Meeting Title: GTM Planning + Kickoff Date: 2025-12-01 Meeting participants: Holly Condos, Hannah Wang, Robert Tseng, Ryan Brosas
WEBVTT
1 00:01:05.610 ⇒ 00:01:07.269 Holly Condos: Hey, how you doing?
2 00:01:09.500 ⇒ 00:01:11.620 Hannah Wang: Good. Hanging in there.
3 00:01:12.690 ⇒ 00:01:14.089 Holly Condos: What was the trip?
4 00:01:14.700 ⇒ 00:01:16.740 Hannah Wang: I’m still in Ohio.
5 00:01:17.140 ⇒ 00:01:17.790 Holly Condos: Hmm.
6 00:01:17.790 ⇒ 00:01:18.860 Hannah Wang: Eastern time right now.
7 00:01:18.860 ⇒ 00:01:19.999 Holly Condos: How long are you there?
8 00:01:20.970 ⇒ 00:01:22.869 Hannah Wang: I fly out Wednesday morning.
9 00:01:23.310 ⇒ 00:01:23.900 Holly Condos: Okay.
10 00:01:26.230 ⇒ 00:01:28.720 Hannah Wang: How was your trip? You got back yesterday?
11 00:01:29.040 ⇒ 00:01:31.010 Holly Condos: Yeah, it was actually pretty seamless.
12 00:01:31.010 ⇒ 00:01:31.910 Hannah Wang: Nice.
13 00:01:33.970 ⇒ 00:01:39.309 Holly Condos: is this meeting happen? Is Robert back?
14 00:01:39.890 ⇒ 00:01:47.759 Hannah Wang: I think so, but then I know that Utam asked Rico to move, like, a…
15 00:01:48.470 ⇒ 00:01:50.790 Holly Condos: All team meeting…
16 00:01:50.790 ⇒ 00:01:54.100 Hannah Wang: 2… 315.
17 00:01:54.100 ⇒ 00:01:55.250 Holly Condos: I saw that.
18 00:01:55.490 ⇒ 00:01:57.939 Hannah Wang: too, but looks like Robert is here.
19 00:01:57.940 ⇒ 00:02:00.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I… hello, everyone.
20 00:02:00.360 ⇒ 00:02:00.950 Holly Condos: Hey, how are you.
21 00:02:00.950 ⇒ 00:02:05.860 Robert Tseng: I know that, that other call got, like, er…
22 00:02:06.880 ⇒ 00:02:19.529 Robert Tseng: There’s… there is a call in 15 minutes. That’s, like, the demos and retros. So, I mean, I don’t think we’ll take the full time, we’ll jump over. Tom just had to move it, because he’s on-site with ABC today.
23 00:02:19.690 ⇒ 00:02:20.930 Hannah Wang: Yeah, that makes sense.
24 00:02:21.650 ⇒ 00:02:22.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
25 00:02:23.960 ⇒ 00:02:24.490 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
26 00:02:24.490 ⇒ 00:02:25.860 Hannah Wang: Back in New York.
27 00:02:25.860 ⇒ 00:02:29.520 Robert Tseng: I am back in New York, yes.
28 00:02:30.210 ⇒ 00:02:34.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I just got off the phone with the YouVersion people.
29 00:02:34.130 ⇒ 00:02:35.820 Hannah Wang: Oh, how’d it go?
30 00:02:35.820 ⇒ 00:02:37.709 Robert Tseng: It went really well.
31 00:02:38.890 ⇒ 00:02:45.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, we kind of discussed… it’s a good… it was, like, really good timing. They’re, like.
32 00:02:45.700 ⇒ 00:03:02.280 Robert Tseng: there’s a couple RFPs that they’re putting together for kind of big digital transformation projects that they’re trying to kick off in January. So, I guess we’re gonna get an early look at it, and I think I just kind of hit it off well with, I guess their…
33 00:03:02.720 ⇒ 00:03:12.230 Robert Tseng: chief strategy person. So yeah, I think it was… that was the right… that was the right persona, like…
34 00:03:12.530 ⇒ 00:03:24.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah, from ICP perspective, she is the buyer. She, like, she handles vendors, so, like, I… she was like, yeah, you knocked on the right door, like, that’s… I’m the right person to talk to at this organization.
35 00:03:24.060 ⇒ 00:03:37.279 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, I don’t know, there’s just a lot of things I was like, wow, I mean, this was our outbound campaign, or I guess, Hannah, you hit her up. So, like, we got, we got one, like, very… like, that… we got that one dialed in very well.
36 00:03:37.280 ⇒ 00:03:38.970 Hannah Wang: Finally. Yeah.
37 00:03:38.970 ⇒ 00:03:39.910 Robert Tseng: So…
38 00:03:40.530 ⇒ 00:03:47.949 Robert Tseng: I don’t think it’s obviously… we’re not always gonna have hits like that, but that felt… that felt good, because the conversation was easy, yeah.
39 00:03:48.210 ⇒ 00:03:49.710 Hannah Wang: That’s good.
40 00:03:52.160 ⇒ 00:04:01.350 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I guess… I’m gonna… I didn’t really do as much of my usual prep
41 00:04:01.670 ⇒ 00:04:05.260 Robert Tseng: preparation that I do, but… which is fine. I think…
42 00:04:05.610 ⇒ 00:04:17.419 Robert Tseng: how I would like to handle this time, we’ll go over the OKRs, and we’ll just kind of, like, triage them live, and then I did send over kind of a doc earlier today that
43 00:04:17.820 ⇒ 00:04:36.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, every time I have been scheduling calls with, with Vixel, they’ve been… they’ve been trying to, like, give us a go-to-market advisor, and so, like, there’s this doc that I put together that’s basically, like, our evaluation doc of, like, who we’re choosing. I think we’ve narrowed it down to two people, and
44 00:04:37.050 ⇒ 00:04:43.069 Robert Tseng: Oh, great. I think I see people have already been putting comments in there, and so we’ll kind of spend some time there as well.
45 00:04:43.350 ⇒ 00:04:50.929 Robert Tseng: Well, actually, I guess since we’re already looking at the doc, maybe I’ll start there first, then I’ll go to the OKRs later.
46 00:04:51.240 ⇒ 00:04:54.430 Robert Tseng: Okay, so I’ll share my screen, and…
47 00:04:55.420 ⇒ 00:04:57.499 Robert Tseng: I don’t know if this is the best.
48 00:04:58.310 ⇒ 00:05:04.119 Robert Tseng: Feels weird looking at myself, so I’m gonna hide that.
49 00:05:04.170 ⇒ 00:05:17.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, great. So, I guess, I mean, some of these are, you know, obviously kind of AI phrases, so… enterprise is enterprise, to me, this is really just, like, I guess this is GPT’s interpretation of, like, a…
50 00:05:17.910 ⇒ 00:05:26.350 Robert Tseng: not a Fortune 500 company, but, like, I don’t know, like a Fortune 2000 company. So, like, enterprise, but not really enterprise.
51 00:05:26.350 ⇒ 00:05:29.290 Holly Condos: So do we… do we need mean mid-market?
52 00:05:30.410 ⇒ 00:05:39.799 Robert Tseng: Well, I mean, I’m curious what you think mid-market is, but, I think… the way that I…
53 00:05:40.060 ⇒ 00:05:46.030 Robert Tseng: Have been, like, changing the way that we talk about What?
54 00:05:46.360 ⇒ 00:06:00.390 Robert Tseng: part of the market we target. I… it’s… to me, it’s either enterprise or, like, small business, and mid-market is, like, we may hit them, like, somewhere in between, but, we’re not really, like.
55 00:06:00.960 ⇒ 00:06:10.629 Robert Tseng: Like, it’s kind of hard to build, like, a mid-market, strategy, because it’s, like, a moving target, the range is very wide, and
56 00:06:10.800 ⇒ 00:06:14.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it just kind of seems like we’re kind of just dipping into
57 00:06:14.590 ⇒ 00:06:30.009 Robert Tseng: like, some mid-markets on the low side, they behave like SMBs, and then on the high side, they behave like enterprises, right? So, like, I… I guess… I mean, this might just be semantics, but, like, I think I’m trying not to describe it as, like.
58 00:06:30.240 ⇒ 00:06:33.110 Robert Tseng: Or going after mid-market companies anymore.
59 00:06:34.430 ⇒ 00:06:35.240 Robert Tseng: Okay.
60 00:06:35.240 ⇒ 00:06:39.870 Holly Condos: So… just to continue on, or pull on that thread, so… Yeah.
61 00:06:40.620 ⇒ 00:06:44.240 Holly Condos: I mean, in my experience, and I think it’s…
62 00:06:44.570 ⇒ 00:06:48.710 Holly Condos: you know, just… just to track numbers. So, mid-market is, like.
63 00:06:49.650 ⇒ 00:06:54.180 Holly Condos: You know, over 100 people, but probably less than a thousand.
64 00:06:54.390 ⇒ 00:06:54.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
65 00:06:55.140 ⇒ 00:07:05.210 Holly Condos: And enterprise is typically over a thousand plus, right? And then revenue-wise, mid-market would be…
66 00:07:05.950 ⇒ 00:07:12.200 Holly Condos: Like, maybe $50 million to a billion, and enterprise is typically a billion and over.
67 00:07:12.800 ⇒ 00:07:13.460 Robert Tseng: Okay.
68 00:07:13.900 ⇒ 00:07:19.230 Holly Condos: that that’s… I mean, I think that’s a fairly standard marker?
69 00:07:19.560 ⇒ 00:07:20.310 Robert Tseng: Okay.
70 00:07:20.310 ⇒ 00:07:26.769 Holly Condos: But, that’s why I asked, what… what are we thinking here?
71 00:07:26.770 ⇒ 00:07:39.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay, I mean, I guess by those definitions, then yeah, I would say we’re mid-market. I don’t think we’re working with any billion-dollar companies right now, and I’m not really seeing that in the short term, so…
72 00:07:39.810 ⇒ 00:07:44.879 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I mean, that $50 million to billion dollar range was quite wide, so… Yeah.
73 00:07:44.880 ⇒ 00:07:56.229 Holly Condos: It’s a big… it’s a big range, but, you know, like, enterprise, we’re talking about, like, JPMorgan Chase, or, you know, Verizon, or,
74 00:07:56.590 ⇒ 00:07:58.090 Holly Condos: Disney.
75 00:07:58.330 ⇒ 00:07:59.300 Holly Condos: Right?
76 00:07:59.490 ⇒ 00:08:02.399 Holly Condos: Amazon… I mean, Amazon is a hyperscaler, but…
77 00:08:02.590 ⇒ 00:08:03.310 Robert Tseng: Sure.
78 00:08:03.850 ⇒ 00:08:13.330 Holly Condos: That’s… I mean, that’s… not just me, but I think that’s a fairly common Range.
79 00:08:15.390 ⇒ 00:08:29.499 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, I mean, I guess I wasn’t really looking at it by headcount, but that, I mean, that makes sense, revenue makes sense, like, I mean, if it’s more helpful to just describe it as mid-market, then maybe we just kind of keep that lingo.
80 00:08:30.670 ⇒ 00:08:35.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I guess I’m… I think I… I can…
81 00:08:35.140 ⇒ 00:08:36.899 Robert Tseng: I can adjust that. That’s not…
82 00:08:36.900 ⇒ 00:08:46.310 Holly Condos: And I’m not trying to… I’m not trying to convince you here, you know, what’s your… what’s your view, or what was it before I said that?
83 00:08:46.510 ⇒ 00:08:48.390 Robert Tseng: I think, like.
84 00:08:48.720 ⇒ 00:08:59.890 Robert Tseng: when we were describing, like, we were going after high-growth, mid-market companies, I think that just created… that was just, like, too… too wide. It’s like… like I said, like.
85 00:09:01.940 ⇒ 00:09:23.129 Robert Tseng: at the lower end, the mid-market companies behave like SMBs, versus, like, on the higher end, they may behave like enterprises. Meaning that, like, in their sales cycle, they may have an RFP process. The person who controls the vendor decisions is not the same person as, like, the… as the operator that’s actually going to be working with us.
86 00:09:23.130 ⇒ 00:09:31.090 Robert Tseng: To me, that’s more… kind of behaves like enterprise, whereas, like, on… more… if they behave more like SMB, it’s like…
87 00:09:31.090 ⇒ 00:09:38.990 Robert Tseng: they’re… like, this… it’s just kind of, to me, I’m art… it’s just a way of, like, decoupling.
88 00:09:39.130 ⇒ 00:09:47.620 Holly Condos: What the sales cycle looks like, who’s the decision maker, and, like, who are the people really involved in making that purchasing decision.
89 00:09:47.620 ⇒ 00:09:56.769 Robert Tseng: Obviously, like, revenue, which to me, revenue… revenue size matters to some extent. Obviously, like.
90 00:09:57.350 ⇒ 00:10:12.530 Robert Tseng: I think there’s just, like, some typical benchmarks around how companies don’t spend more than X percent on, like, kind of… on tech services and stuff, and so we have budget limitations that we have to be aware of.
91 00:10:12.530 ⇒ 00:10:21.990 Robert Tseng: When we’re, like, approaching companies that are only doing, you know, for example, on the smaller end, we have clients that are doing, like, 3 to 5 million in revenue.
92 00:10:22.150 ⇒ 00:10:33.530 Robert Tseng: we’ve pretty much already maxed them out. They’re not gonna pay us, like… they’re not gonna really pay… pay us anymore. They just don’t… they don’t really have the opportunity to do it. Whereas, like, you know.
93 00:10:33.680 ⇒ 00:10:48.899 Robert Tseng: But we may be charging the same amount for a company that’s doing 600 million company behaves like a small business.
94 00:10:49.210 ⇒ 00:10:55.619 Robert Tseng: But, like, yeah, I think there’s just… there are a lot… there are these nuances that, like.
95 00:10:55.890 ⇒ 00:11:03.170 Robert Tseng: I mean, maybe we kind of understand better once we’re within the organizations and trying to do, like, account expansions and stuff.
96 00:11:03.240 ⇒ 00:11:14.320 Robert Tseng: But I don’t think we’ve really tried to bring that type of clarity into the go-to-market, like, ICP definitions before. Like, what I’ve been giving
97 00:11:14.320 ⇒ 00:11:31.290 Robert Tseng: kind of, like, Ryan and Hannah is really just, like, industry, like, title, and, like, you know, maybe we sometimes use person, like, headcount or something, but just by using those filters, like, we’re… we get, like, a big range of people, so.
98 00:11:31.290 ⇒ 00:11:35.610 Holly Condos: Yeah. So, I guess my only caution would be…
99 00:11:36.030 ⇒ 00:11:43.130 Holly Condos: In referring to enterprise, you know, that… so from… so from the decision-maker standpoint.
100 00:11:43.130 ⇒ 00:11:43.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
101 00:11:43.740 ⇒ 00:11:45.819 Holly Condos: That’s typically gonna be…
102 00:11:45.980 ⇒ 00:11:58.129 Holly Condos: you know, the C-level or a senior VP or director in whatever department it is we’re going to, right? IT, security,
103 00:11:58.610 ⇒ 00:12:08.790 Holly Condos: Finance, and then… the… Procurement model is typically with, you know, a procurement department.
104 00:12:09.110 ⇒ 00:12:16.209 Holly Condos: fairly AI, or fairly… Form-driven, and lots of approvals.
105 00:12:16.210 ⇒ 00:12:16.700 Robert Tseng: Yep.
106 00:12:16.700 ⇒ 00:12:22.320 Holly Condos: Sometimes legal might get pulled over if there’s a terms discussion, but it’s just…
107 00:12:23.720 ⇒ 00:12:31.660 Holly Condos: My caution is that as soon as we start saying enterprise, for… for our audience.
108 00:12:32.140 ⇒ 00:12:35.799 Holly Condos: or for our potential customer base. I mean, I think…
109 00:12:36.020 ⇒ 00:12:43.680 Holly Condos: Robert, I took this document in the context of, we’re trying to find a go-to-market person or advisor, right?
110 00:12:43.680 ⇒ 00:12:44.860 Robert Tseng: Yep. Yep.
111 00:12:45.170 ⇒ 00:12:55.589 Holly Condos: So, in that context, I think we just… my caution is to be careful with using Enterprise, because that will open up a certain lane.
112 00:12:56.080 ⇒ 00:13:03.239 Holly Condos: Either with Vixel or with, you know, with other People that can help.
113 00:13:04.340 ⇒ 00:13:04.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
114 00:13:05.540 ⇒ 00:13:06.150 Robert Tseng: So…
115 00:13:06.150 ⇒ 00:13:11.630 Holly Condos: It’s not… it’s not a bad thing, I’m just saying, you know, let’s make sure that that’s what we mean.
116 00:13:11.780 ⇒ 00:13:15.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. I think,
117 00:13:16.230 ⇒ 00:13:32.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, maybe we need to kind of work this through a bit more. I mean, right now, I don’t say… I don’t think we’re in enterprise, and… I agree. Yeah, like, our largest client is probably, like, at that $500K a year, like, point, but that’s… that to me is, like…
118 00:13:33.160 ⇒ 00:13:49.920 Robert Tseng: you know, not… not really… that’s not… that’s not enterprise size. I… for… we’ve talked… we’ve talked to maybe, like, 5 people that Vixoul’s put in front of us now, and I guess the people that we’ve struck out, one is, like, a type of, advisor that’s only done enterprise sales.
119 00:13:50.640 ⇒ 00:14:04.529 Robert Tseng: And, like, they’re super niche, like, they don’t understand, like, our business, like, we do a lot more… we have a lot more range than they’re used to. They were just doing… just purely enterprise, like, AWS sales for, like, automotive, for example.
120 00:14:04.530 ⇒ 00:14:06.669 Holly Condos: And, like, that was…
121 00:14:06.670 ⇒ 00:14:17.239 Robert Tseng: like, we struck that person out, because it was like, I don’t really think they can really put themselves in our shoes. And so the person… the people… the two people that we’re kind of… we’ve narrowed down to.
122 00:14:17.240 ⇒ 00:14:37.419 Robert Tseng: One, like, we like because, he’s kind of done both. Like, his first… his first… he’s kind of… he’s exited two services businesses. One… the first one was more like ours, where it was, like, more of a general consultancy. He kind of scaled it up operationally. Deal sizes remained pretty small. He was still within the mid-market range.
123 00:14:37.430 ⇒ 00:14:44.539 Robert Tseng: Then he exited that, went to the second company, and then he started selling enterprise. And now he’s, like, a lot more, kind of, like, biased towards enterprise.
124 00:14:44.540 ⇒ 00:15:01.099 Robert Tseng: But he understands that, like, we can’t just, like, completely stop what’s working for our business and go all in on enterprise, because sales cycles will slow down, there’s all these, like, kind of complexities that you’re talking about that we would be introducing, and we frankly just don’t have the team to close a deal like that right now.
125 00:15:01.100 ⇒ 00:15:02.010 Holly Condos: Yeah.
126 00:15:02.010 ⇒ 00:15:11.170 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, I guess, like, I don’t really feel like we need more execution support on closing, like, the deal sizes that we have right now. I think…
127 00:15:11.400 ⇒ 00:15:15.990 Robert Tseng: Like, yeah, I mean, you know, we showed a couple weeks ago that…
128 00:15:16.130 ⇒ 00:15:29.939 Robert Tseng: 60% of qualified meetings that we book, Utam and I, are closing. So I think our close rates are very high, and actually, we have to say no to business, and we’re trying to defer business, until the next quarter.
129 00:15:29.940 ⇒ 00:15:36.299 Robert Tseng: But that’s all kind of in that steel size of, like, 10 to 30K a month, 3 to 6 months, right? So…
130 00:15:36.300 ⇒ 00:15:38.709 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, to me.
131 00:15:38.790 ⇒ 00:15:48.399 Robert Tseng: I would rather, like, kind of have an advisor to kind of help us unlock a new channel, which is the enterprise, like, sales motion, or, like, at least going more upmarket.
132 00:15:48.440 ⇒ 00:16:00.489 Robert Tseng: Teaching us how to, like, kind of work with clients of that, of that… sell, sell over, like, a 3-6 month kind of horizont, right? So…
133 00:16:00.490 ⇒ 00:16:14.019 Holly Condos: And that’s helpful, and I agree with that approach. I think that makes sense for where BrainFarge is now, and where you want to get to, right? I mean, the… you want to get out of the 10 to 30K deal size. You want more, like.
134 00:16:14.330 ⇒ 00:16:16.720 Holly Condos: 500K.
135 00:16:17.470 ⇒ 00:16:19.479 Holly Condos: To… a mill.
136 00:16:19.480 ⇒ 00:16:19.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
137 00:16:19.950 ⇒ 00:16:20.870 Holly Condos: Right? Yeah.
138 00:16:21.160 ⇒ 00:16:24.090 Holly Condos: With… with longer terms.
139 00:16:24.380 ⇒ 00:16:27.330 Robert Tseng: Yep. So, yeah, I… okay, I think we’re on the same page.
140 00:16:27.600 ⇒ 00:16:28.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
141 00:16:28.230 ⇒ 00:16:45.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so whether that ends up becoming an enterprise sales motion, or that’s just, like, a function of having, like, a better, clearly defined offer that’s able to go after a specific segment in mid-market, anyway, I think that’s kind of, you know, that’s… that’s where I’m trying to spend more of my time.
142 00:16:45.900 ⇒ 00:17:00.949 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Whereas on Utam’s side, like, now that he’s kind of, like, overseeing delivery, you know, we have gross margin. Like, our gross margin’s not 50% right now, it’s probably closer to 40%, but if we can, like, be in the 50-60% range, so, like, on the…
143 00:17:00.950 ⇒ 00:17:08.089 Robert Tseng: on the work that we’re executing well, we continue to grow our margins there, we want to keep that. Like, we don’t want to lose that.
144 00:17:08.089 ⇒ 00:17:21.030 Robert Tseng: Like, because as we’re trying new things and, like, taking on new business, our margins are always going to be lower on those, because we don’t really know exactly how to scope that work, and it takes us some time to learn it, so…
145 00:17:21.030 ⇒ 00:17:32.299 Robert Tseng: There’s kind of, like, the aspect of, you know, that’s kind of why I shared, you know, what we should keep, what needs to evolve, what we can’t change, you know, that’s all kind of, like, factored into this. Yeah.
146 00:17:32.300 ⇒ 00:17:35.619 Holly Condos: I did… I read through it earlier, so yeah, I’m with you.
147 00:17:35.620 ⇒ 00:17:44.089 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, so we are bringing in… he already started, I guess his name is Clarence, so somebody on the delivery side who’s gonna help us, kind of, like.
148 00:17:44.110 ⇒ 00:18:06.170 Robert Tseng: yeah, help Utam on the delivery, kind of advise him on delivery, who are the next, like, couple hires, like, and then building out kind of, like, a transition for us to get out of delivery. Right. But then, obviously, this team is focused on go-to-market, and so, go-to-market infrastructure and, like, kind of getting the right advisor to kind of help me be…
149 00:18:06.170 ⇒ 00:18:10.639 Robert Tseng: Planning for enterprise go-to-market is, like, kind of… Where I’m… where I’m thinking.
150 00:18:10.640 ⇒ 00:18:11.000 Holly Condos: Okay.
151 00:18:11.000 ⇒ 00:18:19.429 Robert Tseng: I kind of, like, re-clear… like, kind of just rewrote, like, kind of the structure that we currently have right now with the folks on this call, and so…
152 00:18:19.430 ⇒ 00:18:35.370 Robert Tseng: you know, we’re gonna go and try to kind of backfill Joe. I think that’s already kind of kicked off. There’s a couple people that we’re kind of getting close to bringing in. Great. You know, this is more or less Ryan’s role, and then Hannah, I kind of asked her… I know her role has kind of, like, changed, but now it’s…
153 00:18:35.370 ⇒ 00:18:52.590 Robert Tseng: more or less something like this, so if she can kind of flush that out, and then this is kind of where, Holly, you sit, right? And so, like, obviously on our go-to-market side, there isn’t just, like, the direct sales motion, but the partnerships motion is obviously a core part of this, too. But I do feel like those are separate things.
154 00:18:52.590 ⇒ 00:18:56.599 Robert Tseng: We did, because, like, of the advisors we talked to.
155 00:18:56.680 ⇒ 00:19:12.480 Robert Tseng: we struck… I think we’re gonna end up striking out one more, because one guy… one… one guy, that we talked to, he’s… he’s never… he’s never sold through partners before, and I just feel like that’s a little bit strange for us, because, I think that has been, like, a big…
156 00:19:12.480 ⇒ 00:19:25.680 Robert Tseng: you know, that’s a big bet that we’re making, and we have these relationships, they are growing, I think we’re taking steps towards that, so I feel like, you know, I may strike him out just because he doesn’t have partnerships experience.
157 00:19:25.680 ⇒ 00:19:26.940 Holly Condos: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah.
158 00:19:27.150 ⇒ 00:19:28.150 Holly Condos: Sounds good.
159 00:19:28.320 ⇒ 00:19:44.589 Robert Tseng: Anyway, so, like, I guess I’ll kind of keep reworking this, maybe I’ll send it to you for more review, Holly, but, sure. Yeah, I guess, like, you know, more or less, this is what we’ve sent over to Vixel, this is what we’re sending to our advisor candidates, and, like, telling them, like.
160 00:19:44.610 ⇒ 00:19:55.220 Robert Tseng: you know, or kind of basically discussing with them if they’re okay with this, and yeah. So, just wanted this team to see, because this is pretty relevant from, like, a…
161 00:19:55.490 ⇒ 00:20:01.910 Robert Tseng: strategic level of, like, where… where, like, I think this… this team is headed.
162 00:20:02.520 ⇒ 00:20:08.329 Holly Condos: Yeah, I think it’s great. I think it’s a good roadmap, and like you said, to kind of frame
163 00:20:08.450 ⇒ 00:20:10.650 Holly Condos: What we’re trying to get to.
164 00:20:10.930 ⇒ 00:20:14.509 Holly Condos: And what support or, additional
165 00:20:14.730 ⇒ 00:20:19.779 Holly Condos: experience and advisory we need. So, yeah, I think it’s a great, great start.
166 00:20:20.100 ⇒ 00:20:27.849 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, if you have anything that you feel like I’m missing, like, please, like, comment it or call it out. Yeah.
167 00:20:28.150 ⇒ 00:20:33.210 Holly Condos: I’ll keep going on it, unless you are gonna… Do a different version.
168 00:20:33.210 ⇒ 00:20:46.749 Robert Tseng: No, yeah, no, I think, I probably won’t touch it again today, but, like, I’m… you know, this is something… we haven’t… I mean, we’re gonna have to… we’re gonna finalize the selection, hopefully this week. I think we already kind of already know who the one or two people are gonna be.
169 00:20:46.750 ⇒ 00:20:49.970 Holly Condos: Okay. But still want to just have this, like, kind of.
170 00:20:50.030 ⇒ 00:20:53.150 Robert Tseng: clear enough to put in front of them.
171 00:20:53.150 ⇒ 00:20:53.740 Holly Condos: Sounds good.
172 00:20:53.740 ⇒ 00:20:54.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
173 00:20:54.890 ⇒ 00:20:56.230 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
174 00:20:57.510 ⇒ 00:21:03.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, Hannah, you had a couple comments here. Do you want to call out anything that you were commenting on?
175 00:21:05.340 ⇒ 00:21:08.910 Hannah Wang: No, it’s just more questions, like, Yeah, just…
176 00:21:09.570 ⇒ 00:21:13.999 Hannah Wang: the pain… I’m assuming we want to know what the pain points are for enterprise?
177 00:21:14.530 ⇒ 00:21:15.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
178 00:21:15.000 ⇒ 00:21:20.639 Hannah Wang: Whatever term we’re using, so how… do we know that already, or do we have to find that out? Yeah.
179 00:21:20.640 ⇒ 00:21:25.850 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think this is something for us to figure out, I guess, like…
180 00:21:26.340 ⇒ 00:21:36.839 Robert Tseng: you know, whether we call it enterprise or not, as we’re kind of, like, going after bigger deal sizes, I think, you know, Utom and I are running into a new kind of…
181 00:21:37.110 ⇒ 00:21:49.329 Robert Tseng: Yeah, before, we were… we were winning deals off of, like, our speed and our ability to, like, articulate, like, this is exactly where you’re gonna get. That’s not, like, kind of what’s winning us deals anymore as we’re moving up.
182 00:21:49.370 ⇒ 00:22:04.340 Robert Tseng: market, and ironically, like, I think ABC is a great example where we carved out a very small project, and we executed that well. But in this upsell, like, I was kind of… Utam and I were basically
183 00:22:04.340 ⇒ 00:22:23.379 Robert Tseng: trying to break out of, like, what they’ve… that they’ve put… pushed us into. Now they’ve… we’ve worked with them enough, and we’ve kind of found a different champion. We’re working with the CEO directly now, and UTAM’s basically on… on site for… for, like, half a day, just kind of doing, like, discovery. And they just want… they want us to, like, do…
184 00:22:23.380 ⇒ 00:22:35.940 Robert Tseng: have a formal discovery process. We generally know how to, like, navigate this. It looks… but it looks different for every client. And so, basically, we need to build, like, a formal discovery playbook.
185 00:22:35.940 ⇒ 00:22:36.339 Holly Condos: were different.
186 00:22:36.340 ⇒ 00:22:37.610 Robert Tseng: Types of clients.
187 00:22:37.610 ⇒ 00:22:38.550 Holly Condos: Yeah, that would be good.
188 00:22:39.650 ⇒ 00:22:51.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, like, that’s… that’s something that we’re… we’re seeing as, like, necessary. Like, these clients don’t want us to do any work, or, like, we’re only in discovery for, like, 2 to 4 weeks, like,
189 00:22:52.240 ⇒ 00:22:57.590 Robert Tseng: And it’s… it’s just, like, not, like, a pace that we’ve dealt with before, because we were used to…
190 00:22:57.620 ⇒ 00:23:15.000 Robert Tseng: you know, signing the deal, and then jumping right into engineering and building something within two to four weeks. So, it definitely, like, slows things down, but gives us, like, more time to do some of this planning work, that I think that Enterprise is gonna want, like, wants this as well, so…
191 00:23:15.000 ⇒ 00:23:20.679 Holly Condos: I was just gonna say, just based, again, on my other clients and experience, it is very…
192 00:23:20.960 ⇒ 00:23:32.199 Holly Condos: typical to do, an assessment and or discovery, right? And that that gets built into the project plan, it’s built into the pricing. It’s very common.
193 00:23:33.120 ⇒ 00:23:33.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
194 00:23:33.950 ⇒ 00:23:51.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I definitely, as we’re, like, throwing bigger numbers out, like, people are just… they expect that, like, this is gonna be part of the process, they expect that this is what they’re paying for, and they don’t actually want us to speed through it, which is, like… Absolutely. That’s, like, we’ve had to break out of that attitude.
195 00:23:51.800 ⇒ 00:23:56.889 Holly Condos: Yeah, but I mean, I think that, you know, I think that the speed that you guys…
196 00:23:57.520 ⇒ 00:24:15.930 Holly Condos: are used to, and what you can bring to the project is valuable. I think you just have to, you know, kind of transition your thinking into including the discovery, which is what you’re saying, right? But I think in the end, at the end of the day, it’s a good pivot, if you will, because
197 00:24:15.940 ⇒ 00:24:22.190 Holly Condos: To your point, more and more, even mid-markets want it, and enterprise typically always does.
198 00:24:22.780 ⇒ 00:24:23.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
199 00:24:23.750 ⇒ 00:24:24.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
200 00:24:26.000 ⇒ 00:24:26.830 Hannah Wang: Okay.
201 00:24:27.160 ⇒ 00:24:27.750 Holly Condos: Very standard.
202 00:24:27.750 ⇒ 00:24:41.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so as far as the creative assets that are necessary for that, I’m not sure what those will look like yet. There are a couple things that we’re already working on, which I can share with you. They’re kind of in progress. These are really, like, my to-do items this week.
203 00:24:41.790 ⇒ 00:24:56.089 Robert Tseng: because we’re kicking off with Element. Element is another one that needs… that wants the same thing. They want, like, a one-month discovery. So I’ve been, like, trying… this has been pretty relevant, because I’ve been basically having to… we’ve been kicking off, like, 3 clients this week.
204 00:24:56.090 ⇒ 00:25:02.050 Robert Tseng: And then Remo, we just, like, signed. That’s a $100K deal, like, over a month, and so, like.
205 00:25:02.050 ⇒ 00:25:21.209 Robert Tseng: Like, they also want… like, there’s no… there’s, like, they also want, like, a two-week discovery, so it’s, yeah, like, I think it’s just… we’re… this is, like, very relevant, and I don’t know exactly what this will look like right now, but on the delivery side, I’m… I’m actively thinking about how we’re gonna build out this formal discovery process.
206 00:25:22.050 ⇒ 00:25:26.230 Holly Condos: Great, and if you need any input there, I can certainly…
207 00:25:26.460 ⇒ 00:25:29.040 Holly Condos: you know, at least just bring to bear what I’ve…
208 00:25:29.660 ⇒ 00:25:38.540 Holly Condos: already done or due now. It may not be completely the same, and you might want to tailor it, but at least, you know, I have some assets that might
209 00:25:38.660 ⇒ 00:25:40.240 Holly Condos: be tailorable.
210 00:25:40.240 ⇒ 00:25:40.920 Robert Tseng: Okay.
211 00:25:41.660 ⇒ 00:25:50.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I… yeah, I’ll shoot you over, probably by end of day, is what I’m hoping. Like, the thing that I’m working on right now.
212 00:25:50.900 ⇒ 00:25:51.400 Holly Condos: Okay, great.
213 00:25:51.400 ⇒ 00:25:52.900 Robert Tseng: basically, like.
214 00:25:53.080 ⇒ 00:26:05.759 Robert Tseng: I got it from, like, a enterprise Google marketing kind of, like, engagement. I got a friend send it to me. It’s basically what they were using, like, when they were…
215 00:26:05.760 ⇒ 00:26:16.190 Robert Tseng: when Google was still doing, like, marketing pro-serve, like, in-house, and working with big brands, and so, I mean, it’s nothing crazy, it’s just, like.
216 00:26:16.190 ⇒ 00:26:20.230 Robert Tseng: There’s… there’s a few… there’s a few pieces to it, some… some sort of, like.
217 00:26:20.230 ⇒ 00:26:45.209 Robert Tseng: yeah, some… some roadmap, which now we have… we do… I think we do a really good job at doing Gantt charts for, like, our clients now, and so I’m not worried about that piece. There’s something about, like, business requirements and, like, metrics that, like, I think that’s… that’s kind of, like, custom to every… every client. And then there’s kind of, like, taking our technical solution, breaking it down to modules, and then there’s, like, a list of questions, like, a checklist of
218 00:26:45.210 ⇒ 00:26:46.959 Robert Tseng: questions for each of those.
219 00:26:46.960 ⇒ 00:26:52.429 Holly Condos: Sounds good. Yeah, that sounds like a good outline, so… Yeah, that’s generally what it looks like.
220 00:26:53.070 ⇒ 00:26:53.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
221 00:26:54.670 ⇒ 00:27:02.759 Holly Condos: Again, maybe, maybe where I can be most useful is just to kind of, you know, get it to the point where you feel good about it, and then I’ll just
222 00:27:03.080 ⇒ 00:27:05.840 Holly Condos: Tweak it, or, you know, comment.
223 00:27:06.280 ⇒ 00:27:10.250 Holly Condos: Because it sounds like you’ve got it started, so that’s great.
224 00:27:10.570 ⇒ 00:27:11.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
225 00:27:11.960 ⇒ 00:27:12.780 Robert Tseng: Okay.
226 00:27:13.670 ⇒ 00:27:15.690 Robert Tseng: Sounds good. Yeah.
227 00:27:15.840 ⇒ 00:27:22.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so let’s kind of just spend a few minutes here. Yeah, I guess, like, you know.
228 00:27:22.330 ⇒ 00:27:30.559 Robert Tseng: Q4, you know, some of this has kind of changed, so, I mean, I do just want to call it out, so maybe we’ll just do this,
229 00:27:31.220 ⇒ 00:27:32.180 Robert Tseng: Walt.
230 00:27:32.740 ⇒ 00:27:34.750 Robert Tseng: duplicate…
231 00:27:49.900 ⇒ 00:27:51.220 Robert Tseng: Okay, so, like…
232 00:27:52.720 ⇒ 00:28:02.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah, as far as, like, new qualified pipeline per week, sure, I think there… there was kind of… some… some things kind of slowed down here,
233 00:28:02.960 ⇒ 00:28:09.130 Robert Tseng: I don’t think we actually ended up working through the existing offers and being able to, like, pass them.
234 00:28:09.180 ⇒ 00:28:25.020 Robert Tseng: well back to our lost leads and circlebacks, but this is actually not, like, a huge priority for us, because I just think that, you know, with this month, like, kind of reworking the offers and positioning is probably more important. So, there is an aspect of, like.
235 00:28:25.090 ⇒ 00:28:44.529 Robert Tseng: we did put together that one, like, get your data stack in order before the holidays offer. That didn’t get received well, and then, like, we didn’t have enough going to, like, be able to iterate and send out more offers. So, I think we just kind of got… we got stuck here. Like, I don’t really know what I would reach back to these leads with right now.
236 00:28:44.810 ⇒ 00:28:59.659 Robert Tseng: Other than just, like, sending messages. So, maybe that’s still kind of the… the… that’s, like, that’s… that’s the best that we can do. But it… it doesn’t… it doesn’t seem promising, because I did reach out to a few already. We probably, like, hit, like, 10.
237 00:28:59.750 ⇒ 00:29:08.640 Robert Tseng: without, like, a specific offer, like, these calls don’t end up getting booked, or, like, it’s not very clear what the next step is, and so I think these just kind of got… this kind of just dropped off.
238 00:29:09.310 ⇒ 00:29:10.880 Holly Condos: No, I have an idea there.
239 00:29:10.880 ⇒ 00:29:11.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
240 00:29:11.350 ⇒ 00:29:12.509 Holly Condos: what if…
241 00:29:13.130 ⇒ 00:29:20.900 Holly Condos: you know, we could, create a campaign that we could launch in January for the new year,
242 00:29:21.310 ⇒ 00:29:24.040 Holly Condos: To these old, old ones?
243 00:29:24.420 ⇒ 00:29:25.100 Holly Condos: But…
244 00:29:25.100 ⇒ 00:29:25.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
245 00:29:25.700 ⇒ 00:29:32.249 Holly Condos: focus on the assessment or the discovery. Like, hey, you know, we’ve created this assessment package.
246 00:29:33.580 ⇒ 00:29:33.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
247 00:29:33.900 ⇒ 00:29:39.320 Holly Condos: Or would you be interested in, you know, talking to us about launching that?
248 00:29:40.470 ⇒ 00:29:41.730 Holly Condos: Just an ID.
249 00:29:42.180 ⇒ 00:29:52.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think that’s a good idea. Like, we have, a… There’s, like, a… Sorry?
250 00:29:53.450 ⇒ 00:29:57.360 Robert Tseng: You have a 3.30? No. It’s a 3.30? Okay. Alright.
251 00:29:57.640 ⇒ 00:29:59.199 Holly Condos: Do you need to go?
252 00:29:59.200 ⇒ 00:30:03.740 Robert Tseng: Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, okay. I have to… I have to move.
253 00:30:03.740 ⇒ 00:30:04.840 Holly Condos: Sorry, I talk too much.
254 00:30:04.840 ⇒ 00:30:08.789 Robert Tseng: No, no, you’re good. I… I thought I booked until 4.
255 00:30:09.950 ⇒ 00:30:11.819 Holly Condos: Alright, so we’ll talk to you later.
256 00:30:11.820 ⇒ 00:30:14.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, we’ll talk later. Okay, sorry, I’ll…
257 00:30:14.480 ⇒ 00:30:15.969 Holly Condos: Sounds good. See ya.