as Derek said, first principles of. That's the uh, progress is the entire journey. It's not just how we build or you know, how we market or how we, how we sell, but how there's cohesiveness across all of it, you know, really rooted in the customer first. So that, I think that was an interesting thing that we were all aligned on early on. In hindsight, I don't think, like, right away we kind of pointed at that and said, oh, this is the foundational layer. But, um, I think that coming out of this we realized it was a little bit unique in how we approach that.

Speaker C: So Mark, you're already seeing like the two roles and like the way I introd where we're at. Uh, and then Kyle. So you're already starting to see that I'm doing the storyteller setup thing, helping people make, make space in their brain, kind of like get prepared for the story. Kyle's jumping in and he's like getting into the more tactical details, you know, through the sales process. They're like, all right, banker, like, I know you've, you know, like, you've heard the intro pitch, but now it's time to make trade offs in this conversation. Are you going to stick to the rest of the podcast or, you know, like, have they. Have we put enough meat on the bone for you to like, invest or are we done here?

Speaker A: It, uh, is almost like teams could value different skills and competencies and interests to work effectively, isn't it? Um, it's interesting. So go back to that starting point. You were in that situation where you were like, uh, we can't really, we can't carry on like this. And everybody in the various points in a company's growth is in that situation. So you wanted to make some changes. Um, was there a point when or how did you kind of approach that thing? Was it a huge seismic shift a today?

Speaker D: We were certainly. Yeah, Mark, we were certainly at an inflection point.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: So I, I got to tell this story, Derek. So this, this will always live an infamy in my mind where Steve brought me in to, like I said, codify the sales process, hire salespeople, scale, scale that, that, um, that growth of the, that size of the company. And at the time, Derek's transitioning, as he mentioned, from product to marketing. And I remember Steve sitting there, who's done a phenomenal job over the years and I've learned a lot, uh, from him on, uh, how to recruit and just attract really great talent around our atmosphere of Audible Books. And somehow they find a. That's how I'm here, that's how Derek's here, that's how Chris is here. At the time, he thought, hey, you know, the board was giving him feedback. Like, you know, this is a big transition. Right? We all know founder led sales into hiring your first VPs for, you know, marketing in the sales functions. And at the time I saw something that I thought was just really unique in Derek because he didn't think he was a marketer. And as a salesperson I thought, wow, that's brilliant and beautiful because you're better than anyone I've ever met. And, and you don't consider yourself as that label. I remember Steve bringing in some just really phenomenal, uh, interviews for CMOs. I remember Derek calling me going, hey, I, I'm transitioning this role. But we're, you know, Steve's bringing the CMOs. And I said, derek, I'm going to give Steve a list of questions. In the interview, it was me, Derek and Steve. In the interview, Derek's remote. Steve and I are Detroit and Both of the CMOs were also in Detroit in our HQ office. And I said, here's the list and I had a piece of paper folded up and I said, I wrote down the answers that they're going to give you to each question. And uh, on the first interview he started looking at it and going, oh my gosh, it's the same thing. By the second interview he, you know, Steve's a very wonderful and kind and smart and uh, ambitious person. He actually chuckled and during the second one and I felt a little bad because the person on the other side who was phenomenal at what she did didn't uh, realize that like there were stock answers, right? And I said, that's why we don't want to see him. Oh, because if you bring them in here, um, the uh, the disconnect and the continuity goes away of what we're building. That's very special. And I think that's like a really good origin story for people that are figuring out how to get that transition, um, what to do, how to hire the right people. It's always such a big, big moment, right? Transitioning from that, that uh, um, you know, product market fit phase to how do we scale this thing. We found something. How do we, how do we really grow this meaningfully? Um, you know, being a VC or venture backed organization. So I think that's a really good kind of where we are in the mindset, right? And you know, I think it was probably six months in where I remember Steve bringing Derek in front of the board to say, look at what we're doing. And it was just kind of a moment to say, um, are really kind of uh, to realize like, hey, I remember thinking to myself, we're really onto something special here with what, um, how we're, how we're looking at this from um, common goals, um, that continuity between, you know, the two people in the organization that often have uh, a lot of friction between, you know, the head of marketing and the head of sales Org.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean I've spoken to you both separately and I know off the record what idiots you both think each other are. Uh, but uh, what can I say, right, so the pain that or the problem you wanted to solve was this transition to um, more scalable sales. You didn't necessarily start out or do, did you saying, right, we're going to completely rethink the way everything operates in the organization. Were there steps to that? Um, talk to me a little bit about, you know, the.

Speaker C: So there's a little bit of rethinking but then there's just a lot of building from the ground up. And so, you know, as Kyle alluded to, we were doing founder led sales, you know, so our CEO, we had a, you know, a really talented, um, head of corporate development that also had sales chops. I was jumping in and doing presentations, you know, like the typical early stage company. And so like if your audience or somebody attending. So there's, there's a couple of things. One, we're venture backed so we're trying to scale and grow as fast as we can. Two, we are trying to transition out of founder sales. So maybe you've got a good idea, you've launched in a market, you're trying to hire your first head of sales. And like what does that need to look like? What are some things that we did wrong, did right, learned. And then three, you're trying to maybe build, you know, on marketing team an approach. Like how do you go about those things? Those are critical decisions early in a company or even as a company has found um, product market fit to scale to the next level. And so we were as Kyle mentioned, I would say that the Audiobooks team is extremely high power and we were getting by on all of those things. Like we were kind of doing marketing, but we didn't really have a marketing philosophy. We didn't have a strategic approach to it. We were just kind of doing it. We were, you know, basically, you know, um, working our tails off on sales and just grinding through. It wasn't necessarily like a process that Kyle would build that could scale to where you bring in a, you know, mid level or even senior level salesperson. And you could point them to like this is how we do it at auto books. They would just like drown, you know, because it's like when you're in founder led sales there's no process there. It's just like I'm the founder and the magnetism, you know, that uh, that uh, founders often have and the ability to relate to and sell to a client is completely different than when you bring in like a junior salesperson. And we all know that. So we were having to kind of rebuild that process. So like, rebuild the sales process so that we could scale and hire new sales individuals. They could, you know, like find success early on because there was a process and a way that we did it. So that was one thing we were doing. And the other thing we're doing is like, how do we build and scale from the ground up? Uh, really an approach to marketing that integrates with the sales process. So making sure. And that was one of the things that Kyle and I really worked on, and Kyle was really great at, was like, marketing is not a standalone function. You know, it's like marketing and sales, they kind of like begin and end together. And where we found common ground was with Bob and demand side sales. And so whenever we were thinking about jobs to be done from a product standpoint, Kyle as a sales individual reading jobs to be done always, like intuitively saw that that was a sales and marketing, um, uh, tool as well. And so when we met with Bob and we talked about demand side sales, that became the common language that we could build from the common methodology that we could say, that's it, okay, let's go stand on that. That's the foundation now, let's work up from there, you know. And so that's the importance of demand side sales for us is like, we got to transition away from thinking about sales and marketing from our perspective. So as Bob would say, supply side. So we started to transition away from like, let's go drive MQLs and let's go drive SQLs. And you know, as a marketer I could say like, I'm going to go really, you know, like measure site traffic and SEO optimization and all the like, downloads of white papers. And those are my key metrics. And when I can, you know, I see the number go up, you know, I pat myself on the back and the team on the back and we succeeded. And Kyle's over there saying, yeah, but look at my pipeline, you know, like, is any of this leading to revenue? And so we quickly basically said, all right, yeah, we get it. It's about the customer's progress, not about ours. And so that became the foundation we built from. And everything since then has been built around that.

Speaker D: And Mark, I, you know, Derek Touched on the language there too. And I think that for people to listen in and you know, trying to figure out how to, how to scale, you know, their, their organizations. One of the epiphanies that we've had are kind of reflecting back is that, you know, Bob's very famous for saying demo's not a stage. Right. And uh, furthermore, you know him and I've had so many conversations now over the years about, you know, marketing, uh, has college, uh, degrees but sales, uh, historically hasn't. Yeah. So um, one of the things Derek and I have been talking about recently actually is uh, the reason, uh, you know, turning uh, demo from a noun into what it's supposed to be a verb. And if you think about as a sales leader, you open up any CRM and what does that pipeline have on those stages? Like you, you can tell me the stock stages. Everyone listening to this can tell me it's mql, SQL and then demo.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: And then some form of proposal contract. And you got close one, close loss. Those are your stock stages. And so if you think about like what that is fundamentally is supply side. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: We are taking what we feel, we do something. And I think that there's this religion around demo and I think that that's, it's a really good illustration of where Derek and I just fundamentally did not um, apply that because we didn't understand it. We didn't m. Furthermore, you're in the weeds day to day, working 14, 15 hours a day. We wanted to figure out how we could get leading indicators from marketing and then into a salesperson that had a much higher probability, um, of becoming a, not just a signed contract, but a successful uh, customer of Audible Books. Right. On the financial institution side. And so I think that that's really um, where the uh, theoretical, the conversations around progress became very tactical. I think that that's what you know, Derek alluded to earlier was very exciting for me as a sales leader is we can really point to progress, uh, early on in a 12 or 11 to 12 month typical sales cycle. And so that was uh, I think that's what got us uh, really excited early on about how do we operationalize this concept and this philosophy of um, uh, you know, the practical application on the product and engineering side of jobs into how we go about um, now extracting the value from what they're building. Right. In terms of revenue from, you know, from the, from the market that we're applying it to.

Speaker C: Yeah, let's even talk about. So to me, let's ground it and compare contrast. So even you know the terminology MQL SQL demo proposal contract, close one. So using that as like talking to your teams about those, those stages. So what is a marketing qualified lead, Mark? Like you know, in any organization you can start to define that in any number of ways. Like they visited this site, they filled out this form, they've downloaded this white paper, what constitutes a sales qualified lead. And there's this negotiation effectively back and forth between marketing and sales and management has to step in and everybody has to come to this agreement about what qualifies each of these stages versus looking at it. Um, from demand the conversation completely flips and you actually start to talk about the customer, what they're looking for, the progress they're trying to make. So in the demand timeline you have first thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding first use and ongoing use. Okay, if you want more details on that, go back to Bob's talk here on um, business to software. And so first thought is the customers or the prospect is starting to make space in their brain. They're starting to figure out and ask questions and look, they're just trying to get introduced to this idea that they don't even know about yet. They then move into passive looking where they're learning how. They're trying to figure out like is this, would this fit in our organization? Would this help me, would this help my department, my business unit, what have you. Active looking, they're seeing all the possibilities and it's starting to, it's almost euphoric. They're like wow, this thing is really great because of X, Y and Z. Then they move into deciding where they're, that's where the rubber meets the road. They're starting to make trade offs because at that point in time they've got to commit, right? They've got to commit company resources, they got to commit dollars or what have you. And then you've got first use and ongoing use. So even Mark, if you just joined our organization and we asked you to start talking about a customer around, hey, are they passive looking? And the sales rep is like what does that mean? They start to get trained up. Are um, they just learning how to, to think about audiobooks? Are they just learning how to, you know, like maybe fit this into your organization? That conversation is completely different than. But have they downloaded the white paper? Okay, good, they're out of this stage now. Let's just boom, let's, let's try to get the demo booked. If you're actually thinking about where they're at, uh what kind of progress they've made or not made yet. Uh, the amount of information and the approach that you take with that individual is completely different and it's much more rich we found, um, because it's focused on them. It's not focused on the internal metrics that you're looking at on a CRM dashboard.

Speaker D: And so like what tangibly that turns into or turned into for us, I should say, is our pipeline stages now mirror the progress of uh, the customer or the prospect. So passive looking is a stage we no longer have, uh, the typical, you know, CRM stages. And what that's done is created a common language amongst the teams, including and inviting in others like product, which I think is also uh, a really, uh, interesting kind of way to think about it. So when we would, Derek and I would talk about where they're at, where they're at, we would actually speak directly to, well, they're in active looking and this is why. Or hey, they're not in deciding because there's no tradeoffs being made right now. They're, they're really just trying to figure out, um, and seeing possibilities. And I think that that's really created a very new uh, dynamic that we brought in seasoned marketing and salespeople along the way into that environment. Right. So it wasn't just two, you know, crackpots here sitting and going and like, hey, what, you know, what uh, what do we think we is best? And you know, what do we think is, is real? But then inviting in some, you know, industry salespeople that had, uh, very, very um, you know, successful, uh, and tenured careers selling financial institutions at our partnerships. Right. And so they knew this space and being able to see that play out from a sales leader's perspective was uh, was really interesting flipping the paradigm of, you know, marketing. We had another white paper downloaded. Gosh, here comes another lead. Like, give it to the new guy, uh, to

Speaker A: ladies and gentlemen. It's not a lead.

Speaker D: Yeah, that's right. Um, Derek and I were actually joking as we were talking about getting prepared for the uh, conference. And uh, um, you know, one of the things that we kind of flipped on its head was when somebody emails in and says they want a demo. Have you ever said no to that? And if you haven't, then you're probably stuck in that, that um, how many demos did we get this week?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: And you're measuring pipelines on activity and not on progress. And I think that that was uh, that was really eye opening for me as a, uh, as a salesman. As we started down, down this journey.

Speaker A: Great. Tell me about screwing over your salespeople. Didn't you change their comp plans?

Speaker D: Yeah, we did. Uh.

Speaker C: Whoa.

Speaker D: Hey, hey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going to be controversial, but I can see on the other side, it's. It's really really, uh, um, it's really setting them up, uh, for success. Because, you know, every salesperson that's had a, you know, a decent career has been in the spot where you made just gangbuster commission one year and then the next year, what does the company do? Nope. Like, we didn't extract the value out of that. Right. Because we're not focusing on the customer after the signing and the success of that custom. We're focused on the current contract, and there's, you know, misalignment on that as the company evolves. So what we did is actually, we, um. When I joined, the first thing, the only thing, I actually negotiated as a sales leader. And I just think this is fundamental. And any sales leader out there that, um, feels like this is, you know, has an adverse reaction to this. I would really, um, encourage you to look at how incentives drive behavior in the sense that, um, when I joined, the guy that just left that was, uh, trying to, um, you know, take that sales role for Steve and scale it, um, I already had, uh, one or two salespeople when I joined, and they actually had incentives as a sales leader to go out and sell their own deals, uh, and take the best leads and then give the rest to the sales folks that they were quite essentially supposed to be coaching and helping grow. And so when I joined, the only thing, um, I changed away in the commission structure and negotiated Steve. Package is great. Um, I'm hunting a hassle. I'm not going to negotiate that. You gave me more than I was going to ask for. Thank you. But I get to control the commission structure. And, um, I'm going to align it where I make a little bit on everyone's deals, but I never make more by selling the deal myself. So I can look my sales guys in the face and say, whatever, we're changing, um, you know, it might be uncomfortable, but we're aligned. And I only win when you win. And I win by hiring a bunch of more salespeople to continue to win for the organization. And then separately, we move the sales rep or the sales execs, uh, commission structure to be much more focused on the success post. Go live. Which is a very hard and controversial thing to do. I recognize that. But, um, once we got over that initial Kind of, you know, ripping the band aid. You now have sales execs that are really um, um, having a vested interest in aligning to their progress that you know, obviously we shifted and evolved to um, rather than just the actual activity of inking an agreement. And I think that uh, was a, that to me that was just the right thing to do. But looking back now with what we've, we've built and learned from applying jobs to be done, that was actually um, I think a ah, fundamental first principle kind of approach that needs to be done. Otherwise you're gonna build something. It's going to be, you know, theoretical and a philosophy that the applications missed when the salesperson is sitting there saying yeah, like I said, I get the agreement signed. And so that's something that um, we did change early on. And I'm glad because the longer you wait, the harder that hill is to climb. Um, you know, when you got people, people's annual income, their families expecting, you know, commission structure, that's something that you know, I would encourage you to do early on and get right.

Speaker A: So let's just talk briefly about the controversial part of that. Um, Was that controversial when you were talking to Steve and the board?

Speaker D: No, not, not so much. I think it was more um. I, I, I don't know if uh, you know, early on I was still, still pretty uh, young, uh, and a little bit uh, naive. I think it was more of does this guy know what he's doing?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: And so I don't think it was controversial though with the alignment now in all fairness, we didn't have uh, the you know, the uh, the I don't know how intentional Derek, you would call, call uh, it that we were in actually applying all the jobs. It was like hey, we just believe this is a better way to actually scale the organization. And it just happened to be um, in the jobs that we've done philosophy. And so I think that um, all that kind of circle the wagons and was, was pretty good. I think that Steve is in also gives me credit early on because he is an engineer. He's not a salesperson by trade. And so when he was bringing me in it was more like you need to teach us what to do, uh, not just sell the next bank. And I think that that um, that that bought me some time to kind of do it uh, the right way.

Speaker A: That's interesting. It's very interesting. How many salespeople left as a result of that change?

Speaker D: Zero. Um, you know we uh, we have a good, we have some good stories um, you know, we had a, ah, just a once in a lifetime opportunity from our distribution model, um, of you know, working with partners and mass rolling out our technology to all their banks. That changed the sales, um, environment just uh, in the recent year or so. And we're watching one of the sales reps that sales uh, execs that later in his career actually um, went over to one of our partners because the new environment didn't have the same enterprise contracting events. Um, we're getting back to now but um, uh, we had a time period where it was really just focused on rolling out the distribution model. And he, in his first year, uh, became the top rep at a public company, uh, in his first year. And he actually called after he won the award at their annual sales conference and said um, he texted me and Steve and said, you guys actually uh, have no idea. Perspective, he said to me, perspective is um, often uh, not found until you are at the next thing and looking back and then uh, this company and just people saying you're just built different. He goes, at my age, in my stage of career, I never thought I would have done. But what I learned at auto books is actually proving to me to be the most valuable skill that nobody else, uh, in a later sales career is willing or knows how to embark upon. And now, now in his first year, he, he's the top rep at a company that has, you know, sales reps that have been there for 10, 15, 20 years. So I think it was really validating in the sense of like, hey, this really is a better way for salespeople to do it because if that doesn't work, none of this philosophy is actually going to be applied. Um, when you know, you talk to your VP or your, your CRO. So I think that was kind of a full, a full story that just recently happened a few weeks ago.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. That's really nice to, that's really nice to hear. Um, when do you start this process?

Speaker C: When did we start it or when should a company start it?

Speaker A: Uh, when did you start it?

Speaker C: We started this in I guess like 2019, right Kyle? Ah, I think it was late, kind of mid to late 2019. We went to our first conference together. 2020, right before COVID Like everything two

Speaker D: weeks before COVID It was the fantastic.

Speaker C: Uh, and so then we were refining it through this transition to remote work. Um, and really you know, it started to take off at that point in time. So.

Speaker A: And um, when, uh, say 2019 for four years. When did you think, ah, this we're really onto something. I know you haven't got full results, but you really think, wow, this is working, we should be going.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think a couple of key inflection moments were, as Kyle alluded to, we've gone from at that time about 17 to 20 financial institutions under contract to where we're now implemented in close to 1500. And so we were still doing more enterprise sales at that point in time. And it transitioned from um, we were used to doing four to five a year, six a year, to like we did five in a month. And so with this new, like we really had product market fit. Kyle came in, was helping us, you know, optimize and scale the organization from a sales perspective. And like you started to see the fruits of your labor pretty quickly, right, with the, with the enterprise deal value. And then, you know, from the marketing perspective, I think how, you know, our approach to demos, to how we were presenting at conferences, to, you know, the thoughts about the website and where we were going with that, all of that started to click and fundamentally change, you know, and so some of our, you know, Kyle and I talk about it very fondly but like, you know, just like Talking about building PowerPoint presentations and shaping demo processes, like we would just like go through that for hours and we kept refining, refining. It was just so fun. Um, but yeah, you know, at the talk we're going to get into just our demo process, how we rebuilt it, you know, probably, um, you know, rebuilding commission plans is one thing, but like telling a sales rep how to demo, like that's, you know, that is, that's um, that's confrontation on a whole other level.

Speaker A: That's exciting. So that, I guess, you know, if you think about all those things, there's an S curve and you're at the bottom of the s curve in 2019 and uh, you're kind of. At what point do you think you're kind of getting to the top of that S curve?

Speaker D: I, I'd say that it happened, you know, I, I think that the uh, we were, you know, never looking back moment happened probably four to six months in. And so it started off, yeah, you know, so the enterprise sales, like one of the things that, you know, Derek and I had, you know, so many in depth talks and late nights on early on was um, I can't wait 12 months to learn if something's working right, which is our, you know, our typical sales cycle. So how do we just start to get aligned and start to look for, you know, objective, um, and the best information we have early on to say like, that we're heading down the right direction. And I think that um, one of them for, you know, a sales leader and a sales rep, um, at the time, obviously my team was uh, well, how's the quality of our. Just our demos that are coming in, right? Do we have multiple people, do we have multiple stakeholders on like by the time that we get to that moment, how well are we set up? Right? And you know, the typical, uh, what is their pain and who's the authority and who's this, you know, signer. All that typical stuff turned more into um, one of the epiphany moments that, you know, I asked, I remember asking Bob at a whiteboard session and I said, hey, um, I read competing. I recomputed against luck every year. It just happened to be one of those books I have in my annual reading list. And I always felt that there was progress of the organization and then progress of the individuals. And so you can have, uh, I asked them the question, could you have different people at the same company that we're selling in different stages of uh, passive looking, active looking and things like that? And that was really the moment where I could see it playing out. So we had that first conference where uh, Derek and I are um, testing out, right. The messaging and the way that we're going to uh, actually demo and communicate these um, messages and really attract hopefully the right people to um, you know, the, the process we want to take them through. And I just remember, uh, you know, we actually applied. Why are the. These customers hiring for? Are, ah, hiring auto books. And I think that was a big moment that Derek led us through which was we knew why the small business customer, the ones we built the software for. Right. Um, that's what Chris brought to the Org. But what Derek evolved it to was, well, why are the fis hiring us? Because the best way to make progress for the small business customer is. Is to make sure we understand the job to be done with the financial institution. And I think that led into our first conference. There we go. Talk about, we got rid of all the slides, we got rid of the demo, we got rid of everything at this conference. And we just had one PowerPoint slide up there. And so this was my first moment of like, wow, we're. I think we're onto something. And the three jobs were listed as questions on the slide. That was it. Uh, Derek and I were the only ones at the conference. And I just remember, you know, Mark, you see people at a conference as a salesperson and they're in the middle of the aisle, right? They're looking at the booths but like the moment they feel someone catching eyes, they like quickly look away because they don't want to get committed to a conversation. I remember just that first day, people are walking by looking at it and they'd see the questions, right? You don't know what auto books is. People still think that because we're from Detroit that sometimes we get like, are you guys like automotive mortgages for banks? Right. And they looked at the question and it was their progress. They're like, wait a minute, that's me. And then you'd see them slowly start to creep over and say, how do you guys help me solve this? And you could see it start to come to fruition of like in, you know, irl, in real life. They were sitting there and uh, pretty much telling us where they're at in their journey. And I thought that that was a really special moment as a salesperson. Like gosh, like this, you know, thank God this guy's not a marketer. Like this is uh, this is really it, this is going to be really good. And that was kind of one of my first moments early on. But I'd say like solidified four to six months later. Like the quality of um, just the conversations we were getting, um, from a financial institution, highly regulated, um, every reason to say no, not to move forward, um, really opting in and finding a way I thought was uh, for me as a sales leader, I thought that we were, we were, we were betting on this.

Speaker A: Wow. So I guess that's a bit of a, bit of an insight into what we're going to be talking about at business, uh, as software in uh, in Raleigh. It's uh, it's exciting. You asked about Derek when I said when should you know when you, when you started? And you said um, when did we start or when should a company start? Um, I wanted to know about when uh, you started. When should a company start?

Speaker C: Yeah, good question. I think you know, there's some inflection moments whenever I think it makes sense to start. So if you're a founder, you found product market fit, you're hiring, hiring your first sales executive. I think that you should start the discovery journey and understanding kind of the principles of demand side sales and determine if that uh, fits your culture and like what you want to build as a founder and have that thesis before you bring in that you know, that key executive, sales executive hire. Because if you hire a sales executive that it's used to a rigid process and the way that they've always done things and then you have a different philosophy. You know, that's, you know that's basically like getting married to somebody that fundamentally believes in, you know, a different way or different view of the world than you. So that, that becomes a point of contention. I think you can also start to look at it um, whenever you're transitioning into like oh, we need to scale our sales team so we need to be able to bring in you know, mid level talent or you know, entry level talent even. We need to you know, start to scale the marketing team. How do we, how do we build a process that isn't based upon the charisma or the you know, the ability of an individual or two to communicate effectively a message. Right. So I think those would be two easy points to think about. Obviously hiring a new marketing person, you know, making sure that the sales leader is involved in that and the founder that you all are aligned on what that integration looks like. Those, those are kind of like the low hanging fruit moments that I would say.

Speaker D: And Mark, I just want to be clear, um, what he's saying because I know this is a podcast is just because I'm very handsome and charismatic. Uh, that's not the reason that we were able to scale the sales like it was, it was beyond just the uh, sales leader being exceptional at uh, what he did. I think that's what he's trying to say as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think. And we can all agree Kyle's got a face for podcasting for sure.

Speaker A: Sure, sure.

Speaker C: The modern version of instrument radio.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, Kyle and Derek, thanks so much. It's been such fun and I know that we could probably carry on talking about um, this and the stories um for, for a long time but let's try and wrap up. We'll. I know there's plenty more um, interesting stuff being sa. Uh for the, for the session. I can't say how um, excited I am to kind of have a, a full afternoon, kind of dig, dive into all of the different aspects of a, A company and what they've done to change and I think you know, um, really, really exciting to have you all um, there and I think uh, there are a number of other people that aren't going to be involved in the case study but uh, have had um, some impact on your thinking. I mean OB Bob, um, Mesta, uh, April Dunford and uh, a few, few others as well. So uh, it's going to be a uh, it's going to be a really exciting um, thing. I really appreciate your time. Um, how can people find Auto books?

Speaker C: Yeah, so just go to Autobooks Co. We're not a dot com, so it's Autobooks Co. And then most of our, you know, like, go to the website there. But, you know, finding Kyle And I on LinkedIn is where we share most of our content. We're going to ramp that up here soon as well. So you can find myself and Kyle on LinkedIn as well.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Um, thank you so much. Good luck retooling your businesses. Dear listeners,

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the BusinessOfSoftware podcast. For more information, go to businessofsoftware. Org.