Meeting Title: Client Follow-up and Deal Strategy Sync Date: 2026-03-18 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Awaish Kumar, Samuel Roberts, Demilade Agboola, Zoran Selinger, Pranav
WEBVTT
1 00:00:31.370 ⇒ 00:00:36.330 Robert Tseng: So, I’ll wait a little bit for it to come back in, whoever makes it in.
2 00:00:42.610 ⇒ 00:00:43.470 Robert Tseng: What’s going on?
3 00:00:43.900 ⇒ 00:00:44.870 Robert Tseng: Tag him.
4 00:00:46.490 ⇒ 00:00:50.020 Robert Tseng: Danny… Oh, Demi’s here… okay.
5 00:00:57.140 ⇒ 00:01:00.639 Robert Tseng: And… It’s blind in here.
6 00:01:03.890 ⇒ 00:01:18.909 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I guess I don’t want to take up your guys’ time, so I’m just gonna… I’m just gonna start. So, basically, I want to walk through, like, the situation where I pulled Soren into that I feel like is unique to this process. So, so some context,
7 00:01:19.470 ⇒ 00:01:24.729 Robert Tseng: Ellie, I’ll just share my screen, so you guys can kind of follow along.
8 00:01:25.740 ⇒ 00:01:27.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so…
9 00:01:27.910 ⇒ 00:01:43.910 Robert Tseng: Ellie is a former client of ours, they kind of dropped off in December. Yeah, they were trying to get budget, things kept getting stalled in Q1, and so we’ve gone back and forth a few proposals. So I’m kind of going in here, like, I’ve… I have a scope of work, I’ve pitched them on this already, this is the last thing that was set in February.
10 00:01:43.910 ⇒ 00:01:52.890 Robert Tseng: still got stuck, you know, trying to get, like, a, you know, something around a 12K to $15K a month deal over the line. I feel like they’re gonna push it over, but there’s just delays.
11 00:01:53.170 ⇒ 00:02:03.540 Robert Tseng: That said, we did set up some work for them, and something breaks, and so they send a follow-up message, and they’re like, hey, I got something urgent. And, like, they’re like, please, like, please help.
12 00:02:03.780 ⇒ 00:02:16.020 Robert Tseng: And I’m like, okay, well, then we just gotta set up something hourly. And so, yeah, like, they signed the contract last night, Zoram’s jumping into it, and it’s an opportunity for me to, one.
13 00:02:16.060 ⇒ 00:02:22.859 Robert Tseng: Basically, pull the person responsible for this client previously to go back in and solve a quick problem.
14 00:02:22.860 ⇒ 00:02:40.509 Robert Tseng: It’s an easy win. I get to bill at, like, 1.5x the rate that we were at before. I’m charging him, like, $300 an hour for this. And I… that means I get to offer spot bonuses to you guys. So, basically what Zoran is getting is, like, he’s just getting…
15 00:02:40.630 ⇒ 00:02:53.689 Robert Tseng: maybe you have to work a little more this week, but you get to go and solve, like, a quick problem, and use a little bit of time to, like, do a little bit of discovery to help me, like, get whatever else I need to push this deal over the line.
16 00:02:53.970 ⇒ 00:03:04.250 Robert Tseng: So I expect this to be, just, you know, should be short, probably less than 5 hours for… for Zoran, but, like, I do want you to take a little bit of your time, and so I want… we’re gonna… I’ll chat with you on Slack about this, but…
17 00:03:04.330 ⇒ 00:03:13.920 Robert Tseng: I think you already found the root cause of the problem, it’s very easy for you to solve, but take a little bit more time, and I want to re-go through the scope with you that I’m trying to push with them.
18 00:03:13.920 ⇒ 00:03:25.149 Robert Tseng: And I want you to just kind of spend a little bit of time poking around anything else that you feel like could help me, deal with some of the risks and the objections that I’ve gotten so far to get this deal over the line. So,
19 00:03:25.450 ⇒ 00:03:29.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, does that kind of make sense? Any questions on kind of how that… how that scenario played out?
20 00:03:32.900 ⇒ 00:03:51.699 Robert Tseng: No, okay, yeah, so I think, like, two learnings there for me. One is, like, if we get stuck on a deal, and there’s an opportunity, especially for an old client, if there’s an opportunity to jump back in and do something urgent for them, like, I want to be able to pull you guys back in. So I’m thinking about, like, other old clients that you guys aren’t on anymore. I mean, it’s just…
21 00:03:51.860 ⇒ 00:03:56.640 Robert Tseng: it removed the emotions from it, but one day, Lilo calls me and is like, hey, like.
22 00:03:56.760 ⇒ 00:04:00.079 Robert Tseng: Shit, we… we messed up, everything’s broken.
23 00:04:00.180 ⇒ 00:04:21.749 Robert Tseng: I want to… I want to tell them, alright, 300 an hour, bring up back in is gonna solve a couple things, and, you know, if… in this scenario… I’m just planning it out, right? So, like, that’s… that’s what I’m trying to say. So, none of these old clients that you guys worked on is… is lost. These are dead deals. Like, we’ve built something for them that’s hard for them to maintain. And so, I want to be able to, like, leverage you guys to
24 00:04:21.750 ⇒ 00:04:29.279 Robert Tseng: basically go back in on a quick fix, plus also, like, doing, like, a little bit more discovery if we’re trying to get another deal over the line. So…
25 00:04:29.280 ⇒ 00:04:37.349 Robert Tseng: I just wanted to kind of share that as an example scenario for, like, how I’m trying to get us back into LE as fast as I can. So,
26 00:04:37.590 ⇒ 00:04:40.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Any questions on… on that?
27 00:04:41.680 ⇒ 00:04:46.049 Pranav: In this situation, did they reach out to you, or did they reach out to Zoran?
28 00:04:46.790 ⇒ 00:04:55.080 Robert Tseng: Well, I mean, before they reached out to Zora, but I’m… I’m really, like, the CSO on that client, so then they… I call Allison every month, so she just reached out to me.
29 00:04:55.560 ⇒ 00:04:56.240 Pranav: Okay.
30 00:04:56.240 ⇒ 00:04:57.419 Robert Tseng: I pulled to our backend.
31 00:04:57.600 ⇒ 00:04:58.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
32 00:04:58.130 ⇒ 00:05:03.839 Pranav: Gotcha. Yeah, I’m thinking that would probably be more common, right? Like, reaching out to the CFO, so, okay.
33 00:05:04.080 ⇒ 00:05:04.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
34 00:05:05.780 ⇒ 00:05:08.390 Demilade Agboola: Out of curiosity, do we have any, like.
35 00:05:08.990 ⇒ 00:05:21.150 Demilade Agboola: does the sales team, like, keep in touch with previous clients? Like, even if it’s, like, on a quarterly basis, or on a, like, just on a regular cadence, to just find out what’s going on with them, and if there’s anything we can assist with?
36 00:05:21.660 ⇒ 00:05:36.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, good question. We just… we just talked to Urban Stems yesterday, so each time I caught up with them, tried to see what’s going on. We know we’re still in the channels, we see what’s breaking on the data side, but I think, yeah, they… I don’t think they’re ready to move until end of Q2, so…
37 00:05:36.690 ⇒ 00:05:50.989 Robert Tseng: I mean, we’ve been doing quarterly check-ins with past clients. I feel like we should do more frequent, so I think that’s on me. I want to call them at least once a month. So, yeah, I think kind of seeing that, you know, some of these old clients can kind of come back around.
38 00:05:50.990 ⇒ 00:05:57.210 Robert Tseng: a lot of it is a timing thing with Urban Stems, why I think it’s… it’s… it’s not go… it’s not gonna go well. I think Zach is just not…
39 00:05:57.620 ⇒ 00:06:07.429 Robert Tseng: he’s thinking about what else we can do. He pulls up a budget, and he’s like, oh, can you help me trim this, like, this tech budget? They spend, like, about, like, $120K a year on…
40 00:06:07.950 ⇒ 00:06:12.120 Robert Tseng: on, on BI, like, business intelligence, and I’m like.
41 00:06:12.170 ⇒ 00:06:18.589 Robert Tseng: well, we’re not gonna go into a contract, you just cut that by 20%, like, I don’t know how much you’d be paying us for that.
42 00:06:18.590 ⇒ 00:06:23.709 Robert Tseng: He’s saying, oh yeah, PolyTomnic’s too expensive, they want to, like, shrink the number of looker seats, like…
43 00:06:23.710 ⇒ 00:06:40.610 Robert Tseng: I mean, it’s just… I just think he’s thinking about this entirely wrong. We want to be closer to revenue, not be, like, kind of viewed as, like, a cost-cutting, like, thing. Like, there’s just… there’s just no money to be made. The map doesn’t check out. If we’re only going to be saving 20K for them, like, how can we build them, you know, a reasonable amount for us to actually work with them?
44 00:06:40.610 ⇒ 00:06:52.599 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think, like, in that scenario, Zach is just… I feel like he’s not really thinking about us as, like, in the way that we want him to, which is definitely on us. Like, we have to be kind
45 00:06:52.600 ⇒ 00:07:09.609 Robert Tseng: kind of pushing, like, what projects should he be thinking about? So, on Urban STEM specifically, I asked him to get me in front of, like, their, like, head of growth, head of marketing kind of person, because I think that Zach just doesn’t… that’s not his responsibility. He just manages the tech, and he’s just…
46 00:07:09.610 ⇒ 00:07:17.749 Robert Tseng: Kind of doing cost-cutting in the company, and that’s just not gonna be, like, where our long-term relationship with them is gonna go.
47 00:07:19.070 ⇒ 00:07:20.520 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, that’s fair, that’s fair.
48 00:07:20.860 ⇒ 00:07:21.420 Robert Tseng: gap.
49 00:07:21.990 ⇒ 00:07:24.050 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
50 00:07:24.050 ⇒ 00:07:42.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think another… another good news, like, I think AMBLE… work on AMBLE’s going well. I feel confident that they’re gonna renew, and so Awash, like, even as you’re working through Eden and, you know, doing this handout from Eden OS to… I think that’s another service line, being able to do, like, custom data stack build-out from… from,
51 00:07:42.750 ⇒ 00:07:48.180 Robert Tseng: like, I want to… I’m going to Basque’s office next week, and I want to be able to
52 00:07:48.180 ⇒ 00:08:06.590 Robert Tseng: I’m not gonna tell them that we’re helping people move off fast, but there’s, like, other… there’s, like, a few other things that, like, I think we can do with their existing customers. Like, I mean, I think the Anvil project’s been going very smoothly. It’s just, like, an easier eat-in, and, I mean, there’s, like, quite a few more of those. So, I… I think, like, you know, as you’re working through it.
53 00:08:06.660 ⇒ 00:08:15.079 Robert Tseng: I mean, I think, obviously, first, just to get the job done, but I’ll probably come back to you, and I want to build out, kind of, that,
54 00:08:15.640 ⇒ 00:08:25.409 Robert Tseng: basically, like, a service line for, custom software build-out for health… for health companies, plus, like, the data stack that goes into it. So,
55 00:08:25.610 ⇒ 00:08:28.540 Robert Tseng: I mean, it’s all kind of connected, like, I’m trying to, like.
56 00:08:28.540 ⇒ 00:08:51.380 Robert Tseng: pick pieces from everything that you guys are doing well, and I’m trying to go back, go to market with that. So, I think it’s been easier to do that with Zoron’s work, because it’s, like, very tight, and, like, the metric that it moves is very clear. And so I want to be able to get that level of clarity for all the other work that you guys are doing, because I think that really helps me to sell things easier.
57 00:08:56.630 ⇒ 00:09:00.060 Robert Tseng: Cool. Alright, well, that’s… that’s it. Yeah.
58 00:09:00.170 ⇒ 00:09:09.990 Robert Tseng: you know, if you have any other questions, let me know. I’m just trying to keep you guys a little bit more, in the loop of, like, how I’m selling the work that you do.
59 00:09:10.980 ⇒ 00:09:11.560 Pranav: Cool.
60 00:09:12.510 ⇒ 00:09:13.809 Robert Tseng: Alright, thanks guys.
61 00:09:13.810 ⇒ 00:09:14.240 Pranav: Thanks, Robert.