Meeting Title: Sales-Automation-Weekly Date: 2024-08-19 Meeting participants: Atharv Gudi, Patrick Trainer, Abigail Zhao, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:14.780 ⇒ 00:00:15.800 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? How’s it going.
2 00:00:15.800 ⇒ 00:00:17.760 Abigail Zhao: Hi! I’m good. How are you?
3 00:00:17.760 ⇒ 00:00:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: Morning
4 00:00:21.870 ⇒ 00:00:22.530 Uttam Kumaran: oop.
5 00:00:23.730 ⇒ 00:00:24.970 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the weekend.
6 00:00:25.280 ⇒ 00:00:26.340 Abigail Zhao: Oh, it was good!
7 00:00:46.100 ⇒ 00:00:53.890 Uttam Kumaran: So today I think we’ll be working mainly in this the the figma that I sent in slack so
8 00:00:56.600 ⇒ 00:00:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: everyone can make sure that they can log in there
9 00:00:59.950 ⇒ 00:01:03.649 Uttam Kumaran: and then. Patrick, this is Abigail. By the way, Abigail.
10 00:01:03.650 ⇒ 00:01:04.390 Patrick Trainer: Yeah. Have a girl.
11 00:01:04.860 ⇒ 00:01:05.720 Abigail Zhao: Bye.
12 00:01:06.531 ⇒ 00:01:08.790 Uttam Kumaran: Abigail is gonna Abigail’s a
13 00:01:09.070 ⇒ 00:01:10.590 Uttam Kumaran: junior.
14 00:01:10.590 ⇒ 00:01:11.420 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.
15 00:01:11.930 ⇒ 00:01:17.629 Uttam Kumaran: You’re she’s a junior she’s studying in California, studying math.
16 00:01:17.730 ⇒ 00:01:22.160 Uttam Kumaran: And she’s gonna be kind of like interning and helping us with a bunch of stuff.
17 00:01:22.450 ⇒ 00:01:31.980 Uttam Kumaran: for you know, as long as she can. But she actually came. She’s cousins with Brian. Brian.
18 00:01:31.980 ⇒ 00:01:32.300 Patrick Trainer: Yes.
19 00:01:32.300 ⇒ 00:01:42.829 Uttam Kumaran: You know and so excited. And then how we go. This is Athar. Athar was another intern with us as well. Also going into his senior year at
20 00:01:43.310 ⇒ 00:01:44.560 Uttam Kumaran: Uiuc.
21 00:01:46.260 ⇒ 00:01:48.272 Abigail Zhao: Okay, it’s nice to meet you guys.
22 00:01:49.890 ⇒ 00:01:50.900 Patrick Trainer: Yeah, likewise.
23 00:01:52.610 ⇒ 00:01:58.430 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So I guess today, I kind of just wanted to give an overview of like
24 00:01:58.820 ⇒ 00:02:09.089 Uttam Kumaran: how we’re thinking about sales and sales automation and kind of want to set the stage for what the next like few weeks
25 00:02:09.100 ⇒ 00:02:11.962 Uttam Kumaran: are gonna look like I think.
26 00:02:13.132 ⇒ 00:02:25.709 Uttam Kumaran: I think, for folks like Patrick and a thar who have been working on client work. We’re gonna you can consider in this situation like Brainforge, the client. But I think, a little bit differently as well is.
27 00:02:26.110 ⇒ 00:02:47.260 Uttam Kumaran: We’re probably gonna be a lot like I’m going to be a lot more hands on, meaning probably chat or meet, you know, a lot more often than like client work. But also, I think the nice thing is this directly goes to automating. Basically our sales motion as a company. The kind of. And then I just sent in slack
28 00:02:47.380 ⇒ 00:02:51.912 Uttam Kumaran: the link to fig jam. If you guys want to join that
29 00:02:53.640 ⇒ 00:02:58.719 Uttam Kumaran: That’ll be where I kind of like running this meeting from. And we’ll kind of like start to house
30 00:02:59.010 ⇒ 00:03:01.170 Uttam Kumaran: basically everything there.
31 00:03:01.942 ⇒ 00:03:08.429 Uttam Kumaran: If you haven’t used figma before. It’s really pretty self explanator. But I can also do walk through. Just let me know.
32 00:03:21.470 ⇒ 00:03:24.580 Uttam Kumaran: is everyone in here? Okay, yeah. Looks like it.
33 00:03:26.560 ⇒ 00:03:28.940 Uttam Kumaran: So you should see like my cursor
34 00:03:29.290 ⇒ 00:03:30.820 Uttam Kumaran: moving around.
35 00:03:31.150 ⇒ 00:03:38.590 Uttam Kumaran: The one thing that you can do is on the top right? If you see like my name, you can actually click on
36 00:03:38.660 ⇒ 00:03:48.341 Uttam Kumaran: the little U, and then it’ll actually you can hit spotlight, and it’ll actually follow my cursor around. That may be the easiest way to do this
37 00:03:48.790 ⇒ 00:03:51.109 Uttam Kumaran: until basically.
38 00:03:52.370 ⇒ 00:03:55.416 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll have everybody kind of break out and we can think of
39 00:03:55.720 ⇒ 00:04:00.050 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll work on a couple of things. I think ideally.
40 00:04:00.060 ⇒ 00:04:28.847 Uttam Kumaran: this is probably gonna this is probably gonna take longer than just the hour we have today. But I think today, I really just want to set the stage with everybody, and then kind of talk about how to break this problem down. And then the other thing is this, Scott, this has to be really interactive. Otherwise, I’m going to be talking for like an hour straight or or I’m just gonna start asking people for their thoughts. So please like, interrupt me. And like, ask questions.
41 00:04:29.220 ⇒ 00:04:31.359 Uttam Kumaran: this isn’t meant to be like a
42 00:04:31.490 ⇒ 00:04:37.770 Uttam Kumaran: here’s what we’re doing. Go do this like I. This is meant to be like, what is the strategy? We want to set
43 00:04:38.094 ⇒ 00:04:45.479 Uttam Kumaran: on the sales side for the company, and then also, this is a really like, there’s a big technical challenge that we’re going to be going through here. So
44 00:04:46.000 ⇒ 00:04:49.440 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not something that I’m gonna be able to do on my own
45 00:04:49.884 ⇒ 00:04:52.365 Uttam Kumaran: so if you want to follow me
46 00:04:53.390 ⇒ 00:04:57.062 Uttam Kumaran: I think I can probably just like spotlight me
47 00:04:57.640 ⇒ 00:05:13.499 Uttam Kumaran: basically like the things I wanted to talk to through kind of in these sessions are one like what is like modern go to market and b 2 b sales for an agency like ours. The second thing is like how
48 00:05:13.800 ⇒ 00:05:16.560 Uttam Kumaran: prospects move from
49 00:05:16.680 ⇒ 00:05:37.570 Uttam Kumaran: like an open opportunity to a closed one opportunity. And I’ll kind of talk about these like stages today. I also want to talk about industry targets like, what are the industries we’re going after? Why, we’re going after them. And then what is targeting an industry like really mean? The other thing is, I want to talk about like what?
50 00:05:37.640 ⇒ 00:05:52.530 Uttam Kumaran: What is an outbound strategy? Once we’ve decided like, why, we’re going after an industry and so that’s probably like what we’ll get through to today. We may like skip some steps and like the other stuff I really want to talk about is like, how do we
51 00:05:52.680 ⇒ 00:06:02.359 Uttam Kumaran: drive people to our site and our materials through content? What are the content we already have our website, how we get people into our funnel.
52 00:06:02.790 ⇒ 00:06:20.330 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll I think honestly, I’ll probably spend some time today before we end. Today we’ll talk about metrics because we are a data company and metrics are going to govern like whether we’re successful here or not. It’s not gonna be like a feeling. It’s gonna be like
53 00:06:20.390 ⇒ 00:06:22.159 Uttam Kumaran: everything from
54 00:06:22.666 ⇒ 00:06:40.830 Uttam Kumaran: page traffic to like leads and email sent to meetings booked. And then, of course, there will be a revenue associated with it. Each of those, if you break it down, have different timelines of like us getting feedback, like revenue in the door may take months
55 00:06:40.830 ⇒ 00:07:07.200 Uttam Kumaran: while sending an email out could be like in a day. And so we’ll be. We’ll have these different metrics that will begin to track the nice thing is like. This is what we sell to clients is like this, ability to track these metrics. And so we’ll be eating. We’ll be kind of eating the dog food on this one. And then, as we go, we’ll break down tasks and think about organization and things like that. But I kind of today will just be a little bit of just sharing
56 00:07:07.540 ⇒ 00:07:14.244 Uttam Kumaran: my perspective on like sales. So for the 1st part of this
57 00:07:14.960 ⇒ 00:07:16.400 Uttam Kumaran: basically.
58 00:07:17.960 ⇒ 00:07:20.249 Uttam Kumaran: basically, I’ll just kind of talk a little bit about
59 00:07:20.430 ⇒ 00:07:24.766 Uttam Kumaran: go to market and and sales. So right now, if you think about
60 00:07:26.140 ⇒ 00:07:45.519 Uttam Kumaran: let’s say, let’s think about like consumer products. So let’s say you’re you’re getting advertised for like dove soap. The way Dove soap works is like, dove has a product that’s in retail. They sell. They maybe sell digitally. How do they do advertising? Well, they run ads on TV, on Instagram, on all that they’re selling to a consumer.
61 00:07:45.520 ⇒ 00:08:02.060 Uttam Kumaran: The difference between consumer is that consumer? It’s like a very low price point. They’re able to actually go buy the product directly somewhere, and then just use it immediately. There’s no contracts. There’s no lengthy sales process, but also the contract values are very low
62 00:08:02.060 ⇒ 00:08:14.270 Uttam Kumaran: in b 2 b sales. We’re selling to a business. So we are selling to a business. And there’s someone in the business that that basically writes the check and signs the contract.
63 00:08:14.980 ⇒ 00:08:23.330 Uttam Kumaran: what that means is these, the differences is are. These are typically lengthier sales processes, and I’ll I’ll write this down.
64 00:08:23.690 ⇒ 00:08:25.740 Uttam Kumaran: Here.
65 00:08:26.420 ⇒ 00:08:28.340 Uttam Kumaran: post it.
66 00:08:29.510 ⇒ 00:08:30.790 Uttam Kumaran: So
67 00:08:33.220 ⇒ 00:08:37.130 Uttam Kumaran: so the the kind of the properties of
68 00:08:37.260 ⇒ 00:08:41.419 Uttam Kumaran: like b 2 b sales processes are one. It’s like lengthy
69 00:08:42.299 ⇒ 00:08:46.240 Uttam Kumaran: for us. This is anywhere from like one to 3 months
70 00:08:46.440 ⇒ 00:08:48.060 Uttam Kumaran: to close a client.
71 00:08:48.330 ⇒ 00:08:52.950 Uttam Kumaran: and I’ll talk about the phases in the next part, about where usually
72 00:08:53.110 ⇒ 00:08:59.349 Uttam Kumaran: folks get stuck, but it’s about one to 3 months. You compare it again. You could go to a store by product
73 00:08:59.780 ⇒ 00:09:18.039 Uttam Kumaran: and be done with it. For us it takes like months of negotiation or doing process or doing things like putting together proposals. So typically one to 3 months. These are much higher in contract value for us. We’re going after. I’m just calling Acv, or this is like
74 00:09:19.510 ⇒ 00:09:20.225 Uttam Kumaran: average
75 00:09:21.140 ⇒ 00:09:22.520 Uttam Kumaran: on track value
76 00:09:25.060 ⇒ 00:09:28.259 Uttam Kumaran: for us. This is anywhere from
77 00:09:28.410 ⇒ 00:09:29.650 Uttam Kumaran: like
78 00:09:30.030 ⇒ 00:09:33.569 Uttam Kumaran: 10 to 30 K Mrr.
79 00:09:33.590 ⇒ 00:09:36.389 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning this monthly recurring revenue
80 00:09:36.530 ⇒ 00:09:40.565 Uttam Kumaran: Monthly. Recurring revenue is commonly used in like
81 00:09:41.270 ⇒ 00:09:56.639 Uttam Kumaran: subscriptions. But for us, basically, the way I look at it is like we, we close a client on an hourly basis, meaning we typically bill for our engineers time hourly, and then the business, what the usually the minimums we go for is at least $10,000,
82 00:09:56.690 ⇒ 00:10:00.879 Uttam Kumaran: which ends up being like around like 10 to 20 h as like a minimum
83 00:10:01.090 ⇒ 00:10:08.000 Uttam Kumaran: meaning. We can’t really do any damage with less than 10 HA, as we know from a couple of clients, and
84 00:10:08.020 ⇒ 00:10:11.960 Uttam Kumaran: also for the business to make money and to fund like
85 00:10:12.040 ⇒ 00:10:27.389 Uttam Kumaran: all the stuff around it. There has to be a margin there. So that’s typically the things that we go for this will be helpful again in the step 2, which is, clients will come to us and say, Can you do work for like 5 KA month. And our answer is no
86 00:10:27.420 ⇒ 00:10:49.490 Uttam Kumaran: right. And that actually is a good thing. The problems that I’ve got into and that companies typically get into is like, when you’re in b 2 b sales you. It’s A, it’s like a great client you’re like, Wow, this project looks dope. I, we could totally do it. They’re like, okay, but we don’t have any budget. Can you do for 5 K. Well, if you break it down, not only can I not pay somebody
87 00:10:49.510 ⇒ 00:11:05.210 Uttam Kumaran: 5 k to do that sort of work? The company doesn’t make any money, we’ll probably lose money on that. And then all that combined. We’re probably gonna fumble the deal like we’re not gonna work that. So we do have minimums. But this will get. And this will get part of the way we do disqualification.
88 00:11:05.520 ⇒ 00:11:10.726 Uttam Kumaran: and I’ll talk about that in the next step, which is, how do we qualify or disqualify? Leads
89 00:11:11.507 ⇒ 00:11:14.892 Uttam Kumaran: the other thing with b 2 b is, there are contracts.
90 00:11:15.570 ⇒ 00:11:21.309 Uttam Kumaran: so there are ndas. There’s Msas. These are all
91 00:11:21.440 ⇒ 00:11:25.339 Uttam Kumaran: there’s, you know, normal like contractor agreements.
92 00:11:27.340 ⇒ 00:11:51.562 Uttam Kumaran: These are just like basically taking what we talked about stipulating that into an actual contract. There’s also proposals. These are probably less like contractual meaning like these are just like what we’re going to do. But then, when it comes down to someone’s time, money being billed things like that, there are actually like formal documents there. So there’s going to be a stage for like contract negotiation and contract signing
93 00:11:51.890 ⇒ 00:11:57.331 Uttam Kumaran: and then to talk a little bit about Gtm, which is go to market.
94 00:11:58.010 ⇒ 00:12:03.350 Uttam Kumaran: This is where we’re gonna talk about, how do we actually take our product and bring it to market? And our product
95 00:12:03.450 ⇒ 00:12:07.025 Uttam Kumaran: is data services right?
96 00:12:08.770 ⇒ 00:12:14.109 Uttam Kumaran: to give you even a better sense of like what that actually is.
97 00:12:16.180 ⇒ 00:12:24.569 Uttam Kumaran: actually, I’ll just. I’ll just talk through it, and I’ll share you some sales material. So what are what are the like? The services that we offer? So we offer data engineering.
98 00:12:25.560 ⇒ 00:12:29.730 Uttam Kumaran: we offer data modeling and we offer data analysis.
99 00:12:29.970 ⇒ 00:12:42.330 Uttam Kumaran: right? These are distinct. These are distinct services that we offer for different price points for different products. But this is what our team folks like me, Patrick
100 00:12:42.340 ⇒ 00:12:56.900 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan, like like Brian, like other folks, are actually equipped to do. And this is what we go to the market to put into people’s hands. Right? And so these are the services that we go after. The tools are
101 00:12:56.970 ⇒ 00:13:05.299 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit more about our bias. So the tools we like to use are things like snowflake. Dbt, 5. Tran
102 00:13:05.890 ⇒ 00:13:24.480 Uttam Kumaran: is our common like stack. And these are tools that I’ll kind of break down. And you guys will have access to. And I know we, a bunch of us have already know about this. But these are the tools that we like to use. Sometimes clients have tools that are outside of this. That’s all. What goes to the proposal process of understanding is this something that we can actually take on.
103 00:13:24.570 ⇒ 00:13:27.649 Uttam Kumaran: So these are the tools that we typically use.
104 00:13:29.080 ⇒ 00:13:30.699 Uttam Kumaran: in terms of
105 00:13:31.170 ⇒ 00:13:32.467 Uttam Kumaran: in terms of
106 00:13:33.160 ⇒ 00:13:39.020 Uttam Kumaran: kind of the way we do things. Typically with 2 models. There’s 1 which is just like a staffing model.
107 00:13:39.540 ⇒ 00:13:41.990 Uttam Kumaran: which is just like, Do you need
108 00:13:42.180 ⇒ 00:13:48.700 Uttam Kumaran: someone for X Job? The second thing is more of like a project model, which is
109 00:13:49.694 ⇒ 00:13:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: budget in order to get a job done.
110 00:13:54.750 ⇒ 00:13:58.010 Uttam Kumaran: No restrictions on people.
111 00:13:58.780 ⇒ 00:14:16.739 Uttam Kumaran: So we do. These are kind of like the buckets that people typically get put into. Sometimes they’re like, I just need an engineer. We already have a team. Do you have anybody that fits the bill? Sometimes like the client like pool parts that we have, we kind of like handle the whole pie. We got a fixed budget in order to do that, we’re able to distribute it. How we need.
112 00:14:16.980 ⇒ 00:14:21.679 Uttam Kumaran: So those are kind of like the the 2 like project models. I’ll just kind of like.
113 00:14:22.080 ⇒ 00:14:23.630 Uttam Kumaran: put that there
114 00:14:27.560 ⇒ 00:14:29.066 Uttam Kumaran: project model.
115 00:14:30.510 ⇒ 00:14:32.919 Uttam Kumaran: So we have our product. We have our services.
116 00:14:33.040 ⇒ 00:14:36.100 Uttam Kumaran: We have the tools. We have the project model
117 00:14:36.449 ⇒ 00:14:41.839 Uttam Kumaran: and then I also want to talk about kind of the go to market, which is like, why brain forge
118 00:14:42.930 ⇒ 00:14:58.360 Uttam Kumaran: right? And this is something that I kind of like. I now have said a ton of times. It’s actually like what I’ve kind of become better codified since we started the business. But a couple of reasons why you want to hire us one I’ll talk about the state of the market like right now.
119 00:14:59.420 ⇒ 00:15:00.290 Uttam Kumaran: There’s
120 00:15:00.700 ⇒ 00:15:02.850 Uttam Kumaran: there’s not many people
121 00:15:03.340 ⇒ 00:15:05.910 Uttam Kumaran: that have done this job
122 00:15:06.290 ⇒ 00:15:13.060 Uttam Kumaran: as many times end to end as we have. Second is, there’s
123 00:15:13.630 ⇒ 00:15:19.462 Uttam Kumaran: those people that have are very, very highly paid.
124 00:15:21.800 ⇒ 00:15:22.460 Uttam Kumaran: So
125 00:15:23.660 ⇒ 00:15:28.059 Uttam Kumaran: after and stuck in full time. Companies
126 00:15:29.550 ⇒ 00:15:33.121 Uttam Kumaran: Aka, not for fractional hire
127 00:15:34.750 ⇒ 00:15:55.439 Uttam Kumaran: meaning like folks like me and Patrick. A lot of us with our similar backgrounds, are stuck in a Facebook, Google are stuck in another company. They’re not available to hire, meaning. You can’t just be like, I need someone right now who’s on the market, and you can’t go anywhere to get those people. It’ll probably take you one to 3 months just to get with that someone.
128 00:15:55.570 ⇒ 00:16:04.660 Uttam Kumaran: The interview process right now is also super broken. I’m I don’t know if Abigail or thought you guys have tried to interview for jobs.
129 00:16:04.670 ⇒ 00:16:12.170 Uttam Kumaran: But my sister just graduated. I help people interview like almost every month.
130 00:16:12.240 ⇒ 00:16:15.340 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like way harder than when I was
131 00:16:15.460 ⇒ 00:16:16.819 Uttam Kumaran: doing this.
132 00:16:18.310 ⇒ 00:16:26.069 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I guess. Like, like, if you guys want to even chat about like how it’s been for you guys like. And I guess I I’d love to hear like
133 00:16:26.380 ⇒ 00:16:32.450 Uttam Kumaran: what what you guys have tried to do and like what? What even like the signal has been during like your interview processes.
134 00:16:32.530 ⇒ 00:16:34.780 Uttam Kumaran: This is for, like a thorn or abigail.
135 00:16:35.260 ⇒ 00:16:42.799 Atharv Gudi: Well, so far, I mean, I’m looking at grad school immediately after my senior year, so I haven’t been at all
136 00:16:42.920 ⇒ 00:16:47.919 Atharv Gudi: looking for jobs that applying to them. But I know a lot of people who’ve graduated. And
137 00:16:48.710 ⇒ 00:16:58.920 Atharv Gudi: not only is the job. Sometimes people, just most most of the people that I know, do not get interviews as easily unless they have a referral, and even if they do, the interviews are like Groot.
138 00:16:59.450 ⇒ 00:17:00.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
139 00:17:00.620 ⇒ 00:17:01.740 Uttam Kumaran: I agree.
140 00:17:02.290 ⇒ 00:17:05.940 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, I would definitely like, say, the same thing. I mean, I’ve
141 00:17:06.050 ⇒ 00:17:12.869 Abigail Zhao: definitely like, I think the general consensus around, like most college students right now looking for internships. Is that, like
142 00:17:13.152 ⇒ 00:17:25.399 Abigail Zhao: number one, it is really difficult to even get an interview. To begin with, like a lot of companies like. They won’t even end up responding after you apply, and just kind of like, leave you in the dust. And then, like once you do
143 00:17:25.420 ⇒ 00:17:40.529 Abigail Zhao: get an interview. Like, if you get one, you’re like competing with, like a bunch of other like maybe more qualified candidates that honestly, just like really does not put you in a good position. And yeah, definitely, the thing about the referral, like, I feel like it’s almost
144 00:17:40.940 ⇒ 00:17:51.470 Abigail Zhao: nearly impossible now to like kind of get your foot in the door without kind of already knowing someone within that company that can like help. You push your resume up more. But yeah.
145 00:17:51.970 ⇒ 00:17:53.820 Atharv Gudi: Yeah. And we’ve, I feel like we’ve.
146 00:17:54.210 ⇒ 00:17:57.839 Atharv Gudi: I feel like we’ve reached a point where even the Referrals are like a diamond.
147 00:17:58.163 ⇒ 00:17:58.809 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, for.
148 00:17:59.230 ⇒ 00:18:08.890 Atharv Gudi: A very well positioned person’s referral. If you want your application looked at at all, although I will say I had an interview
149 00:18:10.070 ⇒ 00:18:15.250 Atharv Gudi: February for an internship over the summer. It was an internship in Germany, and that was
150 00:18:15.460 ⇒ 00:18:18.820 Atharv Gudi: probably the most pleasant interview I’ve ever had.
151 00:18:19.190 ⇒ 00:18:21.420 Atharv Gudi: It was just a half an hour chat about
152 00:18:22.123 ⇒ 00:18:23.289 Atharv Gudi: you know.
153 00:18:23.800 ⇒ 00:18:26.560 Atharv Gudi: What do you do in the university and
154 00:18:26.600 ⇒ 00:18:28.370 Atharv Gudi: looking forward to? Okay.
155 00:18:28.410 ⇒ 00:18:32.569 Atharv Gudi: if you’re coming to Germany where you’re gonna live, that kind of stuff that was.
156 00:18:32.650 ⇒ 00:18:35.020 Atharv Gudi: and I don’t think I know anyone
157 00:18:35.450 ⇒ 00:18:43.729 Atharv Gudi: in my age range of in and like, maybe anyone who’s between 20 and 30, who’s had an interview as leisurely as that.
158 00:18:44.040 ⇒ 00:18:48.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. The the problem when you say Germany is, though, the pay is gonna be
159 00:18:48.350 ⇒ 00:18:49.870 Uttam Kumaran: like the.
160 00:18:50.573 ⇒ 00:18:53.389 Atharv Gudi: Not gonna be any.
161 00:18:53.390 ⇒ 00:18:54.570 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
162 00:18:54.570 ⇒ 00:18:57.739 Atharv Gudi: Person in Berlin. It was not gonna pay much either way.
163 00:18:58.076 ⇒ 00:19:05.139 Uttam Kumaran: No, so those are, I mean, those are. See even. That’s why I wanted to even talk anecdotally about that. Because
164 00:19:06.070 ⇒ 00:19:12.869 Uttam Kumaran: what does tons of competition actually mean. It means there are too much supply.
165 00:19:14.630 ⇒ 00:19:30.710 Uttam Kumaran: And there is very little demand. But actually, what’s happening. So that’s at the junior level, right? And that’s actually what ha! What’s happening right now is that there’s a lot of people that are applying to those jobs. And
166 00:19:30.880 ⇒ 00:19:38.049 Uttam Kumaran: they just there’s like, actually, just. They’re inundated with applications right now, not only from us students, from international
167 00:19:38.300 ⇒ 00:19:59.399 Uttam Kumaran: and demand is changing, for, like the very low level of the spectrum. The reason I’m talking about low level is like in typically in software engineering, there’s a leveling system, right? You guys have probably seen in the people that you’re reaching out to. There’s like senior engineer, staff engineer, Vp, like CEO, all the way down to tech lead.
168 00:19:59.510 ⇒ 00:20:07.520 Uttam Kumaran: software, lead, tech lead whatever all the way down to software engineer. So there are different demand curves for where you are in the stage
169 00:20:07.810 ⇒ 00:20:12.670 Uttam Kumaran: at this company the folks that we are pitching are all senior talent
170 00:20:14.630 ⇒ 00:20:17.719 Uttam Kumaran: at that level. It’s it flips.
171 00:20:17.970 ⇒ 00:20:24.499 Uttam Kumaran: It starts to flip, meaning there’s actually not many candidates that
172 00:20:25.357 ⇒ 00:20:28.092 Uttam Kumaran: have the required skill set.
173 00:20:29.990 ⇒ 00:20:34.770 Uttam Kumaran: but you still have the tons of applicants problem.
174 00:20:35.120 ⇒ 00:20:51.289 Uttam Kumaran: right? Because, just like you guys, I did the same thing where I applied for any. I just applied willy nilly to every single job, even if it’s even. I didn’t have the requirements had the requirements I got. I just started getting desperate. And this was this was like years ago. And so.
175 00:20:51.290 ⇒ 00:21:09.440 Uttam Kumaran: But the problem is like as you get more senior, there’s less people who can actually fit the bill. And it’s just a simple thing meaning like, there’s more. Those people are higher paid. There’s not as many of them. But you still get inundated with a ton of people, which means that the interview process
176 00:21:11.440 ⇒ 00:21:23.350 Uttam Kumaran: can take months right? And the reason why I’m saying this in the why Brainforge section is Brainforge. Engineers can start immediately.
177 00:21:23.960 ⇒ 00:21:28.270 Uttam Kumaran: and that’s 1 of the things that I talk to people about is they’re like
178 00:21:28.380 ⇒ 00:21:48.690 Uttam Kumaran: I. This is something that we’ll talk about when we go after part of our go to our go to market. Our outreach is going to be going after companies with open job requirements, open job postings. What part of the copy will be. We’re assuming that your interview process is taking months. You’re not getting qualified candidates
179 00:21:48.690 ⇒ 00:22:17.950 Uttam Kumaran: or people that you are qualifying end up going for other jobs. Right. We’re hitting at the pain points, and that’s the pain point as someone who’s hired people. I’m sure, Pat, you’ve been on the descent of it. It’s tough, and it takes months, and it wastes a lot of people’s time. And so on our side, the the luxury that we have and the thing I love about our company is, we have like amazing talent. And this is a lot of folks from my network, a lot of folks from my networks that work that we brought together. And so for the
180 00:22:17.950 ⇒ 00:22:22.029 Uttam Kumaran: for the near future, we have great engineers that are ready to work.
181 00:22:22.570 ⇒ 00:22:24.470 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s our edge.
182 00:22:24.740 ⇒ 00:22:37.309 Uttam Kumaran: Commonly in services businesses like ours. You have one edge. Either you get a business person who’s really good selling. But then the talent is typically mediocre, or they’re just outsourced talent, or they’re like.
183 00:22:37.340 ⇒ 00:22:57.519 Uttam Kumaran: but there’s no attachment. They just sell the contract and they throw bodies at a problem. This is like a typical it staffing thing that happens or you’re like our side, right? And this is not as common. But the challenge is just inverse. Right? You get someone like me, who’s like a technical person. I have access to really amazing technical talent, because these are just
184 00:22:57.610 ⇒ 00:23:12.780 Uttam Kumaran: the homies. Basically, I’d like to put it very frankly. I’m like, I know exactly how these implementations work. I’ve done these. But what am I bad at that reach? Right? And so there’s not. It’s this is Con. This is what happens right?
185 00:23:12.920 ⇒ 00:23:39.679 Uttam Kumaran: Sometimes you’ll get the person who’s on the business side. But the the delivery of the product is actually ass, or you’ll get someone like us who we’re really, really great. But we’re we’re we’re like hiccuping on like even just getting our services in front of people. And that’s why we’re we’re here today. Which is that’s the problem we’re having, not from a lack of trying, but actually, just from a lack of that’s just who we are that our DNA is engineering at this company, right? And so
186 00:23:39.740 ⇒ 00:23:43.060 Uttam Kumaran: the way we will get out of this is like engineering our way
187 00:23:43.090 ⇒ 00:23:59.419 Uttam Kumaran: out of this, and basically our orchestrating sales in a way that takes all the learnings from modern b 2 b sales and will implement it. So the one thing, the advantage we have is amazing talent. This is talent with, like again, like 5 to 10 years of experience.
188 00:23:59.990 ⇒ 00:24:10.439 Uttam Kumaran: modern data stack like those tools that I mentioned. The other thing is, these people are like a video on like personable, personable
189 00:24:11.018 ⇒ 00:24:16.101 Uttam Kumaran: like us, citizen. And the reason I’m saying all this
190 00:24:16.800 ⇒ 00:24:22.400 Uttam Kumaran: is that this is what recruiters care about and what hiring managers care about.
191 00:24:22.540 ⇒ 00:24:27.600 Uttam Kumaran: Are any of these actually meaningful, maybe, or maybe not
192 00:24:27.820 ⇒ 00:24:32.010 Uttam Kumaran: like, I know people who don’t have any of these who are like, amazing.
193 00:24:32.070 ⇒ 00:24:55.829 Uttam Kumaran: right? Like, I don’t have 10 years of experience. I think I’m okay at the job, right? So there’s so so there’s something that you guys know when you read a job requirement, you’re like, how can someone have all that? There’s nobody that exists, and that’s the thing that’s the dichotomy that happens is when you’re on the hiring side. You want the best person when you’re on. When you’re on the hiree side. You’re like, of course, I’m just gonna figure out the gap right? And so there is this gap.
194 00:24:56.170 ⇒ 00:25:00.000 Uttam Kumaran: Our messaging, though, has to be that we are this
195 00:25:00.210 ⇒ 00:25:01.879 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so.
196 00:25:02.100 ⇒ 00:25:22.399 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s that’s who we are. We are folks that have this. 5 to 10 years experience. We worked in the stack. We’re very personal. We’re like video on people. We go a little bit above and beyond that gets us in the door. But once we’re in the door we can then bring in people, you know, based off. They trust us to vet folks, and we bring on people.
197 00:25:22.550 ⇒ 00:25:28.019 Uttam Kumaran: So this is these are the talking points that we’re going to hammer when we go after
198 00:25:28.140 ⇒ 00:25:36.809 Uttam Kumaran: folks on the recruiting side or the hiring side is because there’s always going to be a separation. You always meet in the middle somewhere, right? A hiring manager always goes after like
199 00:25:36.810 ⇒ 00:26:01.279 Uttam Kumaran: a huge list of requirements, and then, based on what they get, they sort of are like, well, actually, it’s okay. If they don’t like technology, they can learn it. Okay, actually, let’s drop that requirement. Right? They start to whittle down and then the same thing on the higher East Side. You start to try to explain like, well, I could learn that, or that’s really similar to this thing right? And you meet in the middle right? So this is just the talking points that we’re gonna be going after. The nice thing is we are a Us based company.
200 00:26:01.550 ⇒ 00:26:12.889 Uttam Kumaran: In my experience, I’ve worked with a lot of really amazing Us based data folks, all of which I became friends with because they’re really great people. And so that works hand to hand into this requirement.
201 00:26:13.633 ⇒ 00:26:20.260 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing that we probably won’t say out loud until we get later
202 00:26:20.280 ⇒ 00:26:24.915 Uttam Kumaran: in the search is that we are like cheaper
203 00:26:25.710 ⇒ 00:26:28.680 Uttam Kumaran: than most senior
204 00:26:29.546 ⇒ 00:26:31.179 Uttam Kumaran: technical firms.
205 00:26:32.053 ⇒ 00:26:36.276 Uttam Kumaran: Doing like services like this to give you a sense of
206 00:26:37.660 ⇒ 00:26:46.559 Uttam Kumaran: of like what like, for example, if you go to a snowflake and you want to hire their engineers and they’ll they’ll say they’ll sell you what’s called professional services
207 00:26:47.240 ⇒ 00:26:48.330 Uttam Kumaran: meaning.
208 00:26:48.340 ⇒ 00:26:57.129 Uttam Kumaran: And again, I just love using like the shovel analogy like, let’s say you buy snowflake. You buy the snowflake shovel they’ll send. They’ll sell you that handyman, too.
209 00:26:57.270 ⇒ 00:27:08.879 Uttam Kumaran: so that you’re like, I want their shovel. But I want a guy who’s gonna come, dig a hole. We gotta go we have. We have holders that will just give it to you as well. That’s what we do right. These guys can go anywhere from like 300 to 500 an hour.
210 00:27:11.190 ⇒ 00:27:13.650 Uttam Kumaran: based on like what
211 00:27:13.770 ⇒ 00:27:18.100 Uttam Kumaran: they do. And to give you a sense of 300 to 500 an hour.
212 00:27:18.120 ⇒ 00:27:23.950 Uttam Kumaran: 70 an hour is about like 147 K. Annual.
213 00:27:24.780 ⇒ 00:27:29.519 Uttam Kumaran: So you guys are all math folks 300 HA lot of money.
214 00:27:29.970 ⇒ 00:27:44.849 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so that’s why I want to explain to you as the opportunity that we’re going after right. And the reason why, like I dropped everything to do. This is because I saw people that were charging things like this and doing like absolutely nothing.
215 00:27:45.261 ⇒ 00:27:48.800 Uttam Kumaran: And so I knew that. Okay, there’s an opportunity for us
216 00:27:48.860 ⇒ 00:28:01.079 Uttam Kumaran: at the moment we charge anywhere from like a 3rd to half of these prices. At the moment we’re going after folks that are, we’re we’re proposing folks.
217 00:28:01.080 ⇒ 00:28:20.500 Uttam Kumaran: And again, it depends. This is all like when we talk about the actual like stages. And when we get to proposal and we get to like, Hey, maybe we can get into this plan. We expand later. This can all change. But roughly, we’re trying to average anywhere from like 1 50 to 200 an hour for folks
218 00:28:20.660 ⇒ 00:28:27.310 Uttam Kumaran: right now. And this depends on the seniority. This depends on demand. This depends on the client.
219 00:28:27.620 ⇒ 00:28:33.530 Uttam Kumaran: Everything. But this is like what we go after in order to make the money work for Brainforge, meaning
220 00:28:33.730 ⇒ 00:28:37.330 Uttam Kumaran: brain force can be like a sustainable business.
221 00:28:38.480 ⇒ 00:28:47.739 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot that went into this number about where we are. Now, I’m happy to talk about the margin structure. Everything like I’m completely open.
222 00:28:47.800 ⇒ 00:29:00.490 Uttam Kumaran: But let’s keep going. Because we’re we’re about halfway through now, and I’m only on the 1st bullet I know. But this hopefully, this gives you like a really like
223 00:29:00.640 ⇒ 00:29:07.429 Uttam Kumaran: extensive background, like why, you would hire us. So we talked about the state of the market. It’s really hard to get great people right now.
224 00:29:08.270 ⇒ 00:29:11.290 Uttam Kumaran: The second thing is, we’re senior talent firm.
225 00:29:11.550 ⇒ 00:29:30.329 Uttam Kumaran: That would do data work. What that does is, it continues to put us in a very specific niche. Could we go do everything? Yes. Do I still have people come to me that ask us to do everything. Yes. Do I try to find a ways to get it done for them? Yes, but when I talk about what we market out to, we need to be specific.
226 00:29:30.330 ⇒ 00:29:49.850 Uttam Kumaran: We’re senior talent that do data right. And that puts us in a in a bracket, and that puts us in a technical bracket where we’re really articulate with what we do. And then we can get a meeting book. Once we get a meeting book. We talk to people. Then we can discuss everything they got going on and kind of think about what we can do. So that’s like a live brain forge
227 00:29:50.550 ⇒ 00:29:56.330 Uttam Kumaran: any questions there. This this I want to be really firm in everyone’s brain about
228 00:29:56.910 ⇒ 00:29:59.499 Uttam Kumaran: like, why, you would bring on
229 00:29:59.570 ⇒ 00:30:01.110 Uttam Kumaran: a firm like us.
230 00:30:02.420 ⇒ 00:30:05.139 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some more intangible things about like
231 00:30:05.250 ⇒ 00:30:13.829 Uttam Kumaran: the way we work. How organized we are. You know how empathetical we are like. Those are things that are very true.
232 00:30:13.860 ⇒ 00:30:25.789 Uttam Kumaran: I just haven’t been able to figure out how to like do the marketing on that, because everybody basically says that but like, I would say, these are the real things that I hammer when someone’s like. Why would I hire you over an accenture?
233 00:30:29.780 ⇒ 00:30:34.049 Uttam Kumaran: Any thoughts or questions, or anything you think we should add here
234 00:30:34.200 ⇒ 00:30:37.430 Uttam Kumaran: anything you think that like that’s not probably not true.
235 00:30:42.010 ⇒ 00:30:42.920 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
236 00:30:43.230 ⇒ 00:30:50.691 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So I talked about the Why brave Forge, let’s go to market. The other thing I want to begin to talk about is
237 00:30:51.490 ⇒ 00:30:52.580 Uttam Kumaran: sales.
238 00:30:53.370 ⇒ 00:30:55.162 Uttam Kumaran: So this is like,
239 00:30:55.930 ⇒ 00:31:01.994 Uttam Kumaran: how we get clients. Let’s even do that which is basic basics.
240 00:31:02.600 ⇒ 00:31:04.879 Uttam Kumaran: on your right here.
241 00:31:06.700 ⇒ 00:31:16.299 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll see that there are a ton of different ways we get stuff we have based on. If we get a recruiter. If we get a job posting, if we get an account, we have emails.
242 00:31:16.310 ⇒ 00:31:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: you can see here, we have like industries that we’re targeting. We have, like SEO, Twitter content. All that stuff right? So that’s what we’ll be really boiling down over this next week. But I basically wanted to talk about how we get how we get clients, which is sales. So
243 00:31:38.290 ⇒ 00:31:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: to date
244 00:31:39.990 ⇒ 00:31:42.469 Uttam Kumaran: all of our clients.
245 00:31:42.940 ⇒ 00:31:46.746 Uttam Kumaran: Actually, not. That’s not true. Today, most of our clients have been word of mouth
246 00:31:47.810 ⇒ 00:31:55.820 Uttam Kumaran: right? And this is basically someone knows me and is like, Hey.
247 00:31:55.840 ⇒ 00:32:01.390 Uttam Kumaran: can you do this for me or someone else.
248 00:32:01.850 ⇒ 00:32:04.900 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I get a text. I get an email. I get a call that’s like.
249 00:32:05.170 ⇒ 00:32:07.850 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, I trust you. I saw you’re doing this thing
250 00:32:08.020 ⇒ 00:32:11.090 Uttam Kumaran: you guys do this, let me know. I’ll set up an intro.
251 00:32:11.390 ⇒ 00:32:13.640 Uttam Kumaran: That’s why we have most of our clients.
252 00:32:13.730 ⇒ 00:32:20.649 Uttam Kumaran: That’s how I got started in this business because I I was just like I called everybody I knew. And I was like, I’m into this. And they’re like cool. I have someone you should talk to them.
253 00:32:21.260 ⇒ 00:32:23.940 Uttam Kumaran: The properties of this that are good is that
254 00:32:24.460 ⇒ 00:32:32.500 Uttam Kumaran: this took like $0 to do like I didn’t pay a cent for the these clients.
255 00:32:32.878 ⇒ 00:32:37.020 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ll talk about clients in terms of customer acquisition costs. But basically
256 00:32:37.240 ⇒ 00:32:45.890 Uttam Kumaran: that took like, apart from my time, it didn’t take any money basically to get those clients. So this took $0. The problem is this is
257 00:32:46.280 ⇒ 00:32:47.870 Uttam Kumaran: unreliable
258 00:32:48.040 ⇒ 00:32:51.800 Uttam Kumaran: and unrepeatable is unrepeatable.
259 00:32:52.090 ⇒ 00:32:54.650 Uttam Kumaran: The word maybe it’s not repeatable.
260 00:32:55.270 ⇒ 00:32:58.710 Uttam Kumaran: This is unreliable and not repeatable May, meaning
261 00:32:58.990 ⇒ 00:33:25.109 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know when my next text message is, gonna Get here. Do I know? I probably get one a month? Sure, but one a month we’ll talk about conversion rates and things. This is not gonna cut it, and it’s not repeatable meaning. It’s not repeatable business like I can’t guarantee that we’re gonna get that coming in. There may be months where nothing comes in right? So the other, the other stuff is organic. I don’t want to talk about organic first, st because I’m going to spend most of the time talking about
262 00:33:25.450 ⇒ 00:33:28.679 Uttam Kumaran: inorganic or like
263 00:33:29.556 ⇒ 00:33:31.259 Uttam Kumaran: what I would call
264 00:33:34.950 ⇒ 00:33:35.655 Uttam Kumaran: like.
265 00:33:36.950 ⇒ 00:33:45.020 Uttam Kumaran: things where we put in real effort, you know, and I want to avoid using like a lot of sales jargon, because
266 00:33:45.554 ⇒ 00:33:51.915 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just jargon. It’s kind of just means something that’s a lot simpler. So organic is things like, SEO
267 00:33:52.520 ⇒ 00:33:55.890 Uttam Kumaran: Aka Googling snowflake.
268 00:33:56.170 ⇒ 00:33:59.479 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll even just I’m just gonna share my screen.
269 00:34:02.030 ⇒ 00:34:04.239 Uttam Kumaran: So I want you guys to see this
270 00:34:06.028 ⇒ 00:34:07.880 Uttam Kumaran: like, if we go to Google
271 00:34:08.750 ⇒ 00:34:10.046 Uttam Kumaran: and I type in
272 00:34:18.010 ⇒ 00:34:25.830 Uttam Kumaran: this is SEO, right? Search engine optimization. These are the things that come up right. You have snowflake service partners. If you click on them
273 00:34:26.199 ⇒ 00:34:37.449 Uttam Kumaran: they’ll give you like some examples of people that they work with right? And the tough part about our business is all these people are basically in bed with snowflake because they sell a lot of snowflake business
274 00:34:37.590 ⇒ 00:34:41.849 Uttam Kumaran: like these guys are probably the closest ones to us.
275 00:34:41.900 ⇒ 00:34:43.600 Uttam Kumaran: But these guys probably do like.
276 00:34:43.900 ⇒ 00:35:04.239 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know anywhere from like 10 to 50 million a year, or something like that. But again, like we are snowflake partner, but like we’re like small beans, so they don’t really care about us. These are the other ones that have really good SEO. So like analytics, 8 dos. 42 dot 42 is like what a company that we use when I was at. We work.
277 00:35:04.250 ⇒ 00:35:12.570 Uttam Kumaran: All they do is like data stuff that you could tell like they’re super SEO optimized. They’ve been in business for a long time, so all their stuff is ranking.
278 00:35:12.580 ⇒ 00:35:16.010 Uttam Kumaran: and you can see that like as you go down the list.
279 00:35:18.210 ⇒ 00:35:26.099 Uttam Kumaran: There’s more and more folks here, you can see I’ve already looked at a bunch of these because I have a basically a list of like the top, like 200 or 300
280 00:35:26.110 ⇒ 00:35:40.680 Uttam Kumaran: of our like competitors in this space. But you can see that we’re not even on here, right? And so that’s gonna be one of our goals on the SEO is to look at like, how do we rank in this? If I type in Brain forge?
281 00:35:41.380 ⇒ 00:35:44.980 Uttam Kumaran: You see, we we do pop up so our company pops up.
282 00:35:45.320 ⇒ 00:35:47.090 Uttam Kumaran: This is
283 00:35:47.340 ⇒ 00:35:49.139 Uttam Kumaran: decent copy.
284 00:35:49.700 ⇒ 00:35:52.330 Uttam Kumaran: This is not that great copy
285 00:35:52.380 ⇒ 00:35:57.789 Uttam Kumaran: could see there’s some other virtual forge or Linkedin pops up, and that’s it.
286 00:35:58.110 ⇒ 00:36:07.729 Uttam Kumaran: right like there’s no articles about us like all of our stuff, should be populating all this. So we have a lot of room to grow on the SEO side.
287 00:36:08.540 ⇒ 00:36:12.162 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the main thing. So that’s SEO
288 00:36:14.020 ⇒ 00:36:23.310 Uttam Kumaran: So we have organic. We have inorganic things where we, this SEO this is gonna be like our Linkedin page.
289 00:36:24.780 ⇒ 00:36:28.200 Uttam Kumaran: So if I go to if I go to Linkedin
290 00:36:30.230 ⇒ 00:36:32.679 Uttam Kumaran: and I just type in
291 00:36:33.880 ⇒ 00:36:35.520 Uttam Kumaran: snowflake
292 00:36:35.690 ⇒ 00:36:37.840 Uttam Kumaran: data consultancy.
293 00:36:38.620 ⇒ 00:36:40.819 Uttam Kumaran: And I go to see our results
294 00:36:43.130 ⇒ 00:36:44.300 Uttam Kumaran: you get.
295 00:36:45.970 ⇒ 00:36:54.901 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not on air. I’m just trying to prove like the same point. But we do have our brain forge page.
296 00:36:55.510 ⇒ 00:37:03.666 Uttam Kumaran: It is getting views. Is there anything on here? No. Are we working on? It? Has everything. Yes,
297 00:37:04.210 ⇒ 00:37:06.970 Uttam Kumaran: But you can see people are looking at stuff.
298 00:37:07.170 ⇒ 00:37:11.420 Uttam Kumaran: We do have some followers. There’s a ton that we could totally do here.
299 00:37:11.990 ⇒ 00:37:14.589 Uttam Kumaran: We also have a twitter.
300 00:37:15.720 ⇒ 00:37:17.679 Uttam Kumaran: There’s nothing on there.
301 00:37:18.090 ⇒ 00:37:20.759 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t even know whether it’ll pop up.
302 00:37:24.120 ⇒ 00:37:30.599 Uttam Kumaran: yeah. See, it’s not even gonna pop up. We have a twitter. We have an Instagram. We have a tick tock. We have every platform. We have
303 00:37:30.790 ⇒ 00:37:46.090 Uttam Kumaran: something on we were starting an email thing. So there’s all these like content flywheels that we’re gonna be investing time into, probably less relevant. For like the the initial work that we’re the 4 of us going to be doing. But
304 00:37:46.110 ⇒ 00:37:52.280 Uttam Kumaran: there’s content. So this is gonna be a live Twitter email, etc.
305 00:37:52.920 ⇒ 00:38:03.770 Uttam Kumaran: So this is stuff that like gets just thrown out into the ether. Right? You throw it out to ether. Someone shares it. Someone sees in their in. Someone sees in their box someone’s Googling. They see us. Someone’s on Linkedin. They see us.
306 00:38:04.150 ⇒ 00:38:07.280 Uttam Kumaran: This is just spray and pray type stuff right?
307 00:38:08.590 ⇒ 00:38:20.868 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a reason for this, but it’s not we. It’s not as targeted right inorganic to be called targeted advertising and things like that. Things where we put in real effort. I’ll say, these are things like,
308 00:38:21.870 ⇒ 00:38:25.864 Uttam Kumaran: email campaigns. These are things like,
309 00:38:27.300 ⇒ 00:38:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: these are things like going to in person events. These are things like Linkedin
310 00:38:35.090 ⇒ 00:38:36.330 Uttam Kumaran: connection
311 00:38:36.920 ⇒ 00:38:38.200 Uttam Kumaran: campaigns.
312 00:38:39.600 ⇒ 00:38:41.825 Uttam Kumaran: Right? These are things like
313 00:38:42.320 ⇒ 00:38:46.100 Uttam Kumaran: cold emailing. These are things like
314 00:38:46.930 ⇒ 00:38:48.280 Uttam Kumaran: partnerships.
315 00:38:50.520 ⇒ 00:39:09.810 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So each of these we are doing at some level right now, and some are working, some are not. But these are a lot of the things that over here. When I talk about like given this, given this. Given this, how do these people flow into a set of actions that we take on their behalf?
316 00:39:11.160 ⇒ 00:39:14.520 Uttam Kumaran: these, typically, the actions that we have
317 00:39:14.620 ⇒ 00:39:16.099 Uttam Kumaran: like. So I’m just
318 00:39:16.810 ⇒ 00:39:25.450 Uttam Kumaran: hopefully, nobody gets nauseous. Okay, so these are the typical things that we could do. So like actions that we can take are like
319 00:39:25.510 ⇒ 00:39:26.950 Uttam Kumaran: emailing
320 00:39:27.400 ⇒ 00:39:28.879 Uttam Kumaran: phone calls.
321 00:39:30.760 ⇒ 00:39:32.170 Uttam Kumaran: Linkedin
322 00:39:32.280 ⇒ 00:39:36.839 Uttam Kumaran: messages in person meetings.
323 00:39:37.120 ⇒ 00:39:42.550 Uttam Kumaran: These are like the things that we could do to try to get in front of people.
324 00:39:42.990 ⇒ 00:39:52.819 Uttam Kumaran: so these are like the the actions that we take when we reach out to folks that we need to get all these people need to get put into one of these different actions that we take
325 00:39:52.910 ⇒ 00:40:00.279 Uttam Kumaran: right. The other thing about these actions is, there are sequences right? And so these are. This is a word that you’ll see
326 00:40:01.780 ⇒ 00:40:08.651 Uttam Kumaran: used in a bunch of different places in the tools that we use, but sequences which is like the order of operations, basically
327 00:40:09.020 ⇒ 00:40:11.802 Uttam Kumaran: order of operations.
328 00:40:12.760 ⇒ 00:40:16.410 Uttam Kumaran: So this can be like email. Then Linkedin.
329 00:40:16.470 ⇒ 00:40:19.150 Uttam Kumaran: then follow up right?
330 00:40:19.280 ⇒ 00:40:25.819 Uttam Kumaran: For an example. We have some email campaigns running right now to give you a sense of the sequence.
331 00:40:26.090 ⇒ 00:40:28.450 Uttam Kumaran: We’re sending an email.
332 00:40:28.740 ⇒ 00:40:38.450 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, this is the copy. We’ll do a whole thing about copy and things like that. Here’s the 1st step in 2 days it sends the next step in 2 days it sends the next step.
333 00:40:38.780 ⇒ 00:40:41.369 Uttam Kumaran: This is a very simple email sequence.
334 00:40:41.860 ⇒ 00:40:50.930 Uttam Kumaran: What we want to think about when we do sales. Sequencing is we want to think about multi step and multi medium.
335 00:40:52.310 ⇒ 00:40:54.560 Uttam Kumaran: I would say, multimedia or platform.
336 00:40:55.600 ⇒ 00:40:59.672 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, we want to try to do like email plus
337 00:41:02.250 ⇒ 00:41:03.556 Uttam Kumaran: plus linkedin
338 00:41:05.380 ⇒ 00:41:07.010 Uttam Kumaran: plus a phone call. Maybe
339 00:41:07.020 ⇒ 00:41:16.240 Uttam Kumaran: right? So we wanna try to hit them wherever they are basically and hit them with the right messaging and ideally drive. Everything drives
340 00:41:18.020 ⇒ 00:41:45.159 Uttam Kumaran: towards a meeting, and that’s going to be our number one barometer, initially is, I don’t really even care at the moment. If people get to a second meeting. If people close the 1st thing, the 1st Kpi that we’ll be driving towards is like meetings booked. The reason why, although I said I, I do care about making money. I do care about all those things. You can only care about a couple of things at a time. And so
341 00:41:45.320 ⇒ 00:42:06.369 Uttam Kumaran: as someone that works in data, we know this, that if you set 10 different goals, your bill and you, you. Probably you guys probably know this in terms of setting personal goals that you know. You set 10 different goals. You’re only going to be able. You’re not. You’re definitely at the more goals you set the less you achieve any of them. And so our job here, when we do this is gonna say, we have one
342 00:42:06.370 ⇒ 00:42:25.510 Uttam Kumaran: common goal which is going to be meetings booked, and we’ll have several different results underneath that, for example, meetings booked, we need to make sure. Okay, our SEO score is X, we’re sending this amount of emails per day, those all kind of ladder up. It’s a 1 common sales goal that we all can measure and say, Are we good or bad today?
343 00:42:25.610 ⇒ 00:42:28.970 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so everything here will be driving towards a meeting?
344 00:42:29.840 ⇒ 00:42:34.329 Uttam Kumaran: And this is basically how sales works right now for b 2 b sales
345 00:42:34.540 ⇒ 00:42:42.319 Uttam Kumaran: as someone who runs a business I get hit with like a million of these people call my phone all day.
346 00:42:42.610 ⇒ 00:42:48.440 Uttam Kumaran: Try to sell me. Bs people. Text, me, Bs, I get email, Bs, it’s tough.
347 00:42:48.630 ⇒ 00:43:09.189 Uttam Kumaran: right? And I feel for them because they’re just working as a salesperson. What I don’t feel for them is, if you have bad content if you annoy people, and if you’re not really clear about like what you’re offering. Right? I have people that just send me like spam garbage, clickbait. Nonsense. They call my personal phone. They’re like.
348 00:43:09.190 ⇒ 00:43:26.559 Uttam Kumaran: you know, they? It’s not even nothing’s personal at all. And so that’s why I want to do things. I want to try to do things a little differently. I want to be very clear with what we do, what we don’t do. I want to be very clear with the Roi that people can expect if they work with us, and I want to give things away
349 00:43:26.630 ⇒ 00:43:49.709 Uttam Kumaran: like case studies like videos. I want to show people like we are who we are. There’s a lot of scammers in this industry. There’s a lot of people that are just spamming. I mean, you guys get a ton of spam. I’m sure via email, my inbox is like mostly that, you know, these days. So we do have an opportunity to stand out. But again, there’s a lot of competition. So
350 00:43:50.190 ⇒ 00:44:06.630 Uttam Kumaran: our emails will have to will be crisp. The way we do messaging will be really crisp, and we’re kind of on their way. But this, these are like the main ways that you do. B, 2 B. The one thing that we also have an ability to take advantage of, that I that I really want to hammer, is going to in person things.
351 00:44:07.111 ⇒ 00:44:25.029 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of like one of the things that’s happening right now, like, I think in general, is, most of life is becoming online, which is good because it makes information transfer really easy, like, we all can work together, which is great. The problem is, there’s now a discount on doing things in person.
352 00:44:25.130 ⇒ 00:44:30.479 Uttam Kumaran: meaning if 2 people email you and one person’s like, Hey, I’ll meet you for coffee.
353 00:44:31.130 ⇒ 00:44:33.069 Uttam Kumaran: That person’s going to get the deal
354 00:44:33.130 ⇒ 00:44:57.100 Uttam Kumaran: right. And so one of the things that we’re also biasing towards is trying to get me or our folks in front of people to show that like, Oh, we’re real people like we actually are can do the job. And so one of the things that we’re doing in our campaigns is biasing towards stuff in Texas or the South, because me or Patrick, or someone can actually go in person to see folks. And so that’s something I do think that we have an edge on
355 00:44:57.340 ⇒ 00:45:10.769 Uttam Kumaran: is that if we can meet people in person, there’s really an opportunity for us to have a higher rate of closing. You know, I meet people in person every week here in Austin, whether partners or like sales opportunities.
356 00:45:10.770 ⇒ 00:45:27.710 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve tried to go to New York to meet people every few months like I’ll go to San Francisco to meet with, so I can fly wherever we need to to make these things happen. And so, if it’s between us and a competitor or us and us losing, and we can say, Hey, we’ll come, meet you at your office, buy you lunch.
357 00:45:27.830 ⇒ 00:45:39.290 Uttam Kumaran: That’s something that I want to present, because nobody’s doing that. You have someone that’s sitting in Palo Alto behind a laptop at some corporate office that’s like spamming people. And then
358 00:45:39.300 ⇒ 00:45:41.870 Uttam Kumaran: like that. There’s no personality right?
359 00:45:41.990 ⇒ 00:45:44.899 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing I’m telling you guys, is that
360 00:45:45.420 ⇒ 00:45:48.280 Uttam Kumaran: and this will be kind of like
361 00:45:48.360 ⇒ 00:45:55.280 Uttam Kumaran: in our whole like Kpi setting thing when we think about goals is we’re not talking about a hundred clients here.
362 00:45:55.930 ⇒ 00:46:03.210 Uttam Kumaran: I’m talking about 5 more clients like, I’m talking about 5 people that pay us? What I said, which is this
363 00:46:03.440 ⇒ 00:46:07.369 Uttam Kumaran: that really puts us into our like 1st phase of like in the money?
364 00:46:07.940 ⇒ 00:46:09.030 Uttam Kumaran: 5 people.
365 00:46:09.650 ⇒ 00:46:15.730 Uttam Kumaran: right? So it’s actually like, not I talked about all these things all these like why.
366 00:46:15.860 ⇒ 00:46:36.529 Uttam Kumaran: but it all comes down to like 5 yeses and 5 sign. So we’ll back up from there to basically set all the other goals. The nice thing is, we’re not a big company. We don’t need a hundred of these guys. I, we actually can’t even handle that right. Even 5. We’ll have to figure out how we handle more than 3. But what I’m saying is that the job is actually very manageable.
367 00:46:36.530 ⇒ 00:46:52.420 Uttam Kumaran: Right? You just got a kind of like an insight into my brain which is like this is this, how I kind of freak out every day, which is like, I think, about all these things I’m like, Oh, my God! There’s so much to do! There’s so many places to go. But it all comes down to 5 clients that we need to book and close
368 00:46:52.840 ⇒ 00:47:04.560 Uttam Kumaran: right, which makes things actually much more reasonable, which means everything we can actually spend more time on nurture. More have the in person meetings, because as long as one of those closes we’re 20% of the way there.
369 00:47:06.110 ⇒ 00:47:11.289 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s kind of like what I want to share, which is like how these companies typically do
370 00:47:11.410 ⇒ 00:47:34.390 Uttam Kumaran: go to market. And b 2 b sales. What we’re doing here is we’re doing this without someone dedicated to this. Typically, the roles are like Bdr, which is business development. Rep. Sdr. Which is sales development rep ae, which is like an account executive. These are all like sales titles that basically mean either you’re selling or you’re increasing revenue for existing clients.
371 00:47:35.170 ⇒ 00:47:37.529 Uttam Kumaran: And so basically, what we’re doing is.
372 00:47:38.100 ⇒ 00:47:41.869 Uttam Kumaran: look together, we’re basically doing the role of like one of those.
373 00:47:42.399 ⇒ 00:47:50.789 Uttam Kumaran: So none of this was technical in nature. None of this was like, actually about how we’re doing this. This is really just like the brain dump of
374 00:47:52.440 ⇒ 00:47:56.799 Uttam Kumaran: what we’re doing. And I think, pat. I don’t know if you did. You just did. You miss the last like few minutes.
375 00:47:57.130 ⇒ 00:47:57.800 Patrick Trainer: Yes.
376 00:47:57.800 ⇒ 00:48:14.079 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. The only thing I said is like, one. We have a big bias for in person, because not a lot of people are going to be doing that. So if we can be in person, I think there’s a huge opportunity. The second thing is, we only need about 5 clients for this initial phase to be like super in the money
377 00:48:14.270 ⇒ 00:48:14.990 Uttam Kumaran: right.
378 00:48:15.260 ⇒ 00:48:16.819 Patrick Trainer: I’m all about in person.
379 00:48:17.140 ⇒ 00:48:19.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And that’s the point I just hammered, which is like.
380 00:48:19.710 ⇒ 00:48:26.629 Uttam Kumaran: we’re doing all this. But we don’t need like a hundred people to close. We just need like 5 for this to be like a sustainable business.
381 00:48:26.800 ⇒ 00:48:29.019 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll think about like the next phase.
382 00:48:29.490 ⇒ 00:48:31.300 Uttam Kumaran: So this kind of like wraps up
383 00:48:31.450 ⇒ 00:48:37.290 Uttam Kumaran: like basically modern like, Go to market and b 2 b sales.
384 00:48:39.220 ⇒ 00:48:42.069 Uttam Kumaran: I know we only have 10 min left.
385 00:48:42.420 ⇒ 00:48:56.910 Uttam Kumaran: I do want to spend some time, and just like, Ask you guys questions on like, what was clear, what what you guys felt was notable. What you guys think there’s opportunities on from what you guys heard heard here, and then we can spend some time planning for like a next meeting.
386 00:49:10.334 ⇒ 00:49:23.410 Patrick Trainer: So one thing I I mean, just kind of like going forward in it is like we’re we’re talking about like defining the sales process we’ve got like the motion, the flow kind of like how we’re
387 00:49:23.460 ⇒ 00:49:27.710 Patrick Trainer: viewing our like SEO, and that sort of like top of the funnel stuff
388 00:49:28.482 ⇒ 00:49:34.026 Patrick Trainer: going further down the funnel. Like, when we’re also talking about
389 00:49:35.250 ⇒ 00:49:38.610 Patrick Trainer: kind of like us and who we are like we’re those like
390 00:49:38.920 ⇒ 00:49:44.960 Patrick Trainer: senior engineers that are doing the sales process that are also like implementing these solutions.
391 00:49:45.350 ⇒ 00:49:51.890 Patrick Trainer: Also like, remember that on the other side of that coin that there’s certain types of
392 00:49:52.275 ⇒ 00:49:55.470 Patrick Trainer: like buyers that we’re going to be speaking to.
393 00:49:55.570 ⇒ 00:49:58.030 Patrick Trainer: And so like when we
394 00:49:58.100 ⇒ 00:50:07.129 Patrick Trainer: define like, it’s it’s super important to kind of like define that persona role of like, who’s going to be buying this product?
395 00:50:07.960 ⇒ 00:50:09.180 Patrick Trainer: And so
396 00:50:09.210 ⇒ 00:50:12.100 Patrick Trainer: it’s very much like like I’ve hired
397 00:50:12.160 ⇒ 00:50:18.410 Patrick Trainer: outside teams to come in and help out, but it’s like Udom I think you mentioned before. Like, if you’re
398 00:50:19.220 ⇒ 00:50:36.210 Patrick Trainer: in your company, it’s like reaching out to just a Joe blow engineer. It’s they may definitely like they want that product. But they’re not necessarily in the position or empowered to kind of make the decision to like, pull that trigger.
399 00:50:36.230 ⇒ 00:50:55.810 Patrick Trainer: And so like bisecting our like, either our sales pitch or just kind of like our targeting needs to then happen at like a couple of different levels, and in a couple of different, like, specific or target targeted to specific like individuals.
400 00:50:55.970 ⇒ 00:50:56.840 Patrick Trainer: And
401 00:50:57.090 ⇒ 00:51:02.350 Patrick Trainer: for kind of like, how at least, I’m thinking about like
402 00:51:02.550 ⇒ 00:51:08.879 Patrick Trainer: pitching our product in like that message? Who who are those people that would be receptive to that?
403 00:51:09.170 ⇒ 00:51:15.570 Patrick Trainer: But then, who are also those people that are in a position of
404 00:51:15.900 ⇒ 00:51:19.149 Patrick Trainer: power or influence to be able to spend those dollars.
405 00:51:19.210 ⇒ 00:51:23.990 Patrick Trainer: And the way that I think about those are like kind of like the like, the the
406 00:51:24.080 ⇒ 00:51:27.160 Patrick Trainer: tech savvy? CTO, that
407 00:51:27.430 ⇒ 00:51:35.230 Patrick Trainer: is like. So the the chief technology officer that are already in the software and tech industry.
408 00:51:35.840 ⇒ 00:51:49.159 Patrick Trainer: That through like your discovery calls. They’re looking to like improve their efficiency. And by like even looking at the these companies that are like us, that where we’re getting these senior engineers doing that.
409 00:51:49.280 ⇒ 00:51:53.110 Patrick Trainer: but then also that are looking at for
410 00:51:54.910 ⇒ 00:51:57.889 Patrick Trainer: Like making those sorts of data driven.
411 00:51:58.080 ⇒ 00:51:58.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
412 00:51:58.440 ⇒ 00:52:01.210 Patrick Trainer: But then are also like
413 00:52:01.630 ⇒ 00:52:24.040 Patrick Trainer: they look for like social proof, and they seek like pewter recommendations. And so like you got it. And then further thinking into that like persona of the person is like, what kind of information is that persona consuming? And so when I think about like like the C Ctos, for example.
414 00:52:24.330 ⇒ 00:52:25.520 Patrick Trainer: like they’re
415 00:52:25.750 ⇒ 00:52:42.260 Patrick Trainer: generally like C-suites are like, they’re quick. They’re on the feet. They’re agile. They’re looking like they don’t have a lot of time, right? And so they’re looking at either like short case studies that are on websites or even like technical white papers.
416 00:52:42.330 ⇒ 00:52:49.198 Patrick Trainer: And so like they’re trying to kind of like correlate their knowledge of like what they already know to
417 00:52:49.780 ⇒ 00:52:55.960 Patrick Trainer: to fit that problem. And so they’re they’re like backing into it to find an answer.
418 00:52:56.623 ⇒ 00:53:04.249 Patrick Trainer: I also look at like like chief marketing officers, as like very similar to that, because they’re in that very like
419 00:53:04.890 ⇒ 00:53:10.659 Patrick Trainer: we’re looking to optimize a process. And like we
420 00:53:10.740 ⇒ 00:53:15.010 Patrick Trainer: have, like generally, like marketing teams are. I mean, they’re
421 00:53:15.160 ⇒ 00:53:17.939 Patrick Trainer: I kind of by definition, less technical than
422 00:53:18.010 ⇒ 00:53:20.149 Patrick Trainer: engineering or technical teams.
423 00:53:20.220 ⇒ 00:53:25.980 Patrick Trainer: but their goals are very similar in what they want. But then they’re also
424 00:53:26.080 ⇒ 00:53:29.540 Patrick Trainer: almost identical to that product that
425 00:53:29.610 ⇒ 00:53:31.410 Patrick Trainer: we’re all free.
426 00:53:31.530 ⇒ 00:53:32.960 Patrick Trainer: And so
427 00:53:33.500 ⇒ 00:53:36.119 Patrick Trainer: like, if we think about like their
428 00:53:36.390 ⇒ 00:53:38.629 Patrick Trainer: preferred style of content.
429 00:53:38.730 ⇒ 00:53:41.260 Patrick Trainer: a lot of those are going to be like those
430 00:53:41.360 ⇒ 00:53:51.360 Patrick Trainer: garner Quadrant like industry reports, where it’s kind of like. How does this stack up against Xyz marketing tool?
431 00:53:51.845 ⇒ 00:53:58.080 Patrick Trainer: As well as like webinars stuff that they can like content that they can consume?
432 00:53:58.710 ⇒ 00:54:14.330 Patrick Trainer: As well as like like just various marketing trends and and those sorts of things and so then you also go into like thinking about like, how do these types of personas make decisions?
433 00:54:14.340 ⇒ 00:54:20.900 Patrick Trainer: Some can be very like kind of like spontaneous and gut focused. But then there’s also, like
434 00:54:21.599 ⇒ 00:54:25.989 Patrick Trainer: like marketers especially. It’s kind of like. Show me the proof
435 00:54:26.080 ⇒ 00:54:33.659 Patrick Trainer: like that they want to. It’s it’s all about that like. Oh, you’ve done business with them. You’ve increased their
436 00:54:33.760 ⇒ 00:54:34.850 Patrick Trainer: still like
437 00:54:34.880 ⇒ 00:54:38.539 Patrick Trainer: click through rate by XYZ.
438 00:54:39.010 ⇒ 00:54:48.430 Patrick Trainer: You’ve operated. They’re like top like helping them with their top of funnel metrics and showing how you’ve impacted that before.
439 00:54:48.823 ⇒ 00:54:56.109 Patrick Trainer: Is I I it’s kind. That’s how it sells itself. And that’s how you like market to to marketers.
440 00:54:58.140 ⇒ 00:55:02.859 Patrick Trainer: and then there like it also, like, goes on further and further down to like.
441 00:55:03.740 ⇒ 00:55:14.160 Patrick Trainer: are you mark like, can like? Are these different personas like operations? Managers? Are these personas like in in their like legal counsel.
442 00:55:14.220 ⇒ 00:55:17.319 Patrick Trainer: there’s like there’s all sorts of different
443 00:55:17.980 ⇒ 00:55:26.549 Patrick Trainer: like people that we can sell to. But it’s it’s all every each one is going to have their own kind of like.
444 00:55:27.030 ⇒ 00:55:27.710 Uttam Kumaran: What they care about.
445 00:55:27.710 ⇒ 00:55:31.779 Patrick Trainer: Or the way to sell to them. So it’s like the pitch is going to be
446 00:55:31.830 ⇒ 00:55:59.029 Patrick Trainer: different and needs to be tailored to like each person that you’re talking to and like, just just like an example or more concrete example is like when you’re talking to or when you’re in an interview. You have these different stages of an interview like you’ve got the recruiter interview the hiring market or hiring manager interview. You’ve got your panel where you’ve got teams, the way that you’d speak to each one is going to be different. And that’s the same way
447 00:55:59.030 ⇒ 00:56:11.579 Patrick Trainer: that, like these sales, pitches or these sales motions work. It’s it’s basically like you’re, it’s it’s like an interview where you’re selling yourself except for you’re selling yourself and
448 00:56:11.620 ⇒ 00:56:13.630 Patrick Trainer: a team that goes with it.
449 00:56:13.810 ⇒ 00:56:14.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
450 00:56:14.980 ⇒ 00:56:33.990 Uttam Kumaran: no, you’re totally right to give you an example. You know we’ve been going after manufacturing clients and one of the things that I’ll show you guys is if you go into notion and you go to a target industries, you’ll actually see something here on manufacturing
451 00:56:34.425 ⇒ 00:56:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: this is actually live. And you can see that we actually looked at the buyers
452 00:56:39.730 ⇒ 00:56:42.570 Uttam Kumaran: what they care about what their titles are.
453 00:56:42.800 ⇒ 00:56:48.779 Uttam Kumaran: And these are the folks that we’re going after. And so we actually establish, like what the Icp is, which is like
454 00:56:48.810 ⇒ 00:56:50.470 Uttam Kumaran: the customer, profile.
455 00:56:50.854 ⇒ 00:57:13.320 Uttam Kumaran: ideal customer profile. So these are the titles that we’ll use in Apollo, and things like that to filter about who we go after. And then we also have things about like, what are the type of companies that we want to go after. So everything is like filters. But again, the goal is like the most as hyper personalized as we can get, and that’s what where we’ll use a lot of AI stuff for this, where we’ll do things like scrape their Linkedin.
456 00:57:13.380 ⇒ 00:57:21.329 Uttam Kumaran: create a personalized message and then do that at scale, but the more personalized you can make it the better. And then the other thing that Patrick mentioned is like.
457 00:57:21.668 ⇒ 00:57:24.949 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes the person you’re talking to isn’t the person that
458 00:57:25.030 ⇒ 00:57:26.869 Uttam Kumaran: cuts the dealer writes a check.
459 00:57:26.890 ⇒ 00:57:44.300 Uttam Kumaran: So one of the things that we need to establish, and this will be this will go into like when we talk about what we do in that 1st meeting, which again is going to be like a secondary conversation as we start to get reliable meetings. Book is going to be in that 1st meeting. We want to try to close deals in 2 meetings or less
460 00:57:44.410 ⇒ 00:58:10.580 Uttam Kumaran: right, and I know that I said one to 3 months currently. But our goal is always going to be to lower that. So in 1st meeting, we need to know. Hey, are you the person that signs this or not? If not, can you refer me to that person? And then you have to handle objections? So what are the common objections that people may say, Oh, we don’t need this right now, or we already have somebody or like, I just don’t get exactly what you guys do have kind of stuff to tackle all that. But
461 00:58:10.630 ⇒ 00:58:17.090 Uttam Kumaran: Pat is totally right. It’s like we need to decide who the buyer is, and that’s how we’re going to establish each of these campaigns.
462 00:58:17.850 ⇒ 00:58:32.149 Patrick Trainer: Something to to look forward to the in like in those conversations of like discovering who the buyer is, is also discovering who, like the champions are of the like of us, and so.
463 00:58:32.667 ⇒ 00:58:41.639 Patrick Trainer: like or or like, who who else can help leverage that decision to to influence whoever like will cut the check.
464 00:58:41.830 ⇒ 00:58:47.369 Patrick Trainer: And like as an example of that, like I’ve been in like
465 00:58:47.710 ⇒ 00:58:52.650 Patrick Trainer: calls with like, let’s say, like one of my past companies we were.
466 00:58:52.910 ⇒ 00:59:01.420 Patrick Trainer: We had like a huge snowflake instance. And then we had a bunch of data scientists that were wanting to move over and buy data bricks.
467 00:59:01.560 ⇒ 00:59:13.589 Patrick Trainer: And so they brought me into that call into those conversations. And like, we were going through these different like scenarios of like cost structures, and this and that.
468 00:59:13.800 ⇒ 00:59:18.589 Patrick Trainer: and like I was very like, did not want the product
469 00:59:19.086 ⇒ 00:59:28.100 Patrick Trainer: in like was pretty vocal about that in how we were doing that, and that obviously like kind of like pissed the sales the the
470 00:59:28.110 ⇒ 00:59:29.820 Patrick Trainer: data, break sales teams off.
471 00:59:29.850 ⇒ 00:59:36.379 Patrick Trainer: And so after, like, we were going through this, and as they were going like closer to those meetings.
472 00:59:37.440 ⇒ 00:59:46.820 Patrick Trainer: They the the their sales teams were wanting to like, leave me out of those meetings. Yeah, it was like the opposite of that. I was the detractor from it.
473 00:59:47.340 ⇒ 00:59:53.500 Patrick Trainer: as, conversely, they were like very high on the on the people that are like, Oh, no, we gotta buy this like.
474 00:59:53.500 ⇒ 00:59:53.840 Uttam Kumaran: Click, on.
475 00:59:53.840 ⇒ 00:59:55.370 Patrick Trainer: For it. And it’s like you.
476 00:59:55.970 ⇒ 01:00:00.780 Patrick Trainer: There’s these also, like sub personas within these like
477 01:00:00.790 ⇒ 01:00:05.759 Patrick Trainer: sales, situations that, like you have to remember to constantly be aware of.
478 01:00:06.050 ⇒ 01:00:06.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
479 01:00:08.090 ⇒ 01:00:14.939 Uttam Kumaran: So I think today was great. I don’t know Thor or Abigail any thoughts on everything here before we kind of talk about next.
480 01:00:18.640 ⇒ 01:00:20.870 Atharv Gudi: And let Abby
481 01:00:21.400 ⇒ 01:00:27.760 Atharv Gudi: talk about what she felt about this cause. I mean, having interned here for 3 months, I feel like I
482 01:00:28.000 ⇒ 01:00:29.410 Atharv Gudi: did learn.
483 01:00:29.780 ⇒ 01:00:46.409 Atharv Gudi: Well, I’ve been working on the engineering side of it a lot. And now I’m getting to see brain coach from a whole different perspective, because so far. I’ve just been neck deep in the pool parts to go repository, that’s all I’ve been seeing. But now, seeing the sales side of it.
484 01:00:46.650 ⇒ 01:00:47.490 Atharv Gudi: it’s
485 01:00:49.110 ⇒ 01:00:50.650 Atharv Gudi: I have to
486 01:00:50.920 ⇒ 01:00:54.219 Atharv Gudi: restart some gears thinking about all of this.
487 01:00:56.316 ⇒ 01:01:01.700 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, for sure. Like, right now, I’m just kind of like absorbing everything like I definitely
488 01:01:02.360 ⇒ 01:01:15.992 Abigail Zhao: do not have like a ton of experience like in sales and stuff like that. So like this is also just definitely kind of like a learning experience for me. But as of right now, I think like everything explained is pretty straightforward.
489 01:01:16.790 ⇒ 01:01:18.989 Abigail Zhao: yeah, I think.
490 01:01:19.710 ⇒ 01:01:22.939 Abigail Zhao: honest, like, honestly, the main thing I am
491 01:01:23.490 ⇒ 01:01:35.850 Abigail Zhao: quite like, confused right now about is I mean you were talking about how like you get like spam like constantly every day, with just like all sorts of marketing messages. So I guess I was just wondering, like
492 01:01:35.980 ⇒ 01:01:58.189 Abigail Zhao: what exactly like Brainforge is do or could do to like, make it more personalized. Because also, I feel like with cold emailing, or just like reaching out. I mean, it is very likely it just gets like lost in the big like haze of other companies. So yeah, I guess I was just wondering on that end a bit more like what Brainforge specifically is doing.
493 01:01:58.380 ⇒ 01:02:02.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s what we’ll kind of go into when we talked about like, actually, how do we activate?
494 01:02:04.520 ⇒ 01:02:27.260 Uttam Kumaran: how do we like activate all these different flows. And you know it’s it’s totally I’m totally aware that, like for each of these, there’s like expected open rates and things like that for, like the best companies, here’s what they get. So we’re not going to be able to win on like having the best copy and things like that. But we’re gonna win, basically on what our clear offer is.
495 01:02:27.260 ⇒ 01:02:48.719 Uttam Kumaran: And then also having, like a multi-step strategy, basically like sending a message on Linkedin, sending an email setting a follow up, but also just like being very clear with, like what we’re doing and why they should just even consider a call with us right? And so a lot of this is gonna be copy. But it’s gonna be things that we can measure like. For example, I shared what we were doing, and instantly
496 01:02:48.940 ⇒ 01:02:52.430 Uttam Kumaran: and instantly we were getting like open rates for every single step.
497 01:02:52.440 ⇒ 01:03:04.977 Uttam Kumaran: I have a B tests running for every single step, so there, there will be a data driven approach to this. It will be iterative. But you’re right like there’s gonna be some stuff where we hit a wall like. These are the ways that you get in touch with people these days.
498 01:03:05.260 ⇒ 01:03:30.029 Uttam Kumaran: But also part of the things is like, we’re gonna get creative on like on like the ways we do that. So it’s a great question, and over time we’ll we’ll figure out like, why we have an edge in that game, too. But that game is tough because everybody’s sending emails. But I will share some emails that I’d be getting. I I’m I’m getting. And it’s like they’re not good at all. So even just there’s some low hanging fruit stuff that we’ll do that will get us over the home.
499 01:03:30.080 ⇒ 01:03:36.459 Uttam Kumaran: I know we have to hop. I just want to like, talk about like next steps. I think
500 01:03:36.710 ⇒ 01:03:49.259 Uttam Kumaran: if everybody’s okay, I’m down to do another kind of session tomorrow where I want to talk about like kind of the different phases, like moving someone from an open lead all the way to closed.
501 01:03:50.920 ⇒ 01:03:55.410 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s just talk about what we want to do tomorrow. So I want to do like
502 01:03:55.921 ⇒ 01:03:58.280 Uttam Kumaran: the phases of a lead
503 01:03:58.922 ⇒ 01:04:03.100 Uttam Kumaran: and I wanna talk about like setting
504 01:04:04.350 ⇒ 01:04:05.630 Uttam Kumaran: kpis.
505 01:04:06.212 ⇒ 01:04:15.097 Uttam Kumaran: so we’ll talk about things like email sent. We’ll talk about like SEO rank. We’ll talk about
506 01:04:15.650 ⇒ 01:04:17.250 Uttam Kumaran: meetings booked
507 01:04:19.080 ⇒ 01:04:25.429 Uttam Kumaran: so we’ll talk about what those like high level kpis need to be conversion rates.
508 01:04:28.090 ⇒ 01:04:36.189 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll talk about that tomorrow, and then I think ideally, tomorrow will end with end with a few tasks for everyone
509 01:04:36.760 ⇒ 01:04:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: to take on.
510 01:04:38.910 ⇒ 01:04:45.551 Uttam Kumaran: The one thing that I think between now and tomorrow, if you have any time is I sent some links in slack about
511 01:04:47.460 ⇒ 01:05:07.009 Uttam Kumaran: adjusting slack. Or Oh, Abby, I might have said it to you, which is like a lot of the learnings about Apollo suddenly, and things like that. I’m gonna send that in in slack, so that if you guys have some time to go through like the Apollo, like webinars or courses just to get familiar with the tools that we’re going to use for this. Basically.
512 01:05:07.010 ⇒ 01:05:19.864 Uttam Kumaran: what are the shovels that we’re going to use to send emails, send Linkedin track everything. I’ll send some of those, so that if you have any time between now and then you can poke around there. But we’ll also go through everything together.
513 01:05:20.410 ⇒ 01:05:22.609 Uttam Kumaran: but yeah, I mean, I basically covered
514 01:05:22.650 ⇒ 01:05:25.360 Uttam Kumaran: sales in like an hour. So that was not bad.
515 01:05:25.767 ⇒ 01:05:31.930 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty much made as much progress as I thought I was. Gonna but we’ll make it through all of these this week. So
516 01:05:32.240 ⇒ 01:05:38.239 Uttam Kumaran: some of these again, there’s not much to cover some of these. There’s a lot to cover, but also one of the things that
517 01:05:38.350 ⇒ 01:05:39.960 Uttam Kumaran: you know I really loved
518 01:05:40.040 ⇒ 01:05:47.439 Uttam Kumaran: and hated for my last Comp 2 companies ago that I was at was every Monday with the whole company. We go through every page on the website.
519 01:05:49.890 ⇒ 01:05:51.859 Uttam Kumaran: and it’s kind of a gnarly meeting.
520 01:05:51.950 ⇒ 01:05:52.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
521 01:05:52.960 ⇒ 01:05:53.670 Patrick Trainer: Wow!
522 01:05:53.670 ⇒ 01:05:59.800 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s like, and we actually did one step further. So it’s a QR code website, this company called Flow Code.
523 01:06:01.380 ⇒ 01:06:09.229 Uttam Kumaran: what we would do is we’d go to the website. We create a new account and go through the QR code creation process every Monday.
524 01:06:09.800 ⇒ 01:06:12.860 Uttam Kumaran: And then when I 1st started the company. We did it every day.
525 01:06:13.285 ⇒ 01:06:15.490 Uttam Kumaran: It’s kind of a nightmare, because, like
526 01:06:15.550 ⇒ 01:06:28.749 Uttam Kumaran: you just gets awkward because the engineers like we’re working on that fix. And it’s like it’s still not. It just becomes a little tense. We won’t do the tense part of that. But basically what what I want to do is like we go to brain. We go to Brain Forge maybe once a week or twice a week.
527 01:06:29.090 ⇒ 01:06:31.310 Uttam Kumaran: and we literally looked through. And we’re like.
528 01:06:31.670 ⇒ 01:06:33.180 Uttam Kumaran: what could be better
529 01:06:33.370 ⇒ 01:06:44.720 Uttam Kumaran: like this button doesn’t work. Or this is unclear like, this is ugly. And we’re gonna constantly find things. And this is how we’re gonna basically dog food. And say, if we were coming to buy our product.
530 01:06:44.760 ⇒ 01:06:52.010 Uttam Kumaran: is this good enough? Right? And that’s what we’re gonna do. The nice thing is, we don’t have a product like we’re the product. So and we’re confident about that
531 01:06:52.685 ⇒ 01:06:53.200 Uttam Kumaran: but
532 01:06:53.340 ⇒ 01:06:58.870 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna when we meet, we’ll walk through the website. And we’ll walk through our materials. And and just basically be like.
533 01:06:59.620 ⇒ 01:07:05.469 Uttam Kumaran: Nope, like, blameless, just be like, is this what we want? Right? And so that’s what we’ll we’ll start to do as well
534 01:07:09.250 ⇒ 01:07:10.260 Uttam Kumaran: cool.
535 01:07:10.670 ⇒ 01:07:11.789 Uttam Kumaran: I didn’t realize that.
536 01:07:11.790 ⇒ 01:07:14.160 Patrick Trainer: Flow. Code made. QR. Codes.
537 01:07:14.810 ⇒ 01:07:16.289 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
538 01:07:17.280 ⇒ 01:07:19.300 Uttam Kumaran: They’re they’re doing. Okay.
539 01:07:20.140 ⇒ 01:07:22.459 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if my stock’s gonna be worth anything but
540 01:07:24.080 ⇒ 01:07:30.600 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Let’s hop to the other meeting. I just I just booked some time for the whole team, so it should be pretty quick. And then, yeah, I’ll grab some time tomorrow.
541 01:07:31.000 ⇒ 01:07:31.620 Patrick Trainer: Sweet.
542 01:07:32.580 ⇒ 01:07:34.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thanks, guys. Good chat.
543 01:07:36.360 ⇒ 01:07:37.610 Uttam Kumaran: Talk to you on the next one.
544 01:07:37.610 ⇒ 01:07:38.220 Patrick Trainer: See off.