GSD Podcast - Getting to Maybe- Selling Services with Dave Witting
Dave Witting joins me on this podcast to discuss why he never calls me back, and also both of our conversions to being sales guys. We discuss networking, content generation, methods that we saw the big salespeople do, and much more. Dave and I have a lot of history, so there are lots of jokes before this goes off the rails.
Transcript:
Jeff 01:10
All right, thanks for joining me here on the podcast. This is Jeff. And this is one of my probably favorite episodes to go over this because Dave and I joke around a lot with each other all the time on a weekly basis. Slightly frenemies and competitive, but not really, with our businesses. And we worked for a long time together and just have seen lots and lots of stuff. So I will warn you also, this one's gonna get the explicit warning. As Kramer likes to say, we let the expletives fly a little bit. So I don't think you would torture your children by putting this podcast on them around them anyways. But fair warning on that one. And also, if you're faint at heart, and don't like to think about certain topics that your grandparents may have engaged in. When you hear me ask them about movies, you should probably just stop and delete the episode from your from your library. The other thing I am anybody that's in sales, I will in a they wind up hearing this, I would love your feedback. We'd love to chat with you on the podcast, because this is a topic that just is new for me and challenging and finding out new things every day. So we'd love to hear your feedback. And here's Dave with computer and see how that goes. All right, I think we're recording Dave, can you hear me?
Dave Witting 02:47
I can hear you great. Yeah. Can you hear me?
Jeff 02:49
I did. You know what I just saw you sign in as David Witting and I've never in my life called you David is? Is that something you hate me for? Is that why you hate me?
Dave Witting 02:58
That is that is one of the reasons I hate you that? Yes, no. David is typically reserved for my mother.
Jeff 03:05
I've seen exactly when you're in trouble. You know, a pack of Marlboro reds underneath your pillowcase. Exactly. Magazines, right.
Dave Witting 03:18
That's exactly right. But man, it's good to talk to you Jeff. Like this is really exciting.
Jeff 03:22
I'm just glad I got an hour your time I just I just besides
Dave Witting 03:28
I will say I'm not blowing smoke. I listened to your Elia like, obviously I know Eric. And I thought that was a lot of fun. And I didn't know the fresh tilled soil guy personally. Okay, Richard. I thought that was really insightful. Like I really, you've been putting out great content, tons of good stories, but also like helpful stuff. So I appreciate
Jeff 03:52
it. Like how everybody approaches the same situations differently. Why? There's before I was like, oh, that's like three success people in a row. But everyone just does it differently, which is just kind of, it's great. So I really appreciate it. So cool. So for people that don't know, David, and I worked at Bright Cove together. And then and then you went to Localytics. And now you're in we're in a like a frenemy type situation, which is like me and five other people, but I think we work out fine. But where are you have? Well, actually, why don't you describe it because you guys had an event recently. And so I would love to hear, like the movement from Localytics to the move into the dark side of professional services because you were an account guy before that, right?
Dave Witting 04:46
That's right. So like when you and I worked at break, have you ran services and I had sort of everything post sale like yes, as account management, sir. And so like, I don't think either view, neither of us were close. to her sales sales guys no at all. But like we've been around it, we've gone through all the training and like you have been involved with a bunch of sales and like you sort of left the world of SAS, and went into services full, full time. And it was one of those things where my partners had made the jump before me, Ashley, Jesse and Josh. Yep. And I was supposed to do the jump, host breakout, but I chickened out. And so I went to look alikes instead,
Jeff 05:34
which was just blowing up at the time, right, so let's be clear, that opportunity
Dave Witting 05:39
is gonna be huge, which didn't occur. And so I stayed in Localytics for a respectable amount of time. So it didn't look, you know, horrible on my LinkedIn profile. That was just like, I gotta get the hell out of here. And I remember having a conversation with my wife. I had two like SaaS, customer success, things lined up. One was like a really big company. And one was another startup. And we were like, laying in bed with her. And I was like, I could do these two things today. This
Jeff 06:09
is this is a PG rated
Dave Witting 06:11
podcast. Yeah, Hi, Paul. Just I could stay on this career path. And like, the benefits will be good. She She's, she's a stay at home mom. Or I could do this completely. crackpot idea with my friends and just do the services company and there will be no salary to healthcare.
Jeff 06:33
Tell him, like enjoy the American Girl dolls, because you're not gonna see anything else for? Are you
Dave Witting 06:38
totally like, seriously, Jeff, no joke. I was like, I have two months pad from local, I'm quitting Localytics I had like enough of a pad. I'm like, I'm gonna get this. If it doesn't work, I'll go find a
Jeff 06:56
name is David.
Dave Witting 07:01
So it was risky. But as you know, because you know, my partners, and have worked with them. Yeah. Like, you know, there was a lot of data watching the strips. Yeah. So anyway, yeah. So I jumped and no regrets and, you know, join professional services and been doing it for building an agency for three and a half years. And yeah, and we recently sold it. Amazing. So happy to talk about any of that.
Jeff 07:30
No, which is great. I wanted to really chat about the sales aspect. Because you and I, we to really call each other I'm like, is that working? I know, that doesn't work. And then does this work? I'm like, No, that doesn't work. And I'm like, I try, you know, so we've just been bounced back. But you did bring up something that was something that I've kind of kept in my head is that, you know, we were always paired on these large deals with the heavy hitting sales, guys, right? So are people sorry, because there was females in there as well, too. So. So we've learned a lot from like, the likes of like, G gutter. And you know, all those guys have like, this is how deals happen. But we weren't exposed. I wasn't exposed to that, like 0% through 15% world of things, right, like, you know, the origination of deals. And we've kind of chatted back and forth about how to do that. And you've been relying a lot on network, right? Like, it's just word of mouth and network.
Dave Witting 08:33
Yeah, I will. I think you and I both had breakups to your point like prior to that I had a low opinion of salespeople. Like I sort of had a traditional marketer. Opinion like sales guys are lazy sales guys who've done you know, sales guys are a hot mess, blah, blah. I think Brightcove was the first time where like, I really was taught, like, what is the SAS playbook? That was and I know you were too. And so like, that was super interesting. And it was also the first time where I really was like, wow, there are a lot of true sales professionals like Eric Rapp or Steve Percoco or Josh norming. Oh, yeah.
Jeff 09:13
Yeah.
Dave Witting 09:15
That are like, these guys are excellent. And like, they're real craftsmen. And you know, like, I really, it was the first time I got an appreciation for how hard sales is. Oh, yeah. How much like skill and talent goes into that I didn't have prior. Right. And so that was a real eye opener.
Jeff 09:35
Did you ever get exposed to Josh Norman's like, like, Lucid Chart like? Yeah, I see when I close my eyes and
Dave Witting 09:45
I have never seen for listeners, Josh had the killer for big accounts. He had this way of sort of mapping out the organization and looking at the coverage within the organization and sort of like game gauging the temperature of like, you know, this person is influenced or these people or this person is the decision maker, these are the influencers, you know, and like, are they a detractor? Are they happy? And you know, are they neutral? And like, how do you move folks to this? And he would literally fill a conference room with like, post it notes of like the org chart and the company coverage. And it was like, it was like a general, you know,
Jeff 10:28
yeah. But it's so true, though. It's like, if that's professional holiday, I have a landline and I will always have it covered. You know, so we can get into remote working a little bit, but I'm sure there's gonna be four girls running around here in a minute and the landlord just stuff but he would go through that in, you know, as I learned later, when I was kind of ramping up on how to sell. He's, he's getting everybody on our side. So that even if they don't have a vote, they've got a voice because somebody's gonna make the decision. But they don't want to hear about it from the person that complained about it the whole time through, right, that whole thing?
Dave Witting 11:10
Right. That's exactly the there was not only that, but also like, bringing to bear all the resources of your organization that's trying to land the steel. That would that to me was equally impressive. Yeah, that's true. Ash is not shy about like, you're gonna do these three things for this person. Because, you know, aggregate this will help us win this deal. I mean, he is a master. Yeah. And I
Jeff 11:35
took some of that I did. I was using that stuff like yesterday, because you know, you get on the phone. And, you know, you and I, oh, just to be a whole thing that we didn't even put on the Google doc felt like, you know, I'm like talking to the Deaf even like, you want to win projects, right? Like, you realize they pay our salaries are like, correct, like, so do you want to complain about like, how this might have some risk? Or, you know, is? That never happens with you? I'm sure, right. It's never, like we're Oh, you're just gonna just send the SJW over, right? Yeah.
Dave Witting 12:05
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happens. But yeah, I mean, what's what's been interesting, I will say, you and I both learned this test playbook. There are a bunch of things in that SAS playbook that work for services.
Jeff 12:20
Let's go through that. Because I know we actually did some work. If anybody knew is that surprising. So we did some work getting ready for this.
Dave Witting 12:29
That's right. Well, come on. This is important podcast, Dude, we got a you know,
Jeff 12:33
I mean, it's I you know, it's just so we're clear. And so everybody knows, Dave and I are basically like managing directors, which is you're responsible for many things, but one of them is the customer success of existing customers. Use definition in the name, and also new business acquisition in many other things like tool. So, so we need to become salespeople. We're not constantly hunting down deals all day long every day. But that's, that's how we gain new customers grow. Projects eventually have end lives. And we hire people to do them. And we want them to have other projects to work on after that. So yeah, cool.
Dave Witting 13:17
So what do you want to we're, where would you like to start?
Jeff 13:20
So when we started, we both came from the SaaS world and went to selling services and houses different. And in so we're gonna kind of get into the whole differences between what everybody is doing in the SaaS world. And I think we were a part of the original wave of that. And How's it different from what we're doing now? Custom bespoke projects? Yeah.
Dave Witting 13:40
I'm gonna hit two things here, which struck me like the first is in the SaaS world, oftentimes, profitability is not the priority, right? Like HubSpot is sort of famous for this. Like, it's, in many cases, it's like, look, it's a land grab, you know, we're trying to be the best catering platform in the world, or we're going to be the marketing platform in the world. And like, we just want to get as many people paying a small amount as possible and have a just like, get them all in the door. And we'll figure out that classic line of will just turn on profitability later. Oh, a lot of loss is sort of just operating in like, get as many people as possible show high user growth, and don't sweat margin Where's services is, which, by
Jeff 14:30
the way, is great for what their audience they're trying to please which is their investors, whether it be going to the public markets or be going to their VCs.
Dave Witting 14:38
And you and I both know, salty old men that like that whole, like we can flip on profitability, anytime is a complete line of malarkey. Like that is
Jeff 14:50
30% of the workforce. It's
Dave Witting 14:53
That's great. Well, we'll just turn on that switch. But anyway, but like that was a distinct change, right? Like it wasn't the land grab? It wasn't that thing, it was just like, we're gonna get a bunch of money and hope that we have a decent margin on these projects overall. Right. Like, that's why the membership? I think, you know, I think for me also, SAS has a very well developed playbook for both marketing and sales. Like they're very well defined roles. They're very well defined things that people do. There is very well defined funnel math, right, like everyone is basically following the same model. And they do think the services model is leaner, right? I think you can do a leaner version of SAS for a services company, which I think a lot of folks do. I also have a hunch, which we can talk about later, that there might even be a completely different playbook
Jeff 15:49
for I can't wait, I'm writing a little asterik down. Right now.
Dave Witting 15:52
It's such a half day Steve crackpot. Yeah, dude. Absolutely.
Jeff 15:57
Which is to me kind of right next to walking around with the sandwich board around.
Dave Witting 16:03
Sandwich. I am developing an idea. Like, you could do a derivative of the sass playbook which will work. You have a theory that there's a whole nother playbook that no one has told us about.
Jeff 16:18
But these are the secrets that the experts are withholding from us unless we pay 297 a month, correct.
Dave Witting 16:23
Exact Yeah, if you sign up my program. Anyway. But yeah, I think I think those are two marked differences. Maybe a third is, you know, I do think sort of the investment in the oversight is waning, right? Like, I remember being in Localytics. And we've got to build our marketing engine, we got to build our sales engine, blah, blah. But there's all this heavy investment in content marketing, which I know you've explored in the past, that very heavy investment to do that land grab, I don't think you have to have that same level of investment for services. I don't know if you'd agree.
Jeff 17:02
I'm TBV did tons of the content and the generation you know, Ed Janiero, getting ready for a smaller version of that not as much the content heavy stuff. You know, it's great to look smart and have some a pump it out there. I think what I like it, if you're proving that you're knowledgeable in your domain and your space, because then you have this content that's out there and everything. It's, I do believe it's different than the SAS model where it's like, join our webinar, and we're gonna have five experts from Harvard, and they're gonna talk about blah, blah, blah, right. So so I don't think it needs that total investment. I don't even know if you need a full time marketer, I would love for like to find a consortium that could just be like, they're gonna have a person that does content for you in person that does this for you in social marketing and things like that. But it's hard because they don't know your company. So I'm rambling a little bit. I did base some of this off of your Alexa strategy, by the way. Oh,
Dave Witting 18:10
okay. Yeah, that I mean, it's funny, that worked. So for folks listening, we did a mini content program. That definitely worked. We're, we basically said at one point, we said, we want to become known for doing Alexa skills. Because, one, we think it's kind of fun, too. We need something that kind of sound sexy to make it look like we're innovative. Right. And it's an emerging market. We think there might be some money there. So like, let's give it a shot. And so we wrote this white paper that was like, you know, the seven secrets for building your own thing. Something like that. We shot a video we did a landing page
Jeff 18:57
was that Branson? Sorry. Sorry. It's Brandon. We use a nickname was Branson.
Dave Witting 19:01
Yeah, Brandon Ascom. Absolutely, like stuck. Brandon. good looking guy stuck on camera.
Jeff 19:07
He's a boyband dream right there. You can tell him when you see him by the way that I've traded in my French cuffs for sweatpants, these
Dave Witting 19:18
let me tell you, Jeff, Christian America stories. But you Jesse, myself and Brandon. Right. But anyway, so we did a light amount, right? Here's a white paper. Here's a simple landing page with like, a call to action reach out. And then like, let's and I think we spend like five grand on like, let's plug the crap.
Jeff 19:40
Yeah, no, five grand is good. I mean, that's fantastic. I mean, I think we're paying 10k a week for LinkedIn ads at a place not to be named here. So
Dave Witting 19:49
yeah, well, I'll tell you, here's what work so we actually we put the white paper on product time And it's funny. We did a bunch of promotion around like, Hey, if you want to, and this is like to cross
Jeff 20:09
reference that with a medium article to
Dave Witting 20:14
Haven so much. I know we ran out of steam on that, I think. But we just basically plugged in meeting with like, you want to build one of these stupid things like here's how to do it. So we gave to the community of like, here's everything we've learned, which was basically a rewrite of Amazon's documentation. And then we're like, We're freaking experts, even though we had really done jack shit at that point, you know. And so, here's it, we're geniuses. Here's a rewritten documentation white paper on product, which we're gonna plug. Now we plugged it on Reddit, which was gave us a lot of leads, which was really hidden. Yeah, I know, go figure. Right. It really worked. And then we had a landing page with a, you know, a reasonably well produced video with like, a grant. And I swear to you, Jeff, we're still getting leads off site.
Jeff 21:07
You just just, it's amazing. It's a beautiful world, right? Like, 89 When I talk to you, but there's the but the conversion rate on them. Okay,
Dave Witting 21:17
no, here's the but. So, like, literally, we are still getting, it's like two years later, we're still getting leads off that stupid thing. Two butts, one very low conversion. It's like, you know, less than 1%, like very low conversion to never became lucrative, right? Like,
Jeff 21:43
yeah, I just read an article. I just cut you off in the West. Go ahead. Never can look good. Yeah.
Dave Witting 21:48
Basically, it's less than 1% of our revenue. So like, we make money off them. But it's small potatoes. They're short projects. They're fun, but like, never, like users don't really use them. Discoverability is an issue. Like, it's just dabeli stuff. So it was fun. It was good to get us an Amazon Partnership, which was super valuable. Yep. But like, from a money perspective, that particular category wasn't super lucrative.
Jeff 22:13
Yeah, you know, and I hear you, I think that you could definitely put this into the category of domain expertise. We're experts. We're cool. We're hip. We know we're doing and at that time, everybody needed an Alexa strategy. So it's a smart move, right? That was like, Oh, my God, we need to what if I was I needed to buy a new ship bolts for my ship? I tell Alexa to find me this part. Everything will work out.
Dave Witting 22:40
You're like, yeah, so I don't know. It was good. Like, it was totally worth it. It was worth every penny. And it worked in that type of like marketing strategy where, like, we're not going to do this big content marketing, heavy lift. It's like, these two discrete things. We weren't real like down and dirty, like dropped it into Reddit forums and plugging it on Product Hunt, with a simple landing page. And that level of effort was like five grand.
Jeff 23:10
So it seems like on that strategy, you were going for developer? Like high fives, right? Like developer credentials are correct.
Dave Witting 23:20
Correct? That's right. So like we weren't selling to his CTO? Yeah. That was like, bottoms up. People are thinking about this. If they need help, they're gonna come to us, and they'll do you know, a small deal with us to get it built. And that worked. Yep. Bottoms up, though. You know?
Jeff 23:38
Yep. Yep. So on that note, lead comes in email, you know, you get your form, fill it out. We'd comes in, were you were you emailing all these people? Did you have this gets into the like, the mechanics and let's say I try and have this podcast be about like, Oh, crap, I'm gonna actually have to do some of this stuff. Like, so. Were you doing into Java, an intern doing these types of things?
Dave Witting 24:01
Yeah. I'll tell you. So the short I'm going to give a short answer a long answer. The short answer is it was mean, Jesse, who followed up yep. Because we were pretty small. We, you know, we could
Jeff 24:18
while I'm still doing I'm doing these things still, I don't mind it at all. So yeah,
Dave Witting 24:22
yeah, it was us and like to like generate the content. We just use contractors. We got this mad Russian guy that if anyone reaches out to me,
Jeff 24:32
hopefully Ukrainian not not actually Russian, right. So
Dave Witting 24:37
like, he was like our PR, he figured out how to get us to the top of Product Hunt and into the right GitHub spots. He's great. And then we use the contract writer to write the thing and then all the follow up was just me and Jesse like that was yeah,
Jeff 24:55
that's that's that's that's the gig. That's that's all I will say. Wow, it's so funny. I'll tell you where I'm torn. Where I just came from. We had tons of content going out. We had a sales intelligence tool, you know where we would be doing outbound basically? Yeah. Did you have a question there? I don't mind answering.
Dave Witting 25:15
I'm sorry. i
Jeff 25:16
Yeah. So, so creating lists, these are the demos that we're going after. You know, like, for example, not going after the fortune 2000, right, because everybody's in those. So like, what, what's the bucket that we're going after here? And then we had two guys banging the phones and sending emails? Probably, well, one of them's awesome. And he's super optimistic and everything like that. But their conversion rate was, like terrible, like anywhere else, any product company, SAS based product company, these guys that have been gotten fired just because of conversion. But I heard them all day long, pitching all day long on the phone. And they were saying exactly like it was a good message. I will tell you this, though, when they booked a meeting, very high ROI, very high match rate, big projects to so I would I go off and hire another one again, right now I'm like, Oh, I don't know. Like what I would I find a service that maybe did that? I don't know. So the model needs to be kind of thought about a little bit as well. And some of that gets into marketing and finding like a real demand gen person who's an expert to get some things off and stuff. I agree.
Dave Witting 26:34
I will say we have done cold outbound outreach, like we have tried like the, the traditional SAS, like, we're sending a bunch of emails, we're gonna put them on these drip campaigns, monthly stager, come through blah, blah, blah. So we've done that we've done that both in turn, like I have physically done that myself. And we've we've hired some contract help. To do that. We've done it twice. We did it when we first started. And then we did it when we opened an office in New York, and we wanted to kind of help grow that business. And in both times, we failed miserably.
Jeff 27:14
It's tough. It's really hard. Yeah, it was really hard.
Dave Witting 27:18
It was really hard. It didn't it didn't work. And so we just stopped.
Jeff 27:21
So you know, my current theory on this is, it's a volume game. And you really need to find a way to crank up the volume. And some of that might need to be automated. Because you can't it's a wrong statement to say, there's nobody sitting around just waiting for a project to happen. That's That's incorrect. I knew I just had a social event last week. And I was like, Oh my God, you have somebody that can help me out with x. I'm like, Yeah, I'm like in a real bind. And like, oh, yeah, so though they're out there, but they're not too many of them. So you have to really crank up the volume on them. So we're exploring some stuff where we're through software, where we might be able to automate some of that, so that you don't have, you know, really depressed people, you know, making, you know, 40 outreaches a day and not hearing back from people for weeks. So,
Dave Witting 28:11
yeah, that makes sense. And I agree with you like it is a volume game. You're absolutely right. And so if you can figure out smart ways to scale that. Yeah, that makes sense. I will tell you that we did try specific to New York, we tried one of those contract services that were like, basically like appointment setting, like we said, we want to talk to.
Jeff 28:32
So outsource BDR is basically Right,
Dave Witting 28:35
exactly. Outsource business development. Rep. Exactly. And it's funny, like, that was a failure. But what was interesting is that they did get us meetings with like good people at the right level. But I swear to you, and I don't have any facts to prove this up. But I swear the way they got the meetings was probably something like if you do this half hour call, we'll give you $100 Amazon. No, I've Yeah. The people we talked to were like that was the right role in the right organization. And they have no need or interest. They were just willing to do a briefing call. Yep. I swear.
Jeff 29:22
Because you know, I BDRs do that SDRs when they're in a little bit of a pension, they need to get their numbers up. They'll that buddies help them out and stuff like that. I've seen it. I've been exposed to it. So I think we move on to that one. But I do want to stick to about one thing that you said the other day when we were on the phone, and I wanted to get some more clarity on it. Which is what we're talking about. It's not that it's not not all the conversation that was good. We were talking about the selling aspect and you said something to the to the lines of they stay on the project throughout. Like, what does that mean? Do you have other people selling things? And then become like the project manager or can you? Did I get that right? Like, yeah,
Dave Witting 30:04
yeah. So this is part we're edging into crackpot. But I'll give you the high level. Basically, we intentionally like we thought about sitting by me V and my three partners, Josh, Ashley and Jessie, like we sat down. And we talked about, like, how are we going to do sales. And we basically were like, look, we believe that people are going to buy an eight, they're gonna hire an agency, like they hire a plumber. That basically, there will be a point where they need help, they will go online and do a bunch of searching. Like, you know, who's in my area, who's on clutter, which is love Angie's List, right? Or whatever. And then they're going to pick three people to reach out to to get quotes. And so we just want to make sure that we are one of those three people they reach out to. And so like, that was the initial sales strategy. And as we talked about sales strategy, we talked about, like one of one of the things and I was very sensitive to this. One of the things that's always really hard is the handoff.
Jeff 31:17
Yep. That's right. This is the now I know what you're getting. Yeah. So
Dave Witting 31:20
from sales, to sales to post sales is a hard handoff. And like, planes can feel like, you know, it was sort of a bait and switch, or the sales guy said a bunch of stuff that wasn't accurate, or, or the, you know, there's tension there, like, inherently right. And you and I, Jeff, because we were post sales, it SAS companies like we really felt that tension. So basically, what we said was like, you know, what, we're actually not going to do salespeople as a hire, we're going to create a role called the exec sponsor, which is like an more of a traditional account manager role. And the exec sponsor to start is going to be Josh, Jesse, Ashley, and Dave, and now we've had more people into this role, where basically, when the lead comes in, they're going to answer the lead, they're develop the opportunity. And when it's one, they're just going to stay on that project through. So like, they're never going to pass it off. And at the time, you know, we're like, that sounds great. And it solves a handoff problem, but it'll never scale. Right? And what we've actually found is, you actually, it doesn't scale as well. But it still scales pretty well. Yeah. You can actually do it that way. And it's okay.
Jeff 32:46
Yeah, so that was our model, where I came from, until the big turn of the year, where we're basically they just wanted me to sell in turn rep. And brought in somebody like VP of Customer Success, you know, very well qualified person and whatnot. I just didn't like the model. And customers were still reaching out and like, well, what are we when we reach out to you? And it's like, well, no, we talk like monthly, it just didn't really wasn't smooth. It was, you know, oh, did you hear about this detail? And like, No, I didn't. So, you know, as that exact sponsor, you don't want to hear about the weekly day in and day out stuff, because, you know, that can weigh on you and things kind of resolve? And do you really need to know that like, oh, this computer failed? And you know, all that crap. Right? So, I don't know. That is also the model I'm working in now again, which is I do the we'd go off make the relationship, you know, get the infrastructure underneath to deliver, but still leading and doing the all the customer success activities?
Dave Witting 33:54
Yeah. Well, that makes sense. I mean, the good thing is that both are equally valid, right? It's just
Jeff 34:03
in your projects, or how long now? Because we you said they're shorter. So what's your what's your average project length?
Dave Witting 34:10
So about half of our businesses like discrete projects have a beginning, middle, and an end. And the other half of the business is what we call embedded teams, which is sort of a polite way of saying staff augmentation. And so
Jeff 34:26
like to say, adjunct product teams,
Dave Witting 34:30
I mean, there is some legitimate nuance there but like for the sake of clarity, our average so the average length of our projects is like four months. But what's interesting in this is gonna sound like boasting but but I think it's actually an important point. We have 100% repeat business, like, so we're like, we'll do a discrete project, even if it's like an embedded team, and it'll go like four months, and then that'll wrap up and then there'll be another set of work to do or like someone Elsa needs help. That's been a big part of our growth strategy.
Jeff 35:04
No, no, that's great. And you're completely boasting, which is great
Dave Witting 35:07
I am but well yeah that's great. Yeah, that's fair.
Jeff 35:20
You think as I get closer to my old age and retirement that
Dave Witting 35:24
yes, you are rapidly aging
Jeff 35:28
products for everything David. It's amazing. Like Ted Williams cryo chamber somewhere but so so let's do this if we still have people listening and not sick of my bad no
Dave Witting 35:42
one's listening this stupid thing. Now you'd be surprised actually our Colin Maybe Mark Collins is still isn't.
Jeff 35:49
Good point. So let's, what's what's going into your crazy crackpot idea because you're just bursting at the seams. And I love how you're in now, twice this week. You've been like, I can't really talk about this. But I just can't I just can't wait to talk about like beautiful mind at home. Right? You've got the other
Dave Witting 36:12
nodes, like arrows going? Yeah. So I got originally set off because a former friend of ours, Kristin Cronin, who went maternity leave, wrote wrote a note on LinkedIn where she was like, I went on maternity leave. I had a very detailed out of office. And yet still, I have all these VCRs like, pounding my inbox to scheduled calls while I'm out on maternity, like when did we lose the ability to like, you know, actually read things and digest them. Right. And so she
Jeff 36:51
shocked that 22 year old guys who are getting forced to make 40 to 50 calls a day.
Dave Witting 36:55
Exactly, exactly. She and I were just chit chatting. She's great. I'm just getting it. He's great. And like she had made the point. And I've been thinking about this for a while. She was just like, there's a you know, there's a discrete SAS model, everybody does it. But like, maybe there's another way to do it. Like maybe there is and we, you know, I'm such a sucker for that. And so, I started thinking about, like, the way we we have done it here in like, specific to sales. And, and I know you're gonna call bullshit on like, 90% of this, which is
Jeff 37:33
I was just wondering if when you two were sitting there chatting, somebody just said it's all bullshit. It's
Dave Witting 37:40
totally, but like, Alright, so here's, here's my stupid thinking. I was like, Alright, I actually, this is from Paul gets. Paul gets him made a comment from me. And he's like, sorry, you're sick. Yeah, right. Just throw up in your mouth. He's a senior sales guy, really smart dude for you. He he basically said to me one point, he was like, everyone buys like a consumer. And I think that is true. Right? Like, think about the last thing you bought, you do a bunch of research narrowed down a couple vendors, you reach out, you read their reviews, you reach out and then you know, you kind of know what you want, when you reach out. And so it's all about just making sure they remember your name when they're ready, right.
Jeff 38:26
I mean, so I you heard because you told me you listen to the podcast I did with Richard. Yes. Where I said, I heard the name. So it was time for me to buy. I actually didn't even get like three. I just went right to you guys.
Dave Witting 38:41
Exactly. I that resonated with me. And I think we can all agree, increasingly, like everyone buys in that same consumer, like think about the last thing you bought and the steps you went through. I don't think it's a different people that want to hire an agency.
Jeff 38:57
Can I interrupt for one quick, because I will forget even though I tried writing it down. So when I was at Virgin, you know, we were SAS and we're trying to figure out some internal metrics and some ways to go on things. And we're getting this webinar ready. And we we started interviewing all of these people that bought SAS projects for behave. There's a behavioral study that we were doing. Yeah, there was a massive number of people for buying technical project products that hated the sales guy. But they bought the deal, because they loved the sales engineer. Ah, that's funny for the slash subject matter expert, right? Bring in the architect. So I would relate this to Janeiro. When people dealt with me so they can get to their architects, right? Like, you know, like, they fall in love with these these people. That subject matter expertise, and they're like, this is the person that's going to figure it all out for me. Yeah,
Dave Witting 39:58
I think that's exactly what I mean. I think that's exactly what I keep coming back to three principles in my brain. One is no one likes being sold like no one likes talking to the douchey sales guy here, too. I believe everyone buys like a consumer. So no one likes being sold. Everyone buys like a consumer. And three, which I think is what you just touched on. If you actually bring them something of value, everything else works itself out. Like whether that's an SAE that knows something that they don't or that they trust, or like you do a really good job on the project. Like I fundamentally believe no one likes being sold. Everyone buys like a consumer. And if you bring them something of value, the money comes like I think those three things are true. And so like, if you believe those things are actually true, then I don't think you actually need to hire a salesperson,
Jeff 40:58
your traditional salesperson, right? Yeah.
Dave Witting 41:02
So your traditional like, and loafer, guy walk in the streets of Manhattan, that guy is not going to help you with any of those three things. I haven't seen it work, no, I haven't seen or so that that's the piece where I'm like, huh, if you actually, if no one likes being sold, then you might as well not hire a traditional sales guy, be super honest about your fees, be honest about your weaknesses, and be honest about what you're capable of delivering, because that's gonna get you much further than hiding stuff or sort of, you know, trying to like, use the Sandler methodology on somebody.
Jeff 41:44
If everyone buys like, I'm more of a blue blue sheet guy,
Dave Witting 41:48
more of a millimeter. Like, basically, if no one likes being sold, then put away all those stupid sales books and honest and forthright in don't hire that traditional salesperson. If everyone buys like a consumer, then rely on your network and recommendations and high quality work and reviews and directories that should you know, list agencies like yours and it's all about bringing value in the money comes, then focus on customer satisfaction.
Jeff 42:23
I agree 100%. How cuz semicolon, however, where I see this, not falling down, where I see some people not liking it, is if they have aggressive growth that they want to do. I understand that but not calling you guys a lifestyle company.
Dave Witting 42:42
Yeah, that is true. I know that you're 100%, right. Like when you are in a SAS land grab, or if you have aggressive growth targets, this model will not work. You are 100%. Right. But I will say like, you know the numbers and I'm not gonna say it out loud. Yep. Incredibly fast and had a big exit in three years, far faster than any Sass company on this model. Like, so I can tell you, it worked. And it worked. To vary.
Jeff 43:17
Yeah, no, I mean, let's say, everybody, there's good honest people. Top notch development, you know, in, you know, not pushing on the sales. So you got good word of mouth. I absolutely. You guys had good networks, too. Right. So
Dave Witting 43:34
yeah, I mean, that that is an unfair advantage. And No, boss, but yeah, but like Jesse, Jesse made the comment, which was funny, Jesse, who's my partner who leads we, he naturally lead Engineering. He was at one of our clients the other day sitting in the hallway. And like, because he's the exec sponsor, because he's stuck around because we did good work, and they appreciate it. Like he got a couple of million dollars worth of leads sitting in the hallway from people that are like, Hey, man, I got to talk to you about XY and Z. Yeah. And there is a long story short is if you have a board up your ass, or if you've got high growth targets, or you're doing the SAS land grab, this model is not going to work, right? You're an agency that is privately held, and you're bootstrapped, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like you can actually do this and it works just fine. Yep. No, I
Jeff 44:30
agree. And this is good for me because I'm, you know, I just sort of just joined and there's a whole bunch of customers who are kind of being managed from afar and I'm like, Well, no, I should just you know, go and their offices and this and that it's like no, everything's fine and like just trust me right? Like that's not even sales sort of stuff all I have everything go you know, it's just you build the relationships up. So that's, that's, that's good stuff. And I didn't know since you wanted to get Some tools and processes, you know, for the people who were, you know, sort of like, Oh, what do I do and things like that. You're using some very lightweight tools we are as well to where? Reason HubSpot CRM right now.
Dave Witting 45:15
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So that's like sort of your customers system of record. That is correct. Yeah. We went with intercom because one of my partners is from HubSpot. Josh. Vicki had some PSD. So, we're using intercom but HubSpot is great. We use base which then this bought is now Zen sell. Okay, as our sales CRM, do you guys,
Jeff 45:43
so a sales CRM like this is like tracking, you know, opportunities and contacts and things? Yeah,
Dave Witting 45:49
we do a very lightweight Monday meeting it is, it is an hour. And we don't track sales activity. We don't track leads, we don't track any of that stuff. We literally just have a bunch of opportunities from prospecting to close one or last, every Monday. We just move them around, like is this moving forward? Is it moving? You know? Is it sticking where it is? Is there new stuff? Is there stuff that we close out? And so we do that every Monday, we use base, which is now Zen cell, like super lightweight. And we just use it for that. And that's been like, perfect. Yeah. Pipedrive I've used to, which is like a lightweight sales
Jeff 46:34
from the oriola. Steve, I'm actually chatting with him soon. So yeah, great.
Dave Witting 46:41
So yep. Salesforce.
Jeff 46:44
Yeah, no, i Hey, listen, I hear you. Just yeah, I mean, not until you're huge, and you need all those things. But I think even then you can probably look around for alternatives like a Zoho and things like that. So
Dave Witting 46:57
we just got bought, and they're switching us over to Salesforce, which makes sense because it's 1000 person agency. Yeah. And like getting back into just like, Oh, God, like,
Jeff 47:07
Oh, here's your lead. It's inside Pareto like no. Totally, like,
Dave Witting 47:12
integrated chatter tool.
Jeff 47:15
Oh, my God. That's is that what was that alias thing that he hit Yammer? It's up there with Yammer. Yeah.
Dave Witting 47:23
But to their credit, like they've done like they've solved the whole, like, complicated quote to order. So they're like, way ahead of assume there's good reason to go. But like, it was a good reminder of like, I just hate Salesforce so much.
Jeff 47:36
Yeah, no, I I'm this is the first time I haven't used it. And like 15 years, and I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah. So just a couple things. And I appreciate because I know we're we've been going for a little bit. But you know, I when I look at some of the companies in Boston that got kind of successful and bought and things like that, they all seem to be repping. Or like, where are the Sitecore integrator for healthcare and things like that? Are you guys doing any of that? Yeah, so the partner thing is a sales thing. Yeah. We are not in So here are two things that we're not either I it's just hard. So here,
Dave Witting 48:17
I'm curious to hear your opinion on this. So we we have had one partnership with Amazon specific to audio skills that was helpful, and like property manager over there has become a personal friend, and she's great. But we've intentionally stayed away. There are plenty of agencies, the partner with big platforms that drive a lot of business and worth it. What I have found the only way that works, and I'm curious if you agree, the only way that works is one, you have to have personal connections into that group. And two, you have to bring them leads. Oh, you know what?
Jeff 48:58
I was trying to hold my breath. But this thing is the stupidest fucking thing. Sorry, the explicit. It drives me crazy, right? I might have talked about this before, but I've talked about it so much, that I apologize that it's coming up again here. Okay. So why do companies is about to use the reason why this happened? But like, Hey, we've got we're a product company, we have this huge, massive product. And we don't believe in building a professional services team, or we're so busy that we need smart people like you to take this extra work from us. Sounds great. Okay, sign me up, right? No, no, no. We also need you to sell stuff for us. And I'm like, Okay, what problem are you trying to solve? Because I heard you're trying to solve fulfillment problem because it's remember you're in an ARR world and you're not going to be able to recognize the revenue until the product is starting to do be used. So are you trying to solve that problem? Are you trying to solve a pipeline problem? And the problem here, David, is that is that all of these partner guys with their khakis and oversized coats are on the sales team. They're all channel guys. And they try and do these relationships based out of a sales thing instead of the one time or word Alex nation. Yep. I was trying to find a staff on partners, because Alex is amazing. And he gets the game. Totally dropped the mic. I'm out. Yeah.
Dave Witting 50:36
I couldn't agree with you more like, we have a colleague who had a services business that was tied to a large partner that's been historically lucrative and is like looking to kind of develop new ones. It is a long lock, and you have to have personal connections. And you have to bring them leads to get the that's just the fact that all right, so let me ask you one closing question. Like what's genuinely, you and I have never done sales, but like, we got trained up on all the bullshit methodologies, and we've watched a bunch of real salespeople who know what they're doing right? And well enough, we've been both doing it for a while. Like, with the benefit of some hindsight, what do you think was the most important lesson you learned? Coming in to do sales for services?
Jeff 51:37
Wow, that's a great question. And an off the cuff tears, I had the biggest lesson. I don't think there's one to be able to, there's this overriding thing I keep popping up in my head now, which is you just have to treat people normally. And like people and don't pressure and things like that. Yeah, that's the that's one of them. You know, as you go from place to place, you see, you're like, I'm not fixed, but scale mode right now. And it's like, you need to appear, you can't, you can't look bumbling. You still need to be execution really fast, confident, not cocky. And just everything's clear and crisp in those are the things that are striking for me for because there's lots of people out there, you know, two developers, three developers that get together and make something. And they're really great developers. And they don't, they don't grow, or they don't scale. And maybe that's fine for them. But I found that you still have to grab these basics from sales, like work it kind of like a sales thing, because at the end, you are selling something. So actually, now that I'm talking this through, there's nothing wrong with it being sales, right? Because now I'm getting to the number one thing, which is I just talked to my buddy the other day about this. He was a CEO. And I was like, Look, I hope you don't feel like I'm pitching you. But to be honest, I just want to help people. And in any, if you're honest in your intentions, like we're not jamming some product down somebody's throat because they filled out a form. I need a solution for my marketing cloud or whatever. Right? So they're saying like, I'm going a little bit of a pinch, I need something built. I don't have the staff. I haven't initiative, we can't do it. Right. Can you help me? Yes, I would like to help you. So to be honest with you, all of the stuff that we've talked about for like last hour, I just want to find more people to help because that makes me feel good. So
Dave Witting 53:36
that that makes sense. You know, I that's a great lesson. And I want to maybe add on to that there was a couple of things that like were surprises along the way that I thought were helpful. Related to that. One is like a break of like, if you're in a sales thing, and like some jerk in there was trying to like beat you up over some point. I felt like I'd have to have an if I didn't know something I would have to try to like bullshit my way. And like, would this be Chicago
Jeff 54:10
based rep that didn't.
Dave Witting 54:14
But it's funny, like, maybe it's age, maybe it's being able to sass, maybe it's something else. The freedom of like when you're in a sales pitch. When someone's like, Well, what about XY and Z? And you're like, I don't have any idea. I don't answer. I'll think about it. Like that freedom. I wasn't comfortable doing that prior. Like, I felt like I had to have an answer for everything in the comfort of like, I have no idea. Yeah, it's a good question. Like, I'll think about it. Like, I was surprised at how much people respect that I thought that would blow up deals and I was surprised by how much they respect people.
Jeff 54:49
She's not auto generating stock candidate answers like that's a great question. We need time to think about that one, you know? Yeah.
Dave Witting 54:56
Like, I have no idea like, never tackled that. Well. like just being comfortable with, like, your shortcomings in front of the client during the sales, I thought was a weakness and it's actually strength and it took me a while to figure it out.
Jeff 55:09
Well, so it's funny you say that because my current CEO said something the other day where he said, I use my weaknesses as my strength, right? So you just kind of highlight those. But you know, you don't want to do it to a default point. But no, it's it's good. Yeah.
Dave Witting 55:23
They tell you one of the things I learned, which is stupid and fun. Yeah, of course. You can only do this every once in a while. So there's that thing of like, always pretend like you don't need the work, which I think is true. Which is part of your company right
Jeff 55:36
out of Eric. We'll need this. Yeah, we're good. I'm gonna be like Don Draper just walk out of the room. Exactly. And he had
Dave Witting 55:44
this one prospect come in, in New York, we had just opened up in New York, we had zip for business, we had this one prospect, that was like a good meaty deal. And we met with the folks and the client, the prospect was tough. And you could just tell like, this is gonna be tough thing. And they were just beating the crap out of us in the sales process. And like, you could tell like, this is going to be an abusive relationship. The word because we just started. There was a point where we've watched the prospect treat their staff really poorly. And my partner's got something we like. She braided them.
Jeff 56:33
He's like the Will Ferrell where he's got the pitchfork, and he's just keeps down.
Dave Witting 56:36
Yeah, she was. Were you people like she braided these people in front of us. went out for drinks afterwards, we're still in the process. And they're like, we're not sure we want to go if you blow. And so we left the meeting. And like, we were having drinks and Josh and I were talking and we're like, we can't do this. Like, it's not worth it. Right. So we went back to him. And we were like, You know what? We don't like the way you treat your people, like had headcount and had no right walking away. They begged us to come back. They begged us, I couldn't believe it. And this happened twice where we do something down. And like it automatically made us like the very thing they wanted more than anything else.
Jeff 57:23
Yeah, did you? Did you take it?
Dave Witting 57:27
We didn't, because at that point we had made such I'll tell you why we had made such a big deal internally. Like we turn this that we are the type of company that turns down stuff, because we both want to work with assholes, right? We had sort of already broadcast that internally. So when they begged us to come back, we were like, oh, maybe we will do it. And then we're like, No, we, we already told everyone, we were not going to do it. We can't do that. But if we did in broadcast that we probably would have.
Jeff 57:59
Yeah, it'd be blinding. It was $100 bills, right? So anyway, it's a good message, though. And we can probably wrap up. So I know you're the big movie guy. I like actually, by the way it was thinking about it. I don't even know if you like music at all. Like we've never ever talked about this overall. Yeah, whatever like that. So I was gonna ask you, like, if I looked at your Spotify current playlist, am I gonna see like Katy Perry or something like, my?
Dave Witting 58:26
No, the problem is they share my Spotify playlist with my kids. Same year old is like Conde and Cardi B. Yeah, like, yeah, like, all this stuff. And unlike, I'm listening to like, Tom Waits in the Pixies, right? Like I like,
Jeff 58:41
now. Okay, I just did all it's all clear to me now. Like,
Dave Witting 58:45
I tried to stay up, but the fact is, is I'm at an age where I'm slipping more and more into comfortable stuff that I used to listen to, and getting less than new stuff.
Jeff 58:56
Oh, I don't know anything new. These Yeah, you must make kids are listening to it, you know, but you know what
Dave Witting 59:00
I do? Here's a tip. I call up Doug stole the music aficionado. I'm like, What are you listening to? Because I'll just listen to that.
Jeff 59:08
Almost enjoy my morning jacket concert from last week.
Dave Witting 59:12
I just called Castoldi. Way better taste than I do. Yeah. Follow it.
Jeff 59:17
That's a good problem. I have an extra fish ticket. I wonder if he's wants to go with me. Kiss his wife off because she's the big fan but could still take it. Yeah. Oh, am I sure. But anyway, so what's the big movie day because you're that big movie guy. So what's your big tentpole this summer?
Dave Witting 59:34
So I'm a big comic book guy so I will literally like Erica you probably guess I will literally go to every comic book movie no matter DC to What's that
Jeff 59:43
you're a DC fan too. Or
Dave Witting 59:45
I'm indiscriminate man, I'll even go to like, I'll go to Hellboy which is a comic giant piece of crap like big monsters comics, and I am your guide like all along. The thing that I watched recently an ad was on, which I loved. Yeah, it was neat. It was I think it was meet the Kooples. It was a documentary meet the Kooples kill Oh P L. Yes. It's Sr. It's a senior citizen set of twin prostitutes in Amsterdam, that are in like their 70s. And one of them retired. And one of them is still working.
Jeff 1:00:26
Oh my god.
Dave Witting 1:00:27
This like sweet but weird documentary about like these women documentary. What's it?
Jeff 1:00:34
It's a documentary.
Dave Witting 1:00:35
It's a documentary. Senior citizens. They've been prostitutes for most of their professional life in Amsterdam's red light district. And it is It is bizarre and like, oddly sweet, where it's, it's really, I really that struck me. And I watched the Mr. Rogers documentary.
Jeff 1:00:57
Yeah, I'll put these down as a list. Can I just wrap up with one story? Do you know? Did I ever tell you about the time? So there was a spike of sales conference in Madrid? No, you're not there. I was not there. No. Oh, my God. That's just me asking shows you what my experience is. And so we had we met, we were signing up a big Spanish broadcaster. And so we so I met them they said, Okay, let's go meet on the on this restaurant. You know, there's a rep there from Stan and can't remember his name and, and they're like, Yeah, we, our offices are right here. And we, you know, in Spain, like what's go meet at six o'clock at night, and have drinks before dinner. And so we go into this outside bar outside their offices in on that street is a street that is just for, like senior citizen guys picking up. So 75 year old guys picking up 60 year old hookers over and over again. Like just constantly.
Dave Witting 1:02:07
God bless him that there was a point in time when it was by the way, it's getting the explicit label because I know that's fair. There was a time when I was a kid where I was like, you know, when I remember thinking, do my grandparents. Like there's no waiting. It's terrible. Oh wait, anyone over 70 still does any
Jeff 1:02:30
Bob Kraft went back on twice in 12 hours, right? So anyways, this is terrible. I'm gonna stop talking right now. Great.
Dave Witting 1:02:38
This is fantastic