The Blueprint for Predictable, Profitable SaaS Growth | FYM Ep. 60

Speaker A: Some people think AI is about firing people, less people in the workforce. I don't view it like that at all. I view AI as doing the stuff that they don't want to do anyway. You can end up fixing the people and you just bring more people in that fail just as badly because of the same problems. The culture and process are still there.

Speaker B: I flipped the hiring funnel. I actually do the first interview because we want to hire for uh, the right um, behaviors and attitudes. The problems are the same. The magnitude of those problems changes in any organization. If we don't do responsible AI like you know we're going to be probably living in Mars by 2045.

Speaker A: You need to take your initial investments and figure out how to turn that into a self propelling engine.

Speaker B: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Fuel youl Marketing. I'm your host Adi Sharma and today's conversation is one I'm really excited about. I'm really looking forward to it because it's not just about marketing tactics, it's about leadership. It's about scaling SaaS and building profitable efficient organizations that actually work. And joining me today is Steve Dueis general manager at tada uh Software uh company and I'll have Steve introduce himself but Steve brings over about 30 years of experience in people uh transportation for the last seven years I believe Steve you've been steering a major non ah emergency medical transportation software provider and um, what I really love about Steve's leadership is that he's done everything I think under the roof which a SaaS organization we need so not just manage but architect efficiency and alignment. So it's a with great pleasure I'd like to welcome you Steve. Thank you so much for carving the time. It's an absolute pleasure.

Speaker A: Oh thanks for having me Arti. It's great, great to be here and uh, yeah we've worked together for, for quite a while.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: One of the things that's interesting is, is you know you mentioned my past and I have actually when I look back, back at my career I've been a developer, I've been in client care. I've set up a uh, production line to build computers and test them. I've run an operations group, I've run a development group. The only thing I haven't actually done is been a salesperson which I think that lifestyle just wouldn't work for me. Um and then I've been managing tech companies since um, about 2014. Um, I got into people transportation like you said nemt and then now I'm in the aviation space so the thing that I find interesting is despite being in different vertical markets, they all have similarities with the challenges when you have a SaaS business. So it's very interesting that way.

Speaker B: Great point. I always, uh, tell my team, and especially, as you know, I am invested in a few businesses as well. I always tell my, uh, other partners and general managers to say that, you know, the problems, uh, are the same. The magnitude of those problems changes in any organization, be it SaaS, be it manufacturing, be it any other, especially when you're dealing with people, technology and cost of goods sold. Right? So I think the magnitude changes. And I'm sure you've held a whole lot of companies where you've changed the trajectory of those companies. So, um, why don't we start broad? You've been in SaaS, and by the way, I had no clue that you were a developer. So we will definitely talk about AI and with your grand experience in technology as well. So, um, let's start broad. I mean, I want to really cover. You've, uh, been in SaaS long enough to see cycles of, uh, great hype and hard realities. I'm sure, especially in the last two, three years, things have changed. So from your lens, what do you think, uh, is the. What does building a truly profitable SaaS business look like in today's, um, age?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and it's one of those questions that doesn't have one answer because things vary so much between businesses. But I really, when I look at the high level, I like to approach it from a resiliency and discipline standpoint. I think the most important thing to have a profitable SaaS business is you have to stick to your plan and don't get distracted by opportunities that maybe aren't in your core competencies. This big squirrel over here that looks really great, but, uh, are you going to get too distracted if you try to go after it? So I think that's one thing that's really important. Be disciplined. And then the resiliency part. Any SaaS business has ups and downs because things happen really quickly. And it's really important not to get too high or too low and really be mindful of what's going on in your business. I actually have a meditation and mindfulness app. It's called Able to, and I use that daily to stay grounded and manage my stress. And the reason I do that is, is if I show up to a meeting where I'm stressed, staff picks up on that and then they get stressed. And if you have a business where everyone's stressed, then you miss things and you're not being able to see the big picture. So I really feel like those are the things that are really important. Discipline and resiliency throughout your business is one of the key ingredients to maintain profitability.

Speaker B: It's so important. Um, I used to lose my cool quite a bit. No, no shame in accepting it because you know, when you're building a small business and you have a lot of pressure on payroll and you're still not profitable at stage, sometimes a small little burn could possibly bring all that stress. So, so one of my uh, mentors taught me uh, at the time said you know what, we are all actors whenever in the business and actors have playlists when they go into scene. So, so that this conversation reminds me of that to say what is your playlist to go to? To kind of go back. And um, and they said I have this song, How Great Are Thou on Spotify. So on my way back home I listened to that and I uh, want to give them a shout out. Can't disclose the names. But um, but you know, and, and since then I had made my own playlist as well and said because when we are going back either to our families or to another meeting, we just can't take that with us. So I think it's really important. What a great golden nugget there. So, so I know that you know um, GTM leaders, business um, leaders um, they tend to underestimate when they hear the word profitable. Right. Um, but building truly a profitable SaaS businesses today's age is ah, is something that you know, you have to have experience, you have to have tenacity, resilience, all of that. But if you were to strip it down. So what are the, some of the non negotiables of profitability?

Speaker A: I think when it comes down to profitability you need to find a way to grow sustainably and responsibly. There's a lot of startups where all they care about is growth and grow, grow, grow. And that's how some people view profitability. Oh, we're growing, we're adding all these clients, we're making all this revenue. But are they actually profitable or not? Right. And can they sustain that?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And a lot of times the answer is they're not and they can't. And even if you have venture capital backing, they're only patient for so long and eventually if you never make money, you know they're not going to keep investing. Right. So I always look to try to do it in steps. So I try to grow. Then I take a pause. Then I maybe look around. What, what skills do I need? What people am I missing? What structures do I need to put in place so I can continue this, do those things? Then I grow again some more. Then I take another pause, and it's sort of like a start, stop, continue type pendulum that I use. And I find it works really well because it allows you to never get too far ahead of yourself because that's where you get into trouble, right? Where things snowball out of control. Things are coming in left, right and center. You don't have enough people. Then your customers get upset, your product starts having bugs, and everything just comes crashing down. And that, that's the biggest threat, uh, for SAS, because you can grow SaaS really quick. Like you could put on a new client in a week, right? So one client, one week seems fine. But you do that week after week after week and eventually you can get into trouble.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think forecasting plays a big, huge role, your capacity planning. And you don't want to burn out your team, right? At the end of the day. Growth at all costs used to work, uh, in times when, uh, we were all working in the office, the culture was a little bit different. Now we are all kind of in our home. Sometimes we're in the offices, although we are hybrid. But at the same time, I think growth at all cost is no more the way to grow any business, or for that matter, SaaS business. Um, and I know that, Steve, you're very data driven, so I've seen you kind of take those pauses and those margins in between. But during that time, do you also take time to reflect on the data, to say, now where I'm going or where my team is headed, or what are the priorities that I need to prioritize in order for us to grow? Is that what you're saying that you have to do during that margin time? Is that what you do?

Speaker A: In my businesses, we develop, we call them custom ratios. And they're typically by department. And what we use them for is to try to identify are we investing at the right level. So, uh, they all have complex formulas, but at the simplest core, it's basically the revenue you bring in divided by the costs in that group. So if you're looking at professional services, how much revenue do they bring in a year? What are your costs for the year? And then we have a certain kind of, what we think is the sweet spot for the ratio. If you're too below, too low and your ratio is low, it probably means you're not investing, um, you know, appropriate in that area. So you're probably over invested if your ratio is low because you have a lot of costs and you don't have a lot of revenue. So that tells you, okay, you need to sell more. Or maybe your, your size is too big. But it can also work the opposite. It could be too high. You have this really high ratio which says you have tons of revenue coming in but a very small team. And I actually think the high ratios are the bigger challenge because you don't want to stop the revenue from coming in. But if you don't have a big enough team to service it, eventually you get into trouble. So how do you get control of that? And that's the situation I try to avoid with the start, stop, continue. Because if your ratio is too low, it sounds bad, but you can, you can stop some contracts and reduce the amount of people you have and get that back in sync. But if you're too high, it's not easy to just bring people on with a snap of a finger. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so I look at that in every one of my key departments. I look at it in R and D, I look at it in sales, in support, in professional services. And um, that's what I'm looking at when I'm trying to make decisions on where do I have to invest next in the business.

Speaker B: So for overall, go to market function, because you manage that and you kind of have that visibility and that transparency and you want to make sure that all levers are aligned and are fluid and working. Um, very well said. I think that's where leaders need to own that. Go to market function to see do not just. It's not all about closed one deals, it's about servicing after the closed one and then retention and then archon. Because the cost of, you know, bringing new, uh, customers, especially in your industry, it's pretty high. And if you don't, and the time it takes and if you don't retain them well or service them well, you know, it's, it's money, a lot of money out of the door very quickly.

Speaker A: So yeah, and that's, that's the real killer for SaaS business is attrition. It doesn't matter how fast you're putting clients in the front door, if they're all sprinting out your back door, you're not getting any farther ahead. And it's really, um, disheartening to lose clients all the time. So yeah, that's, that's A key area to focus on is make sure you know how to retain clients once you have them. Because if you don't have that in place, it's not going to work. And so many people just focus on the front end getting clients, and then they're like, oh, okay, now we have them. What do we do with these? Right. And that, that can be a problem.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I see this all the time, uh, because some of, you know, most of our clients are here to kind of create demand and, uh, generate demand. But I often see the, you know, companies are chasing leads or revenue, but they're kind of, you know, losing their sight on operating profit, predictable profit and predictability, essentially. So, so that's great.

Speaker A: Good.

Speaker B: Ah, to kind of compare notes on that front. Now this is not an easy task. Right. You have to be responsible for team, people, processes, systems, revenue, all of it. Right. Um, along the way, I'm sure you made some tough calls, right? Um, can you share one that really kind of shaped or a few that really shaped your leadership and, um, uh, what that really taught you?

Speaker A: So I can think back to one of my other businesses. Um, we were doing what's called an initiative, which basically we get some funding from our parent company to build a product. So we did that. We thought we had this great view on what was, was to come in the market. We built this product, spent like a million dollars on it, brought it out in the market, just wasn't selling. So we're like, okay, let's go back, let's add some more features. Maybe we missed the mark, brought it out, still isn't selling. And eventually we had to admit we missed the mark on, on that project. And we actually had to pretty much divest ourselves of, uh, focusing on that. And the reason we had to do that is because our core products were getting ignored because so many people were invested in this new product that was supposed to be this great next best thing. It's very hard to do because everyone's so emotionally involved. It's like you're a little child and nobody wants to leave their child on the side of the road or something. Right. So it's very difficult to make that decision and it can really be a hit to morale. M. But you know, what I learned from it is two things. Number one, make sure you do proper discovery of the market ahead of time. So many people think they know what the market wants, either based through their own experience or a few, you know, interactions. But it's really important to have a really good marketing group or firm you work with that can help you investigate the market and really make sure your idea is what, what it needs. So that's, that's the first thing I would say. And then the second thing, make gates in your process. So we waited too long to bail on that. We probably should have known six months into it that, you know, this wasn't going the way we thought it was going to go. There wasn't the excitement generated at, you know, the early adopter phase, etc. You can always rationalize why it's not going well. Um, but you have to be honest with yourself. Um, so that would be the second thing. If you're going to fail, fail fast, don't drag it on and then end up in this big black hole of money that you could have spent on some other part of the business to make it better and instead you kind of flushed it down the toilet. Right. So that, that's one thing I've learned bringing it to my new businesses. I'm very strong, uh, proponent of creativity and experimentation and taking risks. But we need to have, we need to know what our exit strategy is. If the risks are, you know, don't pay off because you can't go down that hole too far.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a rabbit hole, I think. And many emotionally, I always say winners are winners. Right. At the end of the day, you just can't be so emotionally attached to a project. And I've been the creative arm of the companies that I've held and I'm an IDM machine and you know, sometimes so I had to actually give my team the permission to tell me this is not working, scrap it off. And then, you know, and then I'm like, okay, if you say so. I have no team buy in. We got to quit it. So you've said something really important. You know, companies go into launching new products or maybe subsets of those existing products thinking that there is a market. But then market analysis has not been done. Marketing, market investment map has to be so clear that you need to know that when you go into that market, you're either problem solving for a situation that already exists or solve, you know, problem that already exists. And, and how would you be better than others who are solving the same problem? Right. So sometimes that, uh, positioning, but before that positioning is what is the market sizing looking like? So, so very important. I think you, you said some amazing things. I will recap for resilience and discipline. Stick to your plan and stick to your, stick to your lane. Right. And when to know, uh, don't get, uh, distracted by shiny objects. And when you do, uh, do your due diligence to kind of, you know, make sure that you are in the right path. And if you know that this is not the right path, quit fast, uh, fail fast, move on and reinvest in where you have the most strength and stay in your lane. So I think that's, that's great. Um, um, talk to me a little bit about people side of things. You've managed large teams, you've had people, um, you know, that you worked with. Um, talk to me a little bit about who do you think, what are the attributes that you look for when somebody joins your team as an, you know, as an A player, you know, right out of the gate that they're an A player. And, and when you also know that, uh, this is not the right hire, we're not culturally aligned, uh, do you make those kind of calls with people as well and not putting in the spot if you don't answer?

Speaker A: No. I mean, I think you're looking for a certain type of individual in a SaaS company or a start. You're looking for somebody that is comfortable being uncomfortable, um, is comfortable making decisions without all the information because you never have it at the start or you never have enough of it. Um, somebody who's really motivated from within. So you could do everything to create a great culture and a safe environment. But at the end of the day it's very hard to motivate people. Very few people are like, Steve Jobs can go on a stage, motivate people and they're all cheering at the end and, you know, crying and everything. Most general managers aren't like that. Right. Um, so you need people that can be self motivated and really are passionate about what they're doing and what we're trying to achieve. If you can find people like that, obviously they need the technical skills and that, but I always look for the skills that are harder to teach and those sort of soft, intrinsic internal skills are not skills that you can just take a course on to learn. Right. It's, it's a lot harder. Whereas if somebody doesn't know how to do an SQL query, I can put them on a course to learn that. So, you know, I always, I always focus more on the kind of intangibles side of things when I'm interviewing people. And to be fair, most of the time when they get up to me, they've gone through the technical interviews with, you know, the people at the other level. So I don't have to worry as much about that. Right.

Speaker B: So, yeah, no, 100%, I think. Uh, I'm not sure if I. Our audience knows or, you know, but I had run a recruitment firm back before I moved to Canada about 23 years ago, and that was my last gig in India. And we, uh, used to work for banks, and we used to hire for banks. And, um. And I think that carried with me because I, I flipped the hiring funnel within our organization. I actually do the first interview.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.

Speaker B: Because we want to hire for, uh, the right, um, behaviors and attitudes. I don't even want them to go through technical, because if they're good at technical and they've gone through all these assessments, because we put them through hoops for assessments as well, I don't want to waste their time. They could be great at what they do. But if they don't have the right behaviors, the right disciplines, right motivation, as you said, or the attitude to be there and to be present and to learn and to grow and to kind of take feedback positively and then still work on themselves or even contribute to the team at the highest level will be that voice. I think it's really hard because many, uh, organizations are relying so much on humans. Um, I'm not sure for how long, because AI is going to change all of that for us, but I think human factor will never be able to. We'll never be able to steal that because I think being decisive and empathetic at the same time, it's a hard skill to find. Right. And for us as leaders also, um, uh, as leaders, we have to balance that. So it sounds.

Speaker A: I'd also say resiliency is really important.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, with everything going on in the world and social media and just all the things that work and. And this instant, oh, the numbers are in. What are we going to do? Like, you need to be able to compartmentalize that, Go home, refresh, and come back the next day. Refresh. Right. So the resiliency is really important too.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, um, you said two really good things. Resiliency is very important. But I think, um, folks who can prioritize rest. I find that on teams, you know, when people are doing too much over the weekends and it's their time off. But I think when. When we're doing too much, we're different. You know, you're not able to kind of focus on. Then you come back not as inspired, I would say, to work or you're pretty tired. So I think for younger folks who want to do a lot Just, just know that you know, if you want a four, four day work week then yeah, find that and then take the time to rest, appropriate time to rest and come back. I think it's so important um, people biggest strength for all of us and leaders, uh, we are very important. Um, and scaling, um, you know SAS business, especially in transportation and security. Security, I think I want to touch upon that as well because right now you're with airport security and you know you're in unique spaces for SAS which is you know transportation and airport security. Both what um makes scaling in those sectors different than, than those that are very common sectors. Like you know SAS could be a subscription based $39, um, you know, monthly recurring revenue or you can have an annual contract value which is in over $500,000 or more. And scaling that kind of business, what's the different mindset that you need?

Speaker A: I think scaling has a lot of um, similar challenges as you go through the different businesses. And one of the most important um, things about scaling is process. Often startups rely on just the individual's capabilities. Can they do more, can they do this faster? Can they teach someone else to do this faster? But that only gets you so far when you start having to bring in a lot more people. The only way to scale quickly is you have to have a good process. How do you onboard these people? How do you get them familiar with your processes, the metrics you need to meet, how uh, everyone's measured and what's going on in the industry and what the key skills and acronyms are. You need a process to be able to do that quickly because you can't always find an expert from the field to bring in. If you need like 50 people, well sure you might be able to find 5 or 10 from the field that are easy but how are you going to get those other 40 on board that don't have that? So process and onboarding, um, scale is really important. Um, and that's the thing that I find is usually overlooked. A lot of companies I go to don't really have an onboarding plan. Like that's one of the first things I asked when I started a company is what, what's your onboarding plan? And a lot of times you get, well, you kind of shadow this guy and you can come in on these meetings and listen in. And I went that's not an onboarding plan. Um, so you know I think that's, that's really important to scale is and to me that, that goes across industries. Doesn't matter what industry and if to scale properly, you have to have a way, um, to have a repeatable process that you can successfully repeat. And onboard people.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think turnkey processes across the board, across all functions from prospecting to close one to retention, I think they're so important, so critical. Uh, we've been able to build and that's how we've been able to scale. Um, and, and we all, like people always come back to us and say, how do you do this? I'm like, yeah, we've got systems and we've got teams trained on it. And every time we look at our systems when there are inefficiencies, we take feedback very seriously. If, let's say there's something broken or the client feedback didn't come out the way at a level that we expected it to be, after following the process, we got to go back and rejig the entire process to say, hey, can we create more efficiencies? And especially now with all the agentic talks, uh, that we're doing. Um, so when you talk about onboarding, um, I have an experience. Just recently we started working with an agency, um, to do some of our outbound and whatnot. Onboarding was so kick ass.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Which made me reflect on our onboarding. I'm like, man, this is such seamless onboarding. Um, I'm super impressed. Experience is great. But post onboarding there was such a huge gap. Boom. This is what happens. You do the sales, you do the onboarding. But as you said, onboarding, it doesn't stop in onboarding. The processes don't stop at onboarding. Processes must continue post onboarding as well. So there's turnkey systems throughout your gtm. I think that's what you're referring to and I think that's such a critical aspect of it. Now we're so heavily reliant on people and technology. Right. And technology is taking more center stage.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So how, how do you think I can shift the entire playbook from, from, uh, in different aspects? Have you been testing it out? What are, what are you, what is your take? How can SaaS companies scale using AI and make it more efficient and profitable?

Speaker A: First of all, let me caveat this with you have to use it properly. AI is not perfect. Sometimes it will hallucinate, I think is the term they use where it comes up with random stuff that you don't know where it got it from. But if you look at a technology company, there's two main areas that AI can really help. The first is in onboarding and support. So, for example, you can put your user guide and all your release notes into AI and then a new person coming on your team can ask IT questions, how do I do this? Setting, how do I do that? And it'll just spit out the answers. It's like a automated training partner with you. So they, on day one, they could take a ticket from a customer, oh, I'm having trouble doing this. They literally put the question in their AI bot and it'll tell them how to do it. And then they tell the customer, well, that can be a game changer. Um, it gets people up to speed quicker and you can do more tickets with the same person because they don't spend as much time spinning their wheels trying to find the answer. So that's one way that can really help you scale. The other side of it is developing software or features. Um, with some of the new AI tools, you can actually put in a specific and it will create and you tell what code to use and it'll write the code, it'll design screens for you and it'll pop out, you know, 90% of what you want, you know, in, you know, sometimes it's hours, you still need people to have to go in, double check, do some, you know, back and forth, trial and error stuff, uh, clean it up. But you're taking your key developers and instead of having them focus on the grunt, code writing part, quite frankly, is not the interesting part for them. They get to focus on is the architecture. Right? How does the UI UX work? How are we going to roll this out? How do all these tie together with the schema? So you still have your people, but, uh, instead of them having to code a whole bunch and then come out with a product, AI can do a lot of the coding and then the people are applying their talents at the end. And we've done this in some projects where we're saving 40, 50% on coding time to get a feature out than if we just did it manually. And so, you know, some people think AI is about, you know, firing people less, less people in the workforce. I don't view it like that at all. I view AI is doing the stuff that they don't want to do anyway. And the stuff that's interesting that they want to do, partnering with ui, they can do those things and they can get things out much faster. There's nothing more exciting for a developer than having a feature released to the field and used. And normally you do that, what, once a quarter? Well, what if you could do that once a week, think how engaged your developers would be. Right. So I think it has tremendous upside as long as it's used responsibly. You got to make sure the security is there, and you got to make sure that, you know, it's not 100% foolproof. So you need the controls and the

Speaker B: process around it and humans to watch. All right. You definitely need humans, the quality assurance. Wow. So many great things. I made some notes here. I have some questions. Um, you know, you mentioned about imagine the engagement of the developers, and I want to flip that over and say, imagine the engagement of customers. How further ahead would you be in the market around your product, in your category if you were kind of do that and you're a developer? I'm not a developer, but I run a technology company. Can you imagine 17 years, I don't know how to write one line of code. So this is a bliss for me because now I can go into different tools and softwares. I can create landing pages and send it to my team and say, this is what I want. This is how I want to look. Uh, wipe coding is the new one that I'm testing out. And I'm like, I can learn wipe coding. Maybe I could do a weekend course or some sorts. And my team's like, whoa, back off. Because you're going to be in our business way too much. You already are. So I think, um, yeah, you're absolutely. Say, you know, one of the things that I, uh, say is that responsible use of AI. I was at a, you know, an event in Toronto just this, uh, last week where there's a lot of, um, B2B, AI Venture Studios, women in technology gathered, and we're all talking about use of AI. Responsible AI is very much important. And I'll give our, uh, listeners a link to a podcast that I listened recently from Kathy, uh, Wood from ARK Investments, where she's talking about if we don't do responsible AI, like, you know, we're going to be probably living in Mars by 2045, um, if we don't, because Elon Musk is definitely going to build that tunnel for us. So we have to be really responsible of the use of AI. And for those who are listening, who are marketers and are wondering, or even in any kind of operations, just make sure that you're on the good side of AI, learn about it, how to use it, how to create more efficiencies, more speed, and do it responsibly. And for leaders, I think, uh, we have to give that confidence to our teams to Say hey, it's not replacing your job. I mean in some cases it's the fact that we're all in business. It's a business decision. Sometimes we may have to because that's what the need of the hour is to stay competitive and in business business. But I think for the most part if you are the you know, 1% in the company where you're adopted AI and you know, and you have all the things that Steve has said from a behavior, attitude, resiliency, tenacity standpoint and also the right attitude to adopt and learn and do it, I think you're pretty safe. So, so talking about, you know, where the go to market is, we often talk about tailoring go to market based on buying behaviors. Right. Customers buying behaviors. So how do longer sales cycles or regulatory layers shift your GTM strategy or for that matter, uh, you know, uh, overall forecasting in your business.

Speaker A: It is a challenge when you're in a market where the weed time for sales can be years instead of months or weeks.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: You need a different go to market strategy. Um and typically one of the things we really focus on is influencing. You're influencing not for anything specific necessarily, but you're out there to influence. So when a customer does get to a point they're thinking about buying something or investing in something they could think. I've m been talking to that Steve guy the last 12 months. He seems pretty smart and he was talking to me about some of these things. I'm going to ask him what he thinks. I want to bring out an rfp but I don't know what to put in it. But he seems pretty good. He hasn't tried to sell me anything. He's just kind of stayed in touch. I'm going to talk to him about what I should put in my rfp. That's the type of things you have to do those soft things in these long sales cycles because once they bring the RFP out or the proposal or whatever it is, if mhm. You haven't influenced it, you're in deep trouble. Because they probably already have an idea of who they want and they've probably tailored their RFP so that who they want has requirements in there that only they can do. So it's, it's a really important aspect of sales and you need salespeople that can see the long term and the big picture. Some salespeople, if there isn't low hanging fruit that can get all the time, they get frustrated really quickly. I'm not closing deals, I'm not closing deals. You need the salespeople that can think a lot more out of the box and holistically than that, you know, where do I want to be a year, two years from now in this business and how am I going to get there and what's my plan to get there? Those are the people that are more successful in a market where the GTM has much longer cycles. So again it comes down to the type of individual you need to make sure you're buying, you're hiring the right people. If I was making apples and I sold apples every week, I wouldn't want that person that thinks strategically out two years, right. For aviation. Airports aren't built every week and you know, they don't need financial software every week. So it's, it's a longer sales cycle.

Speaker B: And I think uh, you rightly said think strategically. You need a, you need a farmer, not a hunter right away with longer sales cycles. I think you need somebody who can think strategically, be that consultative, has carried, carries that consultative approach, but also is okay to learn about the product, learn about their, the new market. Especially in your uh, industry, if you're not bringing from within the industry somebody. When the longer sales cycle annual contract value is higher, sales cycles are long. Um, what's the role of the executive team in that business development and also in helping support close one deals? Right. So do you know that in your experience what motivates this BDR function but also what motivates the executive team to get in there? Of course, revenue is the lifeblood for any organization. But what are some of those cadences or some of the tips that you would have for anybody listening in that role who's an executive but now is building a sales team and has to keep them motivated, keep them inspired, but also has to get involved. Any tips there?

Speaker A: I would say this, this goes back to kind of the two other core things we haven't talked about in M in startups. Number one, strategy and number two being nimble. And it's a very important combination when you have these types of situations. If I start with the strategy, you need everybody to be in alignment because to get through those cycles you need to have a strategy and you need to stick with it. Um, you can't be going all over the place. So for example, in all my businesses we have a strategy retreat where we take the whole executive team out. Usually we do something like rent a big house, we eat meals together, have some laughs. I have one coming up where I'm taking my team on a brewery tour. And we're going to have T shirts just for the event. So really building the team, but most importantly, working together for three days on crafting the strategy. And it's a team output. So if we want to, if we have a goal of winning this, these many deals that this much value in a year, how are we going to get there? What is sales going to do? What is client care going to do to support what is, you know, what am I going to do as, as the leader, um, what does R D have to do? Etc? Right. And we leave that meeting with everybody in alignment as to what they can do to support each other. But then once you have the strategy, you also need to be nimble. So you need to be able to make decisions quickly and see what's happening in the business, in the market. And to do that, you need the right culture. You need to have a culture where people feel safe bringing up their ideas and their concerns and their thoughts. I have this rule in my strategy meetings. If we all agree on something, we're probably missing something because that's not a good sign if we're all just agreeing on things.

Speaker B: Yeah, you don't want yes people. You want.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And even worse, even if none of us are yes people, but we all still agree. We're like, okay, well, we must be missing something. So then I try to bring in somebody else, maybe with different experiences, but everyone is buying spots, including the gm. So you need to make sure you have your whole business offering this feedback transparently so that you can make sure you're making those little nimble adjustments along the way. You're not pivoting and going totally in different directions, like the squirrel or shiny box example, but you're making these little pivots back and forth, kind of like you do when you're driving. You make little adjustments to stay in the lane. That's what you need to do during the year, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, as long as you're not the bad, uh, navigator like me who kind of fails the GPS sometimes. So nobody touched the gbs, right?

Speaker A: The AI is not always right on Google either.

Speaker B: Yeah, but I want to correct myself. And I mean on business level, I'm okay just in the traffic and road. I just like to enjoy my drives, maybe. So, um, so you said something very important. You know, you got to have bring that clarity, alignment and, you know, trust. That's a CAT framework I borrowed from Sangram, uh, at the GTM Partners. Um, you know, clarity, alignment and trust. And that's very important. Having said that, you also said that, you know, if you're all agreeing to the same thing, we probably are not doing something right. So you challenge yourselves. And then staying nimble and pivoting here and there is good. But how do you kind of. Do you have a framework for making decisions? Because you can't be making all decisions. But do you, when you give your team the trust to make those decisions, do you guys have some framework? And that's one part of the question. And the second part of the question is, Steve, sometimes it's all good. Strategy is great, you know, but we got hit by Covid, we got hit by AI. I just heard, um, so many layoffs are happening anyway, so I just want to know when there is a solid strategy. How do you stay on track with that strategy month over month, even after? And don't let those shiny objects creep in, even if the industry is going somewhere else or something new is being bombarded at you at a conference, a new newsletter, a new group. So the two parts to that.

Speaker A: It's actually a really good point, strategy. And sticking to your strategy is important, but it can't be, uh, at any cost. There will be times where something transformative happens in the market or in the world. And because of that, you do have to do a major pivot and you, your old strategy is no longer valid. It's recognizing that that's important. If I go back to one of the first things we were talking about, that project I had to bail on because we stuck with it too long.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: This is an example. If something like Covid or tariffs hit in the industry you're in, you can't just wait and say, nope, we're sticking to our strategy. We're going to get through this. Like, at that point, you have to decide, you know, this strategy was great for that environment and that set of world events. This is different. We need a new strategy and you have to do a major pivot. So that's part of being honest with constantly evaluating what's going on. You know, the biggest, one of the biggest Canadian examples of somebody sticking to their strategy, strategy with blinders on and not seeing what was going on around them is BlackBerry. They were the leaders. They were number one. Everyone had them. Apple brings this thin, though. They're like, ah, there's no way. It doesn't have a keyboard that can't compete with us. And look what happened. And I use that all the time. Um, with my team. If that can happen to BlackBerry, a billion dollar company with the smartest people in the world.

Speaker B: Well, Apple has to stay on their toes just on the, um. I'm, um, digressing because I can foresee with all that Elon is doing and all the robotics and AI is going to do, I think iPhone's still not getting there, although they have such a huge, huge market share of people using their product. And I think they need to pivot very, very quickly. Otherwise things going to be changing by 2027, 2030, I think 100%. So. You're absolutely right. Pivot at the right time on my playlist is, um, uh, you know, there's a song. You need to know when to quit. Um, and, and I think, and I think that's what is important. And we've been talking about quitting and quitting is for winners. Um, but in this entire process, when you're shifting your strategy, you're pivoting. You got team, team, buy in, team. So I'm going to go back and say, do you have a kind of a cadence or a ritual or some sort of a way, ah, that you can still keep the team engaged, motivated or. Because, you know, one of the biggest. We talked about team alignment and good go to market execution. Everyone needs to be aligned. Everyone needs to know this is the strategy. We're aligned. But here's that. Now's the time to pivot. Do you have some sort of a ritual or cadence that you could pass or framework for that matter?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and it's really quite simple. We have monthly town halls where basically I will get on the town hall for the first 50 minutes. I'll give an overview of the business, where we're headed, what's happened, any changes. I burn on each one of my leaders. They go over what's happening in their area and what our plan is. The output of that meeting is if there's any questions. But then the leaders go off and they have their team meetings like they always do, and they talk about, you know, what do we have to change given what we just heard. Right. And we do it every single month. Lots of companies do it twice a year or once a quarter, and it ends up being just a whole gaggle of information. Ours aren't like that. Ours are very specific. Today we won this deal, or yesterday we got this feedback from the market. We're concerned about this. So this is what we're going to do. Very specific, um, information that really helps staff understand what's different this month, what's coming up next month. M. Right. And if they understand that, then they can help be part of the solution and they can think of, oh, did you think of this? What about this? Right.

Speaker B: It's a little bit more engagement and buy in and I think they own it rather than they being told we, we do it quarterly. Uh, we're not as large as you guys. Maybe so so. But regardless, it should be done monthly. We used to do monthly, then we moved to quarterly and then I think we now need to move to monthly.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I know lots of people that move to quarterly. Yeah. Um, and there's reasons to do it. But I find you if lose the momentum quarters where it's fine because not a lot changes, then you have some quarters where a lot of stuff changes and that's when you run into trouble just trying to do a quarterly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think now's the time for us to also move monthly only because of all the shifts and all that we are doing internally. I think they need to be communicated. So that's great. Good point. See, I told you I'm going to be learning so much from you. Free mentoring for me. Uh, um, so, um, question for you. In terms of metrics, you know, we talked about longer sales cycles, we talk about profitability. Um, are there any specific metrics or two to three numbers that you consider your north stars and how do you balance, um, the lagging indicators like revenue with leading ones like NRR and you know, pipeline coverage, et cetera or CS health even?

Speaker A: Yeah. Probably the two biggest things I look at are attrition and funnel creation. Attrition really tells me, you know, because SaaS is all about you get these regular payments in M. So the amount of attrition I have tells me how secure is that base. So if I don't have a bad year and I don't bring in a lot of new business, how secure is that base I have now that will keep me running while I'm trying to figure out how to get more business. Mhm. So if your attrition is too high, like I said before, you can bring in new business. But if it goes out the door, you're not any better off. So I really focus on attrition and put a high emphasis on that. I look at the other side, the funnel, because if the funnel's building, things are going in the right direction. Your probabilities, things are moving up the funnel and becoming more mature, higher likelihood to close, close dates are getting closer and you see this progression, then you have confidence of what you think is going to come, which can help you predict what sales will come, which can Help you predict what do you have to do in your business to prepare for those sales?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: You need to be able to see what's coming. Right. If I don't see stuff coming, then I'm like, okay, do I need to do something then to protect the business? Because if I'm not going to have this extra revenue coming, do I then have too, uh, many people or do I have people in the wrong roles? Do I not have enough sales people or do I not have a good marketing partner? And that's why I'm not getting leads. Like, you need to figure out how can I fix that funnel problem? Just like how can I fix the attrition problem? If you have the front end working well and you have the back end working well, then the middle generally is a lot easier because it's just about process and making sure you have staff that can execute. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And you have a good product, then, you know, and then you solve the problem.

Speaker A: It's a lot more predictable, but it becomes really unpredictable if one of those two ends is not working.

Speaker B: Yeah. Pipeline coverage is, uh, the one thing that I always hear from our customers and even the prospects. I think you're right. Um, you know, it's funny you say that because one of the management objectives in 2018, I think was revenue. And then when Covid hit, I did a five year plan for our company, strategic plan, I said, okay. Met with my team and other people at the time and my business consultants and we pointed out that we are not, you know, one of our objectives needs to be not revenue. Revenue. It has to be what is our funnel value. So we always keep an eye on funnel value and nrr, of course, which carries retention as well. So that's great that we're aligned. Um, um, so when you talk about, uh, I mean, you know, different metrics as a general manager, but obviously, you know, being part of the firm, we, you know, backed companies and sometimes, you know, your SaaS business are funded. Um, what's the one advice that you would tell a, uh, newer general manager or those who've not been as tenured as yourselves in the role, uh, when they have to report to the board what are the metrics the board is interested in?

Speaker A: You know, I find what boards want to hear is you have a strategy, you, you can see where the unsightly areas of the company are and you have a plan to improve those areas. M. So it really is whatever metric joins in with the areas of the company. You know, the board is going to say, this doesn't look very good. Mhm. That's what you want to get on top of giving them this metric that's great. They're not going to look at that. They're looking at what's not great. So being proactive and getting in front of that and figure out what metrics do I have to show that I'm going to be working on changing or I've maybe hopefully already shown some change in that will make this part of the business better. That's always something I focus on. The other thing I would tell, um, executives that come into SaaS businesses, especially if they come into an existing business, which happens a lot, people come in, you know, they get a new GM or CEO, a lot of people, the first thing they look at are the people. And then they try to figure out what changes to make. I always think the first thing you should look at is the process and the culture. Mhm. And then look at people last. Because in my experience it's not usually the people. Usually the people are good people. They know what they're doing, they're smart, they want to do well. And if things aren't going well, it's because either the process is broken or the culture is not good or something like that. So I always look at those things first before I really deep dive into the people. People. Um, and I. Otherwise you can end up fixing the people and you just bring more people in that fail just as badly because of the same problems of culture and process are still there. So that's, that's one of the things I always try to look at when I come into a new business.

Speaker B: Yeah, throwing more people at a problem is not the solution ever. Uh, I think, I think you're right. If you've done a great job of hiring, your job as a leader is to make sure that they're successful. Successful. And that comes from listening to them. Process optimization. Making sure that they're trained well on your processes and they understand the responsibilities in the role. So great points. But yeah, sometimes, you know, I hear, um, when I'm in VCNP networks, uh, that, you know, responding to boards are sometimes, uh, people are sweating over it a lot because boards are not going to give you the funding if they don't see the numbers, uh, which are in. Of course, you know, they want to see the return as fast as we can. But the times have changed over the last three years, four years, you know, and the payback period is not as strong as it used to be. And growth at all costs is not what we want to do. So when we talk about culture, accountability, um, and decision making, what do best SaaS, teams, uh, when it comes to decision making, speed, especially when we talked about culture, we talked about alignment, accountability as well. I find sometimes teams are not given the power to make decisions, uh, and then the speed at which decisions are being made in the company. Any, any pointers there, any tips there? How do you empower teams there?

Speaker A: First of all, I think you make it clear it's part of their, their job description and autonomy. So many leaders want everything to come to them to get approval and that just kills creativity. Right? So you know, for example we, we have levels in our business where you know, I can sign up to a certain level. If it's above this level, I have to go up to our parent to get someone to sign it. Right. I mhm. Would recommend doing the same the other way. So what are you comfortable giving to say your, your professional services manager to sign off on without him having to talk to you, Give him some pointers on what to look for. Here's the risks. I want to make sure you're mitigating, but I don't need you to talk to me. If you're comfortable with this, you can sign it. And you know, there might be the odd one. He signs that, you look at him and go, gee, you probably should have come to me. This has some weird claws in it. Um, but they learn from that. That's how you learn, right? And you have to allow your people to make mistakes because you know, it's a cliche, but that is how we all learn the best. You remember your mistakes far more than your wins when you're learning, right?

Speaker B: So yeah, as long as you really

Speaker A: have to step back and get out of people's way to make some of these decisions.

Speaker B: We use the decision making framework. It was just very, you know, simple framework we built. But I think every organization, as you said, you either give your team the framework or some sort of a, um, boundary line to say this is what your dream, you know, frameworks are. Um, I read a book from Dan Martell about a long time ago. He said, you know, I give people a budget and say on my team, if this is how much it means to solve a problem, retain a customer, whatnot, these are your budget lines. Don't come to me, spend this money, you know, and just do it. But you go back and report to me and say, how much money did you spend in a month and what actions did you take to prevent it from happening in the future? You know, so I like that, like that analogy as well to give them the authority to say, um, but sometimes budgets may not be the way to solve a problem. You can't throw money at problems. So, um, Steve, um, one last question.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: I've taken a whole lot of your time. Um, do you really think investors, um, and you know, investors are rewarding predictability more now than before? And what advice would you give to an early stage SaaS leader who's got up and growing at all costs?

Speaker A: I really think we're moving out of the grow at all cost sort of environment and into grow with a purpose. I still think they want to see people grow quickly. That's what everyone wants. You want to get, you know, your, your value out of your investment. You know, you have to be able to grow, otherwise, you know, what's the point of this? But you have to grow in a way that you can sustain the growth and plan for the growth. And so what I would say is the most important thing at the start is figure out how fast you want to grow, but then figure out what's the plan to support that growth sustainably. And sustainably doesn't mean every year you need another $100 million you got to inject in the company because eventually there won't be someone to give you another $100 million dollars. You need to take your initial investments and figure out how to turn that into a, ah, self propelling engine that you don't need to keep flying gas from someone. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah, self propelling engine fast. And so I think that there is a lot of things that Steve's talked, you've talked about today. I think um, this has been a masterclass in leading, growing, uh, scaling and building a culture environment team. I mean everything we talked about under the sun I think. Um, so before we close, um, if you um, you know, wanted to let our audience know how to find you, how to connect with you. I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who would love to connect with you Steve. So can they find you on LinkedIn any other ways?

Speaker A: Yep, just Steve Dueis on LinkedIn. I'm all over the place there. I post stuff all the time and also, you know, I, my business name right now is tadera. So steve.dewistadera.com can reach me by email as well.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being so generous with all that you've shared. You've shared from the heart and I think you're definitely building a purposeful and you've always done that. So it's been a pleasure knowing you over the last so many years. Steven thank you very, very much for joining. And for those of us, uh, who meet at Fuel youl Marketing, please keep sharing this podcast and, uh, spreading the goodness. If there is anything that you'd like to hear more from our guests, please post it directly. Um, and if you found this conversation helpful, uh, please make sure that you subscribe to the Fuel youl Marketing podcast again. Until next time, keep fueling growth and with clarity, culture and purpose. Thank you for joining.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Fuel youl Marketing Podcast.

Speaker B: For more episodes, visit www.fuelyourmarketing. Com.