The Wrong Revenue Will Kill You

James: Right, before we get into it, if you like what you're listening to, please like and subscribe. It genuinely helps us reach more revenue leaders. So thank you for that. This episode is sponsored by Indigo, the SaaS sales recruitment business, building tech companies with the revenue sales people they need across Europe and North America.

Now, most founders think their churn problem is a product problem. Today's guest thinks it's something else entirely. Roger Walton is Chief Strategy Officer at Roger, welcome to Revenue Unplugged. ⁓ a pleasure to have you on the show.

As always, the procedure here is I the guests to give our audience a bit of a background as to who you are and you've been getting up to before we dive into the Roger Walton: Absolutely. Hi. Great to be here. Thanks for the introduction, James.

Yes, Roger Walton, currently Chief Strategy Officer of Resistant AI. Like every firm these days seems to be an AI machine learning specialist. We think we're a bit different, obviously, but being in this industry of anti-financial crime for many, years, 25 plus years since 9-11 and previously before that working in and around the James: resistant AI with 25 years in anti-financial crime and growth strategy on both sides of the Atlantic, we get into why the quality of your revenue matters as much as the quantity.

What a motorway has to do with building a pipeline that really lasts and why handing product market fit to your salespeople is one of the most dangerous things a founder can do. And the question that will stay with you as AI takes over more and more of customer success. Roger Walton: software and hardware industry. I suppose my specialism, my background has always been about growth, new markets and growth.

And that's what I particularly enjoy doing is finding the first few opportunities and figuring out a ways to scale from there. So we're both sides of the Atlantic extensively. So have a good understanding of US markets and European markets representing both European and US firms in each of those different markets. So great to be here and looking forward to having a conversation.

James: Are we quietly running out of wisdom? This is Revenue Unplugged. Let's get to it. Awesome.

So the overarching topics that we're going to be talking today is the sales as the fuel of the engine of business and why the quality of the growth matters as much as the quantity and getting the right revenue, not just revenue, which I think is critical in a world where churn is massive what that eventually means to value ⁓ So first before we dig into ⁓ the around that. when we first spoke, this was something that you were quite passionate about and wanted to discuss. So just give our audience an understanding as to why you wanna talk about this topic particular.

Roger Walton: Yeah, I mean, I think having like I said before, you know, been in many different startups and scale ups in different ⁓ indeed in different markets. There's a common theme that runs through which is obviously wants to get revenue, everybody wants to scale, everybody wants to grow, and everybody wants to get sticky customers, obviously. there's a number of different methodologies and secrets to that. But I think it's critically important at the ⁓ time to think about the quality of that revenue that's coming in, how it might be and how easy it is to replicate and grow accordingly in different, like I said before, in different geographies and different regions.

understanding the philosophy of who customers are, why they are interested in what you're doing. ⁓ and why they're likely to start and to stay with you and grow with you. So understanding the quality and the depth of those customers is really important to ensure that you get the appropriate multiples on whatever revenues that you're selling in there. So, yeah.

James: Right. Well, that's a great place, We're going to start with ⁓ versus quantity. We offline about experience we've had discussions with former colleagues we've had about brilliant data and account plans versus the actual relationship work. Firstly, ⁓ what you mean by that?

Roger Walton: Yeah, I mean, the advent of all of the LLM technologies and all the tools that are out there, and exposure of ⁓ data exists for you to capture ⁓ information the firm you're or firms that you're trying to get involved and build relationships with. It's ⁓ really quite to build an account plan. I say that slight tongue in cheek because there's a trick to it. ⁓ It is relatively straightforward to go and say, I want to build a profile of a business.

I want to understand their history, their scale, their challenges. What are the key things that I can focus in on around to build my business case to position my accordingly. You you can do that very well, but do you really fundamentally understand the culture of that organization? How often do look at new technologies?

How do they look at technologies? What's the process they They go through who are the people that they talk to is it more of an American style culture? Is it more of a European types? culture are the different personalities and different cultures involved in the buying coalitions and the sake of stakeholders you need to get to it's really truly you I suppose utilizing the technology to Automate as much as possible, but not forgetting and really importantly figuring out how and why that how they're going to work with you and why they're going to work with you and how you then obviously build that relationships and create the right platform for growth.

And that might not be a big deal to begin with. It might be a small deal to begin with. It might be a big deal, but it's really understanding what makes sense. It's not just simply about those dollars.

It's about the quality of those dollars and the quality of that engagement. James: Where do you think most salespeople are getting that balance wrong ⁓ in ⁓ today's world? And I that as there's urgency to get numbers. There's pressure on activity that the salespeople need to do to get to the numbers.

So where do you think salespeople are getting this balance wrong? Roger Walton: Yeah, suppose the trap ⁓ the problem that people may face ⁓ is everybody's pressure find deals, close deals for as quickly as possible for the maximum amount of dollars. And of course, we try and achieve that. But sometimes it's just really important to just pause, take a step back, understand, leverage whatever relationships that got.

develop those relationships and figure out the best way to engage. And sometimes that might not be, I need to close this deal by the end of that quarter for this amount of dollars because I've got to achieve my number. really understanding what if it slipped by a month and I can get a better deal that might be lower value, but it's going to give a much better platform for growth because I'm including a different business or a different use case or an expanding into a different geography.

It may well be the better scenario. And that might be the wrong decision, might be the right decision, but it's really to ensure that you understand of those things that are in play to ensure that you take the right decision or take the right strategy accordingly. And think we all jump to dollars and obviously everybody is looking to ⁓ get kind of growth. So it's really important to get the right balance.

I'm not saying you shouldn't close that deal as quickly as possible, ⁓ but guess I'm just saying let's think about it and ensure that you're approaching it in the right way. James: something you mentioned to me quite, quite a times when we were planning this is, was about wisdom versus application. ⁓ And what spoken there is, using some of your and insight as a salesperson to make decisions. So ⁓ are you seeing in world now where AI is being used so much that the wisdom is, getting removed?

People aren't using it. And effect does that have? Roger Walton: Yes, I mean, absolutely. And I've seen it all through my career, but it's especially magnified at the moment.

And we see it, we go, oh, this is a tier one financial institution, a tier one bank. Therefore, there's no way we're ever going to sell anything into them for two to three years. We might want to start to those relationships, but it's going to take that time. that that statistically might be accurate, but there are always always anomalies, you just don't know.

So it's important to probe, understand, like I said before, the cultures, the issues, they may have a particular burning platform, they may be doing some form of renewal, there may be something that you can latch on to at the last minute, it may well take you more than three years, they may have just been about to make a decision with the new technologies that's going to replace that one that you're trying to address, who knows, but it's really instead of looking at it. purely statistically and analyzing everything using AI and using data to understand the nuances by which that particular organization is going to behave.

There are absolutely statistical flows that we should pay attention to, but equally there are always differences. And it's important to figure that out. How do you find those areas, if you like, that you can focus in on, highlight and address a problem accordingly. And I've seen ⁓ for both.

I've seen cases where it's absolutely flown in the way the statistics say, but I've seen cases where have popped up and we've been able to jump onto something and make sense of it ⁓ create an opportunity out of that. So ⁓ that experience, knowledge and that understanding to use statistics and ⁓ as an advisory function and not the rule function. So yes, this is something that can help me with those relationships I'm building. but it doesn't necessarily define exactly what those outcomes are going to be.

James: how do we teach salespeople coming through this wisdom part in your mind, particularly where they are becoming more more reliant on AI to tell them what they need to know or what to do? How do we teach the wisdom part? Or how do we get people to have, you don't teach wisdom, you? That's silly.

And say, how do you get the wisdom? Roger Walton: . Yeah, I think maybe maybe it's a slightly different terminology, but it's really about how do you how do you encourage and teach people to, like I said, use the data to drive certain types of expectations, but without defining those expectations, the data and everything that you're using is is ⁓ so more available. ⁓ It's so much faster.

understand all analysis of markets, profiles, collectives, cohorts. It's so much easier and faster to be able to do that now. Therefore, ⁓ you have opportunity, you have as a consequence, more time to take a ⁓ more rational logical ⁓ and wisdom-based rather than ⁓ purely just data-driven decision. So it's about teaching people to pause and use a different part of their brain and their analysis to make the appropriate strategies and the appropriate tactics and actions on how you're actually going to get involved with that organization.

So it's really about teaching people not to just a hundred percent rely on the data, but use the data as advisory and not definitive behavior outcomes. So it's, I don't think it's about teaching wisdom. It's just teaching people to use the data appropriately. rather than just completely rely on it.

James: And you've mentioned to me, and I really liked it, and I don't know if it's something that you came up with recently before, but the highway, when you're talking about pipeline, so where you've got the fast, middle, and slow lane. For the if you could just talk people through the highway, ⁓ then I've some questions behind it. Roger Walton: Sure, sure. It may not be appropriate for your particular product or offering, but I've worked, ⁓ always a number of different types of deal flows.

I ⁓ about whether it's a highway or a motorway, depending on which side the Atlantic you're on, and obviously the number of lanes associated with that. So sometimes there are three lanes, sometimes there might be five lanes. And and again, this ⁓ isn't true when we see it in true life example. Typically, the bigger, heavier, slower moving trucks and vehicles tend to go in the slower lane or the outside lane, depending on which side of road you drive on.

And then the different vehicles and different flows and speed and size and capabilities tend to then move towards the outside lanes with the very faster moving ones in the outside lane. And I think it's important to look at your strategy of sales in that way. which are the particularly fast moving deals and how can I focus on those appropriately without necessarily forgetting or letting go some of those slower deals. Now I've seen many organizations where it forget the slow ones, we're never gonna sell to them, don't worry about it.

But sometimes, well, often you still need those slow deals because they may well give a fruitful outcome in a year or two years time or whatever it might be, while the smaller deals might move quickly, but their values are lower. So it's really important to figure out, do you have that capability in terms of your offering? Do your customers behave in that way? And therefore, treat them in the appropriate sense.

So don't try and group everybody into one. Treat people slightly differently depending on the profile of what they're looking for, how they acquire, how they evaluate the process, the timelines and so forth. And group them accordingly because you can treat them in a way that makes sense for the way that they are culturally. James: I liked when you first spoke that, made a lot sense.

How do you advise sales guys ⁓ on the amount of time they spend each lane? Roger Walton: Well, that's the $64,000 or $64 million question these days, but it's, ensuring obviously you're fully aware of where you are with your numbers and your quarterly cadence and the profile of what you're doing to ensure that you can try and ⁓ and exceed the targets and the goals that ⁓ been set for you and ⁓ as well. So it's just important to balance it appropriately, balance your workload, balance the flow, think about not just this quarter, next quarter, or the third or the fourth quarter, but think about next year as well.

And we should be thinking about that for businesses as well. So often I've worked with startups that tend to react on a quarterly basis. It's like, right, we're go for massive growth this year. We expect triple revenues this year.

So let's go and hire accordingly and build out the right marketing campaigns and the right sales campaigns and start to hire and spend. And then suddenly think, ⁓ my gosh, it's not looking as good as we thought it was. Let's scale back. And we miss out on addressing the future state issues that may well be causing those short-term issues that you face and you have to react around accordingly.

So it's important to balance and ensure that you fully appreciate and understand the market, your ICP makes sense, the profile of the kind of customers that are likely to ⁓ into that and how they culturally and how they or evaluate and acquire from a ⁓ perspective as well. So it's really important just to balance everything out accordingly. James: I think lot of everything you say there makes perfect sense in theory. ⁓ you spoke about when CEOs or founders didn't want to go after tier one banks because it was going to take too long.

you were like, look, we need to do both, which is why you've got the ⁓ motor way analogy go into more detail, you are getting success and you're winning deals on smaller ones, or even larger ones that are outside the tier one banks, do you still feel it's important to start the foundations and having that lane set up and giving it time? Roger Walton: Great question. And I guess I'd answer that in, may well be that you ⁓ your ones. ⁓ just could know if you're in a startup and you're still trying to perhaps even figure out and define your true market and your true ICP.

We talk about the ⁓ size the scope of a market and how much of that is actually applicable to you and how much you can actually. access and truly sell to it. don't know that ⁓ you've perhaps gone through some of those processes. So that's why I think at the start and the early part of your, your sort of scale up ⁓ as a business, do you truly fully understand that appreciate exactly where you're likely to be selling and who is likely to be giving you the best return on that investment and the best and deal flow and growth ⁓ Do you truly know that?

So that's why I say it's important in the first few phases of your your scale-up journey to manage the different types and sizes and profiles of deals accordingly if you find you are able to sell into the fast-moving smaller businesses quickly effectively and you can see significant growth and very little plateauing in that market then absolutely might well be the right thing to do to drop or to tail away from your tier one activities, but you don't know. So that's why I say it's really important I think, to make sure that you fully understand the different sizes, scopes and scales of markets is, ⁓ know, another don't know if it's applicable as well.

It's like ⁓ if breeding animals, know, elephants can take 18 months gestation periods, know, mice take a few days. So yeah. James: Hmm. Roger Walton: You can, you can treat mice in a very different way.

They're to deliver different animals, but they're very small compared to the elephant one. So it's, it's really figuring out what is the best way for you to set up your business and what is the best way to grow. And sometimes you don't know that until later. And I think we get a lot of pressure from the boards and from management to say, we just need to grow.

We've got to get our ICP. think this is the ICP. Let's go for it. And we don't really know that.

And we don't know maybe the. top end or the size of that market may well peak and plateau ⁓ before you're ready to peak ⁓ plateau yourself as a business. So it's really important to understand and appreciate and therefore have the insurance of the variety of opportunities to go for. James: Yeah, you mentioning the pressures from the and the investors is a nice segue into ⁓ the part that we're going to talk about.

You mentioned, I ⁓ agree that most startups end running out of money and not having the success they not because their proposition isn't right, it's because they've scaled too soon. And a lot of what you just spoke about there about the highway and understanding the lanes that you need to be in. How much of that pressure from the board over ⁓ kind of ideology of what they wanted to do? Roger Walton: Yeah, I think there's a there's a lot of that.

I think that, you know, sometimes, and don't get me wrong, you know, in many times there are startups that are starter, sorry, executives, founders, and VCs that fully do understand that appreciate the market and can give you the right guidance and can ensure that you're focused in the right way. So I'm not saying this is a one size fits all, but typically, certainly for a lot of the companies, But I've worked with in the past. We're not a hundred percent sure. We get a feel.

We think this is the right place. We think this is the right market to scale and go for. And absolutely we should try that, but ensure that that is being balanced out with a ⁓ proper view and understanding of the overall market. And I've seen it so many different times where we've gone for a, know, tried to almost pivot the business and gone for a product market fit or gone for a a very highly repeatable lower value type sale, and it's been a mistake and we've missed out on other areas and vice versa.

So it's just really critical and critically important to make sure that you as whether you're salespeople or sales leaders or executive leaders to ensure that you have a full and appreciative understanding of the market, its scale, its change, its profile, its culture, and its buying behaviors to ensure that you can Trap into it, tap into it more appropriately. So it's not disregarding what people are advising and saying, it's just taking that on board and ensuring that you have a balanced view yourself of what you actually should be doing.

James: but how do you manage the expectations of the board? Because the fact behind it is that if there is a VC, it tends to be more than one VC, you know, that comes in, let's say at series A, there's 25, 30 million pounds being thrown around and they'll say, right, you've got a great product. We know X1Z companies have done this. So this is what you've got to do.

And we're going to do it today and we'll go out there and build it. And no matter what, that's the same conversation they have every time. I've not sat down with a founder who's taken 30 million from a VC and they've gone, right, we're gonna take this steady. We're gonna get the highways all lined up.

We're gonna do it. It's gonna be like higher big, higher now, and let's go. ⁓ So how do you sort like manage that expectation? How would you advise someone to manage a VC's expectation and not get caught up in the hype?

Roger Walton: I mean, think, yeah, great, great question. And it comes back down to experience and the wisdom of dealing with and ⁓ and VCs like you described. So it's really ensuring that you have the appropriate solid relationship with the board if you have access to the board as a sales leader, or it's with founders or your own management team if you don't. It's really important to ensure that you are, I suppose, giving an alternative analysis of how to scale this business and make the recommendations.

Like I say, this is the way that I've been successful in the past. This is the way that I think it can mitigate any sudden changes and sudden moves in the market. And this is the way to balance things. And it's not about saying we're going to sort of, know, flat earth across all the lanes of the business.

saying. Let's make sure that we keep a few of these things going because it may well be that's a better market for us than this one, but we don't know until we understand and we do that analysis, we don't know. So it's, it's figuring out again, back to this principle of the, wisdom. can give you all the statistics and all the dials and the dashboards and graphs accordingly to support whichever way, whichever strategy that you, you think is the most appropriate.

So it's just making sure that you use all that data. combined with your wisdom and your instinctive understanding learning of how buying coalitions work to give that appropriate balanced strategy back the the board accordingly. And if they contest it and they push you, you're going to make a decision about what you do there. And that's that's obviously the as a more senior role you get, that's the tricky balance that you've to play out because it may well be you have a fundamental disagreement that you're going to you're going to ultimately fail if you don't adhere to what they're saying.

So therefore you might decide this is, this isn't the right place for you. It's, really a balancing. Then your, your understanding, your own experience and your own wisdom of how to manage that whole process and building out the sales function in accordance with that strategy that's being pushed from, from above. And is that, is that contention too hard and too difficult or is it something that makes sense?

That's up to you to balance out, but I would just, I'd continue to say as someone who's been around this industry for a long, time is don't necessarily be afraid of standing up for something that you believe in and arguing the principles of that up to a certain point. And that's really about you and how you decide it accordingly. James: If you're a time founder, that's about to go into bringing that first big VC pot of money. What advice you give to that first time founder that you would want them to know and understand about their sales before entering those conversations?

Roger Walton: Great question and again, this is one the whole proliferation ⁓ data give ⁓ analysis and that you want to put forward can often cloud the reality of what's going on. So absolutely look at the look at everything you can get from your CRM, look at the way deal flows work, look at the sales cycles, look at outcomes, look at positioning, churn, et cetera. All those really, really critically important. But for heaven's sake, go talk to your customers and understand why did they buy from you?

What were the things that were really critical there? Why are they staying with you? And why are they continuing to buy from you? And what is it that they are latching onto?

And you will find some very surprising information out of that because you will see so much more comes down to culture, the way you do business with them. the way that you support them, the way that you are handling their and problems and challenges ⁓ supporting them accordingly. So it's really critical to get the balance. There's obviously that again, a bit like how you try to sell to businesses and understand how they buy and the statistics of ⁓ market that you're selling into.

⁓ the statistics that you have yourself about how people have engaged, how people have shifted, how people have changed. So talk to as many customers as possible and try and build up, I guess, a method and a process to understand how and why they are your customers ⁓ continuing to be your customers. Because often we tend to fall into that old statistical analysis, well, they're all like that because they're all this type of business. And oftentimes it's a mix of the two.

So be absolutely involved and understand your customers properly. James: Great advice, really like that. Wanna move on to market fit as a topic now. ⁓ It's important.

I think it's even more important as we move further into an AI world ⁓ where needing multi-year deals. ⁓ Everybody that Claude is gonna create an application that replaces everything. But before I've got a number of questions to ask you around this. But in your view, Roger, from your...

time working at many different businesses at many different stages. do you have product market fit? What does it look like? Roger Walton: Yeah, I mean, some some companies never actually achieve it.

Some some start with it, stay with it and it never changes. And some obviously, you know, it's rates and morph and change accordingly. And I think that's that's the lesson is figure out it is, how tight is your product market fair? How tight do you think it could be?

And how tight do you think you want it? And then build the organization to support in that method. And it really does depend a lot on your technology, how you build that technology, technology, how you deliver it and how the customers use it. So it really honestly does depend on it.

And it also depends like, for example, if you have a very, very specific product offering that is implementable and configurable by your customers, that is a very different type of product than it's. than one that is might be delivered in the same way, but it is uniquely trimmed, fitted, tailored to specific customer requirements and customer data sets. So it's much more of a managed service as opposed to just a pure SaaS delivered offering. So it really does depend.

And I don't think there's any one fits all methodology to that. It's back to that proper understanding of the market, true understanding of what it is that that market is. doing right now, where does it need to get to? And what are the kind of things that your offerings or your collective nature of your ecosystem that you fit into can change that?

And how do you highlight what it is that you can do to help drive that organization to that new state or that market into that new state? And if that is highly repeatable, it's a very strong product market fit and you can nail down very, very specific granular detail pricing pricing methodologies and ways to market then that's awesome. You've got something really cool. But if you're on the other end of the spectrum and it's really about morphing a particular set of different types of technologies in a managed service to fit ⁓ uniqueness of a customer then that's a slightly different method ⁓ way of doing it.

But it's it's really important to figure out what it is that you have what the market is looking for. And how do you affect that and drive business value out of that and then making sure that you slot into the way that people analyze and understand that. And I think many organizations, many startups tend to take an approach, well, I've got this, I know that it's gonna make this difference because I've seen it with these four or five customers over here. Therefore, it must be true for these 5,000 over there.

And it isn't necessarily. It might be, but it isn't necessarily until you properly understand and to get that out. So understanding leaning and being involved to the market as well as how your product fits to ensure that you can make that most appropriate and most efficiently. James: I think will agree with you that the ICP is ⁓ usually a gatepost as the product and the business evolves.

⁓ But are any ⁓ leading indicators around you on product usage, churn? there anything that people should be looking for that suggests they're on the right path or that they've got it wrong? Roger Walton: Well, I mean, it's again, it's back to this blend of the analysis of the data, so that you can see how your market, your customers are behaving, how they responding to what you do, how many competitors or similar offerings are entering into that market, how well are they doing, what are the different, I profiles and ⁓ experiences conferences and material and outbound positioning are there regulations that are driving certain types of behavior in your market that might be changing or might be adding more flexibility or less flexibility into your market.

It's not just simply about I've got this product, I've got these three or four customers, I've got this experience because I'm from the industry, therefore it's all going to look like that. You've got to keep a handle on everything. And that's why, and certainly, This is and driven by sales. This is contributed by the information you can pick up from sales, typically it's owned and driven by the CEO, along with the head of marketing, along with the head of sales, along with the head of product.

⁓ that's all the same person. So you really have to have those debates with yourself. But it's really important to look at the different inputs. into that strategy, analyze the data, make sure you extract the appropriate experience and wisdom from the interpretation of that data and apply the that it may well be absolutely rock solid tight and defined from day one or it might have to be flexible and malleable as you move forwards into that market and all those things can be different depending on geography, depending on the time in the marketplace.

being on scale, size of business and so forth. So it's really critical to make sure that you are continuing evaluating, understanding and adjusting the way that you're dealing with that market. James: ⁓ almost like you knew what my next question was going to be the way you answered that as though we've planned this to a T. But one of the things that you mentioned in planning was ⁓ never product market fit to your salespeople.

Help me if a founder's outsourced product market fit to salespeople, how does that look? Roger Walton: Well because you're going to then rely on what's just easiest to sell as method of your product market fit. And that may well be the right way, but you don't know. Back to what we said right at the beginning, selling into a certain market may well give you good ⁓ short-term short-term growth, which might be awesome, but you might plateau if you don't fully understand and appreciate what's coming.

again, that may well up and plateau sooner rather later, not just because of anything that you could have seen, but ⁓ of new regulations or new things that happening in geopolitics like we're experiencing right now. You don't know. So it's really important not that you can second guess and predict the future, but just to have a strategy that can react, can pivot and can adjust accordingly. And you will not get that from just pure sales.

Like I said before, understanding who your ideal customers are and how you're going to sell into them is a balance of your own experience and knowledge as a founder, but with information from your marketing team of what's going on in the market, how people are acquiring competitive landscape, new products, new regulations, all these kinds of things going on. How good your product is to address those particular areas. What are the things that you can highlight? What are the key differentiations you've got?

And also, which of the customers are buying well, which are the that are really interested in, which are the ones that have got budget, which are the ones that are willing to spend. They've got these burning platforms to deal with. of those ⁓ points are really critical in independence, but collectively, they give you a much better idea of how to manage your strategy accordingly. James: ⁓ so does it, ⁓ challenge that you have from this, I guess, is you have an early stage business, you bring in a salesperson and they're just going out there to generate revenue wherever they can.

It's impossible to have product market fit at that point. ⁓ It's just out there and make sales. speak to a lot founders who will then say they've got product market fit, but what they really mean is they've got a lot of leads and a lot of conversations happening in a particular sector. At what point when you're in an early stage business winning these new clients and you're letting your salespeople go out there and just try and win revenue.

You've got your lanes they're going after, but the bottom line is you need revenue. Where I see or where I feel I see the mistakes happen is the churn starts to happen. So customers come on, they stay for one year and then they move off ⁓ see it as a product problem or a customer success problem, ⁓ a client problem. So At what point do they realise that, stop trying to out-win new business to beat the churn and realise actually those first customers, they're not right and we should stop selling to them.

At what point should you as a sales leader look at that and go, right, this is a sales problem, not a product problem. Roger Walton: Yeah, that's a great question. suppose that's where the art meets the science and vice versa, which is ⁓ have to have, and again, it comes back to having experience in the sales leadership and in the management team, according me as well, to figure that out as quickly as possible because you may well find you've built a product that's just a slightly better version of a competitive product.

and you've hired a salesperson from that competitor who's gone and flipped a bunch of his or her existing customers to your product because it's slightly better and you've missed out on a whole regulationary change that's coming that's going to obliterate everything that both of those organizations have or that there is a new product from a different institution that's based on some new technology from Claude that we never heard about that is going to wipe out your differentiation.

So it's just, it's so important. to be on top and understand how customers are buying, why are they buying and why are they staying with you and what are they looking at and talking to your customers accordingly. So back to again, what we talked about before, which is the balance of looking at the graphs and statistics and everything else that you can see about your customer base, but talking to them as well and understanding. There are going to be people shifting and changing the people that you're dealing with, the customers you're dealing with.

and then there may well be new people that come in and have different interpretations of that. So it's really critical to understand that again so you can adjust and make sure that you are focusing, following the market properly and maybe even leading it and driving it as well. So it's just so important to balance that data with the experience and just having those conversations with customers as well. James: I really think the conversation with customers is super important.

Who should be having those conversations with them? Because I know you said, look, we should be taking what salespeople have, the knowledge they have into consideration. But nine times out of 10, the salespeople are looking to just close deals, largely paid off year one revenue. I think it's fair to say without being unfair that renewal is not important to them anymore because of the way a lot of commission plans are set out.

So who is the right person to actually get the right insight should be having the conversations with the clients and what questions should they be asking? Roger Walton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

It really depends your structure your team, who's involved, the experience of it. I would it ⁓ comes ultimately the CEO and having good of that, ⁓ knowing ⁓ how to ask and I sales and it's sort of generic title because it may well be the sales person. It could be the SE, the technical person, or it could be the manager or it could be the ⁓ CRO. It could be field marketing.

could be corporate marketing could be product fit could be the people who are supporting the the problems coming from the customers all those Constituents have both data and opinions that are worth listening to and understanding and it's I mean, so really think ⁓ hardest job in any kind of stuff is the CEO because you are ⁓ for so much, but you have to do so much and you have to try and make sense of all the different data, conflicting data, conflicting opinions coming from your organization to make the appropriate strategic decision accordingly.

So it's so important to balance all of that out. But yes, you have to and should listen to your very good salespeople who are doing those new name business deals. Why, how are they getting into those accounts and what is it that they're doing and what is it that people are? Listening to in terms of your offering and what is it that there were the challenges they have that you think you can address?

Because that will give the indication you cannot look at the statistics because there's so many things that can contribute to dollars coming into the organization it may well be your salesperson has just Fallen into a wonderful opportunity just at the right time in the right way with the right product and you go well therefore every tier one institution should behave like that, but you just You can't guarantee that. So it's balance, taking data with opinion and making the right decision accordingly from different constituent paths that have touched or could touch that customer experience.

James: I like it. I let you go, I've got one last question, which will put you on the spot a little bit and have you on your toes. ⁓ Around product fit and customer success. I've had some roundtables with sales leaders talking about AI and sales enablement.

⁓ And it seems on whole from the people that I've been talking to that ⁓ most ⁓ of AI and sales enablement is going into customer success and the churn When we spoke at the beginning about wisdom against application, where more and more businesses are using AI to run their customer success, there a point where we've got no wisdom left? and it's going to be hard to accurately point what product market fit is because AI is just running around fixing problems. Roger Walton: think there's a danger, I suppose, maybe take a step back because there's both a danger and there's an opportunity there to, I suppose the opportunity being it may well be absolutely right to automate customer success fully and deliver a set of ⁓ and offerings that your customers are quite happy just to click buy.

and use and not have to worry about. There may well be, but we all use them. There's certain products that we all rely on that's really fast, really quick and really easy to automate. And you don't have to deal with anybody.

You've got no interest. I just want to buy that. I don't want anything as long as it works. And as long as it's college and it doesn't break and doesn't cause any problems.

So there may well be that, but there's also a huge opportunity in the market where that is the wrong strategy. Certainly it can help and it can contribute to it for sure. but there will be opportunities to differentiate, create that distinct and valuable customer or customer orientated feature that is going to give somebody a particular differentiation that you can only get by having a human process to understand that. And, you know, I'm sure there's loads of people who might listen to this.

They're very AI enabled. Say, ⁓ that's just rubbish. There's loads of AI that will take care of that as well. I disagree.

I think the The AI that's out there right now is supremely brilliant. mean, it's just amazingly powerful, but it does not replace. It gives you the ability to enhance the human experience, augment the human experience. And to some degree it might completely replace that.

I think the loss is still a massive, huge upside, an opportunity in the market to create differentiation that is going to drive human value and human efficiency by augmenting. James: No. Roger Walton: both your analysis and what you can see of the market and your product set with what they do as well. So it's really important to get that, I think that balance and it may well be, we do rely on certain elements of it that is purely automated and purely AI driven, but making sure if you're going to build a business that I think is differentiated and scalable, I'd argue that a lot of that is going to be around how the human is impacted and enhanced and given things to be more efficient or have a better experience around rather than just necessarily replace.

James: I totally agree. But how do you then ⁓ advise, ⁓ the businesses, the early stage businesses where ⁓ a of people are saying, right, ⁓ we now build ⁓ a dollar valued business a handful of people? How do you ⁓ advise them? do you say to them to make sure they have still people in certain and what their role actually?

is. Roger Walton: I mean, honestly, James, may well be ⁓ you've got a particular business idea that can do that. And you only need a handful of people and you can build a multi, multi billion dollar value business as a result. Good luck you.

Great. Go for it. I can't particularly help you that scenario. But if you want to do something that is different, that is got that ability to work in a different way and deliver value that is human orientated.

that can take advantage of other experiences, build it accordingly. But it depends on the founders and their aspirations and what they believe. I'd still argue that there's still always a significant human element to it. I mean, we've heard of all sorts of big public organizations going, I'm going to fire 60 % of my customer success staff.

And they never get there because they know it's not possible, it's not achievable. Yes, I'm going to create efficiencies and help to... improve how people can deliver a better experience, but it isn't just necessarily about replacement. It's how you support and augment.

So I still believe there's going to be a human element to it. Maybe I'm going to disappear with the dinosaurs in that sense. Hopefully not, but I still believe there's a significant set of businesses that you can build, which is much more human orientated than just pure tech. James: Absolutely.

And I also bring it back to, still think people want to deal with people. I they will accept an agent some degree in a lot what we do because it does ⁓ make things more ⁓ and quicker. But not deal with a human at all, think as a race, just think it would work. I think if you tried it, you'd end up going back to ⁓ having people involved ⁓ somewhere in the stream anyway.

⁓ And also think the art plays a massive part. It's as big as the science the ⁓ but it's the glue. Lose the glue and things fall apart. Roger Walton: questions how and why I spoke at what and when and so forth are so much more important I think or really enhance that ability to make the data make more sense.

James: Totally. I really appreciate all your time in putting this podcast together and the conversation we've had. I've learned so much from talking you ⁓ throughout thank you for taking your time to share just a little bit of your wisdom with here today. Roger Walton: You're very welcome, it's been a pleasure.

Great chatting with you.