The Revenue-Focused Marketer

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Transcript

​0:10:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the revenue Focused Marketer, where we discuss anything and everything related to marketing as well as data.

0:20:
I’m your usual host, Hershey, and today we have Sarah Storm, who is the chief operating officer at Break the Box.

0:27:
Welcome, Sarah.

0:29:
Thank you so much.

0:30:
It’s so good to be here.

0:31:
Awesome.

0:32:
So she’s basically a sales powerhouse known for scaling SAS revenue without any fluff, and she has spent over 20 plus years breaking down what actually works in the B2B SAS sales.

0:45:
And from what I’ve heard, she doesn’t really sugarcoat it.

0:48:
So if you’re a SAS founder, kind of tired of like, you know, low win rates, bloated pipelines, this episode is really the one for you.

0:58:
We’re also gonna be diving into some really game-changing ideas today and kind of also talking about how AI is reshaping sales and revenue growth.

1:09:
, should founders really embrace it, fear it, or adapt fast.

1:13:
So let’s kind of find out, , and Sarah, just to start off for our listeners here, I know your LinkedIn profile says you’re the hammer, so others don’t have to be.

1:24:
What’s the toughest reality that founders need to wake up to in your?

1:30:
Yeah, that’s a great question, , because I believe that we are going to a place where sales revenue team customer facing roles will be cut down into half or more.

1:40:
So we are facing a reality where we will do, we will have to do a lot more ARR with a lot fewer people.

1:48:
So that’s a reality check, right, because before, if you look back in time before COVID, , we had a situation where these.

1:55:
MPs were throwing money at companies, higher, higher, higher was still like that.

2:00:
That’s how we grow.

2:01:
One person in equals X amount of revenue, and it’s not going to look like that anymore.

2:06:
It doesn’t look like that even now.

2:08:
, so one of the challenges that I think is the biggest mind shift for so founders right now is to accept that in a couple of years, your sales team of 2025 people or 30 people will be.

2:21:
People, , and this is something we need to adapt our organisations to.

2:25:
This is something we need to adapt our middle management to.

2:28:
This is something we need to look at when we do recruitment and we need to start building for that future today, , because if we start in 2 years it’s gonna be too late because then you’re gonna have people who are not who are not ready to do the type to drive the type of sales process that we need them to be ready for in our teams.

2:46:
So yeah.

2:47:
No, that’s brutal for sure, but I think that’s something everybody has to kind of, you know, keep an open eye to.

2:53:
, maybe let’s start talking real examples.

2:56:
So could you share an example of a specific, you know, sas company or like a project that you kind of worked on to help them scale and maybe share what was like, you know, some of the biggest challenges they faced.

3:08:
Yeah, so, so we only work with Sauce companies, right?

3:11:
That’s our, , it’s our only ICP because both me and my cofounder and the consultants we work with on projects, , have vast experience from Sauce.

3:20:
So Sauce is a bit different from other company types.

3:24:
It operates a bit differently.

3:26:
And the projects that we are in are very often related to going from having a very prey and prey approach to the market, , addressing a big time of different versions to narrowing down, right?

3:39:
So a lot of projects we do has to do with running into we have an ICP we think identifying we don’t have a clear ICP we don’t have a clear point of view when it comes to who we should be selling to.

3:52:
And based on that, everything that follows marketing sales is going offbeat, right?

3:58:
So AI has done a lot there too to sort of help us fuck it up faster because now we’re doing spray and pray and outbound on markets that we should probably not even touch.

4:08:
We’re spending sales time on markets that we shouldn’t touch based on ACV long sale cycles, etc.

4:14:
So a lot of situations we will go in.

4:17:
And do ICP workshops first because that’s the that’s the that’s the the foundation for all marketing and sales motion that will follow and then we dive into buyer personas who is the decision makers we’re trying to target in these new ICPs and after that we go in and we put a framework together, , to start executing on these markets the way we should execute.

4:39:
So we often help companies go from.

4:42:
Very inbound la, so we’re taking all the leads we get in.

4:45:
We have a pretty good inbound flow.

4:47:
We don’t know how to do the outbound motion to start doing the outbound motion upstream.

4:51:
So when I say upstream I mean towards bigger accounts with higher ACV because that’s where we’re moving.

4:57:
So a lot of companies right now in the EMIA market at least, which is where I do most of my projects, have a challenge going from inbound to outbound and from outbound SME or SMB to mid-market and enterprise because that’s the shift.

5:12:
So when it comes to the companies we work with, we work with companies like FSC, we work with companies like Brickpay, we work.

5:18:
With companies.

5:18:
I have worked for Viny before as an example, which is a Nordic player and I have also worked a lot with HubSpot because I run an agency before as a consultant doing these type of implementations and moving of sales teams to get to a point where we are moving to an account-based sales strategy, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re only targeting enterprise.

5:39:
We can do mid-market motion with account based approach.

5:44:
So when I say account based approach, what I mean is that we have a lot of sales people right now running on all types of companies.

5:52:
They’re running on all kinds of brands.

5:54:
They’re taking the inbound leads coming in.

5:56:
They’re doing outreach to all the companies that they can find on their list instead of having a target list.

6:02:
Like I have worked with wanted lists.
6:04:
I call them wanted because hit list sounds like we’re in a war and we’re not in a war with the customer like we’re trying to help them.

6:11:
But wanted list, so my most wanted accounts, and this is how I work in our own business too.

6:17:
I have 250 accounts in Europe that I will, I will communicate with this year with the end goal to open up those accounts for our business, but it’s only 250, and there are plenty of more sauce companies in Europe, but we have criteria for who do we want to work with, what stage do they need to be in, what sub segment of sauce, what platforms do they need to work with for us to bring value.

6:40:
So that list is pretty thin, and that means that I as a as a single, as an individual person doing sales too, because when you run your business you’re always doing sales.

6:51:
I can actually open these accounts and I have the time to do it because I’m doing tailored approaches.

6:57:
I’m doing showing up at their events, doing webinars that addresses them specifically to get them to understand who I am, my personal brand and the business brand.

7:06:
And so many sales teams in Europe right now are doing AI outreach and the AI outreach is is terrible.

7:16:
Like it’s just terrible.

7:17:
It’s not AI is not the problem by the way, the AI engine is not the problem in itself.

7:22:
It is that we don’t know how to do outbound with the messaging that actually resonates with our buyers because we’re not sure how our buyers are and even bigger companies like Scale up Sauce are still.

7:35:
Struggling with this, so they have a bunch of different industry verticals, right?

7:40:
And then they’re doing so this should be relevant for this industry.

7:44:
They’re not addressing the buyer the way it needs to be addressed because a marketing manager or a sales manager and HR manager in the same company have different alignments and goals.

7:53:
They have different things they will trigger on the narrative needs to be there and we’re sort of just, I don’t know, walking around catching everything that blows by us and it’s, it’s not a good strategy as we progress.

8:05:
Yeah, I think you kind of mentioned about AI here and AI is this thing that you know is really changing everything marketing content, and now even sales.

8:15:
So in your opinion, like, you know, how are you seeing AI’s impact on like sort of tax revenue strategies, , we talked about some of the failures that kind of come with it because they don’t really know what they’re targeting, but like, you know, what do you see major chunk of the player.

8:31:
and how would you like, you know, the founders that are kind of successful in implementing that struggling.

8:39:
Yeah, so I have a good example of a founder who is succeeding.

8:43:
So chilli Piper is a US based company, right?

8:46:
It’s a big sauce company.

8:47:
They’re amazing.

8:48:
They’re good on the market.

8:49:
They understand their ICPs.

8:51:
They have it nailed down.

8:52:
One of the things that they are doing, we had a webinar with Alina, who’s one of the Founders at chilli Piper, , a couple of months ago and one of the things that they are doing is AI agents to support the individual person in the company.

9:06:
So as, as, as we had that discussion, one of the things that came out is look, the point with AI is not to scale outreach fast or it’s not a specific motion we’re looking to address.

9:18:
What we’re looking to address is take a person like me or Alina or you Hershey.

9:21:
And reinforce us with extra powers.

9:24:
It’s like doing an hour putting an Iron Man suit on, right?

9:28:
So this is what AI agents can support us with in our business, but this also needs to be impacted by who we’re hiring because one of the skill sets that AI doesn’t have yet and will struggle to get to a point where it has unless it will become completely autonom, which is another discussion altogether.

9:46:
Is to understand creativity, innovation and people skills.

9:49:
So these things that has to do with how we interact with people will be much more important when we’re trying to enforce a person with extra power using AI agents to automate a lot of the boring stuff that they’re doing on a day to day versus right.

10:03:
And then have them only focus on the things that has to do with creativity, innovation, curiosity, and how the market moves and understanding bigger concepts that we still our brain is still a lot better than AI to do that.

10:16:
So the point is to use AI agents, roll it out into the organisation.

10:21:
And the companies who do that, and there are a few players in Europe who are doing that behind the scenes now working on infusing their people with AI bots to do a lot of the things that are taking time from this individual in different roles, not just with sales but also in HR, also in legal, also in the finance department to be able to get that person to deliver 4 times as much output.

10:44:
Only focusing on the things that has to do with strategic vision, curiously innovation and how we can do social interactions together.

10:52:
Because we will come to a point where AI one AI bot at a B2B company will talk to another AI bot who’s looking to buy that is in another company.

11:02:
We will come to that point where these small deals and small engagements will be done completely digitally without higher management being involved because higher management is busy with painting the picture where.

11:15: This company is going hiring really creative people to get us to move from an innovation space to become better and better and better and that’s what we should be spending our time with that’s what our brains are the best at doing is the vision mission and sort of the the acceleration on the market.

11:31:
We shouldn’t be doing let’s buy this software.

11:35:
We shouldn’t be in processes like that anymore because it’s a waste of our time.

11:39:
And that also means that there will be no sales people because the buyers will just hand this over to their agents to handle based on whatever the market fit is for that specific software.

11:50:
So the sauce industry that targets like all the sauce companies targeting SMB doing 1 to 5 seats.

11:59:
They need to go upstream because otherwise they they will either they will not be able to have sales people hired they will need to do it completely digitally and their sales teams will just go into other roles either in different companies or in their company working with marketing for products as an example instead of doing sales so this shift will be pretty immense and what I can see the US market is so much more mature than than the the European market is we’re moving a lot slower.

12:29:
, and the reason for that is multifold.

12:32:
First of all, the US is more curious as a as a entrepreneurship country to new products that can remove inefficiencies, , than the European areas and the other part also has to do with how much we value, , human interactions, right?

12:48:
Because we are either looking to make money or we’re looking to have people be happy.

12:52:
And this is like always been a disconnect between these two goals and they don’t need to be a disconnect anymore because now we can make a lot of money and we can also have people who are doing the things that they are really good at, which is the bigger concepts on a day to day basis instead of sitting with admin.

13:08:
tasks that we really don’t, we shouldn’t sit with those things, right?

13:13: I think from what I from what you said like, you know, AI isn’t necessarily taking jobs, but it is asking you to kind of think the bigger picture and people who are kind of focused on just doing the repetitive task it’s for them to, you know, kind of go through a different timeline and kind of focus on things that really matter big picture and what we can do.

13:37:
I also wanted to know chime in like with our product the growth, a lot of we’re investing our AI in is like kind of helping with predictive lead scoring helping like you know, giving grades that are sort of done predict.

13:54:
to our sales people like, you know, what they really be focusing their time and energy on or have you seen something like that in the industry and what would be your thoughts on like, you know, using AI for sort of something like predictive.

14:08:
When we were talking about agents before, some of the agents I’m talking about will be doing this, so I’m calling it an agent, but the agent can be in the platform, right?

14:17:
I’m calling it an agent because we’re seeing you’re seeing it as an assistant agent to support whatever the work flow is.

14:24:
So when it comes to predictability of pipeline, predictability of lead scoring, predictability of how the market is moving all of these things we, we don’t have the capacity to analyse these things on our own.

14:35:
It’s a lot better to go to a system.

14:37:
Providers and say look I need to understand how this lead should be either put into nurture.

14:44:
I need to understand if should put in to be put into sales process, should we do this on boarding completely online and these are things that a lot of European companies are also behind on in the sauce space.

14:55:
So when you look at the products out there, products out there are amazing at this point, but with all systems it is shit in, shit out.

15:04:
So if you don’t put nobody, but if you don’t put good data.

15:07:
In there it’s the same with the CRM or a or a growth machine that’s a sequence engine that does outreach, right?

15:12:
If you don’t put good good content inside there, good understanding of the market, because when you’re doing lead scoring, you need to go back to so which which SAP is this company targeting, which buyers, what are a value, what is a valuable lead?

15:27:
What does that mean for this business?

15:29:
And if they get that part wrong, your system will get it wrong because the input is wrong, right?

15:35:
And I’m.

15:36:
Sure you guys see this that when it’s behind the wheels, the car doesn’t drive as well.

15:42:
Does that make sense?

15:43:
Yeah, that’s why I think the focus is, you know, kind of like you know a lot of key players.

16:06:
And the thing is, as a vendor today because I’ve, I’ve been in the marketing and sales, , space, I’ve sold CRM marketing automation prospect tools, , online tools to drive a buyer’s journey, buyer’s experience.

16:17:
So I’ve been in that space for 12 years now, only that space.

16:21:
It’s all I work with, right?

16:23:
The sales and marketing experience that we create for buyers and that can be on a a PLD motion like a product led motion or it can be on a sales led motion.

16:33:
It’s independent of what.

16:34:
of motion you have at the end of the day, we as vendors unfortunately can’t just deliver platform anymore.

16:42:
We need to deliver competence to guide people into what to put into the platform to get the desired outcome.

16:49:
Otherwise you end up in a situation and I’m sure this has happened to you as it happens to all source vendors in the world.

16:55:
We come to a point where the system is the problem, even though the system isn’t actually the problem, right?

17:00:
The customer’s perception is like this doesn’t work like but.

17:04:
you don’t even know what a valuable lead is for you.

17:08:
So of course the system doesn’t work because you, you’re putting in data points that are giving us a, a skewed view of what a good lead is as an example, if you’re looking at lead scoring and predictive leads analysis, right?

17:21:
And if you look at pipeline analysis or sales intelligence tools like Gong and all of these platforms that are out there to provide data points, if we don’t have a framework for our sales people to be on, we can’t.

17:33:
Measure outcome because the sales framework isn’t in place.

17:36:
So all of these things is it comes back to management comp competence in process like that’s where we land land up and a lot of buyers and I have been on the buyer side a lot.

17:47:
I’ve done a lot of demand specs, RFIs and stuff like that for this type of tools and a lot of buyers are also not knowledgeable enough to be able to put together a good demand spec leading to a lot of them will buy their own platform as a sales person when I’m selling platform.

18:03:
Because I did, I did that for years.

18:06:
I have a responsibility to make sure that the customers that I bring in has a low likelihood of churn.

18:13:
So I actually have a responsibility to explain and set expectations in the sales cycle where I’m telling the customers, look, this will fit you if you do this and this and this before you go into platform.

18:25:
If you don’t do the pre-work, this will not be a good investment for you and we will struggle for 6 months trying to get you to get usage up because you don’t understand.

18:35:
So either you and I educate you together.

18:37:
To make sure that we have a good project, or we should probably go our separate ways, right?

18:43:
I think that’s honestly some problems that we saw early on with the product and that led us to shift our approach from kind of being like, you know, mainly as a product and now being analytic service so it takes sort of like a village to really get you.

19:01:
to play with the product that helps and it’s intuitive to use the product, but human intervention to be able to tell you to ensure the inputs that are going in accurate, but no, but I just very much agree with you and this is the thing.

19:23:
It doesn’t require any human interaction.

19:25:
It requires your expertise because this is the thing, right?

19:29:
It doesn’t because they, they could have human like human time to spend on this they could spend their own internal time.

19:36:
They probably don’t know how to spend that time while you guys do.

19:39:
So having a, having being a software company today requires so much more than products.

19:45:
It really does like from a narrative perspective, from an implementation perspective, and, and one of the things that I that I, I have a personal.

19:52:
Point of view when it comes to these things since I’ve been in software sales for so long for me it’s always made me sad, like sad as a person, like sad as a person to see companies pushing their sales teams to sell to non-it ICPs and then and then the customer will churn because we don’t seem to consider what happens for the person who made the decision to buy that platform.

20:16: What happens to their credibility in the organisation.

20:19:
Happens to their career if they make mistakes when it comes to putting a system in place and they roll something out that’s not gonna give the company the benefits like we’re risking people’s careers and jobs for bottom line and bottom line I’m all for I’m all for bottom line.

20:32:
I’ve been a very like KPI and numbers driven person my entire career, but at the end of the day we also as vendors need to step up and take our responsibility and sometimes, sometimes just say to a customer, I.

20:46:
I don’t think you should do this with us.

20:47:
This is not the right time.

20:49:
Like it’s OK.

20:50:
It’s better that you go and you get your foundation in place and then we can talk, , because we, we can build a trust on the market being a vendor like that, and I don’t really see any sauce AI tool taking that space, being a vendor who actually behaves responsibly about the product that they’re selling, right?

21:10:
And I don’t know how you guys see it, but for me it’s always been.

21:13:
I don’t know.

21:13:
I feel, I feel like it’s our responsibility as salespeople.

21:17:
And when I say salespeople, I mean the salespeople’s managers, because that’s the whole driving point, right, and I still, I’m still waiting for that shift to happen where we start looking at churn risk in the sales process.

21:31:
Definitely.

21:32:
And I think with the number of tools that are coming out and the investment that’s going in there, this is a very relevant point.

21:39:
have become so huge we manage them anymore so we just rely on buying another software to manage.

21:50: We need to do foundational work and foundational work, once you plug in a tool like you guys, that foundational work will pay off and they will have a successful platform and project.

22:01: They will think it’s the platform that’s so good, but at the end of the day it’s the foundation that they put into the platform.

22:06:
, that made the project successful because to be fair, if you look at the sales tech stack environment, how many tools are out there and I have sold CRM for many years as well.

22:17:
One of the things that I always told my customers was like, so our CRM has bells and whistles.

22:22:
The other CRMs on the market also has bells and whistles.

22:25: What we can do for you is to make.

22:26:
Sure that whatever you’re going to use the CRM for that you will use it in a way that will actually give you the output you want and this is the difference.

22:35:
It’s not the system because systems go like this.

22:37:
You guys might be top of the market for 2 months and then a competitor will launch a product, , a product add on that makes them better for a couple of months and then you go like.

22:47:
This with each other, right?

22:48:
But the thing that remains is the sort of the viewpoint of what are we here to do as a vendor?

22:55:
What is my impact on the customers that I bring into the table and what am I trying to achieve?

23:01:
Am I trying to achieve output or am I trying to roll out the system?

23:04:
And these are two different perspectives, right?

23:07: No, that’s really like widely spoken, and I think that’s something that needs to be a big consideration for now to kind of get to that level.

23:16: I know we’re at sort of the end of our time here today, so I do want to say thank you so much again for tuning in with us today and sharing your insights.

23:25:
I think this is exactly what SAS founders need to hear.

23:30:
About the changes that are happening in the industry and how to kind of go with ethical ways moving forward so they can make decisions that kind of avoid these super high rates, right?

23:41:
Can I add one thing before we wrap up to founders who are listening.

23:45:
So the thing is that the strategy I’m talking about the ethical approach, it will also make you more money.

23:51:
Because it costs a lot more to drive in new business versus keeping and growing existing base, so your base can be your biggest income source if you choose to go a path that is a bit more long term, which means that the bottom line this will make you more money because you can’t only go on the ethical line.

24:09:
You need to understand that bottom line.

24:12:
This is what we’re giving to our shareholders.

24:14:
This is what we’re giving to our employees.

24:15:
This is the growth we need to do, but this approach, 6 months in, will make you more money.

24:21:
I just want to clarify that that I’m not all about the floof.

24:24:
This end goal is to make more money with less people because that’s where we’re going.

24:29:
100% and I guess like.

24:32:
Before we wrap up, for people that want to kind of find you and learn more about your work, where can they kind of connect with you?

24:39:
LinkedIn, LinkedIn, add me on LinkedIn.

24:41:
I will accept everyone who sends a connection request to me.

24:43:
If you don’t start the dialogue with me though, I will remove you after a couple of weeks.

24:47:
But just send, send a LinkedIn connect, ask me questions, talk to me, and then let’s just do it.

24:53:
Perfect.

24:54:
Thank you so much again for your time today and to our listeners.

24:57:
If you’re ready to stop guessing and you know, really start scaling, definitely follow her and then kind of check out Break the box for more sort of non-BS revenue strategies.

25:08:
And if you found this episode valuable, like, you know, definitely share your thoughts with us and do let us know what are some other topics that you really want us to dive deep into.

25:18:
So see you next time and thank you so much.

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