GSD Podcast - Customer Success in the Pre-sales trial Phase
Very happy to have James Stuart of Reed talk about how the Customer Success team is being used to help trial users get a high touch to increase success in the pre-sales phase. I love this concept! James and talk about using all the great Customer Success tools to get outcome-driven trials to convert prospects into successful and happy customers.
Transcript:
Jeff 00:07
Hey there, it's Jeff, and thanks for coming back to the GSD podcast always grateful that you're listening. today's podcast is with James Stuart have read company over and over in England. They I met James through one of our implementation communities. And when he started telling me about what he was doing, I was like, I gotta get this podcast, I never heard of anybody doing it. It's a really, really smart way of doing things. James is responsible, he works in the Customer Success department. However, he runs the sales trials, which if you think about it is super smart. Because usually what happens is it's a sales driven with sales engineers basically setting people up, giving them some limited functionality and access to the product. Instead, what they're doing, James take it over and the episode is they're having success, walk them through in sort of the success way of doing things and making sure that there's goals and success metrics, and that they get trained and implemented properly on the product so that when it comes to evaluating the the trial, they've had a really in depth and successful way of looking at the product and implementing anyways, I thought it was great. I couldn't get any justice in this intro. So it definitely wasn't James, he's got a great accent. And give it a whirl and let me know your feedback if you got any. And I'll talk to you next time on this computer, and we are recording and we might be a little rushed, because we just got into a big conversation on soccer. But But I want to thank James for for coming on. Why don't you come on and say, the company that you're at? And what's your big focus that you're working on right now?
James Stuart 03:02
Yeah, so I'm James. I'm with Dakota, UK, one of the largest job boards within the UK. And sort of my internal focus at the moment is just working with some of our new sales channels. Sort of, we were working with a sales channels traditionally. And then we've now sort of moved on to working and integrating other sales channels. So just working within that team, supporting them, ensuring sort of like the you know, they're asking the right questions and data analysis and that kind of thing. And yeah, just getting him just introduce them to the way we work for sort of help them in the future when when they're speaking to their customers. And that we may not necessarily speak to
Jeff 03:51
you know, one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on to talk to you about this stuff is because nobody ever really comes on and talks about the pre sales aspects of things, right. A lot of people really focus, especially in our community on on the, you know, customer has signed, how do we get them live? How do we get them to go through success and get more seats and, you know, get success and all the fun CSAT and NPS numbers and things like that. But you're you're unique, you have a big job to do to get before that right? And you're super active and working with the sales team and everything. When do you actually get brought in by the business development team at what point in time?
James Stuart 04:30
It varies, but traditionally, just before sort of the pre trial agreement is signed, we would have a sort of a sit down with the sales team, do a bit of research on the customer. Listen to the sales teams conversation to then what we would do then is we would have an introduction call with that customer introducing myself explaining the differences in roles between myself and the sales guys and then sort of understand them a little bit more about what the customer needs, who's involved within the company, and what the role is within the organization, just so that we can work out, you know, who our end users are, who are influence our decision makers, etc. So we know that type of communication and what support each individual need. And then we were sort of, once we've established that, start the onboarding process and pre onboard and if you like, yeah, and then the full onboarding will start. So you know, the login details, the training, and that kind of thing would start then all the way through to usability.
Jeff 05:43
Do you it sounds like in order for this to work, that it would be like a pretty structured process, like a lot of people's trial processes aren't that it's like, Okay, here's some seats. Here's a URL, we created some login information. There's some training videos over here. It sounds like what I'm guessing and we did talk a little bit about this and sort of like, we have two weeks to prove success, or four weeks. So how are we what's the best way for us to, to get this customer to the place where they're actually going to sign to be up to be real customers?
James Stuart 06:14
Yeah, no, it has to be again, because for two things, I think structure does lead to success. Because you're you've worked out a method in which way your customer has the best can have the best experience all the time. So it's important to have that structure. But also as well, like you said, because we've also got such a short amount of time, we need to make sure that we touch on certain touch points. And actually, we hit bills. And to do that we have created, we have to create a structure to say, by day one, we needed to have this done by day 3x needs to be done five, 712 excetera. So that, because we only have potentially to four to six to eight weeks. And sometimes, you know, that could be 2025 users, we have to do it so that the customer has a great experience. And also, we have the chance to prove ourselves, what we don't want is just to it's a bit all over the place, then actually, you know, it doesn't always be build credibility. And obviously, we need to make sure that, you know, we're credible in the service that we're providing, right? What,
Jeff 07:25
how are you able to? Are you getting the success criteria from the sales team? Are you getting it in sort of that kickoff meeting, isn't, hey, we've got 25 people, or you're getting to the point where it's like, if we do X, like, you know, if we show, you know, why type of, you know, success, or if you say you need to get, you know, 20 people to be able to do these types of tasks, then it's a success, and then we'll consider how are you getting to those types of those,
James Stuart 07:55
we would have a discussion with the sales team first, because ultimately, they would have spoken to them and understood their problems beforehand, because so they can match the appropriate product to fix the solution. But that is quite late. So large scale, wherever we are that kickoff call, we will then look at actually, what can we what are we able to do in the short amount of time to prove success, because they could, obviously when they may speak to them, they may be saying this is my 12 month plan. This is why I want to do, you know, this is what I want to do over the next quarter, etc. But we don't have that. So it's all about setting those sort of SMART objectives. I think one of the things that, you know, one of the challenges that I often see with success criteria, is they're not always quantifiable. So at the end of it, you know, we could go on gut feel was what we like to try and do is make it a quantifiable measure so that at the end of it, we can go, you know, ask those to do X or provide x, we have provided, you know, 10% over 5%, wonder or etc. So that we can, it's a much easier conversation to have. Whereas if, if you've got a product and you just say and I want you know, it's more of a field or more of an emotion, it's hard to quantify that. So we we like to sort of make sure that we're asking those smart, objective questions. And like I said, we've only got a short amount of time, so we need to make it realistic.
Jeff 09:31
Right? So you drive everything through that trial periods, Zeze. And these are the six success criterias. We're going to drive towards that. There's many things we can do. But we agree that this is what can be done. So anything that kind of comes out of that scope, you can point back to the Hey, we agreed we're going to or how does this new request kind of map back to that success criteria?
James Stuart 09:53
So generally what we'll do is we'll have the conversation at the start. And then throughout the process then so if we just start Take that take a four week trial because that's what we've worked. Yeah, you know, you would have like day one would be like kickoff call, where we would lay down the customer the the, the success criteria, then and they say week one, generally provide reports into the customer of tracking on that success criteria, then what we would normally do that is, and then have like a mid trial call, where we reintroduce the sales team and say, you know, we're having a mid trial call where we actually discuss the progress, challenges faced and the obstacle and how we're going to combat them. And also, we'll then map it back to the success criteria to say, so we how, you know, are we on track to hit X? What's the run rate looking like, week three, then you know, the reports and start again to mark it out, and then week four, then we will bring the sales teams back in, have that final end of end of trial call. But one of the things I always say to my customers is, we should have a really good understanding by week four of what if we're going to progress on it, because we should have been having meaningful conversations. Throughout those what we don't want to hear at the end of week four is, I wish we saw this or wish we could do this or wish we did that. I always go at this last thing. That's the worst question I think you can always ask, and a trial because it clearly shows you've not listened to the customer, or you've not been able to have proper conversations with the customer. Regardless of is it yes or no, you should be able to gauge where you're at by the end of week four?
Jeff 11:36
Absolutely. Do you feel that by going through this sort of regimented pre sales trial process, that normal? Or normal, whatever those the regular onboarding process once a customer signed up, is a little bit smoother? So yeah, do you do have situations where people don't go through a trial process? And then they just go through the normal onboarding process? Yeah.
James Stuart 12:01
Yeah. You know, there's, there's customers that will just buy a package outright? Yep. You know, they'll have the usual, you know, they'll go straight from presale. So it'll always been nine times out of 10. It'll always be business development. And it'll just be it might just be a business development to account management handover, without customer trial period in the middle. So yeah, you know, we do that. Well, that's why what we'd like to do as well is sort of, when I speak to my sales partners, I like to, you know, give them information regarding, not just if they use those as a trial, but actually information to arm them regardless of trial or not. So you know, that they might be, they might be having a trial, but it might not be the size to justify it, or the length of time to justify having a customer success. It might be you know, a one day or a three day or five day trial. Where they just want to test the product, though. Yeah, well, we can still arm them with information of, you know, this is how to ask the success criteria. This is how to, you know, onboard a customer correctly, that kind of thing. And that's what we like to try and do so that, you know, the whole education piece.
Jeff 13:21
Yeah, yeah. Do you in so I have another question. I have to ask this one first to get there. Do you work on normal post trial implementation and onboarding? Or is that a separate team?
James Stuart 13:34
No, it's not a separate team? Yeah, well, we have a hat, we have a handle that so we work on anything 12 months or less, or generally 12? Gotcha. Because that's an annual package. And so the way that internally what we would say is it sits with business development, it sits with our team into an account manager. It's definitely not the easiest way to
Jeff 14:00
we look after one year is I mean, for a lot of new SaaS companies. That's, that's, that's a contract. It's it's trying everything out for the one year, and then you try and get to the three year agreement after that, or whatever.
James Stuart 14:13
So traditionally, we work in one year agreements in terms of annual we tend to work in annual contracts, as in like, from business development to account manager. The idea is you try the contract. And then we would pass that on to a business development with them say, Would you like to sign up for an annual nine times out of 10 COVID is slightly changed that a little bit where we're seeing a lot shorter agreement. Yeah, so sometimes what the scene is actually working with customers longer term, just don't shots which I still sit with, we actually will stick with me. I'm actually working on a few six month contracts at the moment, because it's shorter term contracts because of where they're at in their recruitment, etc. And we aren't seeing that gem It's, you know, the pre sale turned into an annual.
Jeff 15:04
Yeah. How involved are the salespeople bugging you every day every week seeing the trouser going? Or?
James Stuart 15:12
No, because we have. So what we'd like to do is, we have a regular meeting each week, whereby all sales partners and all in all ces come together and discuss all the trials, I didn't the one thing we do as well. So every morning, we would always have like a huddle, we can join the huddle to say a little bit of an update of where we're at. So we have quite a lot of internal communication, which then requires eradicates the need for every couple of people check it off, and that kind of thing. But I think it must be working, because we don't get a lot of questions internally, because we're the ones that you know, that conversations flowing already. Yeah. So that generally works quite well. But I think if you aren't getting a lot of questions by you know, from either side, then generally, communication and level have probably not
Jeff 16:10
understood. So how it actually, I know, we talked a little bit and we wanted to go over, sort of, in this short term trial phase, the best ways to build trust along the way, so that they'll want to convert and everything Do you have sort of, I don't wanna say tactics, because that sounds like a bad word. But like, what are your best proven methods for obviously, listening, which you talked about, as well, but
James Stuart 16:34
three items, three things that we need to do to sort of build credibility, I think the first thing is to be the person to provide like insights to the customer, or a sector expert that they can't find anywhere else. So actually, you are that industry expert, not that product expert, that they can't just go and see, you know, they can't just get this information from everyone else, I think that builds a lot of credibility. I think, like proving like little premium wins. So saying little, you know, I was saying, find the quickest way to add value, that's one thing that I always got taught, and the quicker you can add value to that customer the cookie, you can enhance credibility. And it could be a really small change, you know, it doesn't have to be a big massive process change, it could be a little small change, but that hasn't liquid of a benefit to the customer, it could reduce the time to time to value or time to do something. And I think that'll add credibility. And I think the ultimate thing is just by just by completing the objectives you set, right, you know, actually just right, instead of promising the world, you know, just promise little objectives and hitting them, which then builds trust that you're actually gonna complete. The last three times. He said, he's gonna do XYZ. He's done it, it's worked. Well, now we can carry on trusting him. Whereas, you know, if I said to you, I'm gonna save you $10 million? Well, it's quite a big, massive objective, whereas they're gonna say, Yeah, I'll save you 20 minutes per process you do, which in the long run could save your life think you've got it's more realistic and you build?
Jeff 18:13
Yeah, no, that's, it's, this all sounds great, because it's very human and very tangible. It's, it's, I can especially always preach about the insight, being able to provide that. Well, I tell a lot of new groups when they're coming up on board, is they're, they're usually pretty humble. I don't sometimes lacking the self confidence to be able to feel like they have that insight. And it's because they don't realize they're in it. And they're working every day. And they're working with some of your new customers, competitors, and peers and things like that. And you can say, like, Oh, this is what people in your industry are doing, right? You can say, you know, you don't want to name drop too much. But oh, this is what we did for X and Y, and Z. And they're all in the peers of this other company. And they're suddenly like, Oh, that's great, because everybody wants some validation and things like that, and, and your team and the people that are responsible for the onboarding, the implementation, the trials and things like that, if they're working with the software and the customers, they're building up a lot of this insight that really nobody else has, the sales team usually doesn't, they know that there was some success over here and they know what the product does. But being able to really map sort of the business problems to how your software kind of addresses those business problems. That's a huge skill set that that a lot of people I don't think put as much value into this sort of post sale or, you know, you're in a different model, which I really like. Now, I am going to be digging into this a little bit more because not everybody goes through this the standard, you know, maybe even a really elongated sales cycle, and then suddenly, you know, then a long time implementation period, especially if it's like an enterprise, like enterprise deals usually take a long time to close six, six plus months or something. And then they want to do a ton of stuff to get you off the ground integrations and things like that. Do you? Does your team wind up dealing with those at all? Like, hey, we
James Stuart 20:21
Yeah, but I think so just to finish on the Insight thing, I think, I think insights can be overcomplicated. You know, I like, I always think you're really good format of insights, if you know is, this is the data, this is what the data is telling us that but based on this data, you should do X, Y, and Zed. Think it can be a lot of times in so it's gonna be it's like a really complicated, you know, the thing you're asked to be really fancy and stuff like that. But it's not all it is, is federally insights, it's just recommendations based on your industry data. And they think you'll be simplified that way. I think the customer will understand it a lot more, they'll be more receptive. Right. It'll be easier, where instead of saying, you know, we, you know, you're changing the chain and all this, that and the other. It's not you just based on a recommendation. All right, what information is telling you do?
Jeff 21:13
Absolutely, I even see that with, like a slight change to Google Analytics, and I'm not quite sure exactly what it was. But before he just went in and looked at a ton of data, right, like, Oh, it's a nice chart, just use this in there. But then they started putting those questions that you wanted answered on the right side, like, you know, what are my customers doing? What's the content that they're looking at? And those types of insights, but you're right, it's, it's, it's answering these questions. It's not coming back with this massive report or things like that. So it's a good point. I thought about that. It's
James Stuart 21:43
quite intensive integration. Yes. So we, so that's another part of it for like the technical aspects. Like, in terms of technical aspect, I don't do necessarily technical bills or anything like that. But effectively, it's like acting like the middle person, just to ensure that the technical aspects work. So the integration between the two software's were. So what we have is we were with the Corps, ATS systems. So application tracking system, respectively, the big HR tool that can be
Jeff 22:16
customized for their resumes, and then they in the app. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
James Stuart 22:20
And then also, then in the other term, the resume can go for an application can go from our site, into their site, okay. So that they can view all in their own system, and it goes that way. And we sort of helped set that off in terms of liaising with, you know, our company and the company and acting like the middle person and answering, you know, some technical questions. So, you know, we'll have like, a list of FAQ that we would generally answer. And if it gets past this, then it's sort of like the, you know, like, the, you know, IT support where you, you know, the front desk, but you know, we're generally that front desk, so support whereby you know, the normal questions, if it gets passed out, then it generally needs a more technical knowledge or a software developer or something like that. And so it's actually a real technical problem. But we do a lot of the front desk support and setting up that way as well. To ensure that the customers are integrated,
Jeff 23:27
where Where's all this data, getting tracked about all the things that you're doing? So you know, you want that one? I don't necessarily know what system like I don't know the brand name, but you're doing a lot in pre sales that most don't normally do. And then you're having to sort of probably transition over to the account management team, maybe even extended onboarding and implementation. Is that inside of like a CRM system, or is that just enough knowledge, man knowledge transfer that you hand over your notes,
James Stuart 23:56
so we have a few things like we have a few documents that we complete. So the handover Docs. So we have a handover document, slash kickoff call with account management and sales, without the customer saying, These are the strengths, the weaknesses, this is what's going on. And they have like a document of, you know, key users, individuals who, you know, their roles in the company products, they use products that they bought the success criteria of our product, or you know, of the trial, and then sort of like anything that you've picked up. So you know, they've mentioned that the next 12 months, they're going to be making x amount of highest. So we can pass that knowledge on in terms of our own industry specific as a team. We've been doing a lot of document creation, so technical questions, and like FAQ is internally but not necessarily shown with the customer. But basically, it's documentation to help us provide answers to the customers who've been doing a lot of black and white, you know, process play books. So, you know, times, timelines, etc, why you should be. So that it's like a. And obviously the idea raised internally, we would have a place or a location whereby we can access that gives us different scenarios and sort of like key tips to answer that and what a general trial would look like and key milestones so that it's more of a new starters. So if we do any staff on board, you know, we do have reference points. You know, these are documents to read and location are familiar yourself with so that you are aware of the trial process. And it's very high level, because, you know, this is what you would expect and your roles and responsibilities, but most importantly, how to answer the questions and that kind of thing. So we aren't doing a lot of fun at the moment.
Jeff 26:02
Yeah, no, that was because I knew we wanted to cover that sort of handoff and that readiness and aspects. And then from there, the typically the account management team, and they'll have their own sort of, I don't want to say real process, but like this sort of more involved next process to get a whole bunch more users, and things like that. Yeah, as we talked about earlier, I can only imagine that smoother. And this is such a new model to me. Probably because it's larger company and things like that, where it makes total sense. Where I'm just so used to like, oh, no, we're gonna build some custom stuff. And, you know, give it to him for like, a week or two. And, you know, see if that works. You know, one of my customers is a little larger, and they come have some people that they bought from a larger company, and they are doing like, here's your proof of value. Do we agree that if you go through this proof of value, then you will move over to the next phase? And I always thought that was a little bit of like pushing a little bit. But actually, I don't know if you had a perspective on that do you do if you're, maybe if it's success, create more of a conversation here, but spitballing, but maybe if it's success criteria, but not aceso? Not love this? Like, if you do this, you'll sign for the next agreement? Is that sort of how it's phased or it's sort of like, Hey, you're having a trial, these are the things we're going to try and prove they prove it, then you'll have a conversation somewhere else. And maybe you guys look at the customer.
James Stuart 27:27
It's not as blunt of if we tick these, but if we tick these boxes, here's the contract, you must sign but it's, it's more a case of what, you know, what do we need to prove? Or what do we need to show you, that would make it valuable for you to have this product? Because ultimately, you know, there's, there's obviously the customer has glitches and that kind of thing. And it's often like, what, you know, what do you need to see to show this is value for you to spend? You know, is it? And it's like that kind of thing? Because obviously there are competitors out there, like every industry. We've got. So it's you know, it's what do we need to do to set aside from our competitors? Why, you know, why do we need? Why would you come with us, rather than going to one of our competitors is, you want to see this many specific applications? Do you want to see we have a certain size of a talent pool in a certain area, that kind of thing. So it's not necessarily, you've got to do this design. But I think you've got to have a formula to work towards to show value at the end. And a structure for that, because the success criteria, nine times out of 10 will relate back to the organization's goals of what they want to see. And if you know their goals of what you want to see them, you can work towards hitting those goals. And obviously, you know, the difference between success and support is actually with understanding what the customers goals are actually formulating a plan and a product to actually ensure they hit those targets and those goals. Right, so we need to know them. And that's how we receive the success criteria. That sort of thing.
Jeff 29:20
Yeah, yeah. I'm so fascinated by this with a different than I'm normally seeing in SaaS. So one or two more questions on it. When you have the year trial, are you doing some of the standard CSM types of activities like a QBR? I know you have this sort of sales call where you're getting together with the sales team. Do you structure that like a like a QBR or any of those types of normal CSM things
James Stuart 29:47
on a longer term trial? So I'm currently working with a customer that doing a six month trial. We wanted we don't do KPIs we do. We do monthly basis reviews only because of the timeframe. Yeah, I think we do a, we do a key? br I think there's there's not enough conversation like, you know, tangible meetings within that. Right? So actually, you know, three months out of six months, it's hard to contract gone.
Jeff 30:16
One and then the time to decide if they're gonna
James Stuart 30:18
Yeah, so we decided to have a monthly review instead. But effectively we do a CSM process. Yeah, just very sure. So we will have the intro code, then instead of, we would have a mid trial meetings of sales for weeks, which is the equivalent of a QBR, then we would have like, an end a trial review. So that's the second QBR. And then there's like a renewal discussion. So it's the same lifecycle, just in a much shorter process. And it's a bought into a lot more fluid. So depending on the length of the trial, depending on how many meetings we would have, how many times we would contact the customer and where they would fall within the process. So, you know, a three month trial will generally be three meetings with regular reports and catch ups. But when I say catch up with them more, just a really top level 15 minutes, how are things going sort of thing? You know, are you facing the challenge at the moment, and then we'll have a lot more tangible be trial review call or trial read call we call it would get the statistics are good. We would ask them how their performance there and the way you do QPR. So
Jeff 31:37
yeah, talk to users, you know, any bugs stuff like you know, educational things? Yep.
James Stuart 31:43
So we've basically got CSM lifecycle, but we've just adapted it over a much shorter period. And it's just a lot more fluid. In terms of the length we do things over a certain time.
Jeff 32:01
Yeah, it's like using CSM to win trials, basically, because you're putting them into the hands of the people that really know how to use the software and everything. That's I love it. Wow. So this is great. I have so many ideas and things for me to think about. Are you putting them through? Like, your classic education types of stuff to like an LMS, or vide videos to go watch? And things like that? Or is it more you're doing some hands on training and things like that,
James Stuart 32:31
it's more hands on training. So like, typically, you know, today I had a trading session with a couple of users on here who are new to the product. So it's, it's a lot more. So it's, it's a lot more hand holding touch rather than that tech touch approach. of, you know, here is, you know, the classic touches Broadway by here is a program, an education program whereby you have a step by step, I think it's very generic.
Jeff 33:02
Yeah, yeah,
James Stuart 33:03
we don't we do it very much. I speak to all the users that are involved. We do like live training. So you know, screen sharing. And I'll walk them through how to use the product with opportunities to answer questions. And then following that, then we have a bit of a monitoring period, whereby are they logging in? are they posting jobs? What's the performance look like? What are the jobs, just so then we can understand that I'll be using it and if there's any more challenges along the way, and then we can see that we can see back that then to say, the more is more the influence. So because obviously the decision makers often sort of like, you know, the head of, or the finance director or something like that is more, the recruitment manager, or the recruitment team leader or someone like that, who oversees that project. And who we assigned was the influencer, trying to relay that information, saying, you know, this is what we're finding, we may need to do more sessions here, or, you know, might get communications from the NG users to say, Yeah, you know, I don't
Jeff 34:16
so if you don't mind me asking. You just edit right out if you don't like our, our, your or in other people like you, instead of your KPIs being around like churn and percentage like that, and renewal rates and things like that. Are they are they on successful trial conversions? Is that a part of? Yeah, yeah,
James Stuart 34:37
exactly. That's how we operate. You know, it's, it's trial conversions. Is the May, obviously when it's not, you know, you have your you have your outputs and that kind of thing, but the key measure of success is trial conversions.
Jeff 34:52
Yeah. Yeah. And then does your department report into sales or into account management?
James Stuart 34:58
The though so it's I believe we report into a head of the air. Oh, perfect. Okay,
Jeff 35:03
sorry. Um, that's in we have those issues. You know this industry. Some people I met CES, I always in my head called account management.
James Stuart 35:16
We have account management. So it sounds like three channels is a channel? Yeah, account management is a channel, and CS is a channel
Jeff 35:27
as well, it should be I am, that's the model I prescribed, it gets a little confusing sometimes. Some people, they'll have CSMs. But for the people who go off and get new business within sight of your existing business, where does that lie? I think that should be in sales. But regardless. So it's just, you know, there's a couple different models out there. And again, it's what works for your organization, not
James Stuart 35:50
necessarily, what I like to do, is I'm always quite broad with the customer. And I'll explain saying I am customer focused, and basically sort of not detach myself from sales. But say, I don't want to I don't know anything about the pricing model. I don't know, packages, things like that, so that they can separate the two roles. Because I don't know about,
Jeff 36:16
then they know this, I say this 100% When I try and get Cs involved in pre sales, because they know you're not commission based, you're just trying to help them out. And there's a huge, you know, that's such a relief to the people when you're talking to them, because they know you're not coming at this from a like a monetary conversation you're coming at it from how do I make you successful with the software? Yeah,
James Stuart 36:43
I think as well, I think it is key, because again, it goes back to the trust we built before, we're actually making recommendations to make it work. Rather than if I recommend a product to someone, I'm not recommending them to buy it, I'm recommending it because this product suits your needs. If you do want to purchase it, then that's when you would bring the sales partner in
Jeff 37:07
to talk to this guy.
James Stuart 37:10
Because I think it's really key to know that I'm behind making the recommendation to make it successful. And also as well as to to know, we're not just they're not just bringing in another salesperson, you know, we would have that call it likes, I think the biggest thing is separation of boundaries. So you know, who is responsible? For what? And then they can, then the customer then knows who's who to contact regarding what, there's nothing worse than you send me an email saying, Hi, can you have prices start to follow this on to someone else? That gives you the path? You know, palming you off late? No, it's because this is their area of expertise. This is what they have control over. This is mine. So right setting those boundaries at the start.
Jeff 37:54
We're just about to say that as part of your kickoff call, right? Like, you know, this is what I do, if you have a conversation on this, this is that person's responsibilities. And then again, reinforced
James Stuart 38:05
to me like project management, when you've got project management, and you'll have, you know, right so and you're scoping out roles and responsibilities. So, finance, you're in charge of it, you're in charge of, you know, HR, you're in charge of this. And then you know, then he went when you're splitting up the work, right? This is an integration, right? Send that to it. Oh, this has to do with money, send them to finance, this is the people HR? And I know don't you can scope out a lot easier around and figure out well, who do I send this to? Same sort of thing? And again.
Jeff 38:41
Yeah, no, that's, you know, that's the professional way to do it, you know, in a lot of startups struggle with that in it. They feel like when you bring in these types of processes, like oh, no, we're so over processing things and things like that. And it's like, well, no, do it for what you need. But let's look at the problems that keep coming up. And those are, those are huge ones when you're trying to show professionalism to a trial, like if they're, if you're working, especially if you're selling to enterprises, and you're like these guys are buttoned up, they know what they're doing, they get their stuff together, then they're gonna feel a lot more confidence in signing the line versus like, Oh, we'll get back to you on that. Like who writes the contract and not quite sure. And it just doesn't show like, you guys have been around long enough for them to trust you or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So James couple a couple minutes here. There's always stuff to improve and work on. If you were to fix sort of one thing for this year, like your 2021 goal, for improvement for how things currently are, what would that be?
James Stuart 39:39
I think, I think the one thing I think we can always improve on is still in the success criteria. So it's making sure that every time is still quantifiable. You know, understanding that different customers will have different measures but trying to make it a quantifiable success criteria. And that's good. To be honest, that's everyone's challenging. That's one of the most difficult things to do is actually having a success criteria that is quantifiable and realistic. Because sometimes you might think you want to promise the world but you've only got four weeks to do it, you actually need to take a step back and go, What can I realistically do in froley? Or in three months? Because if I don't understand that, I'm just going to fail, because the cost, the customer is going to think you can't do what I've set out to do. So Right. That's probably like, the biggest thing that I'm always personally working on. Is that model.
Jeff 40:42
Now, and that makes total sense. And I can see it, and especially even have a smaller number of users, you know, even if you had five users, but they were super successful. Isn't that amazing? Right? Like, versus like, you know, no, our goal is to get, you know, this huge number of people ramped up and like, great, well, okay, if you onboarded, 50 to 100 people in four weeks, like, I'm not sure that people get any tangible benefits out of the software or anything like that.
James Stuart 41:09
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is one of the big things like you say, you know, and it's also like, with the realistic side, it's about understanding the customer's process. So actually, when we and so an example would be in our world would be a customer says that they want to make 10 hires in four weeks. Well, I would ask him, How long does it take for you to hire a candidate? They got eight weeks? Well, we're not going to do that. You've got four weeks, I'm telling you, eight weeks, where do you in eight weeks in four weeks time? Workers? Where is a candidate in your hiring journey? Well, well, the first aid interview, well isn't actually a more realistic target, we get X amount of candidates to first aid interview, because we can measure that it's within your scope of hiring, that kind of thing. And I think, often I don't think people ask the customer questions that absolutely will help that. Actually, what is the journey of using this product?
Jeff 42:13
And it's, especially in your vertical, you know, getting into even numbers like, I mean, not being able to hire fast is a huge, huge problem, right? You might be using contractors, which are expensive to offset, where you might not be, you know, the just the opportunity cost of not being able to bring people on which I'm sure there's Reed's sort of value prop as well, too, and things like that. So yeah, it's I, I don't do I feel like I don't do a great job of this as well, too. So just asking and hearing your answers to that question. Just getting that, you know, very tangible. You know, you know, every little laser in it's not too gray. And you can look at numbers and quantify it instead of it being sort of subjective as well, too. Yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. So to wrap up what I've been doing during the pandemic, has been asking what your COVID activity has been recently, baking bread, watching more soccer. Yeah,
James Stuart 43:13
my Well, there's two, so get crickets on massive cricket fan. That just started. And then the second one, then is getting the garden sorted. So I moved into my house a couple of years ago, and there was quite a bit to do. The garden was a last thing. But now me little sort of now my son's old enough to go in the garden, because it's nearly two. It's actually something I now need to sort out. So I'm currently sorted out the fence panels, and just tidying everything up on that way. So that's the plan for the next couple of weeks.
Jeff 43:51
Is that food? Or is it just you ever gone just plants or vegetables or
James Stuart 43:57
just making it he's just sort of got a slide to build mud kitchen to build swings to build. And then just starting the patio and stuff like that. There's a couple other like wobbly flags. So to fix him, just to help hazard for any good for wedding.
Jeff 44:15
We feel that I don't do any
James Stuart 44:17
notes. Because we own it. I'm only Well, I wasn't going to be doing it. But the problem we've got in our house is there's no access. There's no access to the back garden again. Because where the access was a conservative was built that you have to access through the actual house itself. But when they went to speak to the gardener's to do it, and basically the machines are too happy to come through the house and they're not able to come through. So by default allowed to do so.
Jeff 44:50
That's awesome. Well, this has been great. I know So James, I met on an implementation-specific Slack channel. Call pre-flight so if anybody's interested in that you can either one of us up I'll put your LinkedIn profile in here but thanks so much I'm gonna hit stop on the recording and I'll just finish up with a couple last words and things like that so thanks a ton I'm going to stop the recording right now and I appreciate it.