Meeting Title: Brainforge Hydra Sales Strategy Sync Date: 2025-11-06 Meeting participants: Joseph Good, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:02:44.520 ⇒ 00:02:45.420 Robert Tseng: Hey, Joe.
2 00:02:45.960 ⇒ 00:02:47.250 Joseph Good: Hey, Robert, how’s it going?
3 00:02:47.250 ⇒ 00:02:48.269 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
4 00:02:48.740 ⇒ 00:03:02.540 Joseph Good: Good. I’m sure you’re a swamp, so I can just dive into, kind of, some of the notes I had here. For… so just for Hydra, I was… I watched a little bit of the call, that is in the internal…
5 00:03:02.870 ⇒ 00:03:13.069 Joseph Good: sort of, like, brain force database. So, basically, the core product offering is, like, Series A startups or early-stage teams who need to get, like, a V1 of their data infrastructure set up. Is that…
6 00:03:13.520 ⇒ 00:03:15.829 Joseph Good: A clear synthesis of, like, kind of what we’re offering.
7 00:03:16.230 ⇒ 00:03:16.770 Robert Tseng: Yep.
8 00:03:16.970 ⇒ 00:03:20.360 Joseph Good: Okay, awesome. And then I saw Utam…
9 00:03:21.250 ⇒ 00:03:25.670 Joseph Good: in that thread, yeah, and GTM sales strategy.
10 00:03:25.920 ⇒ 00:03:31.660 Joseph Good: So, like, see my emails with Hedro? How would be the best way to access his email communication with them?
11 00:03:32.440 ⇒ 00:03:48.070 Robert Tseng: Hmm… Let’s see… This email might be in the… Oh, Lord.
12 00:03:49.810 ⇒ 00:03:53.710 Robert Tseng: Who else… Still not.
13 00:04:06.030 ⇒ 00:04:17.949 Robert Tseng: I mean, either HubSpot would have it, like, sometimes it has it linked, I mean, if it’s set up correctly, it has it linked, and you can see it within HubSpot, or you might just need to use his email, which…
14 00:04:18.870 ⇒ 00:04:21.390 Robert Tseng: I don’t know where he shared it. Yeah.
15 00:04:21.390 ⇒ 00:04:26.489 Joseph Good: Yeah, I see some, like, email objects on the Hedra deal in HubSpot, so… Okay.
16 00:04:26.490 ⇒ 00:04:32.930 Robert Tseng: You can, yeah, maybe look there first, and if not, you can just, ask, ask where you go, and he can share some screen now with you.
17 00:04:33.160 ⇒ 00:04:34.919 Joseph Good: Okay, awesome.
18 00:04:35.160 ⇒ 00:04:40.329 Joseph Good: And then, in the appendix here on this, like, onboarding dock, it sounds… looks like this was, like, a…
19 00:04:40.940 ⇒ 00:04:45.799 Joseph Good: you were just writing out some thoughts here. One note stuck out was, like.
20 00:04:46.310 ⇒ 00:04:57.549 Joseph Good: We’re not able to qualify, sort of, the mob of folks for event objects. Ryan’s supposed to go in here with, I think, lead lists, and then, like, he wants more clay credits.
21 00:04:57.730 ⇒ 00:05:00.499 Joseph Good: But my question was basically, like.
22 00:05:00.780 ⇒ 00:05:11.479 Joseph Good: it sounds like events are the main, like, source of inbound leads, or the main source of top of funnel folks. What is the current qualification process for, like, event attendees or whatnot?
23 00:05:12.300 ⇒ 00:05:17.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think, when we…
24 00:05:19.110 ⇒ 00:05:25.740 Robert Tseng: do LinkedIn outbound for event attendees. There’s already some qualification there,
25 00:05:26.620 ⇒ 00:05:30.469 Robert Tseng: They have to… like, they’re either directly from…
26 00:05:32.430 ⇒ 00:05:40.510 Robert Tseng: Like, there are attendees or speakers that the event will share with us, or we’re, like, kind of grabbing people who have
27 00:05:42.140 ⇒ 00:05:54.249 Robert Tseng: who have mentioned the event name on LinkedIn or something. Then from there, I think it’s just really manually qualified. It’s either Ryan or Hannah that’s going in and,
28 00:05:54.500 ⇒ 00:06:00.769 Robert Tseng: They’re not messaging, they’re not doing follow-ups with everyone, but… For those that…
29 00:06:01.330 ⇒ 00:06:08.570 Robert Tseng: are… it’s not very strict, I guess is kind of the… was my pointer. It’s like a… it’s pretty… it’s pretty manual.
30 00:06:10.910 ⇒ 00:06:26.209 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but those that they decide to message, they will get 3 messages from us before we… before we stop. So, one will probably be some just, like, random, like… you can go through the sequences with Ryan and punch back, but, it’s just, like, a intro… it’s just like a…
31 00:06:26.610 ⇒ 00:06:45.349 Robert Tseng: connection, connection message, then, a connection request, and then an intro message from… from me or UTAM with a link to Brainforge. Then some general… one of our general… generalized marketing assets, which is typically a deck or a one-pager, depending on, like, where, like, the team is
32 00:06:45.640 ⇒ 00:06:53.840 Robert Tseng: something from there. So either, like, we have, like, two one-pagers, one for data, one for AI, two decks, one for data, one for AI.
33 00:06:53.980 ⇒ 00:07:06.349 Robert Tseng: And then we’ll… we’ll hit them with a specific case study that will… that’s close… more closely aligned with maybe what we think they need. So, that’s pretty much what it looks like right now.
34 00:07:07.140 ⇒ 00:07:09.470 Joseph Good: Okay, got it. Is there any…
35 00:07:09.470 ⇒ 00:07:20.100 Robert Tseng: At this point in time, they can, interrupt the sequence, and if they want to jump on a call, because every message kind of has… is trying to push them towards a meeting with us, then we’ll just interrupt it, and we’ll… we’ll jump on a call with them.
36 00:07:20.820 ⇒ 00:07:24.290 Joseph Good: Okay, sounds… sounds good.
37 00:07:24.630 ⇒ 00:07:38.920 Robert Tseng: How many, like, would you say, if you had to eyeball it, like, events are you guys doing per quarter? Or, like, how many of those events are you targeting per quarter? It’s probably, like, two, two a month, so probably, like, 6 to 8, like, almost, a month, a quarter.
38 00:07:39.160 ⇒ 00:07:40.539 Joseph Good: Okay, yeah.
39 00:07:41.010 ⇒ 00:07:48.920 Joseph Good: And then in the initial, kind of, like, OKRs, it looks like, screenshot at the top of that onboarding doc, the first,
40 00:07:49.410 ⇒ 00:08:00.979 Joseph Good: bullet points under, like, marketing is 60K in net new ICB qualified pipeline. Where is that? Like, what would be a good view in HubSpot to see that, like, 60K number, or where are you pulling that from?
41 00:08:01.210 ⇒ 00:08:06.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, and if you go to Leads.
42 00:08:06.170 ⇒ 00:08:10.800 Robert Tseng: And then I’m looking at… there’s, like, multiple tabs around the views, specifically…
43 00:08:11.030 ⇒ 00:08:17.980 Robert Tseng: There’s some… there should probably be something called to-do, those are our active leads.
44 00:08:19.320 ⇒ 00:08:21.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then once you’re in,
45 00:08:22.080 ⇒ 00:08:24.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m missing everything’s pulling up right now.
46 00:08:26.000 ⇒ 00:08:27.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Oh…
47 00:08:31.380 ⇒ 00:08:37.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so in the CRM module, there’s something called Leads, And then…
48 00:08:37.380 ⇒ 00:08:40.409 Robert Tseng: Oops, sorry, not leads, this should be deals.
49 00:08:40.809 ⇒ 00:08:50.239 Robert Tseng: Yeah, deals, and then, there should be something… there’s to do, and there’s also in progress. I guess I’m usually looking at in progress, because those are act… those are active leads.
50 00:08:50.370 ⇒ 00:08:58.690 Robert Tseng: Every deal that gets added starts at $5K, and then we adjust it depending on, like, you know, after we jump on a call with them, then we can maybe adjust the pricing.
51 00:09:00.910 ⇒ 00:09:14.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t… if you look at the view right now, which maybe I’ll just share my screen. Okay, you’re… you’re looking at it, yeah. Sure. Deals… Utops is not the setup the same way as mine, I guess, so… this won’t look exactly the same.
52 00:09:19.340 ⇒ 00:09:23.620 Robert Tseng: You might have to set up your own view, but I’ll… I’ll almost… I’ll,
53 00:09:24.460 ⇒ 00:09:27.420 Robert Tseng: I’ll share my screen.
54 00:09:27.840 ⇒ 00:09:31.739 Joseph Good: Yeah. Is your view called? Like, just yours, Robert’s pipeline?
55 00:09:32.410 ⇒ 00:09:45.200 Robert Tseng: No, I mean, that one’s assigned to me, but, like, I just look at, kind of, in-progress activities, so deal stages, anything that’s… we have a bunch of deal stages. I created a custom view for myself, I’m looking at everything that’s in progress.
56 00:09:45.280 ⇒ 00:09:58.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this is, like, if we’re already driving them towards a call, post-call, kind of, like, different follow-ups that we’re doing. Yeah, I would say anything before that just kind of falls in this to-do kind of list.
57 00:09:59.550 ⇒ 00:10:13.159 Robert Tseng: it’ll say… it’ll look like it’s 207K right now, but I’m looking at 60K new pipeline added per week, so that should be, you know, at around 10… around 10 leads a week, which…
58 00:10:13.190 ⇒ 00:10:26.279 Robert Tseng: we’re not hitting that number right now, but yeah, so, like, it’s not like we actually added $207K in pipeline this past week. I don’t believe that. A lot of this is pretty stale, like, this has been sitting… Port Authority.
59 00:10:26.560 ⇒ 00:10:31.809 Robert Tseng: big RFP. We’ve been working on this for over a month. Like, it still sits here, but…
60 00:10:32.350 ⇒ 00:10:37.300 Robert Tseng: yeah, there’s probably some other filtering that I can do to look at
61 00:10:37.490 ⇒ 00:10:46.050 Robert Tseng: new in-progress leads from the past week, and that number should be 60, is kind of what I’m looking for from the team.
62 00:10:46.550 ⇒ 00:10:52.930 Joseph Good: Okay, can you show me your view, or, like, how you’re getting the 60 number? Or can you, like, share your view to the…
63 00:10:53.200 ⇒ 00:10:54.410 Joseph Good: Central…
64 00:10:55.150 ⇒ 00:10:59.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t actually know how to do that, but I guess if I were to just…
65 00:11:01.280 ⇒ 00:11:08.830 Robert Tseng: Oh, I see, created by me, created to others, can I even…
66 00:11:14.500 ⇒ 00:11:18.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t really know how to share it. Like, I.
67 00:11:18.390 ⇒ 00:11:24.510 Joseph Good: It’s all good. You’re on the sales… like, you’re logged in via the sales at Rainforest, though, right? Or are you…
68 00:11:24.510 ⇒ 00:11:25.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this is mine.
69 00:11:25.770 ⇒ 00:11:28.049 Robert Tseng: Oh, personally, okay. Yeah.
70 00:11:29.310 ⇒ 00:11:32.200 Joseph Good: Okay. Can you maybe just screenshot the filters?
71 00:11:32.760 ⇒ 00:11:34.619 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I can rebuild it.
72 00:11:35.120 ⇒ 00:11:40.959 Robert Tseng: It’s just, deal stage, and then you check everything that’s in progress, but…
73 00:11:41.730 ⇒ 00:11:43.160 Joseph Good: Okay, sounds good.
74 00:11:44.840 ⇒ 00:11:46.510 Joseph Good: Great.
75 00:11:46.650 ⇒ 00:11:51.870 Joseph Good: Yeah, and your dashboard says, like, 60K. It’s accurate.
76 00:11:52.300 ⇒ 00:11:58.680 Robert Tseng: It should be. Yeah, well, it doesn’t right now. So actually, if I were to do this, I would do in progress,
77 00:11:58.920 ⇒ 00:12:01.259 Robert Tseng: Mute, mute.
78 00:12:02.200 ⇒ 00:12:02.990 Robert Tseng: Boom.
79 00:12:04.540 ⇒ 00:12:07.710 Robert Tseng: Last week… Gonna share this with everyone.
80 00:12:08.460 ⇒ 00:12:17.230 Robert Tseng: So, I guess, like, the 60K number I’m looking for is really… Created in the past week.
81 00:12:18.720 ⇒ 00:12:23.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this seems more… Likely, which is, like…
82 00:12:23.420 ⇒ 00:12:28.039 Robert Tseng: But these aren’t even net new deals, like, we just… this is… it’s just kind of messy.
83 00:12:28.950 ⇒ 00:12:35.510 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t go into this that often, like, I think Ryan should be working out of this, and he should, I mean, so, you know, it’s…
84 00:12:36.310 ⇒ 00:12:50.839 Robert Tseng: But I’m just describing, in an ideal world, this is created the past week, and it’s everything that’s active… an active deal. These are existing clients already, so I would exclude these. Like, anything that’s an existing client shouldn’t be.
85 00:12:50.870 ⇒ 00:13:01.849 Robert Tseng: I mean, it’s fine for the purposes of, like, this exercise, it can’t… it can be, but yeah, I… we haven’t added… there are… there are new leads that haven’t been captured in this, so it’s…
86 00:13:02.170 ⇒ 00:13:10.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I would want Ryan to be re… to be report… reporting on this,
87 00:13:11.630 ⇒ 00:13:14.189 Robert Tseng: Every Monday, which she hasn’t been, so…
88 00:13:14.920 ⇒ 00:13:21.270 Joseph Good: Okay, sounds good. I’ll check in with him, too, on, like, what kind of his source of truth is that he’s going off of.
89 00:13:21.420 ⇒ 00:13:24.669 Joseph Good: Similarly, on that same…
90 00:13:25.060 ⇒ 00:13:37.900 Joseph Good: sort of block of marketing, and it says 60% of content… the goal is 60% of content from event-based activation, and then content died in the past 2 weeks. Like, is there a content calendar set up? Like, what’s the.
91 00:13:37.900 ⇒ 00:13:44.729 Robert Tseng: No, we kind of paused the content. I think Ryan was doing our content before, but,
92 00:13:46.190 ⇒ 00:13:53.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I just… I didn’t feel like the quality was high enough. Like, we were getting engagement, but it wasn’t really driving any leads, so we kind of just paused there.
93 00:13:53.800 ⇒ 00:14:02.449 Robert Tseng: There are… the only kinds of content that we’re doing right now are, like, resharing our partner stuff, when we’re…
94 00:14:02.600 ⇒ 00:14:09.750 Robert Tseng: Leading up to events, we’ll, we’ll post. And so he’s just doing those basic things.
95 00:14:10.960 ⇒ 00:14:26.060 Robert Tseng: Any, like, content from Utam and I specifically, we’re supposed to be posting once a week, but we haven’t been, so… I think, yeah, the momentum on the content died. Before, I was… I was looking at that more closely, but I just… I don’t really think that we have the resourcing to push the content out.
96 00:14:26.800 ⇒ 00:14:36.930 Joseph Good: Okay, yeah, and then beyond events and referrals, and just, like, inbound from the website, are there any other, like, windows and doors that leads are getting into the business?
97 00:14:37.210 ⇒ 00:14:51.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I would say there’s a couple platforms, Contra, Upwork, yeah, if you look in the sales channel, or the sales go-to-market strategy channel, that’s where Utam and I, like, will just, like, flag things as it comes up, like.
98 00:14:51.770 ⇒ 00:14:58.560 Robert Tseng: leads… leads will circle back with us via email. There was a guy named Adi today, like, if I just kind of went in here…
99 00:14:59.070 ⇒ 00:14:59.530 Joseph Good: I saw that.
100 00:15:00.900 ⇒ 00:15:07.120 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this guy kind of circled back, so Rita and I are kind of… we’ll take a call with him. I think…
101 00:15:07.620 ⇒ 00:15:11.370 Robert Tseng: Anything else that came up from this one?
102 00:15:12.800 ⇒ 00:15:17.730 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, rituals coming back as well,
103 00:15:17.890 ⇒ 00:15:24.689 Robert Tseng: Yeah, Hannah and I will kind of… she’ll let me know, hey, there’s, like, this random offer on Upwork right now.
104 00:15:24.690 ⇒ 00:15:43.180 Robert Tseng: MixedPanel’s partner platform gives us leads, so, like, some of our vendors have partner portals, and, I mean, we’re, like, a top 5 MixedPanel vendor, so I do get leads from here. So yeah, like, there’s a… it’s kind of hard to consolidate all the inbound channels, because, like, as we kind of see them, like, I just throw them into this panel.
105 00:15:43.320 ⇒ 00:15:48.930 Robert Tseng: Ryan is supposed to take these and put them into HubSpot, which obviously is out this week, so he hasn’t been.
106 00:15:49.110 ⇒ 00:15:59.110 Robert Tseng: But otherwise, like, I see 5 leads already from this week that just didn’t get added into this. So, you know, in a normal state, like, I would expect that all of this would be in here.
107 00:15:59.380 ⇒ 00:16:05.520 Robert Tseng: So I don’t… I think we’re not giving enough credit for what has actually happened this week. Like, we’re definitely doing better than this.
108 00:16:06.510 ⇒ 00:16:09.209 Joseph Good: Okay, sounds good.
109 00:16:10.590 ⇒ 00:16:18.330 Joseph Good: Great, and then, last thing was just, like, can I get access to Clay? Not super critical, just, I don’t think it’s in, 1Password.
110 00:16:18.330 ⇒ 00:16:24.470 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, you can ask Rico. Any access for things, you just ask Rico, typically. Yeah.
111 00:16:24.650 ⇒ 00:16:28.410 Joseph Good: Okay, sounds good. Yeah, that was all I had, so, appreciate it.
112 00:16:28.410 ⇒ 00:16:29.680 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
113 00:16:29.870 ⇒ 00:16:36.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah, good questions. I mean, I know it’s kind of… it’s not as organized as I would like it to be. Things always seem to be…
114 00:16:37.070 ⇒ 00:16:42.500 Robert Tseng: The moving target, sales, specifically, like, things are always changing.
115 00:16:42.970 ⇒ 00:16:46.569 Joseph Good: Yeah, all good. Excited to continue to get up to speed here, so…
116 00:16:46.950 ⇒ 00:16:48.720 Robert Tseng: Cool. Alright, thanks, Jeff.
117 00:16:48.720 ⇒ 00:16:49.370 Joseph Good: Cheers.