This VP Grew Revenue from $15M to $45M Using These Sales Strategies | Mikey Abts

Speaker A: Well, throw them in a room, they'll make 50 million calls a day and that'll drive new logo that just doesn't really scale anymore like it used to. I mean, maybe I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. We still have a really strong BDR program and opportunity there. But the idea that you can just hire another BDR and you're always going to get more and more productivity out of it, it just feels less and less likely because the market is just so inundated and saturated, it's hard to get anyone's attention.

Speaker B: Welcome to Revenue Insights. We're joined by revenue leaders from some of the highest growth companies. Together we explore how they built their revenue teams, the journeys they've been on and the lessons they've learned along the way. Revenue Insights is brought to you by ebsta. We're an AI first revenue intelligence platform designed to help you close more deals, retain more customers and forecast better. Enjoy the podcast.

Speaker C: Hello everybody. On today's episode of the Revenue Insights podcast, I'm thrilled to have Mikey apps vice, uh, president of sales at Recast Software. Mikey has built his career helping sales teams consistently uncover and generate high value opportunities. From his time at SAP, Concur to Nintex and now leading sales at Recast with a deep focus on empowering sales teams to drive revenue through proactive strategic engagement market Mikey combines practical tactics with modern data informed approach. Today we'll dive into how he creates the scale sales generator opportunities, ensuring teams consistently deliver measurable impact. So without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Mikey.

Speaker A: Awesome, uh, guy, I'm excited to be here and thanks for having me.

Speaker C: So uh, before we get started, perhaps you could give us all a little bit of an introduction as to what you're currently doing and perhaps a little bit of information about how you got there.

Speaker A: Yeah, let's kind of start with what I'm currently doing and I've had a bit of a strange background so I can give the high notes on that. But yeah, I'm currently vice president of sales at Recast Software. We sell software in the IT space, particularly to system administrators. Um, as vice president, it's new logo, current customer Reps, also the BDRs fall under me and the solution engineers and, and covering most of the globe except a few parts of Europe where we've made acquisitions.

Speaker C: Very exciting. And how long have you been part of that team?

Speaker A: Yes, I'm coming up on two years here. A lot of movement really quick, which is crazy, but it's also something I really enjoy.

Speaker C: Excellent. And tell us a bit about how you got there. What were you doing in your last role?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I guess kind of starting at the beginning, back in the day. I actually originally went to law school, um, and I worked in patent litigation at, ah, sort of a larger firm. Kind of very quickly realized, like, that wasn't the path for me. I think kind of like maybe a lot of salespeople, I thought the law would just be me kind of in court giving arguments and speeches. And then I quickly realized that's a tiny part of it. Right. It's a lot of backend paperwork. Um, so I ended up kind of transitioning out of that. And really, I guess what I would call my first kind of sales role was, um, I got into a space called litigation finance. And really litigation finance is calling legal cases like an asset. So basically, Guy, let's say you were going to sue me, but you needed a million dollars to sue me. But if you won, you'd win 20 million bucks. Well, maybe you don't have a million dollars. So then what you do is you can go to a hedge fund, a private equity group, a wealthy individual, and say, hey, I've got a good case here. If you guys pay the million, when I win the 20 million, you guys can take 10 million. So I would broker between different finance groups and then people that had cases that needed funding. And so it's really true Sales. Right. I had to, uh, talk to finance groups about what this even was, talk to lawyers and plaintiffs and say, hey, you got a good case, and then bring the two together. And that was kind of my intro to sales. And I was just doing it on my own. So I learned a lot, kind of making it up as I go.

Speaker C: Wow. I mean, that's a fascinating market to be in. Uh, I'm sure you've got plenty of stories of, uh, court cases that went really well and perhaps others that didn't.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Right. Like, as you know, the cases can go in any direction. And I guess as we know in, in the software sales world, timing matters a lot. And you know, sometimes a legal case can go on four or five, six years, which isn't ideal for investors.

Speaker C: Right, absolutely. So. So you moved on from there and, and um, and what did you do next?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, um, from there I ended up actually meeting, uh, a kind of wealthy individual who had his own family office. And he was like, hey, let's do litigation finance and let's try to do utility scale solar investments. So basically developing really large scale solar fields and Then typically selling them to like, you know, a Google or a Microsoft that needs a lot of power off it for like a data center, but they also want to go green. They don't want to take a ton of bad energy off the grid. So we ended up actually starting a solar energy company that went well for a while and then it kind of went topsy turvy. Um, that kind of ended up completely skidding off the map and folding. And I was like, okay, this has been fun but I think I want to do something maybe a little more predictable. And then so jumped into sales at SAP Concur. And that was kind of the beginning of my software sales career.

Speaker C: Got it. Okay. So uh, you decided to step into software sales as a safer option.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think also to learn what even a, ah, typical corporate sales job and process looks like. Right. Like uh, a more entrepreneurial role is what I like. And I think that's kind of why I've ended up even at Recast and more in um, early stage software. But I think first I needed to learn as well. Like if you're at an SAP, a Microsoft, a Google, like what does that look like? You know, how are territories structured? What is the typical sales process? So SAP Concur is as dialed in as like any software company in terms of just like here's how you find prospects, here's what you say and what that sales process looks like. So learned a ton there of just like standard format and process.

Speaker C: So was that it was a really good stables, uh, somewhere where you really learned your craft at SAP Concur.

Speaker A: Yeah, I did both. New logo there, learned a ton there. Also did current customer. So was nice that I got to understand, you know, how you drive revenue on both of those sides. And then um, a gentleman named Ben Brewer who was running sales there ended up going and taking over as CRO of Nintex. And then when he went over there he introduced me to some people and I ended up making the transition over to Nintex running their enterprise sales for current customers initially. Very good.

Speaker C: And you were there for about three years now, is that right?

Speaker A: Yep, there. And kind of ended up doing both current customer and new logo. Like leading that from a leadership perspective. And Nintex, it's private equity owned Tomer Bravo was the main investor when I showed up there. And then they had a large exit to tpg. I think it was, I think this is public. A little over $2 billion. Very good.

Speaker C: Well that's ah, that's another, another notch on your uh, on your resume, getting part of a team that's achieved such a big exit, that's fantastic. Um, um, and that's. Is that when you. When you move to recast?

Speaker A: Yeah. So soon? Kind of after that, I'm sure it's a lot of people on this line knows, you know, big exit, big investors. And there was a lot of change, right? Most of the. The C suite changed, A lot of the different structures changed. My, um, boss at Nintex was a gentleman named Phil Long. He went and took over as CRO of Recast Software I am today. Initially, he was running marketing sales. Ah, ncs. That's changed a little bit as we've grown. And then he brought me over to do my current role running sales here.

Speaker C: There's definitely a theme here, which is, uh, you know, find really good leaders and then follow them around from one place to the next.

Speaker A: For me, probably the number one thing, if I really think about it, you know, And I was talking to a gentleman I work with the other day as kind of a executive coach, and he was asking me to rank, like, different things, like, you know, what do you sell? How much money do you make? You know, what's the purpose behind it? Who do you work with? And I really thought about it for a long time. It wasn't something I'd really ordered. And I think when I really broke it down, the number one thing for me is who do I work with? Like, that's the thing I've learned over all these things. Like, even if you're selling the best product and making a bunch of money, like, if you don't gel and fit with the people you work with, like, it's probably going to be pretty brutal day in and day out. So for me, that's always number one.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And look, uh, those that have followed the podcast will know that we've recently, um, uh, become ebsta, uh, has recently become part of Fullcast. Um, and one of the big drivers for me in joining that leadership team was the caliber of the people that we get the opportunity to work with. Um, in a bootstrap business, it's always very difficult to surround yourself with world leaders. But, uh, um, when you get the opportunity to work with these, with people that have just been there, seen it, done it, that are able to, but. And also really good people, uh, it just inspires you to get up every morning and it helps you to work towards really big goals, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree. You know, and Nintex was a big acquisition company. Sounds like obviously you're in the middle of it and feel like we saw a lot of the, uh, good, bad and the ugly. Right. Of some acquisitions went amazing, some somewhere in between. And I think so much of it was, was there a symbiosis in the people and the cultures? Because every company is pretty different. But when you find that fit, it can really be exponential. Yeah.

Speaker C: And I agree. Absolutely agree. Right. Let's jump into our area of expertise. We're seeing more and more of this in the market where driving sales generated opportunities is becoming more and more of a challenge for front office teams. So can you walk us through your playbook or processes for uh, consistently identifying and creating and converting these opportunities?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I think we should maybe think about, you know, obviously new logo and then the current customer side of the business. I guess it's just a little asterisk. I'm a big believer in separating those two. I don't, I'm not a big fan of reps with dual roles, which we could talk about. But you know, starting with the uh, the new logo piece, I think a lot of people on here will, will feel this way. And I'm sure, Guy, you do as well is, you know, when you look at software initially in the early days, Salesforce really created a lot of the model where they were like, hey, we'll hire a bunch of BDRs, we'll throw them in a room, they'll make 50 million calls a day and that'll drive new logo that just doesn't really scale anymore like it used to. I mean, maybe I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. We still have a really strong BDR program and opportunity there. But the idea that you can just hire another BDR and you're always going to get more and more productivity out of it, it just feels less and less likely because one, the market is just so inundated, inundated and saturated. It's hard to get anyone's attention. I mean, who's really even answering phone calls that much? Who's answering these emails? Again, there's important work there, but I think you got to be a little bit more strategic about it than that. So when I think about new logo, there's really kind of, uh, a few cores I always think about is one. Ideally, I'm a big, big fan of creating some sort of freemium or community model or usage. Right. Just to get people in the door and using and then also really trying to bring them a lot of value on the front end. I Think sometimes when people deliver a freemium model, they are afraid of giving away too much. But in my opinion, the more people you can get on it, the better that are using it, the longer and then you'll really start to grow a community. And people that are getting immense value, you can convert. Whereas if you give away something that isn't that valuable and nobody cares about, yeah, maybe you didn't give away too much, but how are you really going to grow that? So a big thing for me I'm always thinking about is how can we work with our product and marketing team to figure out different ways we can provide freemium value and then rally webinars and promotions around driving people to a free tool.

Speaker C: This episode is sponsored by mailtrap, an email delivery platform built for product companies that sell send at scale, go for high inboxing rates. Try today at mailtrap IO. I really like that where it's possible, of course, um, you know, you always want to find a way of giving before you get, um, and I think for some businesses it's a freemium model, um, or a free trial experience. Uh, the challenge as you move up, um, to mid market and beyond is that a lot of organizations have got things kind of locked down. Um, and more and more of the technology that's out there needs to plug into what you've already got. And that can be a real barrier. Um, and so, uh, uh, and sometimes actually getting the customer to pay isn't the hardest thing on the list. Right? You've got, you've got to get through legal and security and privacy and implementation and change management and, and, and so, um, but I, I think the product is only one thing that you can give away. You know, we, we've, we've done a really, um, uh, my m, my marketing team have done a great job this year, really expanding out our, our, our footprint with our benchmark reports. So, so, um, uh, now it seems to be really popular. I think We've had over 3,000 companies now download the report, um, and we get lots of questions. Uh, and people love the insights. And while it's not the product itself, it gets people thinking about being much more data driven in the way that they operate their go to market motion. Um, and hopefully it presents ourselves as those kind of subject matter experts and when they are in the market, we get the opportunity to have that conversation. Um, but I absolutely buy into the principle that we all want to be able to, we all should be trying to give to the community better than before we were receive and um, what's really interesting is um, one of the things we do for customers is we give every quarter they get an audit of their whole go to market motion in a report we call R.E. s. And one of the really interesting data points that people lean into is looking at source, where do we get our leads from that convert? Um, and time and time and time again you can see that partner channel giving the highest possible kind um, of sales velocity on those deals. So maybe we don't get that many deals through partners, but the ones that we do, they close quickly and we get a really high conversion rate. And um, the deal values are usually pretty high as well. Um, when we look at the deals coming in through the inbound team, usually we see a lot of volume. Um, so you know, they're generating what, what they perceive as sales qualified leads. But when we look at the conversion rates, when we look at the velocity or the uh, dollars per day we generate, we get it from the deals generated from those outbound teams. It's usually the worst conversion rates of all, um, you know, even lower than inbound traffic coming in through paid adverts for example. Um, so relationships really do drive revenue. And I think as a, what we try to do is um, and we do have 360 sellers, they're not responsible for generating all of their own opportunities, but the ones that they, but they do have uh, a target of self generated leads that they are responsible for generating. And we encourage them to get to events, you know, go and meet people in your community, go and shake hands, go and build relationships. Because it's one of the things that AI is never going to be able to do for us. Um, and it's something that we really need to encourage our sellers to be spending more time customer facing and engaging with those prospects.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you really nailed it on a few different points there. Which is one, it's going to determine on what you're selling and what your product is, what you can give away. But there's going to be something you can give away. Whether it's like a report. Ideally what I'm always trying to find is is there a way we can get data from them, whether it's their usage of a freemium product, somehow a report that can tie into what they know, something they can fill out. It can be tricky with security requirements, but sometimes we can actually get into their system and actually provide them with something valuable that states, hey, based on your actual company and data, here's the value that we will provide and why it makes sense to ultimately purchase the software from us in a justified way. Like um, you guys have seen, I'm sure every company is, is people want a data driven approach that they can really articulate and we need to give that to them. We need to make it incredibly easy for them to buy and pitch internally. And when we basically just give them some generic information that you know, hey, this will be more efficient and save time, it just doesn't really land or resonate much anymore.

Speaker C: I absolutely buy into that. And if you can talk the customer's language, if you're actually referring to their individual sellers or their, or their specific use case, they're much more likely to buy into it and relate to the business case themselves. So I absolutely buy into that. Up until in our world we're really focused on how do we get more sellers hitting quota. And um, and how do we get, how do we deliver a really accurate forecast in a much more consistent way. And, and the harsh reality is it's not a difficult solution, it's not a difficult thing to achieve, but there aren't any shortcuts. Um, and you have to, you start with the data, you convert it into insights. You then need some sort of technology platform to give you some structure and then you need a change agent. Um, and for us we launched our own kind of services wrapper around that. We called out these react reports, um, but it was a real heavy lift. We had to get the customer implemented, we had to get them activated, we had to get their data on our platform before we could deliver them these insights. Um, we literally about three months ago, we now are in a position where we can offer reass as a standalone service. Um, and it's unlocked so much opportunity because the customer doesn't need to commit to buying licenses, they don't need to commit to the change management. And we're able to give them that holistic view of everything that's going on in their go to market motion and what they need to prioritize to get more sellers hitting quota. And they get that kind of as a one off report before they have to make any big buying decisions. And it's been transformational for us. Shortened our sales cycle, increase the average deal values and, and increased our win rates.

Speaker A: Yeah, because it gives you to a really nice call to action. Right. Like oftentimes you'll go to a uh, webinar or people will be going to a conference and then it's like what next? Well, it's like well why don't you buy our software? I think they call it foot in the door. Theory is like, hey, this is a pretty, you know, low risk, easy way to get some value. And now we're starting to build into the sales cycle. But if we're going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, where it's BDR cold, call someone and ask for a demo, it can be done, but boy, is that tough, right? Whereas you can deliver them some sort of value, a simple call to action, have something marketing product and sales can rally around. Like now we could start moving things through the funnel. So that's a really important kind of pillar I like to start with. And then another big part for me is I always okay, when BDRs and reps are outbounding, how do we do that in an intelligent way? Right? Not just a, uh, spray and pray. So one I'm always looking at different softwares that provide signaling. I've used a bunch at this point. One that I'm using right now is called usergems. And basically, right, we've built a bunch of different signals of okay, they previously bought us, they're at a new company. That's one we've also built signaling around. If they're using a free version of our product and they hit certain levels of activity and using certain actions within it, that signals a high propensity to buy. Companies that are hiring it sysadmins strong predictor of buying. For us, that's another signal we have in here. Companies that are growing and ideally we start stacking these signals so the higher quality signals that stack together, those flow to our uh, AES and reps to go into sequences and flows. The other signals maybe that have a lower propensity to buy, those flow to our BDRs. But now instead of just targeting the whole world, we're being really thoughtful about who we're reaching out to. And based on the signaling, what that

Speaker C: messaging looks like, I really like that. So you take responsibility for defining ICP at the top level and then you're looking at all of these different signals and it's only when they have a certain stack of signals that the frontline sellers, the BDRs and the AES get access to those uh, leads. And is that about right?

Speaker A: That's exactly right. We're actually able to kind of funnel it into a score like you've probably seen before. And yeah, anything over 80 we have go to reps. Anything under goes to BDRs. But that has to meet a certain propensity to flow to a BDR as well.

Speaker C: What do you expect in return? Is there a turnaround time that you expect them to hit or a minimum number of outreaches or a certain number of sales generated opportunities they need to generate each month? What's the line in the sand for you guys?

Speaker A: Yeah, so kind of a few things. One, we have kind of X amount of leads with like a cap on it because we want it to be manageable, but we want them to be worked, you know, really well. So I'm trying to think offhand, but I think it ends up being like maybe 10 to 15 new accounts. Sometimes those will have three to four contacts within it ideally are flowing to the new logo reps much deeper for the BDR. So I think that ends up being like 30 or 40. Those actually automatically flow into a sequence that has the content written both for what the emails will look like and what they should say on a phone call. So it's pretty like, I don't want to say idiot proof, but it gives you something to jump off on right away. Um, once we get a better handle on conversions over time, I'm really interested to then figure out like, what is a reasonable expectation? You know, I don't think we have enough data yet to really understand what that should look like.

Speaker C: Uh, so how do you balance that kind of sales generation opportunities would exist with the, with the, the energy that they're expected to spend on existing pipeline or partner channels. Is there a, uh, is there a 60, 40 split or is it, uh, you just leave it to the individual A's to, to prioritize their own time?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, outside of capping the amount of leads. Because when we added up both how many leads they'll get each week and then how many phone calls, that looks like we're like, all right, this seems like a reasonable expectation, but not overloading them. But also like sometimes these things just become, all right, we gotta start somewhere and then we can kind of bend the model as it adapts.

Speaker C: Yeah, understood. So, um, do you find it difficult to motivate the sales team to think more like hunters than farmers? Especially in the kind of enterprise accounts where opportunities might not be as obvious.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So I mean, kind of. Ah, A. I think that's one reason why I like the people focusing on current customer focusing on new logo. Because what I found in other structures where I've had it both is, you know, reps are smart. They always take whatever's the easiest path to value. And at some companies, actually the current customer motion, like they feel like there's some simple stuff There. So that's where they focus. Or maybe they have decent lead flow, new logo and they don't really care about the current customer. Similar to doing a BDR SDR division versus inbound and outbound. I really like to have people focused on one thing so that they have to get good at that and don't kind of take the easiest path to value. Um, in terms of getting new logo people to focus on generating their own outbound. I think that's always a challenge. Right. I think especially when I first came to recast, it had a pretty strong inbound engine, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to come here. But ah, like any company, as we start to scale, start to try to hit more and more numbers, right, we're scaling up the amount of reps we have, the amount of inbound that maybe those reps had initially where they didn't really have to do any outbound like now they do. So yeah, it's fundamentally a cultural change. Um, I'm very much, at least I was trying to initially motivate by the carrot. Right. So lots of spiffs, lots of contests, lots of things to just try to make it where, hey, that's actually fun. Both to close deals but also like to really get rewarded for doing the right activities. Ideally once they do that enough, it just becomes a habit.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, sellers love a leaderboard. Um, uh, it's fair to say. And uh, incentives definitely drive the right behavior which is going to. You just got to make sure that you're not incentivizing the wrong thing. But uh, uh, I've made a lot of those mistakes over the years. But um, so, um, do you have internal rev ops and if so, how do you work with them? Ah, and uh, do you see the data analytics team enhancing your ability to identify potential opportunities that might otherwise be missed by the sales team? Yeah.

Speaker A: So, kind of a few thoughts on, on that. So one of the things that was nice about when I came to recast is also the COO that was forming at Nintex ended up coming here as well, who's a really talented Rebops professional. Um, we do use salesforce, we do use gong. And you know, I've always been deeply interested in how to apply AI to what we're doing. I'm not saying I'm the best at it, but a lot of things I'm working on and one of the things I've really just kind of kicked off in the last few weeks is, you know, I guess taking one step back. We're a deep Microsoft shop because the products we sell fundamentally enhance Microsoft products. You know, not to go too deep into it, but you know, Microsoft has intune and SCCM in the IT space. We are kind of add ons to those. So everything we do runs through Microsoft. So we have Copilot licenses. Um, GONG was able to just finally release a beta connector of all the GONG data and transcripts into Copilot was also able to just set up a Salesforce connector as well. The reason that's been kind of interesting I'm starting to play around with it is with m Copilot researcher just fundamentally just like you know, if you've used DeepThink or researching on ChatGPT, you can actually stack all the data polls out of Salesforce with all the GONG transcripts and start asking it some really interesting questions about what's historically happened. You can even ask about specific reps and where you're going. So I'm excited to play around with that, but I certainly haven't mastered it yet. I'm uh, very early days on that. In general in terms of data, the thing to me about AI, there's so many use cases, but it's more like there's so much data in the world, finally there's some way to start sorting through it. Maybe not perfectly, but if you're someone like me moving really, really fast. So I feel like I'm still just scratching the surface on what can be done.

Speaker C: Yeah, I've been playing around with some different agents and you know, every time I create one I need to split it into more than one and we end up um, uh, playing around with it. I think that there is a um, there's a concern I suppose if, if we allow the sellers to get too, too into that. And again it's another distraction from being customer facing. So uh, do you allow the, do you allow your sellers to, to have access to and play with these, these AI models and agents or is it really something that you, you define and then kind of give to them once it's, it's at that stage?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. So kind of a couple different things is from the sort of high level of like Copilot integrating with GONG and Salesforce right now that's just something I'm doing with the leaders. Maybe someday that'll change. But um, again, yeah, I don't want them to go too. But in terms of a sales process perspective, we do use ChatGPT. We have licenses for the sellers. We also have licenses for a lot of our sellers. To use Gamma. I don't know if you ever use Gamma to create PowerPoint decks, but it's a fantastic product. You can actually build your own branding into it. And something, you know, I really like to do is, you know, turn off all the training like for the rep. So it's not training the models. Try to keep all the data as private as possible, but you can flow in the transcripts from sales cycles, have that create the content for PowerPoint decks. You can then copy and paste that content into Gamma and it'll spit out a pretty beautiful presentation in your branding instantly. And you can create a really nice sales process from intro to demo to close. That looks really good. It's pretty dialed in.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm just making a note of that. Um, um, I spent my life building decks so knowing that there's an AI out there that can do it for me is uh, uh, is definitely something I'm going to look into. So appreciate that.

Speaker A: You will love it. Because I'm a deck guy, like just decks all the time and I used a lot of the different tools out there and they were just frustrating. Gamma I'm a big, big fan of. I think you'll get it right away. Excellent.

Speaker C: Oh, I can't wait. Um, that's really good to hear. Um, okay, so uh, we allow the REPs access to ChatGPT and so on but we don't allow it to kind of gather the information. And it sounds like you're limiting the leadership data that the, the AI tools that you're working to just to the leadership team. Um, we, the one use case that we found really powerful was really all around qualifications. So um, we've plugged in an AI bot into. So we'll plug into a Gong Call recorder or a Zoom or, or teams and, and we've got a widget in Salesforce where we, we will populate um, whatever the methodology is that they're using for qualification. So let's say they're using medpic. We'll populate the med pick for them and score it. Um, and we found it to be one of the key drivers to improve conversion rates. Not necessarily at the conversion rates of leaving discovery because people seem to skip through that quite quickly. But the positive impact on late stage win rates is and reduction of slippage at late stage by asking those qualifying questions and more importantly allowing the AI to highlight back to the seller what parts of the qualification maybe they haven't dived into well enough. Have they really identified that critical event? Do they know that they've got a budget. Do we understand who these economic buyers are? Who's going to be in the buying committee? And when the AI is prompting the seller and not allowing them to leave that discovery phase until those questions are answered. We've seen that have a big impact on consistency, on qualification and ultimately lead to better win rates and shorter sales cycles down the road. So I think there's some really interesting kind of single purpose AI models that you can use that can be really powerful for the sellers and it doesn't need to be, you know, all singing or dancing, but it can take away some of the real admin burden on the seller and give the leadership team a lot more visibility as to actually what's been going on and where the seller might need some training.

Speaker A: That's super interesting to me. So um, just even thinking about that, I guess how does it inform the seller? Like is it, where are they getting this information from? So let's say you had medpic. I assume it's then looking at the transcripts of the different calls. Is it in Salesforce, is it emailing them afterwards and being like you should have done this, like how does that I guess work first?

Speaker C: Um, of all, I think we're unique in the fact that when we onboard a customer we can go through the last year's worth of call recordings and associated calls to deals that close one and lost. So what we're looking for is how well or badly are certain sellers qualifying and what impacts that having on outcomes for over the last previous 12 months and that helps to train the model. Um, and then we had this widget that we hold that we capture the data in is a Salesforce widget. Or for customers that are using HubSpot, we've got a HubSpot widget. So um, where it gets clever is when the Rev ops team decide to use the scores within the qualification widget to gate the ability to move from one stage to the next. Um, and ah, they have to get permission to override that from the manager and that in itself has given them the consistency and you only need a couple of. You finished your phone call, you get a green thumbs up, you're allowed to lead discovery. Fantastic. You only need a couple of red thumbs down before you actually change the way you, the way you do your discovery. Um, and because you kind of crave that green thumbs up because you want to move forward. Um, and so we've seen a much better training tool by gamifying it than necessarily sitting people in a, in a, in a training room showing Them how to fill out the med pick or how to game the system.

Speaker A: I like that a lot. That's really clever.

Speaker C: The AI is certainly nowhere near as broad as someone like a gong because I know they do some really cool things with the call recordings. Um, but it's really focused on that qualification question and scoring it consistently across. You might have 100 sellers, um, and you may have run a thousand sales processes over the last year. But having that consistent view and understanding look, uh, seller X is consistently underperforming when it comes to identifying that critical event. So we know specifically we can give them that training and use that as uh, a gate to m. Not allow them to progress without clarifying that point with the customer or the prospect.

Speaker A: Yeah. And to that point, what I also like about, and something we found really helpful is when, you know, using call recordings and things to provide feedback to sellers, you know, like even just upload a transcript and say, hey, what, what were the top five things I did wrong or right here? I find, and this is probably just true of all humans, people are actually more open to taking the feedback from the AI. Sometimes it feels maybe personal coming from a manager, but they said five times in a row, like, they're not doing this. They're kind of like, yeah, that's right. And I think there's almost something about the green thumbs up too. It's like, well, this is pretty, just data driven and I don't have anyone to argue with. It probably lands a little cleaner.

Speaker C: Yeah. And of course they get an opportunity to fix it before they sit with their manager so they can, you know, identify this problem. This is what I did about it. And look, I've got my green thumbs up now. So it kind of gives them that opportunity to win and, and getting the seller and the leader, uh, looking at the same data points and, and identifying the same, uh, weaknesses in the process, it means that it, it turns the pipeline inspection meetings into much more consistent conversations about what could be done better, rather than allowing the seller just to take over and talk about how great they are and how much they love them and they're definitely going to buy.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, thinking about, I guess, you know, you guys and Forkast and all these players in the space, it's like I can almost imagine some tool right where it's, you know, it pick finds a bunch of signals those pop up to a seller, uh, of hey, reach out with this information. Then the call is giving them lots of feedback on what the discussion should look like. That's updating the CRM, it's going into gamma, maybe creating the PowerPoint decks for the next call with talk tracks already built into it. Like I can imagine a pretty beginning to end workflow we're probably building towards right now in this kind of AI application era.

Speaker C: I agree. I think that the tech in revenue operations is going to be um, transformed over the next three years. Um, and I don't think you'll be able to recognize it to what it is today and part um, of the reason that we chose to join Forkast. Um, so Mike, as we look ahead, what do you see as the biggest shifts in how sales teams will generate opportunities over the next three to five years?

Speaker A: Interesting. I mean probably touching on what we were talking about before on that, the AI piece. When I, when I think about, you know, when I first was entering sales, the amount of admin time was massive. I even think when you look at stats, I think it's still undervalued of how high it is. And not only that, the level which, that admin time just kind of like, you know, it's a lot of jumping back and forth. It can be kind of frustrating. Um, and when you look at really the modern era, even with a lot of these tools, I think the average software rep is still spending a ton of time generating quotes, figuring out who to reach out to, planning for next calls, updating their forecast. And not only will AI be able to do these things faster, I think it'll do them better. Right. And that'll bring a lot more consistency across the org when it comes to forecasting and planning. And uh, I think it sounds like a nicer life for reps. Right? That it's really going to come down to your ability to make relationships, run strong discoveries, really know enough to be consultative and push things forward and then figure out how to frame up pricing proposals and negotiations. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker C: I mean with uh, the benchmark report we just produced, we could see the average sellers are spending just two hours a day customer facing um, while our top performers at nearly ah, just under 50% of their time is now, ah, speaking to customers. So um, it's like one of those golf outages, right? The more you practice, uh, the luckier you get and the more time we spend talking to customers and prospects, guess what? The more pipeline we generate and the more deals we close and I think we've almost got to get out of our own way, uh, and really free the sellers up to spend more and more of their time building those relationships, getting customer facing, um, and guess what? If you speak to three customers a day, um, you are going to generate more revenue than the seller sitting next to you. That's only speaking to two customers a day.

Speaker A: Um, just basic math. You got to swing the bat.

Speaker C: Exactly. And everything has changed, but actually nothing's changed. Right. We absolutely, absolutely still need to kind of do that. But, um, look, I think I heard a really wise man say the other day that, um, we can have all of this experience and all of this knowledge under our belts, but the truth is that none of us are sold in 2026, none of us have sold in 2027. And so we're not quite sure what the future is going to hold and how we're going to get there. Um, but I think by being inquisitive, by being curious, by looking at these latest tech, uh, tools, um, and having these conversations about how people are doing things, we've got our best possible chance of winning.

Speaker A: I completely agree, and maybe I'm slightly biased on this, but I think there's so much exciting stuff in the more early stage companies. You know, it's, it's a part I've really enjoyed working on because it's always challenging, but it's always pressing you to come up with new ideas. But when you think about what we're talking about, which is fundamentally how do we take software and more hard coding that's still going to be there, how does that fuse with generative AI and different AI applications? And once people really figure out how to dial in those use cases with humans in the loop, I think you're going to see most businesses transformed. I'm really bullish on the next five to 10 years for people who are in this space, like, I think there's so many applications that are yet to be uncovered and it's going to completely transform away the way a lot of these companies, I think people aren't even aware how transformative it's going to be.

Speaker C: Yeah, I absolutely buy into that. I think the way people buy, the way people sell is going to change, uh, in, in, in so many ways. Um, but, but ultimately, if you've, if you, if you, if your activity levels are high, if you're engaging with customers and prospects more than your peers, you

Speaker A: will win more than your peers 100%.

Speaker C: Well, listen, Mikey, I've really enjoyed our conversation. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. But, um, if, if anyone in the community wants to reach out to you and connect, how would they do that?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, best way is on, on LinkedIn, mikeyapps. M I K E Y Last name A B T S Kind of a weird spelling.

Speaker C: Fantastic. Well, um, I'm sure they'll reach out to you. And, um, if they mention the podcast, I'm sure you'll be happy to accept their invite. Um, uh, so thank you so much for all your time today and all of your insights. Really enjoyed the conversation and, uh, good luck with the future.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks so much, guys. Great. Great.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Revenue Insights from ebsta. If you want to learn more from some of the the brightest minds on how to predictably and efficiently grow revenue, then subscribe to our newsletter. We'll deliver actionable insights straight to your inbox. Go to ebsta.com newsletter see you soon.