The Go-to-Market Operating Model Built for Scale with Greg Leach

Speaker A: So we have our growth PM that's accountable on driving like conversion rate of plg and then we have our sales team that is ultimately accountable on converting more leads into our funnel. So we've almost built it in a way that like each person, the funnel has accountability. And how we work is we basically just have like different rituals. So we meet on a weekly basis, usually on Tuesdays where we review like our scorecard and a funnel and each person has a specific owner of that. And the way we plan is in these like pod like structures as a company actually

Speaker B: no BS news about B2B go to market. This is GTM news desk with me, your host Mark Killens and my co host for this season.

Speaker C: I'm Natalie Marchelio. I'm going to talk about what's going on with Go to Market.

Speaker B: What's up Natalie? It's been a little bit since we chatted.

Speaker C: I know I was on vacation for a little. So we took a little break from recording and then I think we both just like we're traveling, had busy schedules. You know, classic like summertime's kind of starting to roll around and plans are coming back up.

Speaker B: How's vacay?

Speaker C: It was great. I uh, went to Vietnam which was my first time in Asia ever and it was incredible. Food was great views and nature was beautiful. It's. I've ah, been back officially like a week ish now and obviously love being back but it's been a little hard adjusting.

Speaker B: Favorite thing you ate and favorite thing you saw.

Speaker C: That's so hard. I am going to cheat. I'm going to say a savory and a sweet thing. It was just like a noodle dish that was really good that you dipped into. Usually it would be fish sauce but I'm vegetarian so like a vegetarian version of that and then tofu as well. But like the best tofu I've ever had and then sweet. We had this like coconut ice cream that the coconuts there are just unmatched.

Speaker B: Okay, and how about what you saw? What was your favorite thing that you visited or saw?

Speaker C: I'm going to cheat again. There are two things we did day trips to Ha Long Bay and uh, did a hike in Homestay and Sapo region. And both were gorgeous. Like one's beautiful water, huge jut out like rock structures. The other is these insane mountains that have like a bunch of rice paddies. So it looks like they're just like, I mean they are cut into and it just the views of it look incredible. So can't go Wrong.

Speaker B: Yes. Yes.

Speaker A: I need to take a vacation.

Speaker B: This is a good reminder. I need even. Even though we will probably be with my three kids, I still need a vacation.

Speaker C: Go. Go somewhere with some nice nature and good food.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the kids club. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, us in B2B, Natalie, we're just inundated with AI. It's like, I don't know, I'm sick of it. But it is the place we live. And you know, you and I were chatting about Benedict Evans, who, uh, I've probably followed for 10 plus years at least. I used to work at Ah, A16Z. Now he's been doing his own thing for six, seven years. Was on Lenny's podcast. And you listen to Lenny's podcast probably more than I do.

Speaker C: It sounds like a bit. I pick and choose and it's funny because this one's on my list. I did give myself a little AI break during my vacation, so I need to get back to all my podcasts. But I will say, and we were talking about this before, I. I have found some of Lenny's podcast. Great. I found recently it's just like a lot of really like, you know, uh, Open Claw runs my whole marketing or like, you know, replaced all this with AI. So I've been not listening to as much. But I was really excited to see this interview. I haven't listened to it yet, but I know you have.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've listened to this interview with Benedict Evans and Lenny. It just came out. Benedict Evans does a report every six or so months. If you didn't know, definitely check out his website. He's got all of his reports. And this one that he did was kind of basically the state of AI, but not from the B2B perspective. Just like global macro AI adoption, um, sentiment. Yeah, sure, there's some B2B stuff in there. But like it was refreshing because I think if you're listening to this and you're in B2B, especially B2B, go to market, you're like, we're definitely in an echo chamber. I think Natalie. And you feel probably overwhelmed.

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know anyone who. I think we were just saying this, who like in B2B, both isn't using cloud like so much that they feel like they talk to it too much, but also feels like, oh, I don't know anything about using AI. Like, everyone I talk to both uses AI daily and feels maybe overwhelmed by that. But also if you ask them to like share how they're using it, they're like, oh, but I know nothing.

Speaker B: So, yeah, we'll drop this link in the, in the show notes, check it out. Some things to pull out, though, because to your point around, like, using AI, what Benedict found is about 15 to 20% of the people that he was able to find data on. Uh, he finds data usually through, you know, reports that are public. He doesn't do, I think, really any true data collection. He just does the analysis of this data that he can find that's publicly or maybe semi publicly available. 15 to 20% of the people, again, from the data sets you could find are using it every day. That's it. They show like 1 out of 5 people are using it every day. Which, when I saw that and heard that, I was like, that's like. That was m. I was like, mind blown again in our echo chamber. It's like you have to be using. Not you're using AI every hour, every minute. Natalie, it's like, what is going on here? It's like. So, like, I just think we could take a zoom out here and like, we're still super early. He's comparing it to like 1997 in a way.

Speaker C: I actually wanted to click on that because I, again, I haven't listened to the full thing yet. But I think one thing that I've a talk track I'm a little sick of is hearing this is the Industrial Revolution. This is the typewriter also, because it acts as if those things were only positive or that they talk about any of the negatives of it. It's like, oh, but, you know, it might have been negative, but people eventually got over it. Like, it is not giving any credence to any, uh, of the negatives to it. And I really appreciate that. He's like, no, this isn't the Industrial Revolution of the typewri. This is pre.com, which obviously the Internet has been an amazing thing. But let's not try to pretend there wasn't a huge hype bubble around dot com and a lot of things that didn't work out. A lot of startups that failed in dot com era, I, I just, I think, uh, whether or not it's true, I appreciate that framing more than pretending it's this global shift that was only positive. And of course we had to do the Industrial Revolution. And if you were behind, you know, those workers eventually got on board with

Speaker B: it, things will get better. Like normally, you know that to Benedict's point, he's like, look, out of all the major changes in the last 200225 years. There's definitely hard times. You know, he talks about, I think how like some towns and you can see this in certain times of history, you know, kind of get hollowed out, things change, jobs go away, but then we get richer, new jobs get created. The society is a benefit overall, you know, gets a net positive, you know, from these changes. Always both there's harm, but there's a lot of positives as well. And yeah, I just, I just think there's a lot of polarization right now, like taking hard, extreme sides and even from CEOs, like, you know, you got to use AI, got to do this, you got to do this. And now, recently, in the last month or so, as I'm sure some of you have seen, like they're taking a step back. They're like, no, no, we're kind of being hyperbolic here with this stuff. Like, let's tone this down a bit. Yeah, it's just, I think people are tired, but at the same time, Natalie, they don't know exactly what to do. Honestly. Like, they just, they don't know what to do. Like they're just, we're so early, you know what I mean? I don't know, like, I have to use it, but like, like I don't know what to do like, other than like what's right in front of me. Like, I, I don't see, like the application layer is so new in terms of what's being developed on AI right now. It's so new.

Speaker C: I keep joking. I just can't wait till AI basically like Excel how we view it the same way where it's like, you probably get standard coaching about it. No one, no one ever told you, like, you were never positioned in Excel in college. Like it was revolutionary, going to change the world. But was it like, is this a helpful tool to automate a lot of things you're going to do and like, are you going to use it almost every day? Yeah. But no, like it wasn't positioned in a way like it was, you know, going to replace your entire team or could save the universe. I just, I'm waiting for the day that AI gets to that and I feel like we're starting with some of the return to reality. Get a little bit to that phase of like, yes, you can use it in a day to day for specific things. Here are the specific way you use it, but here also ways you would never use it. Like, you would never use Excel for like a lot of creative work or things like that. I, uh, don't know. That's my hope one day that we can get there. Yeah.

Speaker B: And actually our guest, we talked to Greg before this so we'll give a little sneak preview now. In that conversation he gave some amazing examples and advice on how to think about how to structure your go to market teams. Especially if you're a business at this tipping point of like 150, 200 employees. Got to listen to Greg's conversation but we never, did you notice we never talked about AI in that conversation.

Speaker C: I think he maybe said it once but yes. And I was going to say I think this is where I'm seeing a lot of companies struggle and where I think the great company is going to come uh, ahead is because everyone's like well I don't need employees anymore. If you're not thinking about employees you're not thinking about org structure and oftentimes especially more at the scale up phase. That is what separates companies apart. And talking to Greg it was just like oh my God, like anyone who would implement M this would get ahead and this company would be so much more successful. And like anytime I think we both probably run maybe not done those exact pods but when you work in that type of like really highly focused cross functional group you see how efficient it is. I just don't see a world where agents do that effectively. And I feel like so many companies are going to struggle because they're forgetting about org structure and systems because in theory they don't have to if they just have their agents doing everything.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. I am going to give you one more thing folks. Listening. I'm going to find this right now and send it to Natalie. So I don't think the term agents mean anything. Like there's there's some hot debates inside my company about this. Drop this in the chat. We'll make sure that this is in the show notes. But this is an article from AdventuresInClawed AI. That's the website AdventuresInClaw AI. I actually am m forgetting on who writes this website slash article. Someone by the name of Finn I believe. I mean it is an awesome articulation of what the heck is even an agent. And basically like most of the shit that we see right now and uh, like see and also use and also like just basically position our products as they're not really agents. It's kind of just bs.

Speaker C: Oh yeah. I mean we love to hype onto a word of marketing and overuse it. I've always seen agents just like workflows in my mind I'm just like, there just are multiple things rather than like one AI thing. It is multiple working together. I feel like we've invented all these new terms. Like I always say, like, why is it an mvp? Why can't it just be an integration? Because that's what it is. But like, we've invented all these terms for things that exists.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: I mean, classic marketing. We always have to do this because, you know, what else would we put in our headlines if we didn't have agents?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, everything from inbound marketing, conversational marketing. Like, everything. Like, I'm super guilty of this. I do think it helps with. I mean, you have to name something if something's new novel. I think the naming of it does matter to some degree. But at the same time, you know, once you reach a certain point, you know, if the name makes sense, even if it's complicated, like API, like Application Programming Interface, like technically, that's an acronym. I know it stands for three words. But like, you know, I think MCP is the new API, basically. Right. So it's like it's stuck. And like we have now. It's now beyond the, uh, I think agents, though. I don't know if that's going to stick fully. I'm like, I'm skeptical, Natalie. I am, I am skeptical.

Speaker C: I think it will probably hopefully get more narrow. Like we'll just get more defined with it. I don't know. But I hope. I don't care if people continue to talk about agents. What I want to hear less of is like the equivalent of an agent, like a human. I don't care when people are talking about agents again, like a workflow or they're just doing multiple things. But another thing we were talking about before is like one article that lives like rent free in my mind is one I read from Jason Lemkin where he talked about how like he has, you know, of course his whole marketing team is agents now and how they like bully him and how he's basically depressed from it, which is shocking. But like, that type of talking about agents that I'm sick of, like, why can't again it just be like a workflow? We don't have to equate it as like, this is appy. She is my demand gen agent. Like, no, that's just a demand gen workflow that you probably still need a human to supervise. Or else if you just let it be all agents, apparently they bully you and you become depressed.

Speaker B: And you could also make the argument

Speaker A: that just could just be a Chatbot.

Speaker B: Like a lot of these things people are calling agents to your point, I believe are just more like chat bots, just way better than chat bots that, you know around five, six years ago. But yeah, are they, I think you're right with the workflow. Are they really doing work autonomously and they have a system like hardware set up to help them do that work autonomously? Like, I don't know, it's a stretch. So yeah, this, this conversation with Greg around the pods within their go to market setup between pre and post sale teams was very refreshing. Tons of knowledge, bombs dropped. So definitely check that out. And yeah, feel free to check out what we just talked about, the, the two articles, Lenny's podcast. But yeah, I just, I'm definitely looking forward to the rotation out of some of this stuff. I hope it comes as like a Christmas holiday present for us later this

Speaker C: year maybe hopefully even in the summer. And hopefully that means you can take a little break too.

Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be nice. That'd be nice. All right, let's get to uh, the conversation with Greg, Natalie. Hey folks, welcome to the main featured conversation for today. I am with Natalie and Greg. Greg, what's going on? Where are you located again?

Speaker A: Hi there. I am located in Toronto.

Speaker B: Toronto. That is one city I've not been to that I really want to go to.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. Very, very, very similar weather than anything, anything up like around like the east coast. I think you mentioned you're in Boston, so. Yes, we deal with both the great hot humid summers and also the freezing cold winters.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Natalie's in New York, I'm in Boston. We got Toronto now. It's kind of like a triangle. Yes, kind of.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well Greg, you've been in uh, B2B SaaS. Sounds like you have a pretty extensive like product led growth background to some degree like growth marketing type stuff. Yeah. Tell us more a little bit about your background.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. A little bit about myself. I've probably worked uh at like all different levels of stage of like a tech company from series A all the way to D to post ipo. Spent a jack of all trades. Maybe a master of a couple things I uh always like to say. Spent a bit a bunch of different roles across like product marketing. Marketing roles. Spend a lot of time in like PLG roles. So like product like growth roles as like a growth pm. Spend a bunch of time in pricing and monetization like overall and ah, it's been the last few years working for a company called Seven Shifts. We're like a vertical SaaS restaurant software that serves both SMB and Mid Market. So we have both like a PLG motion and like a sales motion and figuring out how you work those together. And what I do there now is like we've actually moved into like we call like go to market operators like GM um roles. So like I previously was in charge of all of our like new business revenue. So everything from a lead to conversion across both our PLG and sales funnel and now I'm are like expansion like go to market like gm like leading all things around. How do we get people activated, expanding. How do we reduce turn and contraction and ultimately grow like what you call like net revenue retention overall.

Speaker C: Okay, this was actually my first question because I saw your title and I was like I am so curious about this. What does a director of GM um of expansion revenue mean? But also why aren't more. It's because especially like marketing background product backgrounds focus on expansion revenue. I feel like this is part of the business that we're maybe put some AMs on and we're like okay, you all figure it out. So I would just love to hear one like how you got into that role and then how the company kind of shaped that role.

Speaker A: Yeah. So probably starts with the company first and then secondary high moved into that role. I think we're like I call it like a scale up. Right. You start to really build traction. You have product market fit. And what we were finding as like a business was like we had to go like to think about full funnel. You had to be very cross functional. It just wasn't like one team like hey the sales org owns like expansion revenue as an example or like account management um owns revenue. It's kind of like a revenue system how it all works. And we started to realize that we're all working in silos. So we as an organization wanted to move towards creating almost like a single threaded owner to help with decision making and move into what we call like a pod like structure. So take like a cross functional group together. So if we take uh the expansion side like how do we bring our, our human onboarding team together? Because we are a very big PLG company. We have like a growth team. We have account management as an example there and that account management is also there is like some SDR motions that are associated with that and then how do we bring like our marketing folks more like on the lifecycle marketing and some PMM approach around that and like data and how do we bring that like cross functional team together? So we basically separated by funnel and we wanted to put like one revenue leader that was kind of on charge of all revenue associated on top of funnel and one around like expansion revenue overall. And that's how you know, we moved into that model and the business kind of asked me. I, I was previously what I was doing, I was, I was like basically like our like director of Product growth before. So like it was a natural like fit overall and had to work much more cross functionally. And in that role you go basically you have to go deep, you have to think much more like a GM I'd say and like understanding each functional system. Like not everyone should go to our onboarding team when they get converted as a customer. So which ones are the best ones that should go to onboarding? Which ones should actually have more of a self serve PLG motion? Do we have a really good PLG experience to get you activated? Where are our gaps around that? Do we have a really good expansion model? How do we think about marketing and the right signals that will funnel different campaigns and do those campaigns push you into a self serve motion to upgrade or should that actually go to an account manager? It's all of like the revenue system and how it all kind of comes together and how that's how we operate the company now.

Speaker B: It's pretty interesting, the POD structure. I mean I've heard of POD structures in the past. So let's double click into this a bit more. So like who's in your POD specifically? Like how does this like look exactly? And then how do you guys like work together and like maybe some examples.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So as I mentioned we basically have what we call like our new business POD and our expansion pod. So think about anything from like a lead to converting to become a customer. So let's start on that like that side of the business. So um, our pod structure is there's like one like call it like new business POD leader slash gm. And we have representations from marketing and partnerships because if you think about that that is like driving top of funnel leads into a uh. When there's two ways you can start, you can basically get converted in our funnel. Either you book a demo on our website or you start a trial. Majority of people start trials with us as an example and then some people also can book demos with us. So we have a representation for marketing and representation for partnerships. And then when you, most of the people who start trials with us we have a representation there are basically our growth pm. Basically their job is to like do all the Great things the growth team does to like get people to activate, to get people to convert off of there and creating a really great PLG experience. And then we have one person in there from sales as an example, right? So because we layer on different sales motions. So when someone starts a trial, who should get assigned to sales on day zero, who should get assigned to sales, almost like a rescue motion. I start plg, I get stuck, I'm not going to convert. Well, sales needs to like rescue it as part of that. So we have one representation from sales there and then finally the last person in that like pod, like structure is data, right? Bringing together all the data and insights that we need around that. So that is an example of like a pod structure that we have where each person in the pod has like almost direct ownership in somewhere where we have someone from marketing. So they're like the marketing representation both on like how do we generate more leads so that can include traffic to our website and then also website site into like website conversion. And then once you're in the funnel, then we have both a PLG motion, a sales motion. So we have our growth PM that's accountable on driving like conversion rate, um, of plg and then we have our sales team that is ultimately accountable on converting more leads into our funnel. So we've almost built it in a way that like each person at the funnel has accountability. And how we work is we basically just have like different rituals. So we meet on a weekly basis, usually on Tuesdays where we review like our scorecard in a funnel. And each person has a specific owner of that. And the way we plan is in these like pod like structures as a company actually. So like the way we built road mapping, the way we want to do quarterly planning, the maybe we want to do like H1, H2 planning. We're all working almost like in this pod cross functional structure. So we can then map out dependencies. Because a lot of times what we found previously was like, great marketing wants to do something, but they need the product team to make one change. And they never planned that in the roadmap. So then marketing team is stuck trying to make that one change. I'm sure we've all gone through this type of scenario. So instead what we do on a quarterly basis is like, okay, what is the things we need to do cross functionally and where are the cross functional dependencies? And like that is actually how like we've operated. So we've put like almost like a, call it like a go to market like GM leader to Be accountable on the, like on revenue. And actually helps make decisions easier too because like sometimes you have a decision that marketing wants to do, but that's like a bad decision for sales. So then you need someone to come and kind of come in there to think about the whole picture of revenue to be like, actually what I think we should be doing is X. Right. So it's more like a picture, uh, in this GM model, it's much more like a dotted line structure. So there's like accountability for each of those functional teams into that like GM and owner.

Speaker C: I was going to say it kind of sounds like mini CROs, like the role that you have. It's because ultimately you are responsible obviously. So it sounds like you end a day like the revenue number that comes down to you and obviously your pod. But it's not as much like sales, you must hit quota. And it's kind of like I feel like usually that all just kind of falls on like sales and the sales leader.

Speaker A: Yes. I think that's a great way to, to frame it up. Right. Like uh, all of these like little like go to market GM leaders roll up into like head of revenue overall. So like that is exactly how like we think about it. And, and it's really letting like everyone cross functionally in the company to work within like one system to drive revenue. And think about it, full funnel, right? Not just like, hey, great marketing, get me more leads. Well actually what we actually care about probably more is the quality of those leads in order to improve our conversion rates in our funnel. Right. So like that's like those types of conversations that we have and it's much more like getting. There's a lot of things that you start to scale. You can get misalignment pretty easily and then you get into a bunch of finger pointing. Right. And that happens consistently. This model kind of gets like, that's how we can get rid of all that.

Speaker B: Yeah, you want the, the hand raisers at the end of the day, right? Like it's not like your two type of hand raisers are like trials and, and demo requests which you know, keeps people very focused on, on that quality.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very much so. Right. Like we, we look at like trying to bring like what's the quality? We have like a quality metric. That's actually what we optimize for in leads. So we're like, here's the quality metric. These are like IC. We call them like our ICPs, right. So like we find like these ICP matches. Great, let's bring them in the funnel. Then once they're in the funnel we then assign on day zero like who actually should be like in a self serve motion and who should go directly to sales instantly. And then we identify of uh, the people that like start self serve and PLG who are like, who need to be rescued. Right. So we have like a trigger that's like great. We see that they need actually help. They've gotten some value. We now need to sign that to like in uh, like an SDR or sales team and then all potentially even over to our like AE as an example. And then we actually take all of our product signals so then they can customize their talk tracks and outreaches based on the user journey they went through. Right. So that's kind of how. And so we're using the underlying like PLG data and funneling that into like our sales assist. We call them our sales assist motions.

Speaker C: I had another follow up question, but I actually remind me of another question earlier was about exactly that sales rescuing bit. Because a lot of feedback I hear about if you're transitioning from a sales LED model to a PLG model, it's like oh my reps don't know how to sell in a PLG fashion and they might not want to because oftentimes I've heard the best sales assist motion is almost a little bit of support. Like it's the sales rep acting more of like, hey, I saw you got stuck, how can I help you? Did you have any. It sounds like you've been PLG for a while, so maybe not. So did you have any that pushback and what particular messaging do you see? Like works well and kind of how do you get the reps on board with it?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little bit different like if you're a trialer versus like your recurring customer. We found a lot of the support example if you have the ability to trial a new plan, if you want to upgrade, if you're a recurring customer. And a lot of the feedback we've got around that is like I actually just have support questions. So like what we learned from that is like that is not a sales assist motion. That is actually a support motion. So like we've now tried to play with like okay, how do we get support involved as an example in those types of conversations and leverage our sales team in different like different ways there on the more like top of funnel starting a trial as an example, we generally find they actually get stuck and they actually need help. There's like we serve restaurants so they're not the most tech savvy in the world. So sometimes they like start something and they get lost and they're like, oh, thank you for reaching out. I have a lot of questions and a lot of times they don't. What we realized what was interesting in our model is like they actually didn't need like an ae, they actually like full demo. They need like an SDR just to like help them with questions and like almost have like a mini demo. And then sometimes I'm like, can I have a trial extension and can you check back in in 20 days? Like it felt what's shifted there is like it feels much more like a product specialist. And to answer your question, like we had to get like a lot of upfront alignment at like a leadership level of like this is the model we're moving towards as a business because it does create conflict. Right. So if you don't have buy in at the top, then of course at the like IC level as an example, that's not going to work. Right. So if you're thinking about moving to these types of motions, you definitely need to think about the system and have alignment at the top of how it's going to work because it changes all the time. And you need to think about like potentially like the sales uh, comp structure and all of those things much differently.

Speaker B: And how many pods do you have? Just like total. I'm just curious.

Speaker A: Yeah, so great question. So right now we have three. Three pods. So we have. Basically the way we think about this is we have like what we call our SMB new business pods. So think about leads that come in. That is all like small businesses, restaurants that come into our funnel. We define that as anywhere under like roughly under 15 restaurant locations as an example. And then we have one on the other side. Once you become a customer you have expansion. And then we have a different selling motion which is we serve mid market. So we also have a mid market like pod as an example. And that's just like uh, a completely different, that's a much more outbound motion. Our SMB is all inbound as an example. It's like no outbound. So it's all like inbound comes in but then m when we go to mid market that is a much bigger like sale. Like we just have a different selling motion as an example. And then the way we think about it, our expansion pod is like it takes both SMB and minmarka together and then it's about like how we expand the whole base. So think about the SMB new business and the mid market pods as ways to like bring in new customers and then you have this expansion pod trying to expand our whole base.

Speaker B: I mean Natalie, I think we should double click into the expansion stuff because I mean Greg, we talk to a lot of people every month and uh, we sometimes get into the post sale side of things. But I feel like for some reason like so many of us just continue to get pulled into like the presale. We need more presale. We need more presale and meaning we need more new customers basically.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like we need more new customers and I think the age of AI and how it's taking shape and hold, I think like partnering and doing more to cultivate relationships with your customers. I know Natalie, you're really good at this. So shout out to you like is so critical uh, at so many different like dimensions not just for revenue but also for long term brand building and like bring down the cost to acquire new customers and all this stuff. So like yeah, I love to double click into this expansion pod and is it truly just like I'm trying to get, we're trying to get more expansion revenue or is it more than that?

Speaker A: Yeah, so the way we think about it, yeah so part of it is how do we get more expansion revenue But I think the way we've like shifted our thinking over time is it like how do we create really great like happy customers also? So it's become much more around how do we get you to activate and adopt. So we spent a lot of time like really defining our core like we call it like activation which we know is like your first like aha moment. And we actually cared way more about adoption which is we call the habit moment. So like how do we understand how you build habit? And we got one step further and because we're a SaaS business, how do what defines plan adoption? So like we're really in the first 30 days we actually care way more about like trying to get you to activate and using our core product and using the core functionality. And like at uh, that point what we said is like the first 30 days isn't actively selling to you. Well you can discover things and you if you're interested in those things go be that. But like we are spending the first 30 days making sure we are getting like the right customers so they're sticky and they don't churn out and then post that we're then thinking that exact thing. How do we expand you? Um, and the way we start to do that is Like, a lot of times businesses, they approach it like, oh, let's go expand all of our customers. We spend a lot of time, like, segmenting our base down to actually identify who actually who we believe have revenue potential and who doesn't have revenue potential. And the people that don't, like, we're not trying to necessarily actively sell to you in a way. We're actually carrying way more about getting you, like, feature adoption. And we have like, core, like, secondary. We have multiple products in our base as an example. So how do we get. How do we get you to drive more feature adoption that then potentially creates like, a strong. Your strong ICP fit for, like, a secondary product we have. That's what we should be carrying much more about that. And then instead we have like, this core base of like, we think about it in two ways. An expansion fit. Like, probably actually three fit, intent and like, revenue potential. So, like, if you're like, as an example, you have high intent, that means that you have, like, your bottom of the funnel ready to convert. So that we funnel those signals into, like, different, like, campaigns we have, as an example, triggering campaigns. And based on that, you could get assigned to, like, and maybe like an SDR as an example, or you get put into, like, a marketing campaign based on your revenue potential. And then on the other side, we have identified fit. So are you a great fit for X product? We expansion product we have. And if you have fit but low intent, you need way more nurturing. So we need to spend a lot more time assigning, like, account management there to potentially nurture you along and get more value and, like, start planting seeds so you can create more intent. Or we leverage like, different marketing automation campaigns to try to do that also. That's kind of how we're thinking about it in the expansion world.

Speaker C: For, um, intent is a lot of that, like, product signals. Like, it seems like a mix of ICP scoring and external signals as far as fit and intent is a lot more like, what are they doing in the product to show, like, they're highly active or maybe they're adding more users. Is that a good way of breaking down?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a very good way to think about that. Like, it's really around, like, a lot of it is in product, like, intense signals. Great. They hit this specific thing we see when someone does that, they're like eight times more likely to want to buy as an example. So that is, like, immediate. We need to, like, outreach. The thing we've been trying to explore more with like, AI right now. Is like third party signal scraping. Like if you do have it, do you search the web in some kind? So that's like the next stage we're trying to think about now is like are there any like third party scraping with like AI now for like scraping tools of like insights that we could connect with customers there? Because that's where it even gets even more powerful. Great. I'm looking for this X product. I might have not done anything in the product itself, but I might have started like my search online to find that thing that I didn't even realize even offer there. So that's like the next stage we're trying to figure out right now.

Speaker B: This is super interesting and how many total people at the company, like just reference point.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're about like 215 people.

Speaker B: So okay, yeah, you're that. I feel like the 150 number is an interesting number of companies. I experienced that twice in my career. It's like when you get to 1:5200 like things start to like you said, kind of get chaotic or they definitely change. So you're at this inflection point.

Speaker C: It's funny you ask because I will admit I was literally just looking on LinkedIn to see how big your company is because I'm like this sounds incredible but I'm also wondering like, and I don't know if you have any insight into this Greg for other companies you're at like I'm like a company because of where like 50 people, like I cannot see a world where we're divided like that. I would love to be divided into these pillars. We just like don't have the resources yet. I guess it's like any tips or recommendations if you're like, you might not have the staff to build a full POD structure but ways you can start thinking about this more. Because I do think there's so much value of having the dedicated resourcing or having different obviously cross departmental groups together, saying we're going to focus on this problem right now.

Speaker A: I would even just start breaking this down to think about start the simplest way in a funnel. Are you trying to new logos as an example or are you trying to expand your base and then off of that I think it doesn't matter if you're like 50 people or plus like you probably can't do that alone and there's probably some type of like cross functional support. So even if you are like trying to generate new logos and let's just say you're a uh, dedicated sales motion of just getting demos as an example. Well then you probably just need a demand gen person to be part of that potentially someone. If that same demand gen person also like drives like the website conversion and then probably need someone from sales like some type of sales manager as an example to like be talking to one another is like the starting point here, right? Because like what happens is like sales is like oh Mark and you sent me really bad leads. Right. And there's actually no alignment on there. But like you know, it's the first step is like hey maybe we should just get like send you like quality of leads like an mql, right? Those are very popular. Well if sales isn't aligned on the definition of MQL and they think they're not good leads as an example then you have like a disconnect. So I think like getting even into very like small like cross functional. Think about it as one funnel and like one customer journey and what teams is a touch along the journey is like starting there. So like even if you don't have this like you're uh, like a bigger org structure, you can start with like just smaller, smaller groups the better because it's easier to make decisions. Right. As you know you add more people in there, harder to make decisions that way and you want to stay away from like decision by consensus.

Speaker C: And it does seem like the GM part is so critical. That case I guess would just be like the founder.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. That could be a founder usually that in a lot of companies that falls into whoever you're like head of revenue is as an example. Right. So you could start there, they could have the ultimate decision making power as part of that and then you have other teams like inputting into that and that's the way I would think about it.

Speaker B: Overall I got a tactical question because uh. Yeah, it's so interesting. You have like the PLG piece. Is it. So it's a free trial PLG motion, is that what it is?

Speaker A: Yeah. So you have a 14 day free trial that you start with us and anyone can start there and yes, and then at the end we don't charge, we don't take your credit card upfront. Like at the end you have to put your credit card in. You can book a demo on our website. We also have a bunch of people come from partnerships that go just directly into sales itself too also.

Speaker B: Fair enough. Okay, and then do you have PLG on the expansion side?

Speaker A: Oh yeah. Actually PLG is what drives most of our expansion revenue.

Speaker B: Okay, this is uh, this is what I want to dig into.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, very much so. Is like, it's actually the way to think about our probably businesses like say like new logo, like 50% is PLG. 50% of sales. And then think about like on the other side like say a primarily like big portion comes from plg. Okay.

Speaker B: So that expansion pod, so growth marketer, product folks like PLG is very as you know, like data. You have engineering, it's like all over the place. Design, engineer, data, marketers. Like you're smiling. So unpack this for us. Because like I just think Natalie, like your business, my business. Like we don't exactly have the same ICP. None of us, uh, all of us have different ICPs, like you know, HR, marketing, revenue teams and then like restaurants. But like I think we all kind of from a price point standpoint, from what I can tell and just like the size of businesses all kind of similar in size, the Persona is different. But like, yeah, I just, I'm feeling like for us we need to do more PLG on the back end. Again, this goes back to Natalie. We do ask selfish questions.

Speaker A: Her point before.

Speaker B: So yeah, I just want to unpack this a bit. Greg, with you. This is fascinating.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. Um, is your question like how it works for us?

Speaker B: Basically how it works. I don't want to like, you know, you don't have to give away all the secrets but like, yeah, how does this work PLG expansion wise.

Speaker A: So like for our business as an example, we serve restaurants like the. You have the ability to move by like plan structure, right. So you can drive like upgrades as an example here. And the other way that we charge is by location, right? So you can imagine restaurants as an example, like you add more locations, you pay per location. So that's like one way. And then we have add ons. So there's like certain product, new products that we've launched as an example that, that you can attach and you can have that, like you can drive that add on. So an example in restaurant space, we've launched like our own payroll product. We've launched our own like like tip management product to manage your tips to make that easier. So like we have these like very specific add ons overall. So a lot of the things that we've built on a lot of our plans. So a lot of our plan structure. A plan like our plan upgrade structure works is like you can upgrade by employee limits. So you hit a certain point where you have that's. I call that like a force upgrade. So like that is like its own PLG motion It's like great. I'm um, on this plan I uh, can have my staff is over 30 employees as an example. So now I'm forced to upgrade. A lot of the primarily way that we also drive people up is actually by features. So like the way you experience the value of those features is like feature discovery. I hit all of a sudden I hit we call a paywall. And in that paywall it's like, hey, do you want to go on a plan trial? That's how it works today. As an example, you could choose to buy up front if you want it. But most of the people want to experience that value before committing to that. So a lot of times in that PLG motion they will go and they will basically just try to upgrade. And through that we have like that set up as an auto conversion because we have your credit card at that point. So like instead we give you 14 days. If you don't, you basically have to like opt out of it because that's the way we've set it up. That's a little bit different than our trial funnel because we don't have your credit card at that point. That's how our motion really works today across both like our add ons and upgrades and then our location expansion. To do that, it's literally just to add a location button in the app. It's actually pretty easy. And by doing that you're charged the same plan price point as for uh, that next location. And then you basically go through whole flow around that and then we charge you that way. And it's been interesting. More of our thing that we've been actually working through is like thinking a lot through how our uh, like sales motions works on top of that because our PLG motions are working so well. So we're trying to think about like where do we place them? Where does it make the most sense? What should we be doing in that motion? Should we try to be push them to do it themselves or should we try to do they actually need sales intervention there? So there's a lot of interesting things we've been trying to experiment around that. We spend a lot of our time in the sales motion trying to identify people that haven't gone into like an actual like expansion trial? As an example, we're focusing on people that maybe like are a great fit but could be getting a lot more out of their plan, but they don't realize that. So that's where we're trying to bring in more of like the human conversation element there. And we try to build what we call like a dynamic book of business for a lot of our like account management teams. So we do it that way and then we actually use like our like SDRs as like I call them like the linchpins in a lot of ways. So their job sometimes like hey, you want to add a location? Yeah, I'm ready. I don't need a demo. I actually just need some help. Well, you have five locations that we can charge you. We're just going to hand you off to our onboarding team. So like that's how we use like our SDRs. In a way they're almost the lynchpin to pre qualify because it's almost like pick your adventure. Like, oh, I actually want to try your upgrade but I don't need a demo on something. Could you just give me like a like an extension on like a plan trial? Oh, here you go right here. We'll give you 30 days and I'll check back in in 30 days. And that's kind of how we set up how our PLG and like sales motions work together.

Speaker B: I'll say one thing because that reminds me so much of inbound success coaches at HubSpot which were basically BDRS sdrs but basically helped and still do to this day, help people use the CRM, use some of those free HubSpot products better basically so that they see more value. They get to that like habit, aha, uh, moment. And then they just buy on their own for the most part. Not always, but sometimes, you know, like it's just, it reminds me a lot about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Maybe like one last thing I'll share like an example of something we tried. So we always try to play around with webinars. So we tried actually one on we've tried webinars with our like existing base. When it's about us, like here's a new product, we're going to sell you on it. No. And like we have very little guptick but like when we make it about like the value that you could get and like how it helps you. So a lot of our features are around like, like labor and how you manage like labor costs in a restaurant. When we do that, tons of people show up and they actually want to use these features. So when you can spin it to them about the value they're getting, then there is like, oh, by the way, we have this other plan and this other add on that could help with you. That to me is like the way to think about expansion selling a lot of ways. It's more of like the value add and then the sell is the after component versus like you need to like you can't take the same way you do on a new logo which is like we're going to sell you up front. It has to be much more of like a nurture play on expansion.

Speaker C: And so you mentioned there are some lifecycle marketers in there because I think part of the reason expansion often doesn't get to that maybe value first approach is because usually again it's like just left the AM team who are sellers, you maybe they get some product marketing support. But so often it feels like they're kind of left to their own. Yeah. How many like how many marketers are in your pod or people thinking about that value focus?

Speaker A: So we have one like dedicated expansion like lifecycle marketer and then they also we do have some like PMM support. They tend to work more on like positioning, segmentation like those types of things. And then our lifecycle marketer is the ones like actually like taking that uh like segmentation process and then figuring out like the right campaigns. And it's interesting we're spending more and more time now trying to figure out with our both on uh just like how we build the right like signals and build those like automation campaigns. But then how can we actually funnel that in to make it easier to like our like sales team to basically generate like pipeline expansion pipeline for them versus like hey we're going to do like outbound calling to our existing base. So we're trying to do a lot more around that. Where before it was happening was our account management team as an example was doing all that work themselves. They're getting comms from, from our account management teams, they're getting marketing campaigns. We're trying to now streamline all of the like customer communications together. So it's like one voice versus like oh great. I got received a marketing campaign today but the marketing team had no idea that the team sent out an email on the same day. So we're really trying to streamline a lot of those communications.

Speaker C: Last quick question. Where does CSMS fit in that?

Speaker A: Great question. So uh, at like our company like we, we basically have like just like what we call like our account management team. They would be similar to like our CSM team. The way we separate that is we separate it both like SMB and mid market, like mid market get like much more dedicated like CSMS example because they there's like one franchise owner as an example and they could have like 40 locations. So like what we've developed on the SMB side is like what we call more of a dynamic book of business. So they won't have like a dedicated like here are the. My accounts I'm managing. It's more like hey, here's the great fit customers, here's ones that showed intent. So we try to uh, our angle there to add value is more like what we call like account reviews and like how we actually automate that way versus like hey, great book a demo with me because I saw you clicked on this paywall and I'm going to sell you on this plan. Like we find that doesn't work well with our existing base because they, they've already self explored a lot of those things. Like instead what you need is more of like a value add play of like hey, I've noticed that you're not managing your labor cost effectively and it's affecting your restaurant margins. Like let's have a conversation how our product can help around that. Uh, like doing that stuff is going to help to generate like more interest that people like our customers want to talk to us.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker B: Interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean you guys have ah, obviously

Speaker A: a lot of volume.

Speaker B: Right. And it sounds like you have like two kind of core segments, small business, mid market. But yeah, you're just being very intentional with the way in which you approach the customer experience. Because I think all of the things you said today, like I would assume are creating a really better customer experience for these very busy restaurant owners like that, you know, they don't want to

Speaker A: talk to salespeople, I don't think.

Speaker B: I mean. Right. Restaurant owners. No. Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean I'm um, I've learned a lot. I've taken like three or four notes down at least. Thank you, Greg. Yeah. I mean, any other questions though, Natalie? Anything else, you know, you want to ask, Greg?

Speaker C: I guess like when it comes down to things like pricing that affect every single pod and I feel like this is where often expansion maybe gets underrepresented. Like how are those decisions made? Is. And is it almost like the POD leaders kind of like making their case for, for their individual pods? Is it, is there another team that handles that?

Speaker A: Uh, I mean I feel like we could all, all have our own scars about pricing decisions in a company. Uh, I consider pricing as one of those things that it's like decision by consensus in a lot of ways. Yeah. So like we'll think about them in the individual but you need to think about pricing more holistically so we ultimately that's, that's up to like our like that if you have a, a small pricing change is fine. But if we're making something pretty significant like that needs like our executive buy in to like actually move towards that. So a lot of might start as an idea at like a pod level and then that is just taken up to get like better alignment around that. We actually went through an entire pricing like rehaul like probably at the start of uh 2025 actually where we changed our entire pricing and packaging as an example. And like it's easy to change like those thing change those things. It's a lot harder to balance between like how does it affect your new logo all of a sudden? What does that happen? Like down funnel into your expansion world as an example. Right. So a good example of that is like bundling, right. When you think about bundling you might be seeing like crazy good success at the top of funnel from like new logos and like wow, look at like the shift in like the attach rates or a plan mix because we bundled all of our great add ons into like a high end plan as an example. But then you start to see the down funnel impact of that where it's like oh now I'm not actually selling to that group anymore. How do we actually monetize like that like our premium best customers as an example and say they're on your high end plan but then you bundled all the great expansion work in there. Well then we just create the segment we can't monetize for and then usually your highest willingness to pay are in that high end plan anyway. So like pricing is that delicate balance that like I'd say like you need to like collectively work in the company and it needs a lot of like stakeholder input because it pricing honestly affects like every team in a lot of ways.

Speaker C: But I do love that you have the pod leaders who are at least arguing or like not arguing but are at least like looking out for their component. I feel like a lot of times the pricing sometimes like the loudest person wins and you don't always have someone who's thinking about it from every stage in the funnel. They might be thinking like oh is how is this going to affect my department? But not thinking holistically like how is this going to impact expansion revenue? Yeah, I'm just, I've walked away from this being like how can we all adopt these pods? Why aren't we doing this? It just it seems obviously everything sounds great on paper but it feels like so many of the common struggles we have in startups of why people aren't aligned, there's no owner for something. Again marketing, sales are going at it like it feels like this solved a lot of that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Like if I could leave any anything for like like listeners to walk away from. I think the thing I realized through this is like as you start to scale like a scale in like a tech business org design and operational rigor matter and like having those like systems in place in a lot of ways is like that helps get better alignment because it becomes so much more cross functional as you scale and you get bigger as a company. So you hey, I can't be the pirate shit that go. That goes over here and does something and it doesn't tell anyone. Right. Like you need to be able to communicate, align and make fast decisions because a lot of times you want to drive faster velocity and a lot of times that gets stuck on like decision making. Oh great. Like we couldn't make a decision here because we all looked at each other. So then we're going to come back the following week and do that. So I think what I've really realized is like having this type of system is like important and it actually makes me part of my thesis is like where I see the industry going, it's probably more into like thinking about like go to market operators into like one funnel especially as you start to scale is like where I see the potential industry going. It just, it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker C: Lots comment here. I feel like so many times founders don't want to add in structure because they think it's going to slow down the company. But I think you're spot on where it's like if no one knows who's the decision maker and how it operates that is often a lot of times a lot slower, just not as apparent than a clear structure.

Speaker A: So I call it structured chaos. Right. And like unstructured chaos is the best way to put it. Like think about putting the systems in place and then work through how do we increase the velocity and change the system around it versus like hey I don't want to have anything there because then what happens as you scale is you have nothing and it's, it actually becomes more dysfunctional and you're actually not as successful because of that. You have no guardrails in place and instead I think about this in like less about process and think about in systems and then how do you take systems that enable velocity if your system is slowing you down, what changes in the system can you make speed that up?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I Mean, we just went through a pricing change. It went live yesterday. So, uh, it's. I think of it as like open heart surgery. Yeah. Like, it's not for the faint of heart.

Speaker A: Like a big pricing change and packaging change.

Speaker B: And I love the points you made on that one. And then I think to Natalie's point, like, especially in marketing, like roles they used to talk about T shaped marketers. Right. T shaped whatever. Like, I think it's kind of like flattening to some degree to your point, Greg.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like there's there. You kind of want to be. Not a generalist per se, but yeah,

Speaker A: I think that is. I think the T, the T shape or like multiple T shapes is like exactly what it is. It's like there's a couple things that, uh, you're going to be less specialized in, but generalist in this, like, probably new world is where the world is heading. Yeah.

Speaker B: So interesting. This is a great conversation, Natalie. I mean, this is fantastic. Thank you, Greg.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. As we said, thanks for letting us just pepper with questions. I knew the second I saw your title, I was like, oh, I have so many questions about this. We are going to spend so much of this podcast, so I appreciate you really in depth breaking it down for us.

Speaker A: No, thank you. Thank you for having me. This was a great conversation. Uh, you kept me on my toes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Best of luck with the second half of the year.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, you too. Okay. Have a great day.

Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks for joining us on this episode of GTM News Desk, presented by TAC and produced in partnership with Share youe Genius. For more newsworthy GTM content, head to tacgtm.com and join our community at the gtmlibrary.com until next time.