Scale with Strive Podcast
Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast - the place where you come to listen to some of the worlds most influential leaders in the SaaS industry!
Scale with Strive Podcast
'The Art of Selling a Premium Product' with Usman Gulfaraz
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Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast, the place where you come to listen to some of the world’s most influential leaders of the SaaS industry. 🚀
I am your host, Adam Richardson and on today’s podcast, I’m excited to speak with Usman Gulfaraz!
With a strong pedigree background in the Tech Sales Space, Usman has worked for companies such as Oracle, Shape Security, Tessian and is now currently the CRO at Speechmatics, a Series B funded 'Speech to Text' AI Platform.
Some of my key takeaways from our conversation were:
💡 The challenges and sacrifices of being a top performing Sales Rep.
💡 Selling a Premium Product – the Process, Marketing and Product Development required.
💡 And of course, Usman's philosophy around hiring great Sales Reps.
Let’s Dive in!
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Watch the episode on YouTube 🎥 –https://youtu.be/tG4JBn_xIiY
Connect with Usman here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/usman-gulfaraz-4447807/
Connect with Adam here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saasheadhunter/
Learn more about Strive here - https://scalewithstrive.com/solutions/
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11:47 Keys to Success in Sales
19:57 Navigating Sales Challenges With Oracle
31:22 Positioning as a Premium Solution
41:07 Thought Leadership and Market Segmentation
50:08 Sales Process and Execution Strategies
58:13 Sales Pipeline and Product Development Strategies
1:14:37 Building Success Through Forward-Thinking
Influential Leaders in SaaS Industry
Speaker 1Welcome to the Scarewas Drive podcast , the place where you come to listen to some of the world's most influential leaders of the SaaS industry . I'm your host , adam Richardson , and on today's episode I'm pleased to speak with Usman Gulfaraz , with a strong pedigree in the tech space , usman has worked for companies such as Oracle , shape Security , tessian , and is currently Chief Revenue Officer at SpeechBattix , a Series B speech-to-text AI platform . Some of the key takeaways from today's conversation were the challenges and sacrifices of being a top performer selling a premium product and , of course , usman's philosophy around hiring great sales reps . Let's dive in , usman . Thank you very much for joining us on the Scarewas Drive podcast today . I've been really looking forward to this conversation . You've been a huge champion for Stryver over the years , whether it be as a client , the roundtable events that we've done , so it's an honour to have you on today's episode and really looking forward to the discussion that we've got planned , I suppose , for the benefit of the listeners today . It'd be great if you could introduce yourself your role a bit about SpeechBattix and what you're doing there . I'd like a bit of a short synopsis over your career just to give people a bit of a flavour for your background .
Speaker 2All right , well , great . Well , thank you , adam for having me . Ann Helen , I really appreciate the time I've become a fan of your whole team and then all the great stuff you guys have been doing at Stryver . So anything I can do to further your great cause , I'm always happy and willing , so great , to chat with you . So , with regards to me , I think the first thing that I'll probably throw most people off is the accent . I am very much here in London and I always tell folks that don't let the accent fool you . I've actually been here for a number of years . Right now I've tried , but I can't pick up the accent now . So it is what it is . But I've been here for the best part of about almost 18 , 19 years now . I moved over from California back in 2005 and I moved over with a company that I was very excited about called Cadence . Basically , I moved over at that point in time to really get a little bit of the EMEA experience under my belt , and the thing about London is that it's a very addictive place , and so my wife and I or my girlfriend at the time and my wife now and the mother of my two beautiful children we kind of instantly fell in love with the city and it became home very quickly for us . And one thing led to another and we're still here today . So London is definitely home and basically kind of my kind of career has really been a ladder of sorts within the sales arena . I started off right at the absolute base , where I started off as a business development manager or business development rep back at Oracle . That was my first real gig straight out of university and that was in San Francisco and then onwards to becoming an AE and then an AE kind of director , then a manager . What have you fast forward to where we're at now ? For the last few years I've been involved in various leadership roles with some very , very exciting companies and I've had the kind of great fortune of some great success and equally great failures and I've learned from both of them . So that's where I'm at and today , with what kind of currently the most recent , I'm with a company called Speechmatics , the fabulous company that is really continuing to be a leading figure of the rise of Brit tech . Speechmatics is pretty much the undisputed leader in autonomous speech and text transcription and translation . We're doing things that are far beyond what folks are used to and where we can talk about that a little bit later . But I've been , I've taken over as the chief revenue officer just in the last six months or so .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , so I mean in terms of like and Speechmatics then . So , yeah , you know , for the listeners you know people that are within the space or interested in the space . It'd be good to understand a little around around the business , the vision , the mission , the plan and like and what your plan is really .
Speaker 2Sure . So since I joined Speechmatics back in July and it was really kind of looking at that next role and my criteria of looking for an organization is is is pretty acute . I mean , I know what I'm looking for and fundamentally I'm at that stage in my career where I I'm only interested in working with organizations that really inspire me and I think that there's a real opportunity for growth and and and the possibility to impact the world positively in some way . Speechmatics covers all of that and then some , and I think , in the essence of what their simple motto is , it really kind of captures it all , speechmatics as a simple motto , and that is to understand every voice . That's an incredible statement to make and the nuance of the nuance meaning behind that is so kind of huge that to undertake such a kind of thinking is itself really exciting , and and so I think that's what really kind of inspired me . So Speechmatics is all about changing the concept of how we communicate , interact , and we've all seen kind of the technologies coming , you know , starting to come of age . We've all got our series and , okay , google's on this and that , and I think most folks would agree that you know the series of this world and the Google's of this world can be quite temperamental and you know you may be out in four directions to some place and you end up getting the recipe for a carbonara or something , so they have their own kind of challenges right . And so when Speechmatics approached me , when I kind of looked at what they were doing , they really kind of said well , we have , we have taken speech and we have focused entirely on accuracy and so we can do what nobody else can . We can do it better than nobody else , we can do it quicker and we can do it with a lot more ease . That was very exciting . And then what's really exciting is that it isn't about just the capabilities that they have , kind of when you and I speak . This is about taking very , very difficult accent , very difficult kind of language , with people who have challenges , whether it's on various levels , the very young , the very old . They speak very differently than us and it really does mean what they say on the tin can that we want to understand every voice . So that was very inspiring . And when I saw the technology and when I saw it , what it could do , I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of it , and so that was one aspect and then really kind of what was really the next step was for me as somebody who's been in the business and sales arena for many years , is how do I impact this positively ? Speechmatics has such a wonderful brand and , they said , fabulous customers . That really , for an organization like Speechmatics , the next step was how do we just really take this fabulous technology and fabulous company we have and start to scale it with pace right , because it was born out of Cambridge University , a lot of academics behind it and a lot of folks that are really focused on the , the actual details of the product and the product vision . You know , somebody like me could really come and add some energy to that from a business and sales standpoint . So that was the challenge I've come in and I'm very excited to kind of tell you that we are continue to grow . We've got customers all over the world . Some of the biggest , most exciting brands in the world continue to use us and we're growing in that in a big way . So I've completed my first full quarter last quarter . I'm very happy to tell you it was a strong quarter and Speechmatics is growing with great , great kind of energy and I hope everybody watches the space very closely .
Speaker 1Good stuff . Well , thanks for that . What better place to find a language recognition business than in the UK , with such a small country with all the different accents and scousers than Northern Ireland and the London ? It always fascinates me how products like that can recognize a different accent . So interested to see how the business evolves and to see your success over the coming months and years . But thanks for that , Osmond . Now I suppose , from knowing each other for quite a while now we've met multiple times From my experience of you , what I'd describe you is like the quintessential sales person , the quintessential sales leader . And so to some of your characteristics and your tracebook what is it that makes you the salesperson , the sales leader and the individual that you are today ? What is it , through your journey , that shapes who you are today ?
Speaker 2That was a very interesting question and you know , adam , it's really interesting when you're in the sales arena . It applies to everywhere , it essentially all kind of walks of life , but specifically the sales arena . From an evolutionary standpoint , one goes through a really interesting stage in their life where at the beginning , you want nothing to do but to talk about yourself and then , as you continue to grow , you want nothing to do but to talk about your team and all the kind of great success around you . So I'm at that other stage in my life , so I'm going to attempt to try to , you know , talk about me , at the risk of not making my own self-cringe , but fundamentally I think there are certain attributes that I think hold true to a commonality of people that generally strive for being the best they can be in all facets , and those attributes I hold very dear to myself and actually I apply them directly into the hiring that we do . So anybody that's ever worked with me , yourselves included , you guys all had a very , very clear remit of the kind of folks that I would want to hire . Is that a fair assumption ? Very sad , yeah , and the reason for that is because I have seen a system that I believe works , or at least it works more often than not , and I just want to apply that to every single kind of aspect . So those characteristics for me have been and we can break it down throughout my career I've been guilty of an incredible amount of things that I'm weak at , and so we could talk about all the weaknesses , but that's going to require its own podcast . But we can be happy to
Keys to Success in Sales
Speaker 2do that . But the areas that I think that really were kind of central to me are there's always been an incredible sense of passion in what I do . From day one I realized one thing I do not have the patience nor the capacity to do well in something I'm generally not interested in , and so I accepted that , and so if I was going to do something , I had to be with a sense of passion , and that's in every conversation I have . Everybody understands that I generally want to put myself out there and I'm generally excited about it . So passion has been one of the most interesting components of what I do . There's so many different kind of virtues of passion that come to play , but I've always been excited about what the possibility is and kind of getting out there and making sure that if I'm talking to one customer , I don't care if it's the one customer I'm speaking to . After speaking to 15 customers , I knew that I had to always have that same level of passion with that 15th customer as I did with that first customer . That was one of those kind of holy grail characteristics that I absolutely believe in . And to this day I do not believe in attending a meeting if I'm not absolutely passionate about it or if I'm genuinely interested . If I start to kind of wean off , I will quite literally tell people that I'm signing off because I don't want to be there , unless I'm giving it my all . So that's one aspect . I think the second aspect is again at the risk of making my own self sound a little weird is intelligence is a very important kind of component of achieving what you want to try to achieve . And I don't mean kind of intelligence like book smart intelligence and all that good stuff . I refer more to kind of cognitive insight , having kind of the ability to put yourself in other people's shoes , think about the conversation from a different perspective , understand where somebody else is coming from and know really kind of the nuance of what the possibilities are . To me that is so important . I look at people that are hired today and I always kind of think about how much self awareness do they have about the kind of conversation that's being had . So that street smart cognitive insight , you just cannot replace that right , and we'll talk about a little bit later how I believe fundamentally we've got to treat sales as a science , just like anything else , and cognitive insight , I think , forms the basis of a lot of that . So that was something that , again , I always kind of put myself into . I wanted to make sure that I understood the construct of the conversations that I was having with prospects and customers , and I wasn't just trying to shove something down their throat . Rather , I was trying to figure out always , what is it that these guys are going to need to hear or see to start breaking down some of that wall of doubt , and so I would oftentimes put that in that perspective .
Speaker 1So like a mixture of fluid intelligence and the emotional intelligence piece . So you don't have to have the most ridiculous IQ and be stupidly bulk smart , but have that fluid intelligence , the ability to problem solve , think on your feet , and then have the emotional intelligence to sort of deal with the human aspect .
Speaker 2That's absolutely right and I think that that is fundamental to what I'm saying . And oftentimes people mistake this for just kind of oh , I graduated from Stanford or Cambridge and this and that , and therefore I have this kind of capability . I think no , it's absolutely understanding the psychology of humans and understanding that at the end of the day , everybody wants to do something . They want to feel better about the work that they're doing , and so just because somebody is saying no or not interested , isn't a kind of take on salespeople and their product , and oftentimes salespeople take that very personally . To me it kind of comes back to well , I have to figure out a way to engage with this person , so the person lets the guard down . I want to understand the perspective , I want this person to know that I'm trying to find a commonality here and kind of take that . So that has been kind of a constructive part and I think that's a good way to put it . So that kind of emotional and the emotional intelligence part really kind of comes in really well after that . And I think the last thing that I would say is for me has been coachability . I cannot stress that enough . We live in an era right now where people , unfortunately , have worked for eight months , nine months , are looking for that promotion , want to get to the next role for eight , nine months and to get to that promotion , and what happens is that , very quickly , what they realize is that they've just kind of grown their career titles without necessarily growing their career experience . So for me , I always knew that because I had so many weaknesses , like we all do , I had to be ready to be coached , and so throughout my career I have found mentors that I have just sunk my nails into . Some of them know very well that they were mentors . Some of them had no idea , but for me they certainly were , and it was an important kind of way for me to kind of have a North Star from a fork that allowed me to kind of look at it , and I would look at people's attributes as to what is it that this person is doing that makes this person so successful , and I would quite literally just follow suit and kind of check on that .
Speaker 1To recap , I think what you've said in here is passion is important to believe it in the product and the business that you're working for so you can really get behind it and be engaged in the conversations that you have in to drive that business forward . That cognitive insight a nice blend of street smarts , the fluid intelligence and the emotional intelligence to be able to read situations , break problems down and offer a valid solution . And then , I think , finally , around coachability , that piece is so important in sales , particularly when you're selling complex products , complex sales cycles , complex stakeholders . I think having people with that sort of growth mindset who are willing to take on the advice and experience from other individuals and implement that is super important . So it's good to get , I suppose , your perspective on some of the things that have helped shape you to the individual that you are today . Now one of the things I wanted to talk about , and then we can move on to I suppose the focus of the conversation today was specifically around your time around Oracle . There's so many businesses are always coming to ourselves , coming to strive , asking for a specific caliber of sales rep , and there aren't many , I suppose , out there that have quite come to some of the levels of achievements that I suppose you managed to achieve at Oracle . So it'd be really good to understand a lot of it around that sort of journey and , rather than focusing purely on the positives and the successes in the winter , it'd be really good to understand , I suppose , more around the challenges and sacrifices , Because I think when it comes to being a top performer , a lot of people will talk about the success that they had , but people don't always understand what goes into that the sacrifices that you make , the challenges that you've faced and , as you refer to some of the failures that you've experienced , and ultimately how that's then led to where you are today . So it'd be good to understand a little bit around that journey and your experiences there .
Speaker 2Sure . So , specifically with Oracle , we can kind of try to talk a little bit about it . I think I will start off by saying I think it's a good framework , a frame to say rather than talking about the success , talk about
Navigating Sales Challenges With Oracle
Speaker 2the challenges . Because in my mind , from a sales standpoint , we are sometimes in a very unfair world . A lot of salespeople will use the word unfair all the time , and there's reason for that . The reason , fundamentally , is there's a reality that you can be doing everything by the book , waking up every day with a goal to really kind of set the bar high , meeting your customers' prospects , understanding the business case , raising the stakeholders , creating a closed plan , challenging them with kind of their own process and trying to keep that going . And you can be doing all the right stuff and it's still not be successful when it comes to closing the deal , because Lady Luck may play a card at the 11th hour . So I think that I always tell folks that the difference between success and failure is that in both instances , as long as you have put in the execution and the effort , that will eventually pay out .
Speaker 1And so it's not going to be one of those . It's not going to be one of those large numbers , isn't it ?
Speaker 2Always balance itself out over the course of time , always balance yourself out and I think that you're going to win some , you're going to lose some , but maintaining that discipline of execution and focus and staying true to your playbook , you will absolutely kind of come out on top in the long run and , I think , many times over . So I think with Oracle what had to happen was this was my second time at Oracle and the first . I started my career at Oracle , as I mentioned to you earlier , and then the second time around , we got acquired into Oracle . That's when you know a company is big Even if you don't want you've got to get sucked back into it . But incredible experience I was with a company called Responses . This was kind of during that era of marketing automation and where a lot of kind of the noise was around that new kind of move to customer centric marketing and what have you . So Oracle had acquired us and it was obviously very , very exciting for the whole company . But we went from being a small , a startup kind of company with a few hundred employees , I would say , to suddenly being a part of this massive oil tanker again . So there were immediate challenges , which was well , we still had to do what we did . But now we were a totally different organization , and one of the things about startup companies is the ability to be kind of nimble and quick and fast and not have a lot of red tape . That was those are the kind of core strengths , right and being able to directly engage with the CEO and the chief product officer and all that good stuff to help you get on the calls . Suddenly , you're working for a company where you'd be lucky if you even know what the boss above you is , your boss's name is , and so it's a very different kind of arena . So there was a lot of challenges as to kind of what to do over there . My kind of focus remained , though I knew one thing , and that was again one of the things that I've known all my life is I know what my strengths are and I know what my weaknesses are right , and I think that's one of the lessons that I teach a lot of folks , a lot of my sales team is understanding . Having a strong sense of self-awareness is perhaps one of the most valuable attributes for any professional , regardless of whether you're in sales or not . But knowing the parameters of what your strength is and what your weakness is because if you know that , you know where to double down on and you know where to kind of pull back from . So I took that into my career , into my time at Oracle the second time around and it was okay , what are my strengths and what are my weaknesses ? Right , I knew that I had the capabilities to engage customers and to my communication kind of capacity to engage in the find that sense of commonality was strong and I knew that I was a lot more kind of impressionable when it was face to face or when it was in person . So those are all attributes I knew and I knew that there was kind of kind of some core areas of of strength that I had there . There were areas of weakness that I had . My areas of weakness was I wasn't the kind of person that like to send a lot of emails and a lot of data down to people and have them start thinking about things through a bunch of kind of various white papers and data , all that kind of stuff . Because I just thought that for me it started to , it started to take away from where I thought I could really make an impact and I think and I just felt like I wasn't giving it . I didn't know how to give it that sense of clear importance that it clearly did it . I'm not saying it doesn't work , I'm just saying for me that wasn't an area that I wasn't specially kind of strong on , and so I knew that and I'll tell you a little secret here right now . That formed the foundation of my career up until today . One of my mentors , the very first job I ever had out of college , when I was at Oracle . The first time I was absolutely blown away by this person . He was a tenured sales executive , meaning that he's been . He was at the company for many years , he did so well but he didn't want to manage anybody , just want to be a sales person . So he was a very , very senior person , without managing anybody , but just a sales person , and I was just absolutely like a mouth to flame , just completely in all with his opera or the way that he did his , run his business . And then I sat down and said , how is it ? You know what I just need to know , like what is the best thing I could do to make an impression in a meeting when I meet prospects ? And I kept on . You know I said look , I mean , is it going in more prepared ? Anybody , is it , you know , having all the kind of content ready to go ? Is it ? Is it going to be a good idea to have a meeting with a sales person ? And I said I don't know what you mean . He said make the meeting that you have with that person just the most fun meeting you have that day . And I said I don't know what you mean . Does that mean make my content the most fun to it ? Does that mean make make the pitch ? They said no , just make that meeting the most fun that he's had . He or she's had that day . And and I kind of took that and I didn't say what it meant , but I took it and I took it to such a different part that I tell you right now that that is probably the strongest ace card that I have in my playbook and it's held , it's it's been truly me to that day and I understood what he meant and the ethos and this is what I did a fast forward to what come to Oracle today . My thinking was very simple and it is kind of the thinking was that look these guys . So you're going to be meeting . You know these folks , men and women , are going to be meeting . They have they meet with vendors all the time , and if you can do something to make that first meeting just a little bit more enjoyable , a little bit more fun , a little bit more memorable than any of the other meetings say , they've had that date , that shirt , door in all . Your goal with the first meeting , just to get the second meeting that . It stuck with me throughout my career and , like I said , it's a foundational part of my focus today . So when I was at Oracle , I had taken on a region that I had very little exposure and it was kind of the emerging markets , the Middle East and this and that , and nobody wanted that region . They had to touch it with a 10 foot pole because everybody was selling into , you know , london and Europe and whatnot . And so that was my thinking , was if I'm going to get out there , I'm going to have to get out there for a week at a time and of course , here in the BS , welcome , with different regions . But I'm going to make these meetings just focused on making it absolutely engaging and fun and I'm going to let them know who I am as a person and how interested I'm doing that and and that was my entire ethos my ethos was get out there and make the meetings the most interesting news we can have . As soon as I did that , I knew I learned very quickly that people will take a call . They like you , if they enjoy having a conversation with you and and then you have all the time in the world to do your pitch and get them to listen to you afterwards if you've earned the right to let them hear you out . You don't . You know you can do that continuously and it doesn't have to be on that first call . So that was kind of my kind of what would really kind of . That was the first aspect of what I did . The second aspect of it was I created a reverse plan for what I wanted to do . Really kind of selfishly , I thought about one of the most important things to me and I was at that you know those four million years in my life where I needed to make a lot of money , at least a lot of money to what . You know what was a lot of money to me . So I created a reverse plan . To this day , my entire team if you talk to anybody on my teams they do reverse plans . Okay , what is the target that you got to get to right and let's do a reverse plan at the start of the year as to how you're going to get there . So in the , in our kickoff , like that , you know we do that . Now this is what I did , that I said , if I need to get to 200% of my number because I want to make X amount of commission , so that's the path for me to get there . What are those 10 accounts ? What are those 12 accounts that are going to help me get there ? Because these 1012 accounts I'm going to get absolutely sunk knee deep into . I'm going to research these people . I need to know these accounts better than the account customers themselves and I want to do that . And then I want to start kind of building out that . So I had a kind of a game plan from day one that this is what I was going to do . I had a game plan . You know , a lot of the words kind of fall out , a lot of the words come in , but I knew that I always had to have that reverse plan and so those two things , with the kind of characteristics that we've already talked about , kind of the coach ability and passion , really led to having some of the best people in the world for a while and I think with all good sales people , with all people , it feels like what snowball starts it kind of rules on its own and luck starts to come in your way .
Speaker 1It's a really interesting point you raised around making the meeting fun , and I think , yeah , you alluded to . I think it's about being memorable , following a good process , making sure that you're making the best use of the individual's time , but yet coming away from that meeting and leaving a lasting impression . I think if you're a prospect and you've been contacted multiple times each day by different stakeholders , people constantly selling to you , who's the person that you're going to , you know pick up the phone to when you , when you have that need or there is a demand for that specific product within within your business , is is the salesperson that you remember . So I think you know being authentic and driving value , but also , yeah , like making it fun first and leaving a lasting impression is definitely something that I would . I would I definitely echo that point as well . So , which you know , moves
Positioning as a Premium Solution
Speaker 1us on to . So we suppose that the focal part of the conversation which I wanted to have to with you today was was around positioning your products as a premium solution , and we've spoke about this before , and particularly with them . You know what you do in our speech mathematics and I'd love to get your insight and you know for the listeners out there , who , who are , you know , selling a premium product , or who aren't selling a product , and about some of the sort of key learnings and advice that you give around positioning that and selling it . So I suppose to start the discussion on this but how , how ? How would you define a premium product ? Like ? What is it that that would position your products as something premium ?
Speaker 2So that was an interesting question . I understand the context of the question . It's the word premium that kind of throws you off because we would take a step back . Nobody really assumes that their product isn't a premium , right ? If you're less , you know that your business is in the copycat kind of hey , we're just going to create a much cheaper version that we're going to take whatever customers are happy to do that . But that's not the business that's exciting , or that's not the business that most of us that are in tech it's aspire to be a part of . So , that said , when you join an organization that is a startup or is a successful large public company or what have you , there's a lot of hard effort that's been put behind this and people put a lot of sweat and tears . And if you're a startup and raising that kind of money to get this , you do it because you believe in the product and you believe in the supremacy of that product and that space and you put your heart into it . And so to that extent , I think that every aspect of a product has the company has that aspect of wanting to be looked at as a premium product . I think the question I would rather say is , rather than what's the premium product , because a premium product on its own doesn't make the company necessarily grow . Just because it's a better product , I would say what is the premium experience of engaging with a customer ? So I'll tell you there's an old 80s or early 90s movie made for TV movie , called Pirates of Silicon Valley . Your viewers may or may not remember it , I'm probably aging myself here , but it's a really bad movie . But it was all about the rise of Apple , rise and fall of Apple and Microsoft and whatnot . And there was a very famous slide and I may be getting it wrong a little bit , but folks who know me know I always tell this one little story . But there's a very famous slide in that . And if you know the story of Apple , before Apple's meteoric rise , again they were almost bankrupt , they're about to collapse and Steve Jobs was in a really dark place . Everything was about to kind of collapse on him . He had to leave and Microsoft was kind of taken off and just really kind of climbing the ranks . And there's a lot of history there between the two of them and Steve Jobs prided on having the better product and what have you . And of course Microsoft was about getting it out as quick as possible and streamlining it and making it user friendly , and all that . So , when there was an absolute collapse , apple and Microsoft was going , steve Jobs and Bill Gates had met and in that one scene Steve Jobs was just looking out , I guess towards the window , and Bill Gates was walking . They were about to say bye and it was pretty clear that Steve Jobs was over after that , and while Bill Gates was walking out , steve Jobs said you know , we're better than you , right ? And Bill Gates paused and he said something to the likes of that's your problem , steve . No one cares , right ? And he just walked out . That has haunted me for ever since . I've seen that and what that has always told me is just having the best product on its own means very little , right . What is it that do with this product ? How am I going to change the experience for my customers ? Why is the overall experience of engaging with us going to be what's so important ? And that is , of course , when you look at all the great companies , you think about the experience now . So for me , what really defines a premium product , and what I hold very near and dear to my team , to the organization I work with is I said look , our job is to create the best product of value proposition as to why we are fundamentally an important part of the customer's business and how we understand their business and the kind of the pros and cons of what they're doing and how we position ourselves as experts that will fundamentally impact their business for the positive right . Our product is a means to a net . It's how we solve that problem for our customers . So to me , the most important thing about the company that prides itself on being the leader of the pack is that they are able to articulate with absolute kind of strength and precision the problem that they're going to solve and the problem they're going to solve better than anybody else . The understanding that they have and the fact that they can tell you what's around the corner just that few months earlier than anybody else . It's that experience that ultimately leads to a customer , in my opinion , wanted to have that product . That's what my goal is with Speech Maddox and it's what it's been with every organization I work with .
Speaker 1So just to like bring that down . What you're saying is it's not all just down to purely around the technology , it's the whole experience from every engagement , every piece of marketing the product , the sales rep that they deal with , the leadership that they're on board in the whole experience and the value that the product drives is you're not just a premium product . It's got to be all of that and you need to nail all aspects of that to be that sort of leader of the pack which I'd like to like break that down . And so you talked about being able to articulate with absolute clarity around the value . What about from , like , a marketing and a brand perspective ? So you know , if I'm a founder or I'm a sales leader now trying to influence this within the business , what are the kind of what's the advice that you'd be given in terms of , like , your marketing and brand and how you position in yourself in the marketplace to be that premium experience business or that premium solution ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so you know it's interesting because , from a marketing standpoint , marketing itself is such a vast spectrum of effort . Both there's marketing in terms of brand marketing , obviously that there's product marketing , that there's . How do we drive lead generation ? There's so many different kind of components of it and so obviously , you know , there's different kind of detail that is applicable to each one of them . But when it comes to the face of the company that we want to represent , in my opinion it's always been to me the most important thing about a custom , about a premium experience , is you want to give the impression that you are somebody that can hold somebody's hand and lead them to what is happening . You want to be that person that everybody looks to for direction , that , hey , these people know what's going to happen in the next six months . They know what trend is going , they know where the industry , they are industry thought leaders , right , and that's what we pay a premium for , right , we pay a premium . The reason why we know all of us know that there's a new iPhone or a new Android phone coming out in September , october . We're all waiting patiently to know what that next level of product set in the phones are going to look like , or functionalities and features . And so the reason why a lot of people will never leave these Apple or these folks is because they are thought leaders and people just trust in them that they are going to guide them into what the future looks like . And so it is an absolute kind of it is . You know , it's a fallacy to assume that every company in its own right can have that same kind of mindset . And so for us , it's very for us , we , as speechmatics , we say look , we want to be well-regarded as the thought leaders that we are . Our engineers are focusing on not solving the problems of today . They're focused on what are the problems that are going to emerge after what we've already solved today , and what does that journey look like ? And what , once we understand every voice well , what can we do with that ? You know , what is the power potential of now that Adam and I can speak to four different people who speak four different languages , and we can communicate with absolute efficiency and real accuracy ? What's that next level of power ? For example , what we are doing at Speechmatics is all we're talking about speech intelligence , which is now that we have the accurate understanding of it . Let's talk about the power of how we can create some generative AI on the back
Thought Leadership and Market Segmentation
Speaker 2of that . Summarize what the conversation you've had . Talk about the key themes , talk about what was you know ? Was this conversation done with a positive sense ? At what point did it start getting a negative tone ? All these kind of really exciting , creative things that you can start doing things with . So to me , I think that's what it comes back down to as a marketing . From a marketing standpoint , organization really needs to say what is the best way we can show that we are thought leaders in the space . If you are shown as thought leaders , people will look to you as thought leaders , and I think that is the kind of real goal for my standpoint .
Speaker 1Yeah , I suppose in terms of the importance of positioning yourself , and becoming a thought leader in the space is one way to then , you know , position yourself as that premium solution and provide that premium experience . So suppose the other side of the coin is around identifying the right customers who have the needs . So I'd love to understand a little bit around your philosophies for , like market segmentation and finding and defining ICPs when it comes to going to market with a premium solution . So talk to me a little bit about that .
Speaker 2Yeah , absolutely . Look , thought leadership is a critical component of what you need in terms of the mindset of impression the US organization want to give out to the world , and that is regardless of whether somebody is a in your ICP or not , it's your ideal target . That impression remains and I think that that is an important kind of aspect to delineate the two . Now , having said that , the kind of the details of how we go about achieving success and growth is is very detailed , it's very meticulous and there's a lot of science , like I said , that goes kind of into it . And kind of the last couple of leadership roles that I've had have really thrown me into the ocean , so to speak , with having to learn very quickly what works and what doesn't , trying a lot of things , failing a lot of things , finding paths forward . And I think you know , with both post oracle kind of the two leadership roles that I think really helped me kind of create that sense was my time at Shape Security , which an incredible journey , something where I learned so much and what I was capable of doing , strengths , weaknesses , what I what just wasn't working , but again , very fortunate enough at the end of the day to achieve and be part of a very exciting acquisition by a five and I met Tessie and after that , where I was able to really apply from day one really kind of the details of what I believe really became foundational to the best chances of us securing success . And we achieved some great success at testing , where I read the organization there , which again very fortunately led to a very recent acquisition by proofpoint . And kind of coming to that question for us , understanding where we fit in the landscape of the market is is incredibly important . So one of the first things that I did when I joined speech Maddox is quite literally , you know took a step back and said I need to understand how we position ourselves . What is our ICP ? What does our ICP look like today ? Why is that our ICP ? Challenging the notion of what an ICP is and that understanding what that spectrum looks like and how do we build ourselves to have the most chances for success . So you know , when you think about ICP and market segmentation and you think about a startup , well , the real , by definition , the ideal customer profile , should be evolving eventually . Right , if you make custom organization , you may have a speciality in a certain space , but if you're an organization that wants to continue to grow . By definition , so too should your ICP . So I believe that we should be constantly testing our ICP , not every day , obviously , because we've got to set territories and plants , but certainly every year . We have to really look hard at where we are with ICP , what success we had , what are we ? You know , what new territories and regions and verticals can we flirt with us to bring into ICP ? So for me , I look at that , I look at what our business use cases are and I break it down into , you know , some very logic oriented structure . I think about what is the lowest hanging fruit of where we know as an organization that with minimum effort , we can kind of go in there and get some early success , and so I'm going to create a bucket of that . The next one is what is that ? The , you know the real engine , so to speak , where the core of your customers lie , and it's more of a cash cow where , if you kind of keep putting time and effort in into this specific arena of target market , and so you know , you're bound to get success . And there'll be quite a bit of volumetric based success , whether the deals are , you know , very sizes or not . But again , a very , very important component because it kind of forms a basis of it . And then I create , and then we say , what are our kind of strategic oil tanker deals that we were strategic customers that we believe we have to fundamentally find a market fit for ? And that's kind of how I have always kind of thought about ICP . And so what we've done is we've done . We've taken a look at where we , where we know there's a natural landing spot for our technology and kind of our vision , and we've created that kind of spectrum of the lowest hanging fruit , middle kind of cash cow market , so to speak . And then are the volumetric size , and then we've got our strategic deals are pipeline , where we're saying , look , we may or may not necessarily be a fit , we're not going to be able to do that directly , but these are such big organizations that if there is , it's important for us to become engaged with them in the capacity . And so we've got to find market fit Right . And so it's a bit of a push and pull . And so that's what we've done . We've we spent a lot of time on it , we went through it in great detail , we've highlighted it , we've done we put a lot of logic into our planning to make sure every rep now gets exactly the same level of each one of those things , if that's what their kind of role is . If you're an enterprise rep , of course you would get that . If you're a commercial rep , you would get more focus on the area . But I wanted there to be an element of all that and you know we I think we've spent a lot of time and energy on it . Once we do that , our goal , that is just to continuously focus on new use cases , new compelling stories , doubling down on case studies , making sure that we can talk to the , the ICP space with complete comfort . And we need to be able to talk about it from a futuristic standpoint , not just oh well , hey , you , you're in broadcasting , you know you need speech , right , that's just not what we're talking about . What we're talking about is what , what is it that the broadcasting arena is looking to do ? How are they evolving and how do we start kind of tying ourselves ? So I believe that we have a capacity as an organization . I believe most you know folks have a capacity to really scale when they can connect with their ICP and look to achieve or look to kind of be a match for the , the goals that the ICP customers have for what they want to do in the future , and that , hey , we can align with you , and so that's what we're doing very heavily at Speechmatics .
Speaker 1Yeah , okay , now that that that makes sense , and I suppose you've talked to there around your process of breaking down ICPs into different categories . You know low hanging fruit , where can we get some quick wins ? You call business , which is going to make up a large percentage of the revenue , and then you know your , your more strategic accounts , which may be a more of a longer term play . How does that translate into like sales process then ? So you know with them , when , again going back to that premium solution , that and that experience , how does that translate into the actual process you know versus you know , at more of a high , high volume transactional sale , versus that premium , premium solution , premium experience that you refer into , yeah , how does that translate into sales process ?
Speaker 2So everybody prays to their God of choice every Sunday . No , we're definitely putting a lot of discipline
Sales Process and Execution Strategies
Speaker 2into process . Like anybody that knows me knows , I run a great tight ship right now on what I on execution , and it's kind of come from years , like I said , of of learning it and not having it . I'll admit that there were many years of my life where I thought I could wing it because I had some great success and that's cliche as it sounds and it's a cliche statement , I'll say it again even a broken clock will tell the right time twice in a day , and so to be your kind of skill set on the back of those two incorrect times is just is something that we we need . We need to find force ourselves to not to do so . I've learned over the years to run a very tight ship , and what that means is there is a lot , there's a huge amount of data science into everything that I do and how I run it . So I guess the first and foremost thing is I have a very tight relationship with rev ops right because I they they found they form a foundational basis of all the kind of things that I want to execute , so that we can kind of witness the growth or lack of , and then go in and quickly pull the levers . So when you talk about process we have my first goal is to make sure everybody understands , especially when you're a growing company . This is more global to growing companies and startups , and not not so much larger companies , because they've got this methodology well in place , but startup organizations , depending on where you are . If you're a series a , post series B , post series C , there are different things that matter for you . Where we are right now , which is a post series B , raise a decent amount of cash , want to get to that scale up mode , get into that point where we're now truly being able to scale across . For us , what's very important is structured process and getting to a predictable growth model right , and we're not the discipline of having a single source of the truth . Anybody who's been in startup knows exactly what I'm talking about and what that means is you know it really uncomfortable job of getting rid of those three spreadsheets that sit around somewhere in one kind of teams or slack red that has a different data set than what you have in Salesforce . I might have a different data than what you have in Clary or outreach or what have you . The very first thing was getting rid of all right and making sure that we force ourselves as an organization to get in tune with whatever technology we happen to be using , whether , In the case of you know , sales , for the case of speech Maddox , today it's outreach with Salesforce and kind of . Those are the kind of core tools and I wanted to make sure that we all are focused on building data that is a single source based on that particular models . I got rid of all the spreadsheets . The second aspect is making sure , once we've identified I CP , we've got a clear understanding of what our target is . We've gone through the difficult process of doing the territory planning and alignment , we've done all that analysis , we've got our comp plans , all that sorted and we're ready to roll out . Now comes the process of making sure that we have a good way to ensure that the team is actually following suit on all of the kind of goals that we're trying to reach is set out . So what that means is , at the start of every week , I do something that I'm a huge fan of and I called my weekly objectives call and I'm on that call with everybody and and this is not to be mistaken . For example , like a forecast call , it is just a weekly objectives call where I look at what is that ? Every single rep has two minutes maximum and all they're doing and we've got a really diligent spreadsheet that talks about what was the week before , what it is now , and they're just going to go through and say these are my core objectives for the week . And you know , with this customer it's to agree on a commercial . This customer is to agree on T's and C's with this customer is to just to find the stakeholder this . And then there's , you know , yes , no , this and that , and did I achieve it ? And then we have this is how many self generated leads I'm looking to do , self generate a self accepted opportunities . So they start off with that . This is my goal , right or sorry . What they'll start off and we can objectives is this is what was last week and you know , quickly go and say I did achieve this or I did . I'm not challenging , not asking , but what I want people to do is be aware that they are really running their own process and I don't want to micromanage . I just want to know what your core focus and your energies on and we'll see what your objectives are , and so people are pretty self explanatory . So people tell you this is what I'm focused on for this week and I just listened to it , I'm okay , that's fine . And you can tell really quickly the people that have you know it's not rocket science people that have got a lot of focus and a lot of goals , that the Kremachy are typically the ones that end up achieving great results , and so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy . So we literally start off the week with that , we go into our forecast call and later the week and everybody knows that there are very , very clear steps that we've got and there is no ambiguity there . So to me the process of knowing where you are at a stage and then moving forward is very important . Now we apply a lot of sales methodology kind of tactics to moving our sales forward . So you know there's so many different skills and sales kind of preferences out there that folks have . I'm a big fan of the challenger model so I will use , so I apply this very heavily to my teams . For the last few years I've been doing that and it's kind of in line with Medpick . So if you think about Medpick and everybody wants to talk about Medpick . I think Medpick is a phenomenal set of tools to kind of be adhering to . But Medpick is a checklist . It's do I know who this is ? Do I know the champion is ? Do I know you ? It's not telling you how to achieve it more efficiently . It's not teaching you how to achieve all of those things , it's just checking if you've actually done it . You've got to apply methodology to efficiently achieve Medpick and , to my mind , what I really enjoy and I think , disruptive technology . The challenger sales model is designed for it . So we apply our challenger model every single employee and at Speechmatics and we're the go to market org . The first thing you get when you join the company is the challenger sales book .
Speaker 1I saw someone post it this week one of your team Did you really , yeah , and I think there's no better time to be reading that book than in the current macroeconomic climate , given when the book was set with the 2008 crash .
Speaker 2I need to find whoever posted that and send them over a bottle of bubbly , because I'm very happy about that . But it's an important thing because what happens is that I want everybody to be able to understand a common language of what our objectives and goals are , and so I think the real value of having a sales model that you want to act is that everybody is understanding the challenge in the same language , so to speak , and knows how we address it , and we can all learn from each other . So we apply the challenge or model very diligently . We have a challenge of training sessions that come up . I ask folks to present me value back as to what are the pros and cons of the current opportunity . Have they identified a challenge ? What's the constructive tension that they're putting together ? How are they reframing it ? And I'm making sure people speak in a way that other people speak . So we apply that process . It carries on to all the usual things that you would expect . We have very , very disciplined Q and Y hours where we're setting objectives , we're looking at a quick rear-view mirror and then plan forward . We do mid-quarter to mid-calls to make sure that people are there .
Sales Pipeline and Product Development Strategies
Speaker 2Something that I hold very , very dear to my heart is something that I've learned . It's taken me forever to learn this and I've realized how important it is for salespeople , your organization , to know the difference between what it means when something is in pipeline , when something is best case , and when something is commit . I can tell you I have spent weeks , if not months , on establishing the framework of what that looks like , because if that itself could create for a leader representing kind of an overall number , a sink or swim for you , because you are assuming things that are actually not there , so to establish very quickly that if you are committing something , this is what that means and these are the stages you've crossed . It should almost by default , turn into commit because we have successfully gone through all these stages , or we are at stage five , for whatever reason , and we know by virtue of where we're at , that this is a best case and this is a pipeline . So that's something we work really hard on . I'm very happy and proud to tell you that a speech about it , so we've achieved that . To me it is a big kind of turning stone for us where it helps us to kind of launch so all of that process with the kind of standard things that you would expect out of that , every sales leader would be focusing on pipeline generation , quality of our pipeline , making sure that we're putting in time and effort in there to do that , setting up time to follow up , having one-on-ones , all of that . But in general the process in my org will always be such that it's so structured that even if I was ever to step away and have a holiday which will never happen and I'm still waiting for that to happen but somebody could quite easily go in there and they see that the framework is in place and they could kind of just follow it while I'm away because it's so structured .
Speaker 1Yeah , now it makes sense , and it's interesting how you've broken down , particularly around forecasting . It's over the last , I said the last 18 months . Even , charles , as a recruitment business , forecasting has been such a challenge because of the unpredictability of the market . But it's interesting to learn how you've gotten to three different sort of stages in terms of forecasting , and I think we've talked about marketing , we've talked about messaging , we've talked about thought leadership and sales process . One of the things that I'd like to understand from your perspective as well is around product development and connecting the sales org to product and engineering to define teacher roadmaps for the product and how , as a premium solution , providing that premium experience by leveraging that relationship between sales and product development , how that is ultimately feeding into that continuum to position yourself as that market leading product . So talk to me about your philosophy and how , as far as you're all personally keeping connected to the CTO and those in product , to ensure that not only you're providing that experience but the product itself is way in advance in terms of features and functions and capability .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think that's a significantly vital part of anybody who has aspirations to do some great stuff with a company . Look , at the end of the day , for anybody that generally wants to do some exciting stuff , and whether it's growth , whether it's money , whether it's commercial , whether it's personal development and you happen to be the go-to-market we can only do so much At the end of the day . Obviously , it all kind of comes down to what is the mindset of the organization from a product standpoint and what is it that we're trying to achieve in the market . And to me , the most important thing so when I interview or when I think about the next role that I ever want to take with any company and that's what I did when I did with SpeechBadics is I wanted to get a sense of what the company thought of themselves . That's quite literally the basis of what I look at . Are they a slick sales engine that's just fired product out and making sure that they are , and they've got a great kind of process in place to get this stuff out and just focusing on making sure that they're growth ? Or are they a product company that is absolutely devoted to the product and they know what kind of the pulse of the future looks like and this and that . So there's so many different kind of nuances . What I look for and to me , what's really important for a product standpoint is it comes back to what I said earlier the most exciting aspect of product in my mind is a company that is focused on solving the problems of the challenges for tomorrow . A company that says look , this is what you are looking to achieve today . You guys need this level of . We know that you're challenging . You've got a value added service where you are providing an application to the media industry which is capturing all of this great content and then being able to translate it and then providing value to the Wimbledon's of this world or the Olympics or what have you . But that is something that we can solve today . And the idea and if you sit down and you look at the speech Maddox product team , 90% of their conversations are always focused on what is the next three things that we're going to be focused on once , as soon as we achieve this , and the assumption is that this has to lead to a journey , and so for me , it always comes back down to product roadmap Thought leadership . Is this a company that wants to be an important figure in how the industry is going to be created in the future , and do they treat themselves with that same level of seriousness ? Because if they do , then for us , as sales in the revenue business , all our job is to translate that passion and that focus to the customers and we're not feeling like we've got to put lipstick on a pig , so to speak , or we're not feeling what we have to do that . So it is harnessing the energy and that passion that the team has into their own product future and being able to relay that to the customers . I think that's what I look for and I think that is the kind of thing that I believe personally makes for a very , very exciting play . When product and revenue are both focused singularly on that future , it gets very exciting .
Speaker 1I think that ties in again to the challenger , because if you think , if you product team are trying to solve the problems and challenges of the customers like challenges and problems that they don't know they have yet , then it's your job to go out and to educate the customer on that and to inform them about future challenges that they may not be aware of , to connect them to the product and , again , not very much feeds into the challenger sale , doesn't it ?
Speaker 2Absolutely , absolutely . Couldn't agree with you more Cool OK .
Speaker 1So I think , in terms of the final discussion point around , this topic was around particularly around hiring and mindset of the individuals that you hire and that you've currently got within your team . So I think how does , as a premium solution , as a market leader within your space , thought leader in terms of the content that you put out and the way that you position in your brand , how does that then translate in terms of the mindset of the rep and , ultimately , how that then impacts the kind of individuals that you're recruiting into your organization ?
Speaker 2OK . So , adam , you will obviously know that this is a critical component of focus for me . Right , and hiring I think it's Richard Branson said hire the best people you can and kind of get out of the way a little bit , right , so I do fundamentally believe in hiring absolutely the best people that we could find . But that's such a relative and subjective statement that it becomes very difficult to kind of do that . So what I've learned over the years is that I have to be quite prescriptive as to what I believe constitutes that kind of thing . So it's going to go back to the characteristics that we talked about earlier . But I'll give you a little two-minute story that I tell every single one of my teams or anybody who'll listen to me if I've had a drink .
Contractor Selection Based on Education
Speaker 2But we did a big expansion and it kind of ties in perfectly , by the way , to the challenger , to the hiring , what I look for , and all that kind of good stuff . So we did a big expansion work in our house about a year and a half ago or so A year and a half to . So I'm sitting at part of it which is all kind of the new expanded part . There was a lot of work done . It was two-story , this and that and quite a lot of work . And so we had to get proposals for contractors to kind of come in , and this is a size-all amount of money to get done . So what had happened was we got proposals from 15 , 20 kind of contractors all kind of come in . We had given the kind of details of what we were looking to do and achieve . We almost had the lay out . They had everything . So for them it was kind of putting in a bid and kind of coming in and giving us their walkthrough . So we had them all right about 15 , 20 . We really kind of took time to kind of find the person that we really thought would be the right person , because it was a lot of money for us at least , and we had more , and we had folks that kind of came and say , hey look , I know that you want to do this , you guys , you want to , you've got a fireplace that you want to do here . They'll walk through with us and we like yes , and they would stop and tell us well , it'll be very happy to know the spot of bear that we've done over a hundred fire in a fireplace installations . We've done a big , small , we've done them gas , natural , all that good stuff . And these are the 10 references that we have and I'm very happy to kind of Connect you to them and we said , great , it was very exciting actually . And then we would kind of continue on and they would show us We'd come to where the bathrooms are gonna be put in and they would tell us again that , look , we've done a number of bathrooms big , small bath tub seat , this that would have you Corporate house personal , you know , big kind of a mansion , small flats . These are our references and and we would kind of continue and we were really , you know , obviously , as you do , you're happy , you're like , okay , great , you've got experience , you got references , got a lot of knowledge doing that . And we would kind of go through it . About 15 of these guys why exactly ? Maybe 10 to 15 of them would kind of come and they would all their own way walk through and tell us all of that . And we were all very excited and , look , they would go back and we would say , of course we're gonna make it . To see , let you know , now , if I put myself in their shoe , they would go back from very justifiably thinking , well , we've got a great shot at winning this business . We knew exactly what they wanted to achieve . We showed them our level of confidence in it . We showed them exactly how much experience we have in it . We've given them references of how we can achieve all of this and and we have earned the confidence that they know that we could do the work . So I think we've got a good shot . If I was that person and they were , and they were probably right , right so they would do that and , like a like a really bad Hollywood film , this exact would happen . We had a sixteenth contractor that kind of came right and , by the way , these 10 , 15 contractors before had they submitted their commercials . All the were , I would say , within 25% Delta of each other 10 , you know , 20 to 25% price range . So they're all within the same range . We had the 16th contractor come in and , like I said , it's just like a bad Hollywood movie . He would . He came in and I remember this . He said look , I noticed you want to do a Fireplace here and we said yes . He said , look , typically when people want to put a fireplace there , it's because what they're trying to do is they want to break up this Large space into kind of two areas , because it's too large and allows for a nice kind of view and it also that achieves some success . But in my experience , if that's the case , I've found that it's much better to position it on this side of the house because a it's a lot closer to when you're . You know where your connections are . Your energy costs reduce much more and actually if you want to get under floor Heating , it is . It reduces the level of time it's thinking to heat up the forest . Can I ask is that way you wanted it ? And we both looked at it . You said yeah , though actually , yes , that was it . It said okay , good , just moved on . Didn't talk about anything else . Then we went to the bathrooms , right , and he said look , I know that you guys are looking to do a bathroom here . This that he said look , is in my experience . Again , you know it's it's okay to have that , but you would gain so much more value if you just moved it to this side , because what actually happens is the pipelines are connected to this side . The house is a little bit lower . Actually , you'll have a chances of a leak much less . If it kind of comes down , the water will come down . You have a lot , much less chance of blockage and actually it achieves that . I mean , you achieve a lot more kind of value out of that , and if you weren't so stuck to To that , is that something you think you would consider ? And we said , yeah , that that makes a lot of sense . And he went throughout the house , not once talking to us about how much experience he has , how many customers he's done different bathrooms for , or prefer how much , how many references he had . But what did he do ? The entire time he was , he was educating us and we just were literally Kind of going off what he said . We said , yes , oh yeah and oh , yeah , that totally makes sense . No , that's exactly right . And so what ended up happening was we were learning in the process of the entire engagement that actually what we wanted , there's a much better way to achieve it . And what we ended up with was somebody that said , okay , look , I think I can get you guys a proposal and I'll get that over to you . We didn't ask about one of his references , we didn't ask about how many times it's done this . We just felt like there was such a an education at that point that when the proposal came , it was about 30% more expensive . And who do you think we went with ? Right , we went with him only because of one reason . We said this is not about price . This is not about . This is about somebody who we feel so confident in that we're putting our trust in because he knows this better than us and he's educating us . So if that person knew even a word of technology , I swear to God I don't hired him in a heartbeat . Right , that's exactly the person I want . Somewhere out there is the best technology sales rep who's just really happy doing this contractual work . So I hope that story resonates with your audience .
Speaker 1It absolutely does , and I think that's like a really nice place to To wrap up , I think , in terms of paying a picture of the kind of individual you want within your organization selling speech Battix and selling their the product and taking it to market , and I think that this , the story you just described , gives a bit a really clear picture of that . So so as well , listen . Thank you so much . I know we've had a few hiccups along the way recorded this with people walking in and out , but I think we've We've styled off quite well and thank you very much . The time . I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation , feel like I've looked a lot myself , appreciate your time and , unless it's best to look with everything that speaks my tix . I'm gonna enjoy watching your success over the coming quarters and and yeah , thanks again for For being part of today's episode .
Speaker 2No , I appreciate your time , adam , and then , like I said , all the great work that you guys are doing . I will tell you , the arena that you guys are in is one of the most difficult ones , and it's not easy to that not in in a crowd of Very crowded
Building Success Through Forward-Thinking
Speaker 2folks . But one of the things I really appreciate about what you guys do and he's done very well is very similar to us . You know what you guys are strong at put yourselves out there . You want to be looked at as folks that are looking to move the needle as to what that is happening around the corner , and that is why I like working with you folks is because Once you believe in that , everything else becomes secondary . And so good luck for you guys , continued success , and we'll look forward to catch up against Cool . Thanks you time , thank you .
Speaker 1Thanks for listening . I hope you enjoyed today's episode . Don't forget to subscribe and if you want more information about the podcast , head over to our website . Scale with stride .
