Meeting Title: Account Mapping + ICP Refinement Date: 2026-04-06 Meeting participants: Fireflies.ai Notetaker Ardi, Ardi Ghasemi, Jorrel Sto. Tomas, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:05:06.960 ⇒ 00:05:07.870 Robert Tseng: Hey, Artie.
2 00:05:08.890 ⇒ 00:05:10.500 Ardi Ghasemi: What’s up, Robert? How are you, man?
3 00:05:10.500 ⇒ 00:05:11.589 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
4 00:05:11.900 ⇒ 00:05:14.089 Ardi Ghasemi: I’m good. I mean, bullshit.
5 00:05:15.250 ⇒ 00:05:17.510 Ardi Ghasemi: Let’s see you again. Did you get to…
6 00:05:18.020 ⇒ 00:05:20.929 Ardi Ghasemi: I heard Utam was in, the Bay this past week.
7 00:05:21.350 ⇒ 00:05:24.939 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, he came to New York first,
8 00:05:25.150 ⇒ 00:05:27.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he traveled a lot last week.
9 00:05:27.200 ⇒ 00:05:27.730 Ardi Ghasemi: We did.
10 00:05:27.730 ⇒ 00:05:28.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
11 00:05:29.010 ⇒ 00:05:30.039 Ardi Ghasemi: Oh, shit.
12 00:05:30.180 ⇒ 00:05:40.169 Robert Tseng: We’ve been, trying to close this deal for a long time, so… just… I should have flown him out here a month ago, but we… yeah, we did it… we did it last week.
13 00:05:40.660 ⇒ 00:05:41.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
14 00:05:42.210 ⇒ 00:05:45.360 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay, gotcha. Are you guys gonna close it up? What’s the deal with it?
15 00:05:46.000 ⇒ 00:05:59.599 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I mean, we’re… we’re kind of stuck in, like, legal kind of discussions now, so, I mean, I still think that it’s… it looks like it’ll go over the line, but it’s been delayed another week, so…
16 00:06:01.080 ⇒ 00:06:05.649 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t know if I mentioned it to you, but basically, like, my learning for Bad was,
17 00:06:05.970 ⇒ 00:06:07.010 Robert Tseng: we…
18 00:06:08.630 ⇒ 00:06:26.599 Robert Tseng: we discounted too much to get the first deal, we just wanted to get in there. I mean, it’s… I don’t know, I think that one of the big differences between services and products is that, like, it’s not as easy for us to show things out of the box, and so typically what, like, bigger clients will pay for is, like, a discovery phase.
19 00:06:26.740 ⇒ 00:06:39.460 Robert Tseng: And so that’s anywhere from, like, one to three months, and that’s just, like, for us to go in, do, like, a strategy audit, and we were pretty much just doing a flat rate for that before. So we… and…
20 00:06:39.650 ⇒ 00:06:49.329 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, like, when we… when we actually do… when we run the strategy audit, like, we start to, like, think about what resources we need.
21 00:06:49.500 ⇒ 00:06:56.149 Robert Tseng: For the longer engagement, because we’re usually trying to, like, sell into a bigger contract.
22 00:06:56.400 ⇒ 00:07:09.329 Robert Tseng: For this one, we front-loaded… we brought in more additional staff, and we’ve been front-loading a lot of the, the work up front, because they were moving faster than they had originally thought they were going to.
23 00:07:09.330 ⇒ 00:07:17.430 Robert Tseng: So we’ve… yeah, we were just, like, running this contract at a loss for, like, 2 months, expecting the deal to close in February, so…
24 00:07:17.430 ⇒ 00:07:25.910 Robert Tseng: I think, like, now… I mean, to avoid this situation again, I would… Probably priced higher.
25 00:07:26.280 ⇒ 00:07:38.049 Robert Tseng: Like, I would just do, like, a big, big discovery fee. Like, I mean, we were doing, like, 15K a month for 3 months, but I probably would have just priced it at, like, I don’t know, like, $60K up front.
26 00:07:38.340 ⇒ 00:07:53.960 Robert Tseng: 60K up front, 60K up front, and then, if they move… if they do, the full implementation with us, then we’ll take it out of their implementation fee, or something like that, just so we get the cash in sooner, and we don’t have to, like, float,
27 00:07:53.960 ⇒ 00:08:02.039 Robert Tseng: all these payments while we’re waiting for them to decide, which I feel like just kind of was a big pain for our cash flow, the past month.
28 00:08:04.960 ⇒ 00:08:08.979 Ardi Ghasemi: I bet, man. I bet. That’s interesting. I appreciate you going into that. That’s…
29 00:08:09.270 ⇒ 00:08:13.929 Ardi Ghasemi: Making me think of a million different ideas, but, good learnings, it seems like, either way.
30 00:08:14.590 ⇒ 00:08:20.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, overall good learnings. This is Jarrell here, I don’t think you’ve met him, but yeah, he’s the other guy.
31 00:08:20.640 ⇒ 00:08:21.040 Ardi Ghasemi: There’s wrong.
32 00:08:21.040 ⇒ 00:08:23.299 Robert Tseng: Selling with us the past couple weeks.
33 00:08:24.120 ⇒ 00:08:25.170 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s the majority.
34 00:08:25.290 ⇒ 00:08:26.040 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s hard to know.
35 00:08:26.040 ⇒ 00:08:27.370 Ardi Ghasemi: What’s going on, man? How are you?
36 00:08:27.370 ⇒ 00:08:29.120 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I want to make sure I pronounce your name.
37 00:08:29.120 ⇒ 00:08:30.340 Ardi Ghasemi: You nailed it, man.
38 00:08:30.340 ⇒ 00:08:32.049 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Perfect, perfect. Nice to meet you.
39 00:08:32.059 ⇒ 00:08:35.839 Ardi Ghasemi: Nice to meet you too, man. Nice to meet you, too. Alright.
40 00:08:38.279 ⇒ 00:08:39.919 Ardi Ghasemi: What’s going on, Robert?
41 00:08:39.919 ⇒ 00:08:40.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
42 00:08:40.309 ⇒ 00:08:41.699 Ardi Ghasemi: What do you want to do with this meeting?
43 00:08:41.700 ⇒ 00:08:55.629 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think with this meeting, yeah, I mean, I kind of labeled it, like, account mapping, ICP, so, yeah, I think just kind of, you know, since, since we’ve met already, we’ve kind of added a lot more sales process, so I don’t really want to talk about RevOps.
44 00:08:55.630 ⇒ 00:08:55.990 Ardi Ghasemi: and…
45 00:08:55.990 ⇒ 00:09:08.599 Robert Tseng: sales, sales ops stuff. Happy to kind of talk through some of the leads that are in progress, and I think something that I’d like to get out of this call is just having more clarity on, like, what
46 00:09:09.030 ⇒ 00:09:13.780 Robert Tseng: what else we need to do for, for, like, ICP definition,
47 00:09:14.630 ⇒ 00:09:21.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think you know that we sell pretty industry agnostic right now, and I want you to just kind of.
48 00:09:21.320 ⇒ 00:09:21.750 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
49 00:09:21.750 ⇒ 00:09:29.010 Robert Tseng: you know, I want to talk through some of the deals that are in the pipeline so you get a sense of, like, what are we actually trying to do with these folks.
50 00:09:29.010 ⇒ 00:09:43.410 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think we do want to get more focused. I don’t think we’ll do much actual account mapping on this call, like, that was more kind of an accountability thing that I do with Jarrell a couple times a week, so we can kind of skip that for now, since we already did it last week.
51 00:09:45.680 ⇒ 00:09:46.440 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay.
52 00:09:46.650 ⇒ 00:09:57.359 Ardi Ghasemi: I like it. Yeah, let’s go through some deals, and I can add comments here, and then, I can shed some more light how I like to think about ICPs, and then kind of bounce it off you guys from there.
53 00:09:57.930 ⇒ 00:09:58.920 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
54 00:09:58.920 ⇒ 00:10:07.650 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. So, I mean, this tab right here is, you know, on the left is HubSpot, on the right is kind of just, like, our knowledge base for everything related to sales, so we don’t have it, like, in a.
55 00:10:07.650 ⇒ 00:10:07.990 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay.
56 00:10:07.990 ⇒ 00:10:11.429 Robert Tseng: single-page Confluence thing you have, but we should give you access to those.
57 00:10:11.430 ⇒ 00:10:12.029 Ardi Ghasemi: That’s what I should.
58 00:10:12.030 ⇒ 00:10:15.070 Robert Tseng: point you to some of the kind of guides that we had built out. Please do.
59 00:10:16.640 ⇒ 00:10:34.749 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I mean, I think on the left, these are all the active deals that we’re kind of working through right now. So you’ll see, even, like, you know, the one where Udon flew in is here. So we have a few deals that are… yeah, these are upsells, right? So, like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so 5 out of, what, it’s like 20,
60 00:10:34.820 ⇒ 00:10:51.010 Robert Tseng: like, yeah, like, 25% of these, you know, these are just existing clients or past clients that we’re trying to, like, sell new business into. A lot of these are from referrals, so from partners, from clients, from people within the company, or really myself. And…
61 00:10:51.130 ⇒ 00:10:59.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it’s a mix of, like, you know, for elements and for Sunstone, like, these are more traditional, kind of.
62 00:10:59.440 ⇒ 00:11:12.389 Robert Tseng: what we call, like, data… I don’t know how much you know, really understand our offerings yet, but, this is, like, traditional data engineering work, where they’re trying to set up a data warehouse.
63 00:11:12.870 ⇒ 00:11:14.659 Robert Tseng: Land all of the data.
64 00:11:15.090 ⇒ 00:11:18.680 Robert Tseng: Be able to, like, have some guidance on how to govern their metrics.
65 00:11:18.690 ⇒ 00:11:36.999 Robert Tseng: And these… yeah, and so, like, that’s… that’s, like, probably our core… that’s our core work stream, like, probably over 50% of our revenue is, like, from… from deals like this, and, yeah, at this point, we have a bit of a reputation here in the industry now, so people just refer us business. I’m not, like, directly selling
66 00:11:37.210 ⇒ 00:11:38.020 Robert Tseng: What’s a…
67 00:11:39.190 ⇒ 00:11:40.000 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
68 00:11:40.710 ⇒ 00:11:41.190 Robert Tseng: Sorry.
69 00:11:42.030 ⇒ 00:11:42.960 Ardi Ghasemi: No, you’re good, man.
70 00:11:43.830 ⇒ 00:11:52.759 Ardi Ghasemi: A quick… quick question here, Robert. On these upsell ones, they’re technically customers, right? Because you’re upselling them? They’re already customers, to some degree?
71 00:11:52.760 ⇒ 00:12:04.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah, they’re already customers, or, like, some were past customers. So, like, these two are not active clients, but, we… we did sell… I mean, they were clients, like, last year.
72 00:12:06.020 ⇒ 00:12:16.720 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay, okay. I would say, I mean, just for, this is, low-hanging fruit, nothing, like, dramatic, but, I would put those, ideally, in a different pipeline.
73 00:12:16.720 ⇒ 00:12:26.389 Ardi Ghasemi: Altogether. So, again, going back to kind of, like, one of the things I mentioned at this stage right now, just to get a more clear and more granular view.
74 00:12:26.390 ⇒ 00:12:34.449 Ardi Ghasemi: of everything. I think, like, again, anything with the upsell, you have a… dude, your shit is really organized, so, I think…
75 00:12:34.450 ⇒ 00:12:48.730 Ardi Ghasemi: Putting it in a different pipeline begins to, again… later on, we could go look and see the conversions from accounts that have already signed and how they’re converting for upsell in a pipeline-like analysis versus another pipeline of new business.
76 00:12:48.730 ⇒ 00:12:59.950 Ardi Ghasemi: it’s not something that’s going to be valuable, I think, today for you guys, but it’s just good practice for, you know, 6 months down the line, you want to just get a better understanding of, hey, do our current customers upselling?
77 00:13:00.010 ⇒ 00:13:14.169 Ardi Ghasemi: I don’t know, man, we convert those twice as much, and so let’s… I don’t know, maybe that shifts us around from get our foot in the door, how… whatever it seems, because we know once we’re in, we can do better, for example. Just a small thought, small feedback there.
78 00:13:15.080 ⇒ 00:13:28.979 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no, I think… I think that’s, that’s totally fair. We, I mean, we do kind of bucket them separately, so I can do that funnel analysis on, like, existing clients. I mean, I think the conversion is higher, and I mean, I think.
79 00:13:28.980 ⇒ 00:13:29.430 Ardi Ghasemi: Dude.
80 00:13:29.430 ⇒ 00:13:30.339 Robert Tseng: Hold on, hold on.
81 00:13:30.340 ⇒ 00:13:49.250 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah, and sorry to cut you off. To your point, we, you know, you’re… I don’t want to focus too much on RevOps, frankly, from, like, the amount of changes you made, man, in just one conversation, tells me all I need to know about you. So, like, that area, luckily, on my side, you’re not struggling, you guys are not struggling with in terms of how you’re thinking about RevOps overall.
82 00:13:49.250 ⇒ 00:13:57.579 Ardi Ghasemi: So let’s do this, let’s just start jumping into deals where you feel like you’re stuck, or they’re very active in the process. I just want to see how you talk about it, and how we…
83 00:13:57.640 ⇒ 00:14:00.739 Ardi Ghasemi: Where they’re at right now, last touchpoints, all that good stuff.
84 00:14:02.190 ⇒ 00:14:20.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure. So I would say, like, maybe we could pick a couple… yeah, so, like, Deloitte and EY, I think, are interesting ones, because we’re… these are bigger deals, I mean, we’re basically trying to subcontract to them. So the EY deal’s a bit further along. We have a relationship with, a partner there, and so…
85 00:14:20.940 ⇒ 00:14:32.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think… but they just… they just move incredibly well. Whereas, like, the Deloitte is a much earlier stage. I met this person at a conference, like, two weeks ago. I’m… I’m meeting with them tomorrow, so…
86 00:14:32.560 ⇒ 00:14:46.889 Robert Tseng: I’m basically trying to, like, pattern match, like, what we did with EY and, the pitch that we gave them, and I’m trying to give a similar pitch to Deloitte. Basically, like, you know, our pitch is that we have a…
87 00:14:47.120 ⇒ 00:14:49.919 Robert Tseng: enterprise-ready, like, Claude.
88 00:14:50.140 ⇒ 00:15:05.799 Robert Tseng: code environment out… that works out of the box, that doesn’t involve them having to, give their data to, like, OpenAI or Quad. So, we have, like, a… this is more of, like, a product play. Like, we have, like, a Brainforge app that’s…
89 00:15:05.800 ⇒ 00:15:24.779 Robert Tseng: basically, like, something that could be run offline. We have all these, like, kind of built-in skills into it, and it’s, like, it’s privacy-first, it’s good for enterprises, because it… it’s a very… it’s a closed-loop system. So, yeah, I’m really just expecting to go into this call with Deloitte and do some problem discovery, understand, like.
90 00:15:24.970 ⇒ 00:15:43.800 Robert Tseng: I mean, this person is kind of a head of, like, AI and data over, like, a thousand, like, kind of people, so I’m sure she already thinks that she has her, like, roadmap figured out, but I also know some of the pains that they’re dealing with in their industry, where, they’re, like.
91 00:15:43.800 ⇒ 00:15:59.849 Robert Tseng: yeah, these consultancies are selling a lot of, like, AI strategy work, but they’re not able to land, like, big implementation deals, and because I just… yeah, so I think that’s probably where I will spend most of my time talking to her about, like.
92 00:15:59.990 ⇒ 00:16:14.399 Robert Tseng: if they… yeah, if we were… if they were to subcontract work out to us, we’d be able to move much faster than what they can do, internally. So, at least that’s… that was the pitch that we… we made to EY, and so I’m… I’m basically gonna run something similar with Deloitte.
93 00:16:16.050 ⇒ 00:16:20.230 Ardi Ghasemi: So is it, like, a secondary discovery from when you met her at the event?
94 00:16:21.230 ⇒ 00:16:25.619 Robert Tseng: I mean, the event was really just kind of… Yeah, I would say it’s just a…
95 00:16:25.620 ⇒ 00:16:44.180 Robert Tseng: I mean, the first meeting her was just kind of qualifying it, so now we’re actually doing discovery, like, we’re meeting face-to-face. I’ll show her a demo, like, I’ll try to understand kind of, like, some of the problems that she’s… that she’s thinking about more. I mean, ideally, the best outcome would be, I have a proposal that I can shoot out to her right after the call.
96 00:16:44.180 ⇒ 00:16:56.709 Robert Tseng: Ideally, there’s nobody else that I have to talk through, but I expect there’s maybe, like, another decision maker that’s not… that’s not her, that I… that I’m not… that I’m not gonna be able to meet the first time around.
97 00:16:56.880 ⇒ 00:16:57.540 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
98 00:16:58.210 ⇒ 00:17:05.130 Ardi Ghasemi: Is the proposal basically your contract, the agreement for them to sign, or is it just, like, a step before that, just like another document?
99 00:17:05.440 ⇒ 00:17:25.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, we have a few different ways, like, if I feel like the deal gets stuck, like, with EY, we moved it further along, because, like, they need us to go through a whole vendor approval process, but if we just, like, kind of sell Utom’s time, which is basically what we did, we’re basically billing UTAM’s time out, and he’s just going on as, like, an individual subcontractor.
100 00:17:25.109 ⇒ 00:17:29.729 Robert Tseng: then, like, we could get the deal through faster. So, like, there are some…
101 00:17:29.730 ⇒ 00:17:43.139 Robert Tseng: things like that, that, you know, if I talk to her and try to understand, like, timeline of if they’re excited, how fast they can move, like, I think I know what levers we can use to speed up the deal. So, rather than bringing in my whole team, if they just want to bring me in.
102 00:17:43.140 ⇒ 00:18:00.260 Robert Tseng: Then that would be faster. So, like, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, like, this is the District Attorney’s Office of New York, like, that… this is the same thing. Like, they… I’m basically a subcontractor to them. I went on site, like, two weeks ago and did, like, a…
103 00:18:00.340 ⇒ 00:18:18.369 Robert Tseng: two-hour discovery with them and just build them. And so, they’re gonna bring me on one more time, I think. I’m gonna check with them later this week. They were off on holiday. But yeah, like, this deal may start with me just being… just… just being me billing my own individual time out until I can
104 00:18:18.380 ⇒ 00:18:23.359 Robert Tseng: Until we catch up on the vendor approval side and bring the rest of the Brainforce team in.
105 00:18:25.550 ⇒ 00:18:37.290 Ardi Ghasemi: When I’m looking at these deals, and I’m not you or UTAM, how can I tell which one… which ones are subcontract work, like the ones you’re mentioning, and which ones are more product-played overall for Brainforge, and…
106 00:18:37.520 ⇒ 00:18:40.570 Ardi Ghasemi: your other services. How can I tell the difference?
107 00:18:41.070 ⇒ 00:18:47.339 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you wouldn’t be able to, like, I don’t really think we have anything here that specifies that, yeah.
108 00:18:48.580 ⇒ 00:18:51.890 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. Okay.
109 00:18:52.070 ⇒ 00:18:59.429 Ardi Ghasemi: And then, with these, can you do me a favor? Can you, on the table view, so right below in progress, could you put it in board view really quickly?
110 00:18:59.570 ⇒ 00:19:00.290 Ardi Ghasemi: If you don’t mind.
111 00:19:00.290 ⇒ 00:19:00.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
112 00:19:01.410 ⇒ 00:19:02.800 Robert Tseng: So… .
113 00:19:03.690 ⇒ 00:19:04.540 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s right under…
114 00:19:04.540 ⇒ 00:19:05.020 Robert Tseng: in progress.
115 00:19:05.020 ⇒ 00:19:05.710 Ardi Ghasemi: progress.
116 00:19:06.240 ⇒ 00:19:09.190 Ardi Ghasemi: So, right under it, you see table view.
117 00:19:09.190 ⇒ 00:19:09.900 Robert Tseng: Oh, I see, I see.
118 00:19:09.900 ⇒ 00:19:10.620 Ardi Ghasemi: It says, no, no, no.
119 00:19:10.620 ⇒ 00:19:11.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
120 00:19:11.270 ⇒ 00:19:13.910 Ardi Ghasemi: under it, there’s a tab. Yeah, go, board view.
121 00:19:13.910 ⇒ 00:19:14.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
122 00:19:14.350 ⇒ 00:19:14.990 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay.
123 00:19:15.480 ⇒ 00:19:20.179 Ardi Ghasemi: Perfect. Okay, and if you can scroll right… alright.
124 00:19:22.140 ⇒ 00:19:25.020 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay, so first, look at this.
125 00:19:25.480 ⇒ 00:19:32.389 Ardi Ghasemi: Robert, so… and then could you scroll left a little bit? Sorry, I missed the first ones. Progress Nudge, some progress creation, okay.
126 00:19:33.040 ⇒ 00:19:42.639 Ardi Ghasemi: So, just quick feedback here. Again, for me, this RevOps stuff is not the lowest hanging fruit. I want to get deeper into the calls, but we gotta make this way more simple.
127 00:19:42.760 ⇒ 00:19:58.910 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s gotta be way less stages, because it’s… it’s… there’s so many now that, like, the… it gets diluted in terms of what the gaps are, and when we’re trying to fix where things are happening or where things are dropping, the more stages you have, in just my experience.
128 00:19:58.910 ⇒ 00:20:04.780 Ardi Ghasemi: it’s… it’s harder to identify those gaps, right? So this is, again, I would just put it in the back of your mind, Robert.
129 00:20:04.780 ⇒ 00:20:16.219 Ardi Ghasemi: not tomorrow, like, oh, we need to change the stages, I don’t care about that necessarily, but I’m as… I’m looking at this with knowing very little to nothing about you guys,
130 00:20:16.450 ⇒ 00:20:19.009 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s hard to see…
131 00:20:19.170 ⇒ 00:20:33.939 Ardi Ghasemi: where the funnel is moving, and what the criteria is from one stage to another. That’s one. Two, I know this is tougher, because you just mentioned some of it is subcontract work, some of it is not. We need to define that. You don’t need to go through something crazy.
132 00:20:33.940 ⇒ 00:20:53.930 Ardi Ghasemi: If I were you, man, I would just put up one property, even, and put… you distinguish it. Subcontract work, like, or, you know, product work, I don’t know the other services you guys have. And also the amounts, right here, right? I want to be able to look at, from a sales lens, almost on a daily, weekly basis, when I look at this.
133 00:20:54.050 ⇒ 00:21:07.160 Ardi Ghasemi: I want to be able to predict or forecast as much as possible, not perfection, of what is, right now, low-hanging fruit, where when we show up on a call, and hopefully you guys have 10 on this call in a year or so.
134 00:21:07.160 ⇒ 00:21:22.100 Ardi Ghasemi: it can be very easy of saying, hey, I got, you know, $250K right now in the proposal stage, and I know when I have in the proposal stage, we typically close, you know, 28% of those. I know anything I’ve had a discovery, that moves 65% to a demo.
135 00:21:22.100 ⇒ 00:21:30.000 Ardi Ghasemi: Right? Having those conversations, I think, is not, doesn’t take skill, you just need the numbers, the visibility into it, if that makes sense.
136 00:21:31.320 ⇒ 00:21:44.759 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure, I guess, like, we can get there, like, I could swap out this filter, I could go to do MQL, SQL, early, SQL, mid, whatever, like, I could simplify that. I have the numbers of, like, what the percentages are moving to different stages.
137 00:21:45.710 ⇒ 00:21:51.030 Robert Tseng: Okay, but even if I had that, then, like, I guess what… what would you… what would you do with that?
138 00:21:51.980 ⇒ 00:22:04.349 Ardi Ghasemi: So, for me, I would… I would want to understand, like, where we are with these deals. Some of the ones, like EY and shit, like, you met them at the event, there’s not much to that. That’s pretty simple, straightforward. I met him at an event, I had one discovery call, it’s a second.
139 00:22:04.350 ⇒ 00:22:14.600 Ardi Ghasemi: I’m also thinking that that’s not gonna be a system that’s gonna scale. You guys are gonna meet people here and there. The definitions just put us in the right buckets for us to understand what you do want to scale.
140 00:22:14.600 ⇒ 00:22:19.539 Ardi Ghasemi: And that’s up to you guys, man, right? Like, if you’re telling me, Artie, we need to…
141 00:22:19.640 ⇒ 00:22:28.310 Ardi Ghasemi: scale, like, outbound, getting fresh new leads, and I want them going through only selling this product, right? I don’t want to subcontract my work.
142 00:22:28.410 ⇒ 00:22:35.560 Ardi Ghasemi: then that’s a problem to fix where it starts with the definitions, right? Like, for me, in terms of, like, what we do.
143 00:22:35.680 ⇒ 00:22:46.970 Ardi Ghasemi: I don’t know enough from here right now, right? Like, I see, in progress, disco follow-up, 10,000, the amount, it shows a 40 there, that’s great. Email 4 hours ago.
144 00:22:47.200 ⇒ 00:22:57.730 Ardi Ghasemi: I don’t know right now, and again, like, what the next step is here, right? And what that entails. And maybe you click onto the deal, you get an understanding of it, but…
145 00:22:57.810 ⇒ 00:23:15.479 Ardi Ghasemi: the typical pipeline flows we want to go through is to be just as simple as possible as far as, like, here’s where we’re at with it, here’s the barriers we have, here’s the next step. When I run my team pipelines, we have, like, 7 AEs, it’s… right now, for example, for us, we only… I only look at the deals that we have
146 00:23:15.810 ⇒ 00:23:17.670 Ardi Ghasemi: A demo completed and after.
147 00:23:17.680 ⇒ 00:23:36.390 Ardi Ghasemi: Right? Demo completed, and after, I wanna… I wanna know, basically, they’ve done the initial call, and they’ve had the demo for our process, so at this point, it’s a decision. What is the road to get to a decision? And for me, just personally, I don’t like floating proposals or contracts, so unless I get 100% verbal, I don’t do that.
148 00:23:36.590 ⇒ 00:23:48.780 Ardi Ghasemi: So, that’s just one side of it, man. The other side of it is digging deeper into this, is like, I haven’t heard any of you guys’ calls. So, I don’t know what those entail.
149 00:23:48.780 ⇒ 00:24:01.459 Ardi Ghasemi: I don’t know if you think that that’s an area where you guys could do better, then let’s attack it there, right? This as much as what you think the gap is, and where I could add. Again, from what I’m seeing here.
150 00:24:01.460 ⇒ 00:24:07.149 Ardi Ghasemi: I think you have a lot of good shit here overall, but I still, like, definitions of
151 00:24:07.510 ⇒ 00:24:16.369 Ardi Ghasemi: what takes it from a discovery call to waiting on requests? How long is it waiting on… what is that one? In progress, waiting on required materials? What is it?
152 00:24:16.740 ⇒ 00:24:23.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s just wait on requirements, like, it… yeah, you’re just like, we… we can’t just shoot a…
153 00:24:23.950 ⇒ 00:24:30.070 Robert Tseng: follow up after a discovery call all the time, because they may have an RFP process that they need us to go through.
154 00:24:30.490 ⇒ 00:24:34.020 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay, okay, understood. I just think,
155 00:24:34.060 ⇒ 00:24:45.440 Ardi Ghasemi: where what you guys are today, some of the shit I might be saying, you might be thinking, is what is gonna change for us tomorrow. And I’ll tell you, probably not much, right? But I, like, when you’re thinking of scaling it now.
156 00:24:45.440 ⇒ 00:25:00.530 Ardi Ghasemi: this is when it gets you in trouble, because when I… when I joined, like, even this last organization, similar problem, where, like, they… things looked similar to this, but now they had, you know, $4 million in ARR. That was just a disaster, so I had to spend months just cleaning out
157 00:25:00.530 ⇒ 00:25:07.559 Ardi Ghasemi: to get to baseline of, like, what is this? Because when I brought the 7 AEs, that’s when I need the system to be bulletproof.
158 00:25:07.820 ⇒ 00:25:20.479 Ardi Ghasemi: Right? And so, my scope of it right now is, like, we need to… I need to know a lot more, so sometimes I’m saying shit that’s not making sense, it’s just because I don’t know that much about you guys yet.
159 00:25:20.580 ⇒ 00:25:32.519 Ardi Ghasemi: But that’s… getting to that source of truth of, like, I need the pipelines to be accurate for me to see how these deals are flowing, and I need to get an understanding just from how they progress.
160 00:25:32.740 ⇒ 00:25:44.960 Ardi Ghasemi: And if you don’t have enough, man, I would probably question you, saying the ones you guys have closed. What does that timeline look like? All the deals you guys have closed, your best customers, in your opinion, I want to know their journey.
161 00:25:44.960 ⇒ 00:26:02.870 Ardi Ghasemi: how can we replicate that journey? Well, already, they… we met them this, they were great here, here, here, and we start to get an idea of ICPs, we start to get an idea of the ideal journey, and vice versa. You tell me, Artie, these type of people, we’ve talked to, absolute nightmare. Jarl, you tell me, when I talk to X, Y, and Z people.
162 00:26:03.230 ⇒ 00:26:13.809 Ardi Ghasemi: fucking hate them, and they’re nightmares to deal with, and these things don’t go forward. I don’t know that stuff, but that’s… that’s irrelevant, whether I know it or not. I want you guys to be able to spell that out.
163 00:26:13.870 ⇒ 00:26:18.910 Ardi Ghasemi: So you guys can see it all up there, and begin to understand just from observing.
164 00:26:18.960 ⇒ 00:26:28.479 Ardi Ghasemi: I’m like, oh, when I talk to companies that are like this, this, and that, and when I talk to people like this, this title, this office, it works out better for me.
165 00:26:28.510 ⇒ 00:26:44.709 Ardi Ghasemi: when I’m not, my calls go like this, and there’s so many branches it goes out to. It could go down to the specific calls, and I don’t know if you guys have a playbook right now in terms of your call structures, how you handle discoveries, or do those differ right now, Robert, per, like, case by case?
166 00:26:45.550 ⇒ 00:27:04.429 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, there’s general, like, spines that I work off of, but, like, a data discovery versus an AI discovery, you’re gonna go over differently. And, yeah, I mean, like, I think there are enough assets that we have, like, I… I don’t… I don’t feel like I’m gonna create more docs, like, I think people just need to.
167 00:27:04.430 ⇒ 00:27:04.970 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
168 00:27:04.970 ⇒ 00:27:11.520 Robert Tseng: jump on more calls, like, yeah, like, every… every… every deal in the pipeline right now is, like, my… is my deal currently, so, like, I…
169 00:27:11.520 ⇒ 00:27:11.890 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
170 00:27:11.890 ⇒ 00:27:20.940 Robert Tseng: I’ve talked to all these people, I know exactly where they are. I’m not planning to hand them off to anybody, like, at this point, so, like, I… yeah, I’m not… I…
171 00:27:21.400 ⇒ 00:27:30.129 Robert Tseng: Like, I could say all the things… I mean, all the next steps are already logged in the table view, but, like, I know what’s blocking all of these deals.
172 00:27:30.520 ⇒ 00:27:39.009 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. So where do you see the gaps right now in getting more of these, essentially, through? Is it all case-by-case? Do you see anything large that’s, like, just keeping you up at night?
173 00:27:39.480 ⇒ 00:27:58.250 Robert Tseng: I think it’s just filling pipeline. I think, yeah, I think that’s the main thing. Like, I think once we get to a discovery call, like, I know what our close rates are, I know how long it takes to close, like, I know what our average deal size is, like, all the pricing is pretty standardized at this point.
174 00:27:59.890 ⇒ 00:28:08.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, I just need to talk to more… well, we just, yeah, we just… we just need more… we just need more people going… going through this… through the system.
175 00:28:08.310 ⇒ 00:28:20.930 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah. Okay. So, safe to say, more focus on just filling up your initial pool, and this part is not, like, top of mind. Getting them through the pipeline overall is not a sticking point for you. It’s not, like, a barrier.
176 00:28:21.320 ⇒ 00:28:42.290 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I would say, you know, when I benchmark us against other services businesses, like, where we… our close rates are high, like, our pricing is… I mean, I… I think I know what all the comps are, and, like, I don’t really think there is, like, a… we don’t have, like, a middle… we don’t have, like, a close… we don’t think we have a closing problem, like, right now. We just…
177 00:28:42.290 ⇒ 00:28:46.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah, Mike, we… we just… we just need more… we just need more shots on goal. I think that’s… that’s all it is.
178 00:28:47.690 ⇒ 00:28:53.590 Ardi Ghasemi: Perfect, man. And Utambo’s signaling the same thing. And in terms of the top of the funnel right now.
179 00:28:53.800 ⇒ 00:29:09.559 Ardi Ghasemi: Is it, like, vary in terms of… when a lead comes in right now, does it show up on this pipeline on the very left, on the first stage? Or what’s the… what’s the journey when there’s any interest right now? Let’s assume, not from an event or someone that you and Utah met?
180 00:29:09.560 ⇒ 00:29:17.820 Ardi Ghasemi: like, from any outbound efforts, from LinkedIn or something, when a lead shows any type of interest, what does that look like on HubSpot?
181 00:29:18.480 ⇒ 00:29:27.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah, they would end up as an MQL, and once they move from an MQL, if there’s actually… if they get pre-qualified through, kind of, the qualification, like.
182 00:29:27.610 ⇒ 00:29:30.089 Robert Tseng: We have, like, an automated qualification tool.
183 00:29:30.680 ⇒ 00:29:41.969 Robert Tseng: it’s not just a tool, it’s like a process that… and whatever, like, if they end up booking… if they… if there is a real commercial, we’re basically trying to guess if there’s a real commercial opportunity. If there is to become an SQL,
184 00:29:41.970 ⇒ 00:29:59.099 Robert Tseng: And we book a call with them. And, from there, it’s pretty straightforward. They just… they get a proposal, and then they… they close. I mean, there’s, like, some nudging back and forth. Some proposals are more complicated, because they need us to go through an RFP, like, obviously, most deals get stuck in, like, disco follow-up, so, like.
185 00:29:59.400 ⇒ 00:30:17.319 Robert Tseng: you know, they express interest on the call, but then, like, the timing’s not there, or they’re not ready to commit to something, like, moving forward, because they don’t have budget, or what are all these types of reasons. So, we’re just kind of like, if we need to, we’ll put in a demo, if only if it’s, like, a big enough size deal.
186 00:30:17.320 ⇒ 00:30:35.409 Robert Tseng: And otherwise, they’re usually kind of bouncing back and forth between follow-ups and nudges until we can get to a yes or no, and then we… we move them out of the pipeline within two weeks if there’s no, like, clear answer from them. Like, yeah, so, like, we’re pinging them, like, at least twice a week.
187 00:30:35.410 ⇒ 00:30:37.539 Robert Tseng: For 14 days, until, like.
188 00:30:38.000 ⇒ 00:30:47.090 Robert Tseng: they tell us… until… if they don’t signal to us that they’re interested anymore, I just move them out. Otherwise, like, we’ll… we’ll just… we’ll just keep…
189 00:30:47.680 ⇒ 00:30:52.779 Robert Tseng: We’ll just keep nudging them until… until the deal… until there’s a proposal that… that.
190 00:30:52.780 ⇒ 00:31:01.379 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah. Do you guys have a nurturing function, too, after they exit your pipeline? Anything to nurture them? Any sequences they go through? Anything like that?
191 00:31:01.380 ⇒ 00:31:09.720 Robert Tseng: No sequences right now, but I have all the deals, they’re just kind of stuck in circleback. Okay. So, I mean, we could… we could go and, you know, once…
192 00:31:10.310 ⇒ 00:31:23.999 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we should… I mean, I think it’s just kind of willy-nilly now, like, Tom and I will go in and we’ll… we’ll hit up some people if we… if we think about them, but there’s… we’re not, like, sending automated, circle-back sequences or anything.
193 00:31:24.560 ⇒ 00:31:32.689 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay, okay. Just something to keep in mind, something you could just, I mean, you could create a workflow in, like, 10 minutes with, something that goes in your,
194 00:31:32.690 ⇒ 00:31:49.390 Ardi Ghasemi: another pipeline, as soon as it closed lost, in 14 days, it automatically… the workflow pushes it into a nurture pipeline, and then that nurture pipeline, you automatically enroll it in a sequence, and it’ll kind of send, like, a 60-day… it has to be specific, but just something to keep in mind. Yeah.
195 00:31:49.390 ⇒ 00:31:53.789 Ardi Ghasemi: In terms of top of the funnel right now, What is, like, a…
196 00:31:54.050 ⇒ 00:31:55.599 Ardi Ghasemi: How do I ask this question?
197 00:31:56.910 ⇒ 00:32:04.560 Ardi Ghasemi: how many leads are essentially… how many meetings are you having a week? Do you know that number? Is it consistent, or does it vary right now, week by week?
198 00:32:05.270 ⇒ 00:32:13.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it’s about 8 meetings per week. Our target is 12, but yeah, between Utah and I is 8, yeah.
199 00:32:13.420 ⇒ 00:32:20.550 Ardi Ghasemi: Between 8. And those 8 are predominantly inbound? Are they coming through different sources? What’s kind of the segmentation on it?
200 00:32:20.850 ⇒ 00:32:27.539 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s mostly, it’s like 60% partners, and then, 20% outbound.
201 00:32:27.540 ⇒ 00:32:28.390 Ardi Ghasemi: practices.
202 00:32:29.250 ⇒ 00:32:37.849 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, then 20% upsells. They’re, like, there’s, like, almost no inbound. Like, directly… direct inbound, just… we don’t really… we don’t really get that.
203 00:32:38.490 ⇒ 00:32:46.600 Ardi Ghasemi: That’s all good, man. In terms of the outbound, what does that look like? What are the inputs from you guys’ side when you say 20% outbound?
204 00:32:47.340 ⇒ 00:32:52.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s just, LinkedIn scheduled campaigns, so we use a tool called HeyReach.
205 00:32:53.690 ⇒ 00:32:58.709 Robert Tseng: We do lead gen off of events, and, events that are related to
206 00:32:59.710 ⇒ 00:33:04.229 Robert Tseng: our target ICP, so we have, you know.
207 00:33:04.380 ⇒ 00:33:17.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, even if we’re not going to an event, I’ll still do a targeting sequence off of that. Yeah, we’re not really doing any, like, specific… but I feel like we’ve already exhausted a lot of the lists where we just, like.
208 00:33:17.500 ⇒ 00:33:20.789 Robert Tseng: Describe the person’s title and industry and, like, hit them.
209 00:33:20.790 ⇒ 00:33:21.160 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
210 00:33:21.160 ⇒ 00:33:30.590 Robert Tseng: generic message, like, we don’t really have any of those right now, so the only, like, consistent outbound sequences we have right now are all, like, event-based, campaigns.
211 00:33:31.100 ⇒ 00:33:49.610 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. Are you right now, and Robert, sorry for my ignorance here, I’m trying to get, acclimated to you guys’ world. What is the… if I’m looking at companies, is there something I can find through online, or anything before having a full discovery that would signal pain, or that would signal that they would need you guys’ services?
212 00:33:50.880 ⇒ 00:33:58.120 Robert Tseng: I think events are typically, like, good signal, because they’re usually closer to their buying cycles.
213 00:33:58.670 ⇒ 00:34:18.349 Robert Tseng: I mean, we’ve looked at other signals, like hiring… if they’re hiring for a role that’s within our range of services, but I think we don’t really… like, the… try to pitch a hiring manager on our services, like, doesn’t really work. We’ve… we’ve only closed, like, one deal off of that in the past year. And…
214 00:34:18.610 ⇒ 00:34:21.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we look at…
215 00:34:21.630 ⇒ 00:34:26.630 Robert Tseng: Like, recent fundraise, and there’s, like.
216 00:34:27.330 ⇒ 00:34:37.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think those are really the main things that we look at. So, aside from, like, revenue, industry, like, whatever, like, the basic play table stuff.
217 00:34:38.520 ⇒ 00:34:40.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
218 00:34:40.310 ⇒ 00:34:47.629 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. Okay, that makes sense. And when you say outbound, I know you mentioned the LinkedIn. Have you guys ever had any experiments with cold calling at all?
219 00:34:48.670 ⇒ 00:34:49.110 Ardi Ghasemi: Emailing?
220 00:34:49.110 ⇒ 00:34:56.710 Robert Tseng: We’ve done cold calling, it hasn’t been on for, like, 6 months, and we also don’t really do email right now,
221 00:34:56.710 ⇒ 00:34:57.280 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
222 00:34:58.620 ⇒ 00:35:08.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I had email… I have a few email lists that I would hit, again, that are very industry-specific, but, yeah, no, LinkedIn is the only one that’s active.
223 00:35:09.790 ⇒ 00:35:10.620 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay.
224 00:35:11.780 ⇒ 00:35:28.840 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s worth considering, only because I just… I actually, reactivated… I redid a few of our sequences, to make it more call-heavy. I think just with more AI that comes about, people are getting more creative, more consistent.
225 00:35:28.840 ⇒ 00:35:35.820 Ardi Ghasemi: With their emailing, aka, my inbox, I can tell, is, like, Double compared to, like, even.
226 00:35:35.820 ⇒ 00:35:36.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, exactly.
227 00:35:36.210 ⇒ 00:35:36.860 Ardi Ghasemi: ago.
228 00:35:37.000 ⇒ 00:35:53.019 Ardi Ghasemi: So, but at the same time, you know, calling, has its… has its, pitfalls too, but nonetheless, it just creates such a more straight line to it, and people, man, the more and more there’s AI comes about, and I can tell because all the sales guys that I hire.
229 00:35:53.020 ⇒ 00:36:11.789 Ardi Ghasemi: less and less want to do calling, which just has naturally made it more of a differentiator. I mean, I didn’t think it was, but it’s just naturally becoming it. We’re running an experiment right now with it, and that’s what it is, so it’s just something to consider, I think, with, with the outbound.
230 00:36:12.030 ⇒ 00:36:24.639 Ardi Ghasemi: you guys seem like, from the very little I’ve heard from you, it’s… the quality seems pretty on point, like, you get the partner stuff, you have it pretty much set on the corner, obviously the upsell, and the LinkedIn, you’re able to manage the quality really well.
231 00:36:24.910 ⇒ 00:36:26.470 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s worth it?
232 00:36:26.620 ⇒ 00:36:35.900 Ardi Ghasemi: I would say just to try it out at some point, to do, like, a quantity play. Again, not, like, just hit up everyone on the face of the earth, it’s like,
233 00:36:36.060 ⇒ 00:36:38.169 Ardi Ghasemi: You know, running at least, like.
234 00:36:38.290 ⇒ 00:36:52.430 Ardi Ghasemi: a couple of thousand through a campaign of calling and emailing. Pretty simple, bare-bones thing, pre-AI, almost. You know, we can use AI to make those workflows, like, tight and easier and more efficient, but I think, like.
235 00:36:54.110 ⇒ 00:37:04.540 Ardi Ghasemi: if I was sitting in your chair, I would just want to see what that looks like. Like, I like to see after, for example, 1,000 calls over, like, 2 months, I love looking at just, like.
236 00:37:04.540 ⇒ 00:37:10.810 Ardi Ghasemi: what happened on those calls. Good, bad, or ugly. Like, it doesn’t matter, right? Like, it just tells me a good story of
237 00:37:10.810 ⇒ 00:37:34.599 Ardi Ghasemi: where my baseline is, and no matter what happens, you learn a lot. Like, I’ve done that test 7 different times now, at least 1,000 to 2,000 contacts. I’ve had every result you can think of, I’ve had it, right? I’ve had a result where, like, we’ve had fucking no one pick up. Like, you would not believe it. Almost no one would pick up. And it was like, okay, well then, now we don’t… you don’t need to call. We need to change our strategies for not working. I’ve had it where
238 00:37:34.650 ⇒ 00:37:53.850 Ardi Ghasemi: people have answered and then told us to F off. You know, like, insane amounts. And then sometimes you’ve, you get a good chunk of people that, you figure out certain titles and certain company sizes are answering favorably, and that’s where, like, ICP becomes just more clear.
239 00:37:54.050 ⇒ 00:37:59.010 Ardi Ghasemi: Right? And Robert, I just, I want your takeaway from this to just understand, like.
240 00:38:00.070 ⇒ 00:38:06.169 Ardi Ghasemi: my, like, getting to the ICP is not a lot of me guessing. I want the answer to surface.
241 00:38:06.430 ⇒ 00:38:22.710 Ardi Ghasemi: in everything I see in the sales side. Like, I don’t want to be the hero. I don’t want to have, like, a… take a gamble and a guess. My easiest bet, the safest at the same time, is to just let it surface on its own. So that’s why, like, if you see me being picky on this, like, RevOps shit.
242 00:38:22.920 ⇒ 00:38:33.679 Ardi Ghasemi: It’s only because the more defined I’ve been, and the more simplified I’ve gotten a pipeline, the answer just shows itself to me at some point. And if you tell me your problem right now is top of the funnel.
243 00:38:33.930 ⇒ 00:38:42.110 Ardi Ghasemi: I go through the process of elimination versus the process of, like, curation and, like, let’s have a silver bullet to see this strategy works.
244 00:38:42.180 ⇒ 00:38:52.340 Ardi Ghasemi: You guys haven’t, frankly, done any strategy for so long that you can show me a sample size of thousands of contacts that have gone through this engine, and here’s the results.
245 00:38:52.380 ⇒ 00:39:03.530 Ardi Ghasemi: All I’m saying, Robert, is let’s get to that point to run those tests, whatever the fuck it looks like. Whether it’s continuing the LinkedIn campaigns, you want to go events, you want to do outbound.
246 00:39:03.990 ⇒ 00:39:23.980 Ardi Ghasemi: I just think you guys owe it to yourselves to just run heavy there, because it seems like you just said it, man. We don’t… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you guys generally feel confident that once we get already into that demo, like, discovery, we’re good. Alright, cool. Right? If you’re struggling anywhere there, we can dig into it, but if right now you’re saying, I just need more at-bats.
247 00:39:24.350 ⇒ 00:39:33.419 Ardi Ghasemi: then we’ve got to kind of go guerrilla mode on there in terms of whatever it takes to start up those conversations, and it’s not…
248 00:39:33.680 ⇒ 00:39:53.550 Ardi Ghasemi: the lack of effort, I think it’s a little bit lack of… maybe just going… defining the experiments, and going into it without having too much assumptions of, like, with calling, man, I’ve heard it. People say they do cold calling, not you guys, but others, and I dig into it. It’s really hard, and it’s really not fun.
249 00:39:53.620 ⇒ 00:40:00.750 Ardi Ghasemi: But it’s very, very important work, and the results are… I’ve never had a result where I’ve been disappointed. I’m telling you.
250 00:40:00.750 ⇒ 00:40:20.270 Ardi Ghasemi: In any outbound efforts, so it just sucks. There’s… I’ve been an SDR, when I was in college. I’ve… I’ve trained… I’ve hired a team of, 80 SDRs out in India back in 2015. I went out there for 6 months. So, I know that world really well, and it’s ugly, but,
251 00:40:20.330 ⇒ 00:40:25.109 Ardi Ghasemi: even the SCR experiments that never worked for me, like, in terms of results.
252 00:40:25.430 ⇒ 00:40:34.800 Ardi Ghasemi: it, like, pinpointed our ICP, pinpointed our strategy, and I never had to think again, like, oh, fuck, what if we picked up the phone more, you know?
253 00:40:35.250 ⇒ 00:40:35.850 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
254 00:40:36.610 ⇒ 00:40:52.699 Robert Tseng: Okay, so let’s say we’re, like… I have a… I have a list of… I have about, like, 4,000, like, law firms that I would… I would talk to. If we were to build, like, a cold call campaign for them. I’ve hit them all via email already. I know the response rate is about 3%.
255 00:40:52.910 ⇒ 00:40:57.699 Robert Tseng: We ended up booking maybe, like, 13 calls out of… out of that list.
256 00:40:58.220 ⇒ 00:41:14.560 Robert Tseng: I could hit them again. We have a different offering at this point. Like, I think the email messaging, the experiments that we ran were, like, not very robust. This was, like, a year ago, so I feel like we could hit the same list and just probably do better, but I would also want to cold call them.
257 00:41:14.790 ⇒ 00:41:17.180 Robert Tseng: Like, what… like, what…
258 00:41:17.490 ⇒ 00:41:28.910 Robert Tseng: like, I have a sense of who the buyer is. It’s gonna be, like, a partner of a mid-sized firm, probably, like, under 100 associates, who’s interested in adopting AI for their firm.
259 00:41:29.140 ⇒ 00:41:35.779 Robert Tseng: like, I guess, how would you go about building, like, a cold call, like, campaign for that?
260 00:41:36.760 ⇒ 00:41:55.850 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah, I would just, what I like to do with that, and since you guys have HubSpots, is, run A-B testing through sequences. On the sequences, you could do, two types of sequences, I like, on there. What is one of them called? Trying to just get the name right before I tell them to you.
261 00:41:56.680 ⇒ 00:42:04.720 Ardi Ghasemi: Oh, dynamic. So, with a big list like that, I probably want to do a couple dynamic sequences, which basically.
262 00:42:04.720 ⇒ 00:42:05.050 Robert Tseng: Basically.
263 00:42:05.050 ⇒ 00:42:18.050 Ardi Ghasemi: It just works off of signals, right? I can do two clicks, or two opens, or two clicks, something like that, and then it moves it to calling. So we could do a few sequences like that. I’d probably take half of them, and I would put them through there.
264 00:42:18.080 ⇒ 00:42:31.640 Ardi Ghasemi: try to put A-B testing on the emails, and try to nail the fucking emails in terms of just getting them to be intrigued, and then see how many of those move into opens or clicks, and then I can just call those.
265 00:42:31.720 ⇒ 00:42:40.820 Ardi Ghasemi: And then a second… the second half of those, I would… what I would do, just a normal sequence, all heavy, and this way it’s not dependent on them opening or not.
266 00:42:40.900 ⇒ 00:42:55.509 Ardi Ghasemi: But the good news about a generic sequence, what I love is, like, with the templates, I can fucking test, like, 4 per stage. So, like, if you have high quantities like that, and then after, like, a week, I’ll just, like, dip the ones that are not working at all.
267 00:42:55.510 ⇒ 00:43:09.809 Ardi Ghasemi: And then the calling part, yeah, that’s where, like, half of them, I just want to get on the phone and carve out, like, 2-3 hours, just sit, block, and just fucking, do a power dialer. I used Aircall before, pretty cheap.
268 00:43:09.810 ⇒ 00:43:10.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
269 00:43:10.220 ⇒ 00:43:23.979 Ardi Ghasemi: Power dialer, rip it. And I’ve set up a short little script, obviously, you know, using AI, short little script. That’s where I would… Robert, obviously, I wouldn’t know it, depend on you to figure out, if I’m a partner, what do I care about, what are…
270 00:43:24.010 ⇒ 00:43:31.509 Ardi Ghasemi: one sentence, two sentence, to ask them, and then just see how the fuck it goes, right? With no expectations. That’s how I would do it.
271 00:43:32.010 ⇒ 00:43:32.730 Robert Tseng: Okay.
272 00:43:32.900 ⇒ 00:43:36.199 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’ll rip that before the next time we meet.
273 00:43:36.710 ⇒ 00:43:37.710 Robert Tseng: It’s easy.
274 00:43:37.710 ⇒ 00:43:43.549 Ardi Ghasemi: I love it, man, I wish I worked with more people like you. Those 13 people that did answer.
275 00:43:43.680 ⇒ 00:43:49.659 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah. What happened there? Like, when the meetings got booked? Do you have data on those? Did they move through? What happened?
276 00:43:50.080 ⇒ 00:44:03.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we jumped on calls with them. A lot of them were just, like, they were intrigued, but, like, AI back then was, like, so new, like, we didn’t really have anything to show them. Three of them we built custom discovery, like, custom demos for.
277 00:44:03.820 ⇒ 00:44:13.479 Robert Tseng: But yeah, once… I just… I also feel like the timing of the market was just too early then. So, like, I feel like I have a more compelling pitch this time, so I am… I have been trying to…
278 00:44:13.540 ⇒ 00:44:25.999 Robert Tseng: go back to that list, and yeah, so I think that would be… that would be helpful to… or, I mean, I would… I’ve been wanting to experiment on that list anyway. But yeah, I think it was that we lost all of it off of timing. Like, it was just, like.
279 00:44:26.000 ⇒ 00:44:26.540 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
280 00:44:26.810 ⇒ 00:44:44.629 Robert Tseng: They were intrigued by the demo, didn’t really see how they could plug in immediately, like, nobody wanted to really be trained to do it. Like, I think we’ve done some more work since then that, like, I feel like I could handle some of those objections better. But yeah, like, I think that was pretty much the main reason.
281 00:44:45.470 ⇒ 00:45:00.100 Ardi Ghasemi: Another thing you mentioned was sometimes after the intro, they… they basically… it doesn’t move forward because of timing, or something else. Is that, like, a very common objection you get? It’s just timing, or what do your objections look like today?
282 00:45:01.470 ⇒ 00:45:10.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I think people are like, okay, why can’t I just do this by chucking it into Cloud or ChatGPT? And it’s like, well, you haven’t done it yet, like, why haven’t you done that?
283 00:45:10.310 ⇒ 00:45:11.560 Ardi Ghasemi: And then…
284 00:45:11.560 ⇒ 00:45:22.889 Robert Tseng: They may say that they tried, or it doesn’t work for whatever reasons. I feel like because this is so new, like, the edu… a lot of these calls just become very educational.
285 00:45:22.890 ⇒ 00:45:32.960 Robert Tseng: And they don’t really, like, if they’re not getting… if they don’t get it, like, on the… on the spot, and I think we’re trying to speed up, like, the way that we could produce custom demos to, like, kind of show
286 00:45:32.960 ⇒ 00:45:45.190 Robert Tseng: show, people on a call, like, I, I, maybe that, that’ll, that’ll help as well. Like, yeah, it’s like, they’re… they’re not able to, like, kind of wrap their head around it and… and move, move forward, with, with,
287 00:45:45.190 ⇒ 00:46:01.970 Robert Tseng: the call. But I also think that we’ve built out, like, a whole discovery… discovery framework now, so if they’re not willing to buy the full thing, like, I… I can… I can sell them a few hours to just kind of do an audit. Like, I… I feel like I can… I can… I can do that better now than I did a year ago.
288 00:46:01.970 ⇒ 00:46:09.169 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I don’t know, I think… I think the… all of these assumptions, I feel like, are all pretty outdated at this point, like, I do want to test it.
289 00:46:09.710 ⇒ 00:46:10.100 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah.
290 00:46:10.100 ⇒ 00:46:11.250 Robert Tseng: Again, yeah.
291 00:46:11.790 ⇒ 00:46:26.940 Ardi Ghasemi: But just purely out of, curiosity for my end, I would love to hear a few of those, like, initial calls you do have with people, where you feel like they don’t move forward for the reasons you mentioned. I don’t know if you have recordings of them, whatever it is. I’m just curious how those go.
292 00:46:26.940 ⇒ 00:46:34.459 Ardi Ghasemi: Do you have, like, a… do you have a place where you, keep track of the objections and how you handle the objections?
293 00:46:35.320 ⇒ 00:46:47.249 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, we don’t really have, like, like, how we handle the objections. We have all the… we have a list of all the objections, like, we’ve turned them into deal stages for pretty much, like, why we lose them.
294 00:46:47.280 ⇒ 00:46:57.730 Robert Tseng: And then we have all the transcripts, so, like, if people want to know, like, what happened on a deal, they can go and listen, listen to a call, or, like, go read the transcript for one of them.
295 00:46:58.080 ⇒ 00:47:15.050 Ardi Ghasemi: I know you had, someone was supposed to send me an NDA or something. I’d love to get access to you guys’ HubSpot, just so I can, get a better understanding of some reports on the clothes lost, and why they’re going out of the pipeline to see if there’s any nuggets there.
296 00:47:15.280 ⇒ 00:47:17.839 Ardi Ghasemi: Worth attacking, but,
297 00:47:18.330 ⇒ 00:47:32.429 Ardi Ghasemi: it seems like majority of your shoes, again, getting the at-bats, so we can focus there. But, I will say some of these stuff, where it might seem tedious and the ROI might seem not tangible at the moment.
298 00:47:32.590 ⇒ 00:47:49.959 Ardi Ghasemi: I’m telling you, it’s… it’s something that, it will be a nightmare once you guys grow more, and you guys got more clients, and I don’t want you guys to be at a point… told Utam, something similar, like, I don’t want you guys to be at a point where… I mean, I’ve had to do it, you have to… we have to bring in major consultants.
299 00:47:49.960 ⇒ 00:47:52.880 Ardi Ghasemi: And implementation people to, like,
300 00:47:53.160 ⇒ 00:48:05.439 Ardi Ghasemi: you know, clean up the HubSpot, so you guys don’t… are not dealing with that pain today, because it’s still growing. But… and that’s something I don’t want you to, like, stress about. I can… those things are pretty quick fixes.
301 00:48:05.440 ⇒ 00:48:13.720 Ardi Ghasemi: Just from a scalable aspect of it, but that can be secondary. You tell me where you need the help, which you have, so…
302 00:48:14.780 ⇒ 00:48:24.500 Ardi Ghasemi: Yeah, I just want to learn more. I want to hear how the calls go, I want to see how the people are, what questions are being asked, what they’re objecting, so I can get a better understanding of you guys’ flow.
303 00:48:25.200 ⇒ 00:48:42.210 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, that sounds good. So, I’ll try to send you some… I mean, I’ll send you some calls today, and then, yeah, I’m assuming the NDA stuff is all kind of sorted out, so we can give you, like, a Brainforge, like, kind of login, so you can go in… you can basically go into our platform, you can search any calls there, and also on our HubSpot.
304 00:48:42.400 ⇒ 00:48:47.750 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, I’m gonna basically queue up this outbound campaign for the next time we meet.
305 00:48:47.890 ⇒ 00:49:00.420 Robert Tseng: Because 60% of our sales for the last quarter came from, like, partners, like, I feel like my biggest priority is on partner kind of motion… on the partner motion. But yeah, I do want to keep outbound on in the…
306 00:49:00.420 ⇒ 00:49:08.439 Robert Tseng: the LinkedIn stuff will just keep coming. We always have more events to kind of target around, so I think running this kind of phone, email, like, kind of.
307 00:49:08.440 ⇒ 00:49:09.040 Ardi Ghasemi: That’s good.
308 00:49:09.040 ⇒ 00:49:12.610 Robert Tseng: Outbound… outbound campaign could be… could be a good experiment to run.
309 00:49:12.890 ⇒ 00:49:28.019 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. Yeah, man, I mean, I’m, my attention goes to where you guys need it, where you guys feel the gaps are initially, right? And then I’ll try to tell you guys things that you might not be seeing that I’m seeing, and that’s it. Yeah. Definitely the at-bats, and then…
310 00:49:28.220 ⇒ 00:49:32.089 Ardi Ghasemi: I’m also thinking about whatever, even the 8 meetings you guys get.
311 00:49:32.260 ⇒ 00:49:47.899 Ardi Ghasemi: I want to dive in for my purposes of just… I’m curious, I want to see what happens with those 8. So, like… Yeah. And we can track that as we go now. I want to see, like, a meeting gets booked, and I just want to be there and figure out, like, where it goes, and shadow you guys, at kind of every stage.
312 00:49:49.370 ⇒ 00:49:50.880 Robert Tseng: Okay, will do.
313 00:49:51.660 ⇒ 00:49:52.350 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay?
314 00:49:53.840 ⇒ 00:49:55.819 Ardi Ghasemi: Anything else?
315 00:49:56.820 ⇒ 00:50:07.160 Robert Tseng: No, I mean, I think that’s… that’s all I have for now. Yeah, thanks for… I know I blocked off the time in case we needed a full hour, but I think this is… this is enough… enough for us to kind of…
316 00:50:07.160 ⇒ 00:50:07.699 Ardi Ghasemi: For sure, man.
317 00:50:07.700 ⇒ 00:50:08.060 Robert Tseng: the runway.
318 00:50:08.060 ⇒ 00:50:27.480 Ardi Ghasemi: And you guys tell… like I said, like, you guys tell me where, my intention is not to put my stamp on it for the sake of it, right? It just… where you guys need it, literally, that’s it, right? Yeah. And in terms of the… I’ll share more of the scope from just my brief conversations with you, Robert, and with Utam.
319 00:50:27.480 ⇒ 00:50:34.259 Ardi Ghasemi: where I think, we need to work on, but it’s up to you guys. So I’ll send that.
320 00:50:34.260 ⇒ 00:50:44.670 Ardi Ghasemi: Okay. To you and you, Tom, today, if not today, tomorrow. And you guys can just figure out, again, if we don’t need attention somewhere with stages and…
321 00:50:44.920 ⇒ 00:50:52.160 Ardi Ghasemi: then we don’t need it, right? But then some stuff I’ll kind of recommend, we look at it, even if you guys might not think it’s imminent.
322 00:50:53.960 ⇒ 00:51:13.880 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, no, I appreciate, appreciate your kind of, I mean, outside perspective. Obviously, we… we kind of just tell ourselves the same thing over and over again, so it’s, it’s good to, you know, we welcome the, the critical eye to come in and just, you know, if you, if you feel strongly about something that we should pay attention to, like, we’re… we’re all ears, and, yeah, like, nothing, nothing’s off the table.
323 00:51:14.560 ⇒ 00:51:27.359 Ardi Ghasemi: I appreciate your openness, man. It’s… I’m telling you, I wish more people were like you. I have to nudge people 8 times to send me something, so you already made some changes after 30 minutes of talking, so… you’re way ahead of the curve.
324 00:51:29.500 ⇒ 00:51:35.269 Robert Tseng: Cool. All right. Well, thanks for your time, Marty. Appreciate it. Yeah. Okay, well, I’ll send you some stuff soon.
325 00:51:35.270 ⇒ 00:51:39.489 Ardi Ghasemi: And I’ll send you some stuff, too, okay? See ya. Later, Joe. Bye.