November 5, 2024 • 41 mins
Dan Balcauski speaks with Evan Liang, co-founder and CEO of LeanData. Evan shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting his experiences in venture capital and leadership roles at major tech companies before starting LeanData. He discusses the importance of understanding customer pain points in product development and the role of HR in scaling a SaaS business. Evan also explores the challenges of transitioning to a multi-product company, emphasizing strategic alignment and clear communication. The episode concludes with a discussion on evolving sales models, specifically the buying group motion in B2B sales, offering listeners deep insights into efficient scaling and process optimization.
00:57 Evan Liang's Journey to Entrepreneurship
04:51 The Birth and Mission of LeanData
07:00 Navigating Organizational Challenges
15:33 Customer-Centric Product Management
21:20 Scaling with Multi-Product Strategy
23:53 Deciding to Sunset a Product
24:43 Navigating Sales and Multi-Product Selling
29:30 The Concept of Buying Groups in B2B
33:33 Implementing Buying Groups: Steps and Advice
Guest Links
LeanData website
Evan's LinkedIn
The Buying Group Leaders LinkedIn Group
The Buying Groups Resource Center
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan Balcauski (00:20):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Ssecrets, the podcast
that brings you the insidestories from the trailblazers of
B2B SAS growth.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today.
I'm excited to speak with Evan.
And Liang the co-founder and CEOof LeanData.
Evan held leadership roles atMicrosoft.
Microsoft eBay and caring.combefore leaping in an
entrepreneurship.
He's also spent time in theventure capital world with
(00:40):
stints at Shasta ventures andbattery.
Murray ventures.
Evan is widely recognized as apioneer in Reverend operations.
and emerging
Evan Liang (00:47):
trends like the "Buying Group motion" in B2B
sales.
Let's dive in!
Dan Balcauski (00:52):
Welcome, Evan, to SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Evan Liang (00:55):
Glad to be here.
Dan Balcauski (00:57):
Evan, I gave folks a little bit of a taste of
your Background in the intro,but for folks who maybe are not
aware of you and your journey,could you give us a little sense
of your experience in this SaaSworld and how you got to this
point that you're at right now,leading LeanData?
Evan Liang (01:12):
Yeah, I had kind of a unique background, actually.
So I actually started my career,actually, on the other side of
the table in venture capital atBattery Ventures.
So I started off on the investorside of the house before kind of
moving on to the operator sideof the house.
And I was looking at investingin, back then, SaaS companies
that were called ASPs.
So it's not the latest thing.
(01:37):
I was actually investing in bothsoftware companies as well as B
to C companies and found my wayinto entrepreneurship actually
through turnaround, doingturnarounds during the dot com
bust.
So basically was asked to comeinto and save some extra cash.
I've recently salvaged somecompanies, found I was, I
enjoyed that part of it.
And that's kind of where I foundmy initial passion for being on
(02:01):
the operating side rather thanthe investing side of the house.
And so the rest of yourbackground, you mentioned was
actually building skillsets,learning how to work at a bigger
company, tech companies likeMicrosoft, like eBay, etc.
And especially in the productmanagement side of the house and
then For me it ultimately camedown to finding the customer
pain point that I was passionateabout.
And that led me to starting
Dan Balcauski (02:22):
LeanData.
Very fascinating.
I'm sure there was plenty ofopportunities for turnarounds in
the smoking wreckage, that wasthe The oh one oh two.com bust I
remember fondly as I graduatedin computer engineering, right
into that into that burningwreckage.
Hey, worked out.
Worked out, but for any of youout in the tech hunting job
world right now, I know it couldfeel tough but you know, this
(02:45):
two will pass, if there's
Evan Liang (02:46):
great.
I definitely agree with thatsentiment.
Dan Balcauski (02:50):
Well, look, we all have those transformational
moments.
Maybe it was graduating into amoment where you didn't think
maybe the market would beexactly where you're at.
I think of them as like asuperhero transformation moment
where, I'm high school studentPeter Parker.
I get bit by a radioactivespider.
I go to sleep the next day.
I wake up, I'm Spider Man.
What was that for you in yourjourney?
Evan Liang (03:12):
Yeah, so for me there's kind of, there's the
two, there's obviously the moretrite one is the aha moment when
you decide to start a companyand you have the idea, right?
But I won't cover that.
I think the other one, becauseof what you were talking about
in 0102, it was really realizingthat where you wanted to be an
operator and you want to take onthe hard challenges of being an
entrepreneur.
(03:32):
Because I do think theentrepreneur journey is very ups
and downs.
And so for me, the aha momentwas, Where I was watching like
people, like when we were doingthese turnarounds and other
people were just freaking out.
It was like so much hard work.
And the person I was workingwith was like, I just don't want
to deal with this.
And I was like, no, this is a,it's hard, right?
Ah, we were dealing with toughtimes.
(03:53):
We're talking about people'sjobs here and stuff like that.
But I felt like I was prettycalm about it.
And I was like, look, I just dowith one step at a time.
We're going to solve oneproblem.
It's kind of like the Martian,and it was like, you don't got
to figure out how to get off theplanet, It's got a.
Figure out the next problem tosolve.
And as you solve one problem ata time, you start making
progress.
And I found a lot of joy indoing that.
And that also gave me a lot ofcomfort that I could solve some
(04:15):
of these harder problems.
And be kind of be crazy enoughto start my own company and be
okay with the OA crisis, the SBBcrisis, whatever you hit me at.
People would be like, Hey, it'sreally hard, Evan.
How do you deal with that?
I'm just like, I'm fine with it.
This is what I signed up for.
This was the journey.
Right?
And this is kind of what I getupdated data to try to figure
out.
Dan Balcauski (04:34):
So proving competence and building that
confidence over time as you sortof solve those problems.
And we won't delve into all ofthose crises, lest this turn
into a therapy session.
Cause we, we both might end upon the couch at one point, if it
goes too far in that direction.
We definitely have lived ininteresting times.
Well, I want to talk a littlebit about LeanData, but to set
the context for your audience,could you give everyone just a
(04:56):
kind of 30 second elevator pitchon what LeanData is?
Evan Liang (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So LeanData really, our missionwas really to try to make sales
and marketing teams moreefficient by solving data and
process challenges.
So that was kind of what we setout originally to do.
What we're best known for is aprocess called matching and
routing.
And so that's really taking thehand off when marketing creates
a lead or some sort of tool.
Marketing Signal, whatever thatmay be buyer intent these days.
(05:23):
How do you make sure that getsinto the right sales person's
hands so that you can run theright sales plan?
So LeanData orchestrates ormanages that handoff process and
the workflows in order to makeyour your go to market process
really smooth.
Whether that be a speed to lead,whether that be account based
marketing or lately whether thatbe this new motion called buying
groups.
So that's Where LeanData sitswithin your tech stack and your
(05:45):
process.
Dan Balcauski (05:46):
Interesting.
So, Edwin, I'd love to touch onsome of those distinctions and
different go to market modelsthat you mentioned earlier, like
ABM and buying group.
Cause it's definitely an areawhere I have interest in.
And I think like many others,some of these things maybe fly
over my head sometimes.
So I think you're a great personto talk about that.
In terms of LeanData then Is ittools?
Because it's in the go tomarket, when you think about
(06:07):
that, is it, is your primaryuser on the sales side or the
marketing side, or are they allin there together?
Evan Liang (06:14):
Yeah, we kind of sit in between, actually.
So, we, we were kind of helpingpioneer the concept of RevOps.
So those are the folks whoreally are our champions and who
use us day to day.
We do impact both marketing andsales, and oftentimes they'll be
the buyer.
But when we work well thingsshould just be extremely smooth
for both the marketing team canbe ensured that all their leads
are being followed up with, andthe sales team should just be
getting the right information,whatever it leads, contacts, and
(06:36):
accounts.
So, while those are our Endusers, and that's how we impact
them, we try to make their livesas easy as possible.
But the people who actuallyadminister and configure us is
either Sales Ops, Mark Ops, orReb Ops.
Dan Balcauski (06:48):
Got it.
Well, and I'm sure we'll see ifwe can get to it, but I think
there's probably someinteresting lessons you've
learned there and needing to bea leader in a business.
I think he could bring his owngo to market challenges as well.
So, besides helping go to marketleaders, you've probably had to
sell plenty of your ownchallenges well, look, Evan, I
tragically missed out in theintroduction, we are both
Kellogg MBAs which so veryexcited to highlight another
(07:12):
very seasoned, successfulKellogg leader on this program.
Look, if you had two, Let's adda SaaS CEO Scaling 101 course to
the Kellogg program.
What would be the most importanttopic you'd include?
What was missing in youreducation that you found to be
most critical as you've reallytaken on this role of scaling a
SaaS company?
Evan Liang (07:32):
Yeah, so I would say from the Kellogg perspective I
think and it's slowly changed,probably.
I mean, I've been out of Kelloggfor close to 20 years now.
And so I would definitely sayoriginally when I was at
Kellogg, it was very muchfocused on, like, the
traditional, like, how do you,like, do a search fund?
Find an existing business.
And I think that type ofbusiness is very different from
scaling perspective, like aventure backed company.
(07:53):
And so I, I would hope atKellogg that they have started
moving that thing around,understanding what it takes to
scale venture companies.
And I would say the keychallenge I would as a, maybe
people focus a lot on thefundraising part and I think
Kellogg did have like a venturecapital I think that the
transitions in organizationalbehavior, that's just a topic
I've always been fascinatedabout business school is that
(08:15):
how it takes to manage a companyfrom zero to 30 people is really
different as you scale tohundreds, right?
And talking about like, It's notthe same model, right?
There's this whole, this talk onthe Twitter these days about
like founder mode versus like,bureaucrat mode.
And I think that would be afascinating topic in my mind and
saying, it's not one versus theother.
It's just that you have to playat different modes or different
(08:36):
organizational structures.
Those changes as you scale acompany.
And so to me, I think thatunderstanding that there isn't
one right way all the time andhaving people understand that
the job and the functions andthe organizational design
changes over time would be kindof interesting in my mind.
Dan Balcauski (08:52):
Well, it is such a pressing point.
And I mean, it's kind of the, wewere talking before that we
started hitting record, but thisis kind of the reason for this
podcast.
Cause I feel like this is these,those insights aren't really
covered in any curriculum.
But I think, when you look at anMBA curriculum in general, it's
most of them imply some steadystate.
(09:14):
Of a business, right?
It's like, we've got themarketing function, the
accounting function, the financefunction, the marketing
function.
And, I remember, and I had thebest experience, but I also
remember you'd have a lot offolks who were, had worked as
brand managers at CPG companiesand they, we were taking
marketing strategy and they weretalking about, oh yeah, every
(09:34):
year we do our annual planningfor what our marketing is going
to be.
And look, it's not to say that.
B to B SaaS CEOs don't have aannual planning cycle, but I
think the amount of rigor thatthey put in, because look, if
you're managing Cheerios atGeneral Mills, like how much
change do you really expect inthe cereal market next?
I mean, maybe you're going tointroduce a new SKU, maybe you
(09:56):
have some slightly different,distribution or, whatever new
campaign, but it's going to berelatively steady state versus
as you mentioned, as a SaaS CEOscaling a company.
It almost feels, it could feellike you're running an entirely
different business.
Year to year, if not quarter toquarter, sometimes.
What, if you think back at thatscaling journey for you has, was
(10:18):
there really like a particularchallenge that sticks out to you
as you're, that was difficult toovercome, maybe a crucible
moment that sort of sticks outin your mind that really has
forged you into the companyyou've come today?
Evan Liang (10:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I definitely think like as youget to like 100 employees or
more, maybe 150, I think at thatpoint in time you start, it
becomes a little bit more of asystems thing than it is an
individual.
People aren't going to, I thinkmy leadership style is a little
bit, show, showing leading byexample, right?
(10:50):
If you will, and that doesn'tquite work as well at a certain
point in time and scale.
And I think understanding thingslike HR and how important that
function is to be like, oh,that's a, that's the back office
thing to being, no, that couldbe one of the most strategic
things that you do.
And so fortunately for mefinding that right HR partner
someone I turned in actuallyfrom a chief of staff into my HR
partner was really critical.
(11:11):
And I'd say the key point intime for us was during COVID and
trying to figure out how tonavigate that and how to come
back from that in personcollaboration has been really
big for us and what were thepolicies we need to put in
place.
So I think we do hybrid prettywell, and we've never had back
to office mandates and thosetypes of, and all of that only
happened because I had a truepartner, someone I could
(11:32):
collaborate with, and we canmake great decisions around.
And to me I didn't think of HRwhen we were smaller that way.
I was like, ah, they just takecare of like onboarding stuff.
And afterwards I was like, no,HR.
And the most important thing forme was the most important
quality wasn't their experienceprior.
What wasn't what they'd doneprior.
It's trust.
Does that make sense?
I need to have an HR partnerthat absolutely sympathetically
(11:53):
trusts me.
And that was the most importantquality that that I found in in
this our director of peopleoperations she hadn't done it
beforehand, but we just see eyeto eye on things so that we
could react faster, we couldbounce ideas off of it, and then
we could develop policies beforethe big companies did.
Everyone's like, well, why don'tyou wait until Amazon, Google,
or Facebook figure out theirtheir back to office.
(12:13):
I was like, whoa, that's goingto take too long.
I And I think they're doing ahorrible job about it, so we
actually came up with thingsearlier while it advances them,
and that's done us well, so Ithink that allowed us to
navigate it and have that kindof like lead the way a little
bit on the hybrid culture thatwe have today that has served us
well.
Dan Balcauski (12:30):
Yeah, well, I know navigating, no one expected
that massive psychologicalexperiment we're all subject to,
and I can imagine leading ascaling, leading and trying to
scale a company during that timewas particularly challenging.
I think what's interesting aboutthat example is, What it ties
directly into what we were justtalking about, which is you were
having to realize the need foran entirely other new department
(12:53):
which I think is, or a new,senior leadership, like that
didn't even exist in thecompany.
I guess kind of looking at thatexperience, like, What signals
did you look for where it waslike, cause it sounded like this
person was, you think you'dmentioned they were chief of
staff and so you're kind ofputting them in a new role, but
like, what was sort of tellingyou like, Hey, there's a,
there's an HR shaped hole in myorganization that I need to fill
(13:17):
ASAP.
Cause I imagine, right?
Like.
You're a smart guy, right?
Like be like, Oh there's abillion other problems.
How do you, how did you know,like that became a pressing sort
of issue?
And is there any advice youwould sort of be able to relay
at folks?
Is there, as a sort of lookingof like, Hey, like, am I big
enough to bring in a chiefcustomer officer or chief
operating officer at sort of myscale?
Right.
I think the scaling SaaS CEOssolve this, you see this kind of
(13:39):
challenge all the time.
So like, what did you sort oflearn during that experience?
Evan Liang (13:43):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think being a CEO
of a scaling SaaS company isalways about, like, putting out
fires.
And one of the things I noticedis, so we did have HR beforehand
but they were very, like,legalese.
You know what I'm saying?
They tell you legally whatyou're supposed to do but not
the business, and that created alot of friction points with my
other executives, where, if youare making a re org, something
big strategically, The legalpart of it is like 10%.
(14:06):
90 percent is how do youcommunicate it?
How do you plan it?
How do you do like all the otherthings to make sure it goes out
smoothly, right?
Who needs to know when?
How do you because it'ssensitive information, but at
the same time, they need to beable to do their functions
because of the impacts though.
And so what I started noticingwas that like we were managing
HR from a legal perspective,like legally was, but we weren't
making it strategic, right?
(14:27):
Because people are so key in andalso the aspects of technology.
Culture and that type of thing.
And interesting, like, as kindof we scale the company, my job
as CEO and co founder hasshifted.
It went from like, hey, tryingto like talk to customers, try
to figure out product market fitto very much managing the team
and culture.
And so like.
That's the reason I startednoticing our Chief of Staff, she
(14:49):
wasn't originally looking to beto be HR, but I was like, you're
actually really good at this,and guess what, as my Chief of
Staff, we spent 80 percent ofour time talking about the
people internally, how do wemotivate them, how do we work
with them, and doing all thehard things that are around it,
and I was like, I actually thinkyou have a good empathy and you
have a good sense of this.
And so, I actually approachedher and was like, Hey, do you
(15:10):
want this role?
And so that, that was kind ofthe transition.
And like I said, it's one of thethings that made my life a lot
easier and it became a streetfunction where we could try to
drive towards how to help theculture.
How do we drive things?
And I'm always thinking aboutthings from a perspective of
like, Hey not what legally we'resupposed to just do, right?
But how does this drive likebusiness outcome, business
(15:31):
benefits, and all that otherstuff?
Dan Balcauski (15:33):
Well, this is an interesting segue into kind of
next topic, because I believeyou have a background in, in
product management as well.
And so I fall from that thatsame tree and I have a love for
all my product leaders out theremuch love.
But I heard you talk in Ibelieve it was another podcast
about hire, bringing on yourfirst chief product officer and
(15:53):
giving them an interestinginitial assignment when you
brought them on board.
Could you elaborate a little bitmore about that?
Evan Liang (16:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, brought in a product managerfairly early on.
And the first key thing I reallyhad was customer support and
customer success reported intohim.
And he didn't initially want thejob.
And, but I was like, look, We'retrying to figure things out.
I need you to be as close to thecustomers as possible.
And for example from thebackground he came actually from
(16:20):
some bigger B to C companieslike Zynga and stuff like that.
Or and he was like, Oh no, weneed to automate this and build
for scale.
And then quickly, when you dealwith the customers, you're like,
Oh, wait a second.
That's not exactly where my keypain points are.
It kind of drove the productroadmap.
And so there was that strongalignment and some of our
biggest innovations.
So, Dan, how did you come upwith this?
when we first came from himhaving to work with customer
(16:41):
success, he was trying to solve,like, how do I make this a
little bit easier for ourcustomers?
And that wasn't exactly on theproduct roadmap, but it ended up
becoming some of our bestfeatures.
So, for example, something likeat LeanData we have something
called Audit Logs, which allowsyou to understand why something
went where it went in theseworkflows.
And that was developed on theback end to solve people's
questions because they're like,why did this happen instead of
(17:03):
that?
Yeah.
That's our second most usedfeature, at least that because
people want to be able to selfservice and do that.
So, so that's an example of likea back end feature that no one
really thinks about.
But if you have that tightalignment between your customer
needs and your product roadmapthey will naturally kind of
solve those problems.
Now, they are separate today.
At a point of scale, when wetalk about organizational
design, there's just not enoughhours in the day and they need
(17:23):
their specific focus areas.
But in early days, I think ifyou want to be a customer
centric company which a lot ofproduct managers believe in,
Don't have them too separatedaway from the customer problems.
Dan Balcauski (17:33):
I love that.
Well, that's definitely one ofthe challenges, you talked about
like making sure that theproduct folks have their, Finger
on the pulse of, the customer's,current kind of pain points and
what they're trying to achieve.
And I absolutely love that ideaof sticking them in the weeds of
customer support for a while tosort of trial by fire, really
learn where all the, or whereall the road bumps or roadblocks
(17:56):
are.
But as.
A company scales like that is,unfortunately, right.
It's like when you're 10 peoplein a room, like everyone's
talked to a customer that day.
Everyone, is like, in your shotof each other can overhear
what's going on.
But as companies scale, like, itjust gets drowned out.
Right.
For better or worse, people tendto start migrate.
Actually, I would say for worse,tend to start migrating to what
(18:18):
does the dashboard tell me isactually going on with my
customers.
Are there ways that you'vethought about approaching making
sure that kind of customer painpoints stay kind of central to
the company and don't get sortof lost in just another data
point as you've grown?
Evan Liang (18:32):
Yeah.
So one area that we've investeda lot in is kind of customer
marketing and customer advocacy.
So, very early on, we noticedthat our best customers were
what we call viral so that theyactually buy us multiple times.
So, so because we deliver agreat experience, they'll go to
another company, they'll take uswith them.
And so we've had people use us,I don't know, five, six, seven
(18:53):
times these days at variouscompanies.
And so this is a great.
Great source of leads.
It's probably the best source ofleads.
It's not the most scalablebecause you're counting on
people changing jobs.
But at the same time, it's thatvirality is really important.
And so to kind of fan thoseflames, there are things that we
have done, like we have aLeanData Certification Program
that's very popular, that wekind of encourage.
(19:13):
And what we see when customersdo become certified on LeanData
they're much more sticky,they're bigger advocates, We
drive a lot of customer reviews.
We do a lot of dinners.
I personally love speaking tocustomers whenever I can.
I'm happy also for the customersupport.
I also take the hardest calls.
The customer is really unhappyabout something.
I'm happy to jump on that call.
And similarly, try to make surethat we're doing right by them.
(19:35):
Can't save every customer, butat the same time, knowing that,
hey, your opinions and we'relistening and we're hearing,
we're trying to, And those allmatter.
So, we also started a bigconference called Opstars.
That's a dreamforce that bringsa lot of customers.
So as many customer touch pointsas you can possibly have.
And many of those customers thatI had dinner with like six,
seven years ago.
I'm still in touch with them.
(19:56):
They've moved jobs and stufflike that, but you still have
that little bit of reference andthat little bit of familiarity
that's really important.
And similarly, we do use them alot for roadmap and stuff like
that.
So, I think it's you can designprograms to make sure that
people don't just become siloedand lose touch of, Who is it
(20:17):
that we're really servicing?
Like a great example at Opstars,by the way, is we kind of tell
our, we have our go to marketteam go through this and
sometimes we ask them to do jobslike co check, hallway greeter,
and stuff like that.
And they're just that's beneathme.
But I'm like, no, you get tohave a touch, customer touch
point with lots of folks.
And they end up, a lot of timesthey do enjoy it because they
end up recognizing names.
Oh, yeah, we've chatted a wholebunch.
(20:37):
And if they see that love thatcomes from the customer, that
just fires people up so muchmore.
So it's not about what you'respecifically doing to them, just
get a chance to actually, asmuch as possible have face to
face connections with your withyour customers.
And if you build your productright and it's delivering value
it is really like magic.
Dan Balcauski (20:54):
I think, I think a big thing there was, No one
has walled themselves off fromcustomers right, you've welcome
being directly at the firingline even at the senior most
levels at which I think it'ssuper important, otherwise, it
could get too easy to you knowget just look at a Wall of
dashboards and maybe tellyourself a story you want to
hear versus what's actuallygoing on in the customer's mind.
(21:15):
Well, and kind of staying on thetopic of product, leadership and
scaling and company.
I know you guys are now a multiproduct company.
Can you talk to me a little bitabout, what was behind that
decision and as you've gone intomulti product, I think this is
an area where definitelycompanies get stuck, right?
(21:35):
They see their sort of maybe.
tapped out on sort of, what theycan achieve revenue growth wise.
And so now it's like, okay, webuild a second product.
Do we go acquire a secondproduct?
And I've seen a lot of those,second, third products really
sort of gum up the works.
How did you really think aboutthat from an organizational
perspective to, to make surethat, like, one plus one equaled
(21:59):
three and not one plus oneequaled like 0.
7.
Evan Liang (22:04):
Yeah, actually it's funny we actually went Multi
product fairly early on, but itdidn't work and we actually had
to end the life of product Andthen we did it a second time and
it is working And so I thinklike some of the key things
there is really around Sooriginally, our technology
allowed, had two major usecases.
(22:26):
One was the matching routingthat we're really known for.
And another, it was being ableto use because it could put
together groups and understandthe buyer's journey it was using
for marketing attribution.
And so that was initially wheretwo products actually came out.
What ended up happening, why itdidn't work, was it was
Different value propositions indifferent ICPs.
One was really sold to like themarketing heads, right?
(22:48):
Or the analytics team.
The other was more sort of off.
So it actually made sales cyclesmuch longer.
And I actually, I remember earlyon I had, I forced us to bundle
them.
So I was like, no, we got to getour ASP higher.
So you have to sell bothproducts into all the accounts.
It did get ASP hires, but italso lengthened the deal cycle
by two or three times.
And so, so that's it.
(23:09):
Oh, great.
Well, you got to go involve abunch of other people who aren't
in this conversation, right?
And that's not necessarily thebest thing.
Now, over time, what ended uphappening with one product was
growing clearly leaps and boundsahead of the other.
And the customer love there wasso much higher, the virality.
The other one, some peoplereally actually liked it.
Yeah, I'm still still swear byit, but it just seemed like it
(23:31):
didn't have the samecharacteristics.
It didn't have the same LTV, thesame level of stickiness, and I
actually don't know the productword, but I don't know if we
were really trying to solve theend goal, which is really like,
which is the holy grail of like,What should marketing spend more
money on?
I think any marketer willunderstand why.
That's a, that's an elusivegoal.
The product produces the data,but it's a little bit of the
(23:53):
story telling.
So in any case, we did end updeciding to end the life of it
because it was consuming 50percent of the resources, it was
about 10 percent of the of theoverall revenue.
And it was growing slower with ahigher churn profile.
So that would be a case ofsomething not working.
The newer product that we'veadded was in the calendaring
space.
So we added a product calledBookIt that allows scheduling.
(24:14):
And the reason that has beensuch a nice one plus one equals
three is as the technologiesevolve, moving meetings is just
the same as moving leads orcontacts or accounts.
So it's just, it just naturallyfit into our sweet spot of what
we were good at.
And as people got moresophisticated around their go to
market, we were able to.
Getting the right meaning ontothe right person's calendar was
just the same thing we werealready doing.
(24:34):
And so those kind of spacesmerged in some respects.
So yeah, we became a multiproduct company, but in some
respects, it's so close thatit's almost the exact same
space.
Now changing the sales reps,having to teach them how to sell
multi products has beensomething that we have been
going through.
But it's been a nice change tosee that they can tell that
joint story.
They're not just stuck on theirother thing.
(24:55):
And so most of our deals nowland with them.
Both.
And that's a sign that it'sworking and it goes faster and
people understand that.
It's kind of the same ICP versuspreviously it was end of like
some reps knew how to sell one,some reps knew how to sell the
other.
There were just things that wereearly signs that it wasn't
necessarily working that well.
Dan Balcauski (25:17):
Yeah.
And it's such a tempting placefor companies to end up because
you're like, Oh, well, themarketing, talks to the sales
operations team.
Right.
They're right next to themtalking, but you know, then you
go to market and you're like,wait, this is, we've now split
our, we've got too little woodbehind too many arrows and it's
(25:38):
just really difficult to makethat transition, um, you decided
to actually kill the product.
And it's an interesting scenariobecause it's one, like
sunsetting a product is one ofthese things that is not on the
bucket list of every productleader, but it's one of these
things that you don't get to dovery often, so it's one of these
things where you're like, youget asked to do it, you're
(26:02):
really, your end goal is to makeeveryone the least mad at you as
possible.
Walk me through that decision.
And I guess, were there any sortof takeaways, if you could like,
there's a junior PM here whereyou're like, if you ever have to
send a product, like make sureyou do X, Y, Z, like any words
of wisdom that you'd be able toshare from that experience.
Evan Liang (26:20):
Yeah.
So I think the biggest thingabout it is opportunity cost.
So the resources that we weredevoting to that product
actually allowed us to developthe new product bookend.
So we wouldn't have been able tolaunch the new Bokeh product if
we hadn't done that.
So if you take a step back,that's absolutely the right
decision from a productmanagement perspective.
That being said, what we did dois we tried to be as customer
friendly as possible.
(26:40):
So we gave them a long heads up,we explained it to them.
Now, a lot of the customers didhave both products.
So, So it was not like if youdid this wrong, you could be
risking the main business,right?
So we had to do it verycasually.
We gave people plenty of headsup.
We gave them our rationale forwhat we were doing at it.
And I'll be honest, for a lot ofcustomers, we're just like, Hey,
look, we're not going to We'renot going to build new features
(27:03):
on here.
That makes sense.
So there's no new featurescoming on here, but we'll let
you use this for another year,two years, etc.
Until this until this deadline.
And actually the trick is weactually did let some very few
customers continue to use it onthe notion that It's just code
that's not getting updated.
As I said, so, so, so, so we letthem slowly migrate off and let
(27:23):
them choose how to do it.
Internally the one thing we diddo is assign a line extensive.
So I did take that AR of thatbusiness.
And I told my board, I was like,that AR is just gone off our
books.
No, we're not counting it.
No thing is so like, if somechurn hits on that business, no
one gets penalized.
We're not trying to retain it.
But also if you sell it.
(27:44):
Which we don't want anyone to dobecause that was the biggest
cost you don't get any creditfor.
So there's no incentive foranyone to keep that business.
What ended up happening was thenthe our account manager saw a
great opportunity to take thatbudget and reallocate it to our
other if you will so they werelike, oh, this is free money I
know this company has thisbudget now that they're not
using how do I go get more ofthat into my other existing
(28:06):
business?
So a couple of methodologiesthat I plan and the team worked
well together But time framegiving the customers more time
allowing that and, but but stillgetting the majority of your 80
percent of your resources was atthe sales, marketing, product,
R& D teams shifted over allowedus to make it fairly smooth.
I don't think we lost a singlecustomer who was just really mad
at us for how we acted and threwus out of the other part of the
(28:29):
business.
Dan Balcauski (28:30):
Well, well, congrats.
That's a, it's a hell of a tightrope to walk.
So I heard a couple of goodthings there, which is clear
communication to the customerswith a good amount of time for
them to transition effectivelygood communication to the board
and then aligning incentives.
I think that's the aligningincentives thing is so huge.
And, I spent all my time in thepricing world and, you missed
(28:52):
that.
Upfront, right?
If they're transitioningperpetual to subscription,
right?
And it's like, well, perpetualthey get to, this big, chunk of
the lifetime value right upfront versus subscription.
And the company's trying to sellboth, right?
Like, Oh, why didn't sales guyssell on our fancy new
subscription product?
Right.
And similarly, if you've got a,you try to go from subscription
to a pay as you go model.
Right.
And it's like, Oh, well, thesales folks are happy because
(29:15):
they're getting paid their fullbonus on, you go.
Expected usage on a pay as yougo, but like, but those
customers never actually grow.
Like, and so, the managing thoseincentives is huge.
Not saying it's the only thingthat matters, but it's often
forgotten.
So, worth double clicking on.
As we kind of were talking aboutearlier, I, one of the
interesting areas, like you'replaying in this whole world of
(29:38):
go to market broadly WithLeanData And so, One of the
things we mentioned earlier wasthis evolution of this new
concept of a buying group.
Why is this becomingincreasingly important in B to
B?
How is this different from maybewhat people have thought of as
like account based marketing?
Evan Liang (29:57):
yeah, exactly.
So I think it's the realizationthat there's a lot of change
going on the go to market andsome of the old metrics like
MQLs have not been working.
Just the companies were not justnot delivering the efficiencies
that we expected, the metricsaren't working, sales and
marketing alignment isn'thappening.
And so the notion of buyinggroups is just going from, Hey,
marketing is just deliveringleads to account based marketing
(30:19):
is, Hey, we're doing targetaccounts.
So what actually the sellers andthe best sellers have always
been doing this is theyunderstand that within a
company, there's a select groupof people, a buying committee
that actually makes the purchasedecision.
And the buying committee hasbeen getting bigger, especially
with the harder economic times.
It used to be like, in the boomtimes, maybe one person can make
a business decision for a smalllevel of business.
(30:39):
Now it's like 9, 10, 11 people.
Your CFO is always involved.
You've got procurement.
So there's this notion thatmultiple people are involved,
and the best sales repsunderstand that and naturally do
that.
So this is not a notion that'schanging sales, really.
It's the fact that instead ofdelivering just this random
person, or just like, hey,there's someone that the
company's looking at you, it'sto actually deliver multiple
(31:01):
people who are showing interestin your product area.
Add a specific company that is abuying committee.
Now Salesforce your CRM wasoriginally set up this way.
There's something called contactwith role.
So it's that, that was orig sooriginally set up this way.
But it required the salespersonto do everything.
They had to find a lead, convertit to a contact, and add it with
(31:21):
the contact role.
Guess what?
No salesperson's ever doingthat.
Like, no one, maybe one person.
But, no, no one was actuallydoing that.
The changes, the technology hasevolved to allow that, and then
the need on the go to marketteams has evolved to say that
you have to have this level offidelity.
And so those combination of thetwo is leading a lot of,
especially larger enterprises,to understand that They have to
(31:43):
work at the buying committeelevel.
This is especially true as thebiggest companies, because if
you think of someone like hugelet me think, they're like, I
don't know, like the SIEM orstuff like that.
They don't, it's not aboutaccount base, where they're
trying to penetrate into newaccounts.
They've sold to everyone.
Everyone's a customer.
It's about how many other SKUsand how many multi products in
your share of wallet withinthere, right?
(32:04):
Or even your renewal.
So that's a big change where ouraccount base is really great
for, like, early stage company,venture backed company,
penetrating into new accounts,right?
But what if that customer isalready one of your customers?
What you need is expansion.
Selling them multiple products,etc.
Those are buying committees.
That's not account base.
Does that
Dan Balcauski (32:23):
Interesting.
Interesting.
Well, well, and I feel like,this is a place where maybe a
picture's worth a thousandwords.
Cause in my head, as you'retalking and maybe you could I'll
help kind of describe what thepicture I'm seeing, and you can
tell me where maybe it's wrongis, if we just imagine right,
the big circle is it accountsand inside there, maybe I've got
a Venn diagram of overlappingother smaller circles that are
(32:46):
all these buying committeegroups.
And so, yeah, like I.
Account based marketing onlyreally looks at the big circle.
And maybe, I mean, maybe it payssome attention to, okay, yeah
there's somebody in there whomakes a purchase decision versus
is just an influencer.
Maybe there's some sort of, roleconfiguration, but understanding
that like, okay, there's, for a,if we're trying to sell,
(33:08):
whatever, a piece of marketingsoftware versus a piece of sales
software, like those are both inthe, This is usually structured
like the words SEO, Rendering,Marketing, Sales, Appliances,
Proch pesticiding and those arewhat they do a is that they
maturity into more and more Lookat this.
Everything in there is great.
So this is an example of whatbanking and banking services
might look like but
Evan Liang (33:24):
yep.
I think you're absolutely right.
It's like lead is too small,account is too big, buying
groups is just the middle, theright side, the Goldilocks.
Dan Balcauski (33:31):
All right.
Goldilocks view of that.
Got it.
And so, so I guess for maybefolks who are, have been in
either a traditional leadcentric world or an ABM world
Like how did, how they measuresuccess when using a buying
group model change?
Like I, you threw out a bombthere before in the, MQLs are,
(33:52):
don't work.
And I'm sure we you're sure youget a lot of agreement from
listeners on their experiencewith MQLs.
But I guess, as you kind oftransition to this model let me
take a step back.
One thing I've heard aboutproblems of companies trying to
implement ABM, maybe going froma traditional lead centric model
is like internal KPIs don't evensupport that transition, right?
(34:16):
So as people are starting tothink about buying groups, is
there another transition theyneed to go through
organizationally or KPIs to makethis successful?
Evan Liang (34:23):
Yeah, so I do think it is a digital transformation,
just to be clear.
It's not something just flip ona switch.
So it is a transformation, but Iencourage people not to
necessarily just cut over on dayone, it's to run both sets of
metrics keep your traditionallead metrics or account based
metrics and add these buy groupsultimately is measured on
success of pipeline.
(34:43):
So it is one that aligns prettywell with sales but you're not
looking for, you may not belooking for, Hey, number of
leads.
Where I think one of mycustomers called the second lead
syndrome.
So if all you are saying is youget a single lead, you may
ignore the second lead, right?
Because you're not getting paidfor it on the same company.
And that could be a reallyimportant person.
And so, so I think buying groupsis just taking it more at the
(35:05):
opportunity level.
And you're going to be measuringpipeline.
You're going to be measuringASP.
You're going to have a closerate.
These are, These would be thesome of the metrics, but they're
not like radically new metrics.
But it ultimately is aboutpipeline and increasing your
chances to close and notspending time on things that
don't make a lot of sense.
But most of the companies I knoware trying to run both metrics
(35:28):
in parallel for a while beforemaking that transition.
Yeah,
Dan Balcauski (35:32):
so don't pull the plug on day one and do a hard
cut over cause you're there's apitfall doing that.
There's some dragons waiting inlate for you.
So, so if folks are sort ofinterested in trying to start.
They said, Oh, Evan, that allsounds great.
Buying groups sound interesting.
Sounds like maybe we're nothitting the mark or the current
go to market.
Like, besides like not doing ahard code over on day one and
(35:54):
folks are just like trying tofigure out how to start, like,
how do you recommend folks evenstart sort of figuring out what
this thing is and how to sort ofbring it into the organization?
Evan Liang (36:02):
so I think the analyst group that's been really
pushing this the longest andthey've published a whole bunch
of articles out there would beForrester.
So I'll give them credit.
They've been on this.
By the way, they invented theMQL.
This is the old seriousdecisions, folks.
So they've realized that themodel has shifted.
And so they've been publishing alot of information out there.
I would approach this.
Our analysts like TerryFlatterty, Amy Hawthorne, and
(36:22):
Vicki Brown have really beenpushing this initiative.
And so there's a lot ofmaterials that they're putting
out there.
LeanData ourselves are alsoaggregating a lot of
information.
We've Put together some someguide books around it.
Some authoritative guide tobuying books.
And we're just trying to publishout the thought leadership.
Certainly you can follow me onLinkedIn.
I'm just Evan Liang is just theshort handle for me on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn and we arepublishing, we have like
(36:44):
communities around it.
So we're trying to gather thethought leaders in and around
buying groups to really espousewhy it's working.
And we do have a case studiesabout successful companies like
Siemens, Palo Alto Networks, etcetera, that have moved to this
motion.
Dan Balcauski (36:57):
Awesome.
Well, I will definitely putthose links in the show notes
for listeners so they can makesure to follow up on that.
Evan.
I could talk to you all day butI do want to be respectful of
you and the audience's time.
I'd like to wrap it up with acouple of rapid fire questions.
You ready?
Evan Liang (37:10):
Sure thing, go for it.
Dan Balcauski (37:11):
Well, I'm going to wave the magic wand.
We take your responsibilitiesall away.
You have one year to go studyany subject you want in depth.
All your other responsibilitiesare taken care of.
Lead data continues on itsgrowth path.
Your family's fine, but youcould dedicate all your time to
just immersing yourself in onearea of study.
What do you study?
(37:31):
Why?
Evan Liang (37:33):
Yeah, so I think the area well, actually, two
answers.
One academic interest area, I'vealways loved econ.
So, to me, what's happeningwith, like, economics and all
that stuff is something that I'mreally fascinated about.
So that would be one, so I'llcheat.
Secondary, just like if I was togeek out on just free time, it'd
probably be like World War IIhistory.
So I am a World War II geek.
I like to read about history andsome of those stuff, the things,
(37:56):
so those probably would, maybeI'll double major.
So those two.
Dan Balcauski (38:00):
Double major is acceptable.
And yeah, the history seems tobe a big topic on that question.
So, look, when you think aboutall the spectacular people
you've had a chance to workwith, learn from, is there
anyone who just pops to mind,has had a disproportionate
effect on the way you thinkabout building and leading
companies now?
Evan Liang (38:17):
Yeah, so I was very fortunate that some of the early
folks that I worked with reallyearly in my career at Battery
Ventures are still with us andhave been backing me and those
two people.
So, two so Ravi Mohan was myinitial boss at Battery
Ventures.
He ended up backing me throughShasta Ventures in my early
venture.
So, definitely has been a mentorthroughout my career and I owe
him a lot.
And then there was a secondperson there who's still on our
(38:37):
board, David Hartwig, who's atSapphire Ventures.
And both of them have beeninstrumental to me throughout my
career, but also as friendsalong the whole entire way.
Dan Balcauski (38:44):
Well, if you think about maybe pick one Roshi
or David and like, is anythingsort of stick out in terms of
the best piece of advice thateither one of those has ever
given you?
Evan Liang (38:54):
Oh, interesting.
I don't know if it's like onespecific thing that they've said
but I would say that they've oneof the things I really value is
just really being candid andstrong transparency and so I
think for for Rovi for sure,he's not afraid to call it as it
is and so, but I think the goodthing is he'll give me the
advice and he'll let me learn myown mistakes, but he'll remind
(39:16):
me.
And he was like, I told you thatfive years ago.
Like, I was like, okay, I justneed to learn my own lessons.
But I appreciate you giving methe room to figure that
Dan Balcauski (39:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, well, and keeping it realwith the the venture capital
learning cycles of five years,like, see how I told you I have
five years for now?
Like, but you know, that's howtheir investments work.
So, yeah.
Look being a leader of a scalingSaaS company could be taxing in
multiple ways.
Are there ways that you keep youyourself on the top of your game
intellectually, emotionally,physically?
Evan Liang (39:45):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I think, this is a
marathon, not a sprint.
Especially as you look at likeexit outcomes for SaaS companies
have really really elongated.
We all thought, to buildsomething in scale.
So I think the main thing is,yeah, you have to, Keep keep
yourself healthy and stuff likethat.
And so for me, it's just sleep.
So I make sure I get a solideight hours and I always have
throughout the entire way.
(40:05):
And so that, that balance isreally important is that you're
never trying to burn yourselfout because I mean, the hardest
thing is if you burn out, thenthere's no hope really for how
do you keep everyone else'sspirits up in the company.
Dan Balcauski (40:18):
Was there a point that changed for you where did
you used to be a believer andlike, Oh, I could just grind it
out and, get four hours and justkind of, perpetual or was there
a Matt Walker moment whereyou're like, Oh yeah, this is
it.
Evan Liang (40:30):
Not really.
I think actually it has beenfairly consistent throughout.
So I would say, actually, a lotof the work stuff and maybe the
family stuff, I mean, there'scertainly times when my kids
were young, I wasn't quitegetting that.
But as my kids have gottenolder, I think that is something
that I have prioritized.
It's important from a wellfunctioning perspective.
So, never really tried to taketoo much like caffeine or stuff.
(40:53):
So I actually don't drinkcoffee.
So, getting so, getting to sleepin the morning is enough for me.
So,
Dan Balcauski (40:58):
Oh man, well, I'll have to learn your secret
some other point about thecoffee.
I've got a too much of anaddiction.
Well, look, if I gave you abillboard and you could put any
advice on there for other B to BSaaS CEOs trying to scale their
companies, what would it say?
Evan Liang (41:12):
I think what should I say, it's a marathon, not a
sprint.
So I think think long and, trynot to have there are a lot of
ups and downs, but try tosmoothen it out in some respects
for both yourself and youremployees.
Dan Balcauski (41:23):
I'd love that.
So marathon, not a sprit youalready mentioned a couple of
different links.
Any other ways that folks wantto learn more about LeanData or
follow you around the internet,anywhere we should send them?
Evan Liang (41:33):
No, I think primarily that we're we're kind
of using LinkedIn a lot more.
I mean, obviously, you can go toleandata.
com and our website, and we havea lot of great information there
as well.
Dan Balcauski (41:41):
Awesome.
Well, we'll put those links inthe show notes for our
listeners.
Everyone that wraps up thisepisode of SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Evan for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips for our listeners,if you found this conversation
as enlightening as I did,remember subscribe so you don't
miss out on future episodes.
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Ssecrets, the podcast
that brings you the insidestories from the trailblazers of
B2B SAS growth.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today.
I'm excited to speak with Evan.
And Liang the co-founder and CEOof LeanData.
Evan held leadership roles atMicrosoft.
Microsoft eBay and caring.combefore leaping in an
entrepreneurship.
He's also spent time in theventure capital world with
(00:40):
stints at Shasta ventures andbattery.
Murray ventures.
Evan is widely recognized as apioneer in Reverend operations.
and emerging
Evan Liang (00:47):
trends like the "Buying Group motion" in B2B
sales.
Let's dive in!
Dan Balcauski (00:52):
Welcome, Evan, to SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Evan Liang (00:55):
Glad to be here.
Dan Balcauski (00:57):
Evan, I gave folks a little bit of a taste of
your Background in the intro,but for folks who maybe are not
aware of you and your journey,could you give us a little sense
of your experience in this SaaSworld and how you got to this
point that you're at right now,leading LeanData?
Evan Liang (01:12):
Yeah, I had kind of a unique background, actually.
So I actually started my career,actually, on the other side of
the table in venture capital atBattery Ventures.
So I started off on the investorside of the house before kind of
moving on to the operator sideof the house.
And I was looking at investingin, back then, SaaS companies
that were called ASPs.
So it's not the latest thing.
(01:37):
I was actually investing in bothsoftware companies as well as B
to C companies and found my wayinto entrepreneurship actually
through turnaround, doingturnarounds during the dot com
bust.
So basically was asked to comeinto and save some extra cash.
I've recently salvaged somecompanies, found I was, I
enjoyed that part of it.
And that's kind of where I foundmy initial passion for being on
(02:01):
the operating side rather thanthe investing side of the house.
And so the rest of yourbackground, you mentioned was
actually building skillsets,learning how to work at a bigger
company, tech companies likeMicrosoft, like eBay, etc.
And especially in the productmanagement side of the house and
then For me it ultimately camedown to finding the customer
pain point that I was passionateabout.
And that led me to starting
Dan Balcauski (02:22):
LeanData.
Very fascinating.
I'm sure there was plenty ofopportunities for turnarounds in
the smoking wreckage, that wasthe The oh one oh two.com bust I
remember fondly as I graduatedin computer engineering, right
into that into that burningwreckage.
Hey, worked out.
Worked out, but for any of youout in the tech hunting job
world right now, I know it couldfeel tough but you know, this
(02:45):
two will pass, if there's
Evan Liang (02:46):
great.
I definitely agree with thatsentiment.
Dan Balcauski (02:50):
Well, look, we all have those transformational
moments.
Maybe it was graduating into amoment where you didn't think
maybe the market would beexactly where you're at.
I think of them as like asuperhero transformation moment
where, I'm high school studentPeter Parker.
I get bit by a radioactivespider.
I go to sleep the next day.
I wake up, I'm Spider Man.
What was that for you in yourjourney?
Evan Liang (03:12):
Yeah, so for me there's kind of, there's the
two, there's obviously the moretrite one is the aha moment when
you decide to start a companyand you have the idea, right?
But I won't cover that.
I think the other one, becauseof what you were talking about
in 0102, it was really realizingthat where you wanted to be an
operator and you want to take onthe hard challenges of being an
entrepreneur.
(03:32):
Because I do think theentrepreneur journey is very ups
and downs.
And so for me, the aha momentwas, Where I was watching like
people, like when we were doingthese turnarounds and other
people were just freaking out.
It was like so much hard work.
And the person I was workingwith was like, I just don't want
to deal with this.
And I was like, no, this is a,it's hard, right?
Ah, we were dealing with toughtimes.
(03:53):
We're talking about people'sjobs here and stuff like that.
But I felt like I was prettycalm about it.
And I was like, look, I just dowith one step at a time.
We're going to solve oneproblem.
It's kind of like the Martian,and it was like, you don't got
to figure out how to get off theplanet, It's got a.
Figure out the next problem tosolve.
And as you solve one problem ata time, you start making
progress.
And I found a lot of joy indoing that.
And that also gave me a lot ofcomfort that I could solve some
(04:15):
of these harder problems.
And be kind of be crazy enoughto start my own company and be
okay with the OA crisis, the SBBcrisis, whatever you hit me at.
People would be like, Hey, it'sreally hard, Evan.
How do you deal with that?
I'm just like, I'm fine with it.
This is what I signed up for.
This was the journey.
Right?
And this is kind of what I getupdated data to try to figure
out.
Dan Balcauski (04:34):
So proving competence and building that
confidence over time as you sortof solve those problems.
And we won't delve into all ofthose crises, lest this turn
into a therapy session.
Cause we, we both might end upon the couch at one point, if it
goes too far in that direction.
We definitely have lived ininteresting times.
Well, I want to talk a littlebit about LeanData, but to set
the context for your audience,could you give everyone just a
(04:56):
kind of 30 second elevator pitchon what LeanData is?
Evan Liang (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So LeanData really, our missionwas really to try to make sales
and marketing teams moreefficient by solving data and
process challenges.
So that was kind of what we setout originally to do.
What we're best known for is aprocess called matching and
routing.
And so that's really taking thehand off when marketing creates
a lead or some sort of tool.
Marketing Signal, whatever thatmay be buyer intent these days.
(05:23):
How do you make sure that getsinto the right sales person's
hands so that you can run theright sales plan?
So LeanData orchestrates ormanages that handoff process and
the workflows in order to makeyour your go to market process
really smooth.
Whether that be a speed to lead,whether that be account based
marketing or lately whether thatbe this new motion called buying
groups.
So that's Where LeanData sitswithin your tech stack and your
(05:45):
process.
Dan Balcauski (05:46):
Interesting.
So, Edwin, I'd love to touch onsome of those distinctions and
different go to market modelsthat you mentioned earlier, like
ABM and buying group.
Cause it's definitely an areawhere I have interest in.
And I think like many others,some of these things maybe fly
over my head sometimes.
So I think you're a great personto talk about that.
In terms of LeanData then Is ittools?
Because it's in the go tomarket, when you think about
(06:07):
that, is it, is your primaryuser on the sales side or the
marketing side, or are they allin there together?
Evan Liang (06:14):
Yeah, we kind of sit in between, actually.
So, we, we were kind of helpingpioneer the concept of RevOps.
So those are the folks whoreally are our champions and who
use us day to day.
We do impact both marketing andsales, and oftentimes they'll be
the buyer.
But when we work well thingsshould just be extremely smooth
for both the marketing team canbe ensured that all their leads
are being followed up with, andthe sales team should just be
getting the right information,whatever it leads, contacts, and
(06:36):
accounts.
So, while those are our Endusers, and that's how we impact
them, we try to make their livesas easy as possible.
But the people who actuallyadminister and configure us is
either Sales Ops, Mark Ops, orReb Ops.
Dan Balcauski (06:48):
Got it.
Well, and I'm sure we'll see ifwe can get to it, but I think
there's probably someinteresting lessons you've
learned there and needing to bea leader in a business.
I think he could bring his owngo to market challenges as well.
So, besides helping go to marketleaders, you've probably had to
sell plenty of your ownchallenges well, look, Evan, I
tragically missed out in theintroduction, we are both
Kellogg MBAs which so veryexcited to highlight another
(07:12):
very seasoned, successfulKellogg leader on this program.
Look, if you had two, Let's adda SaaS CEO Scaling 101 course to
the Kellogg program.
What would be the most importanttopic you'd include?
What was missing in youreducation that you found to be
most critical as you've reallytaken on this role of scaling a
SaaS company?
Evan Liang (07:32):
Yeah, so I would say from the Kellogg perspective I
think and it's slowly changed,probably.
I mean, I've been out of Kelloggfor close to 20 years now.
And so I would definitely sayoriginally when I was at
Kellogg, it was very muchfocused on, like, the
traditional, like, how do you,like, do a search fund?
Find an existing business.
And I think that type ofbusiness is very different from
scaling perspective, like aventure backed company.
(07:53):
And so I, I would hope atKellogg that they have started
moving that thing around,understanding what it takes to
scale venture companies.
And I would say the keychallenge I would as a, maybe
people focus a lot on thefundraising part and I think
Kellogg did have like a venturecapital I think that the
transitions in organizationalbehavior, that's just a topic
I've always been fascinatedabout business school is that
(08:15):
how it takes to manage a companyfrom zero to 30 people is really
different as you scale tohundreds, right?
And talking about like, It's notthe same model, right?
There's this whole, this talk onthe Twitter these days about
like founder mode versus like,bureaucrat mode.
And I think that would be afascinating topic in my mind and
saying, it's not one versus theother.
It's just that you have to playat different modes or different
(08:36):
organizational structures.
Those changes as you scale acompany.
And so to me, I think thatunderstanding that there isn't
one right way all the time andhaving people understand that
the job and the functions andthe organizational design
changes over time would be kindof interesting in my mind.
Dan Balcauski (08:52):
Well, it is such a pressing point.
And I mean, it's kind of the, wewere talking before that we
started hitting record, but thisis kind of the reason for this
podcast.
Cause I feel like this is these,those insights aren't really
covered in any curriculum.
But I think, when you look at anMBA curriculum in general, it's
most of them imply some steadystate.
(09:14):
Of a business, right?
It's like, we've got themarketing function, the
accounting function, the financefunction, the marketing
function.
And, I remember, and I had thebest experience, but I also
remember you'd have a lot offolks who were, had worked as
brand managers at CPG companiesand they, we were taking
marketing strategy and they weretalking about, oh yeah, every
(09:34):
year we do our annual planningfor what our marketing is going
to be.
And look, it's not to say that.
B to B SaaS CEOs don't have aannual planning cycle, but I
think the amount of rigor thatthey put in, because look, if
you're managing Cheerios atGeneral Mills, like how much
change do you really expect inthe cereal market next?
I mean, maybe you're going tointroduce a new SKU, maybe you
(09:56):
have some slightly different,distribution or, whatever new
campaign, but it's going to berelatively steady state versus
as you mentioned, as a SaaS CEOscaling a company.
It almost feels, it could feellike you're running an entirely
different business.
Year to year, if not quarter toquarter, sometimes.
What, if you think back at thatscaling journey for you has, was
(10:18):
there really like a particularchallenge that sticks out to you
as you're, that was difficult toovercome, maybe a crucible
moment that sort of sticks outin your mind that really has
forged you into the companyyou've come today?
Evan Liang (10:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I definitely think like as youget to like 100 employees or
more, maybe 150, I think at thatpoint in time you start, it
becomes a little bit more of asystems thing than it is an
individual.
People aren't going to, I thinkmy leadership style is a little
bit, show, showing leading byexample, right?
(10:50):
If you will, and that doesn'tquite work as well at a certain
point in time and scale.
And I think understanding thingslike HR and how important that
function is to be like, oh,that's a, that's the back office
thing to being, no, that couldbe one of the most strategic
things that you do.
And so fortunately for mefinding that right HR partner
someone I turned in actuallyfrom a chief of staff into my HR
partner was really critical.
(11:11):
And I'd say the key point intime for us was during COVID and
trying to figure out how tonavigate that and how to come
back from that in personcollaboration has been really
big for us and what were thepolicies we need to put in
place.
So I think we do hybrid prettywell, and we've never had back
to office mandates and thosetypes of, and all of that only
happened because I had a truepartner, someone I could
(11:32):
collaborate with, and we canmake great decisions around.
And to me I didn't think of HRwhen we were smaller that way.
I was like, ah, they just takecare of like onboarding stuff.
And afterwards I was like, no,HR.
And the most important thing forme was the most important
quality wasn't their experienceprior.
What wasn't what they'd doneprior.
It's trust.
Does that make sense?
I need to have an HR partnerthat absolutely sympathetically
(11:53):
trusts me.
And that was the most importantquality that that I found in in
this our director of peopleoperations she hadn't done it
beforehand, but we just see eyeto eye on things so that we
could react faster, we couldbounce ideas off of it, and then
we could develop policies beforethe big companies did.
Everyone's like, well, why don'tyou wait until Amazon, Google,
or Facebook figure out theirtheir back to office.
(12:13):
I was like, whoa, that's goingto take too long.
I And I think they're doing ahorrible job about it, so we
actually came up with thingsearlier while it advances them,
and that's done us well, so Ithink that allowed us to
navigate it and have that kindof like lead the way a little
bit on the hybrid culture thatwe have today that has served us
well.
Dan Balcauski (12:30):
Yeah, well, I know navigating, no one expected
that massive psychologicalexperiment we're all subject to,
and I can imagine leading ascaling, leading and trying to
scale a company during that timewas particularly challenging.
I think what's interesting aboutthat example is, What it ties
directly into what we were justtalking about, which is you were
having to realize the need foran entirely other new department
(12:53):
which I think is, or a new,senior leadership, like that
didn't even exist in thecompany.
I guess kind of looking at thatexperience, like, What signals
did you look for where it waslike, cause it sounded like this
person was, you think you'dmentioned they were chief of
staff and so you're kind ofputting them in a new role, but
like, what was sort of tellingyou like, Hey, there's a,
there's an HR shaped hole in myorganization that I need to fill
(13:17):
ASAP.
Cause I imagine, right?
Like.
You're a smart guy, right?
Like be like, Oh there's abillion other problems.
How do you, how did you know,like that became a pressing sort
of issue?
And is there any advice youwould sort of be able to relay
at folks?
Is there, as a sort of lookingof like, Hey, like, am I big
enough to bring in a chiefcustomer officer or chief
operating officer at sort of myscale?
Right.
I think the scaling SaaS CEOssolve this, you see this kind of
(13:39):
challenge all the time.
So like, what did you sort oflearn during that experience?
Evan Liang (13:43):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think being a CEO
of a scaling SaaS company isalways about, like, putting out
fires.
And one of the things I noticedis, so we did have HR beforehand
but they were very, like,legalese.
You know what I'm saying?
They tell you legally whatyou're supposed to do but not
the business, and that created alot of friction points with my
other executives, where, if youare making a re org, something
big strategically, The legalpart of it is like 10%.
(14:06):
90 percent is how do youcommunicate it?
How do you plan it?
How do you do like all the otherthings to make sure it goes out
smoothly, right?
Who needs to know when?
How do you because it'ssensitive information, but at
the same time, they need to beable to do their functions
because of the impacts though.
And so what I started noticingwas that like we were managing
HR from a legal perspective,like legally was, but we weren't
making it strategic, right?
(14:27):
Because people are so key in andalso the aspects of technology.
Culture and that type of thing.
And interesting, like, as kindof we scale the company, my job
as CEO and co founder hasshifted.
It went from like, hey, tryingto like talk to customers, try
to figure out product market fitto very much managing the team
and culture.
And so like.
That's the reason I startednoticing our Chief of Staff, she
(14:49):
wasn't originally looking to beto be HR, but I was like, you're
actually really good at this,and guess what, as my Chief of
Staff, we spent 80 percent ofour time talking about the
people internally, how do wemotivate them, how do we work
with them, and doing all thehard things that are around it,
and I was like, I actually thinkyou have a good empathy and you
have a good sense of this.
And so, I actually approachedher and was like, Hey, do you
(15:10):
want this role?
And so that, that was kind ofthe transition.
And like I said, it's one of thethings that made my life a lot
easier and it became a streetfunction where we could try to
drive towards how to help theculture.
How do we drive things?
And I'm always thinking aboutthings from a perspective of
like, Hey not what legally we'resupposed to just do, right?
But how does this drive likebusiness outcome, business
(15:31):
benefits, and all that otherstuff?
Dan Balcauski (15:33):
Well, this is an interesting segue into kind of
next topic, because I believeyou have a background in, in
product management as well.
And so I fall from that thatsame tree and I have a love for
all my product leaders out theremuch love.
But I heard you talk in Ibelieve it was another podcast
about hire, bringing on yourfirst chief product officer and
(15:53):
giving them an interestinginitial assignment when you
brought them on board.
Could you elaborate a little bitmore about that?
Evan Liang (16:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, brought in a product managerfairly early on.
And the first key thing I reallyhad was customer support and
customer success reported intohim.
And he didn't initially want thejob.
And, but I was like, look, We'retrying to figure things out.
I need you to be as close to thecustomers as possible.
And for example from thebackground he came actually from
(16:20):
some bigger B to C companieslike Zynga and stuff like that.
Or and he was like, Oh no, weneed to automate this and build
for scale.
And then quickly, when you dealwith the customers, you're like,
Oh, wait a second.
That's not exactly where my keypain points are.
It kind of drove the productroadmap.
And so there was that strongalignment and some of our
biggest innovations.
So, Dan, how did you come upwith this?
when we first came from himhaving to work with customer
(16:41):
success, he was trying to solve,like, how do I make this a
little bit easier for ourcustomers?
And that wasn't exactly on theproduct roadmap, but it ended up
becoming some of our bestfeatures.
So, for example, something likeat LeanData we have something
called Audit Logs, which allowsyou to understand why something
went where it went in theseworkflows.
And that was developed on theback end to solve people's
questions because they're like,why did this happen instead of
(17:03):
that?
Yeah.
That's our second most usedfeature, at least that because
people want to be able to selfservice and do that.
So, so that's an example of likea back end feature that no one
really thinks about.
But if you have that tightalignment between your customer
needs and your product roadmapthey will naturally kind of
solve those problems.
Now, they are separate today.
At a point of scale, when wetalk about organizational
design, there's just not enoughhours in the day and they need
(17:23):
their specific focus areas.
But in early days, I think ifyou want to be a customer
centric company which a lot ofproduct managers believe in,
Don't have them too separatedaway from the customer problems.
Dan Balcauski (17:33):
I love that.
Well, that's definitely one ofthe challenges, you talked about
like making sure that theproduct folks have their, Finger
on the pulse of, the customer's,current kind of pain points and
what they're trying to achieve.
And I absolutely love that ideaof sticking them in the weeds of
customer support for a while tosort of trial by fire, really
learn where all the, or whereall the road bumps or roadblocks
(17:56):
are.
But as.
A company scales like that is,unfortunately, right.
It's like when you're 10 peoplein a room, like everyone's
talked to a customer that day.
Everyone, is like, in your shotof each other can overhear
what's going on.
But as companies scale, like, itjust gets drowned out.
Right.
For better or worse, people tendto start migrate.
Actually, I would say for worse,tend to start migrating to what
(18:18):
does the dashboard tell me isactually going on with my
customers.
Are there ways that you'vethought about approaching making
sure that kind of customer painpoints stay kind of central to
the company and don't get sortof lost in just another data
point as you've grown?
Evan Liang (18:32):
Yeah.
So one area that we've investeda lot in is kind of customer
marketing and customer advocacy.
So, very early on, we noticedthat our best customers were
what we call viral so that theyactually buy us multiple times.
So, so because we deliver agreat experience, they'll go to
another company, they'll take uswith them.
And so we've had people use us,I don't know, five, six, seven
(18:53):
times these days at variouscompanies.
And so this is a great.
Great source of leads.
It's probably the best source ofleads.
It's not the most scalablebecause you're counting on
people changing jobs.
But at the same time, it's thatvirality is really important.
And so to kind of fan thoseflames, there are things that we
have done, like we have aLeanData Certification Program
that's very popular, that wekind of encourage.
(19:13):
And what we see when customersdo become certified on LeanData
they're much more sticky,they're bigger advocates, We
drive a lot of customer reviews.
We do a lot of dinners.
I personally love speaking tocustomers whenever I can.
I'm happy also for the customersupport.
I also take the hardest calls.
The customer is really unhappyabout something.
I'm happy to jump on that call.
And similarly, try to make surethat we're doing right by them.
(19:35):
Can't save every customer, butat the same time, knowing that,
hey, your opinions and we'relistening and we're hearing,
we're trying to, And those allmatter.
So, we also started a bigconference called Opstars.
That's a dreamforce that bringsa lot of customers.
So as many customer touch pointsas you can possibly have.
And many of those customers thatI had dinner with like six,
seven years ago.
I'm still in touch with them.
(19:56):
They've moved jobs and stufflike that, but you still have
that little bit of reference andthat little bit of familiarity
that's really important.
And similarly, we do use them alot for roadmap and stuff like
that.
So, I think it's you can designprograms to make sure that
people don't just become siloedand lose touch of, Who is it
(20:17):
that we're really servicing?
Like a great example at Opstars,by the way, is we kind of tell
our, we have our go to marketteam go through this and
sometimes we ask them to do jobslike co check, hallway greeter,
and stuff like that.
And they're just that's beneathme.
But I'm like, no, you get tohave a touch, customer touch
point with lots of folks.
And they end up, a lot of timesthey do enjoy it because they
end up recognizing names.
Oh, yeah, we've chatted a wholebunch.
(20:37):
And if they see that love thatcomes from the customer, that
just fires people up so muchmore.
So it's not about what you'respecifically doing to them, just
get a chance to actually, asmuch as possible have face to
face connections with your withyour customers.
And if you build your productright and it's delivering value
it is really like magic.
Dan Balcauski (20:54):
I think, I think a big thing there was, No one
has walled themselves off fromcustomers right, you've welcome
being directly at the firingline even at the senior most
levels at which I think it'ssuper important, otherwise, it
could get too easy to you knowget just look at a Wall of
dashboards and maybe tellyourself a story you want to
hear versus what's actuallygoing on in the customer's mind.
(21:15):
Well, and kind of staying on thetopic of product, leadership and
scaling and company.
I know you guys are now a multiproduct company.
Can you talk to me a little bitabout, what was behind that
decision and as you've gone intomulti product, I think this is
an area where definitelycompanies get stuck, right?
(21:35):
They see their sort of maybe.
tapped out on sort of, what theycan achieve revenue growth wise.
And so now it's like, okay, webuild a second product.
Do we go acquire a secondproduct?
And I've seen a lot of those,second, third products really
sort of gum up the works.
How did you really think aboutthat from an organizational
perspective to, to make surethat, like, one plus one equaled
(21:59):
three and not one plus oneequaled like 0.
7.
Evan Liang (22:04):
Yeah, actually it's funny we actually went Multi
product fairly early on, but itdidn't work and we actually had
to end the life of product Andthen we did it a second time and
it is working And so I thinklike some of the key things
there is really around Sooriginally, our technology
allowed, had two major usecases.
(22:26):
One was the matching routingthat we're really known for.
And another, it was being ableto use because it could put
together groups and understandthe buyer's journey it was using
for marketing attribution.
And so that was initially wheretwo products actually came out.
What ended up happening, why itdidn't work, was it was
Different value propositions indifferent ICPs.
One was really sold to like themarketing heads, right?
(22:48):
Or the analytics team.
The other was more sort of off.
So it actually made sales cyclesmuch longer.
And I actually, I remember earlyon I had, I forced us to bundle
them.
So I was like, no, we got to getour ASP higher.
So you have to sell bothproducts into all the accounts.
It did get ASP hires, but italso lengthened the deal cycle
by two or three times.
And so, so that's it.
(23:09):
Oh, great.
Well, you got to go involve abunch of other people who aren't
in this conversation, right?
And that's not necessarily thebest thing.
Now, over time, what ended uphappening with one product was
growing clearly leaps and boundsahead of the other.
And the customer love there wasso much higher, the virality.
The other one, some peoplereally actually liked it.
Yeah, I'm still still swear byit, but it just seemed like it
(23:31):
didn't have the samecharacteristics.
It didn't have the same LTV, thesame level of stickiness, and I
actually don't know the productword, but I don't know if we
were really trying to solve theend goal, which is really like,
which is the holy grail of like,What should marketing spend more
money on?
I think any marketer willunderstand why.
That's a, that's an elusivegoal.
The product produces the data,but it's a little bit of the
(23:53):
story telling.
So in any case, we did end updeciding to end the life of it
because it was consuming 50percent of the resources, it was
about 10 percent of the of theoverall revenue.
And it was growing slower with ahigher churn profile.
So that would be a case ofsomething not working.
The newer product that we'veadded was in the calendaring
space.
So we added a product calledBookIt that allows scheduling.
(24:14):
And the reason that has beensuch a nice one plus one equals
three is as the technologiesevolve, moving meetings is just
the same as moving leads orcontacts or accounts.
So it's just, it just naturallyfit into our sweet spot of what
we were good at.
And as people got moresophisticated around their go to
market, we were able to.
Getting the right meaning ontothe right person's calendar was
just the same thing we werealready doing.
(24:34):
And so those kind of spacesmerged in some respects.
So yeah, we became a multiproduct company, but in some
respects, it's so close thatit's almost the exact same
space.
Now changing the sales reps,having to teach them how to sell
multi products has beensomething that we have been
going through.
But it's been a nice change tosee that they can tell that
joint story.
They're not just stuck on theirother thing.
(24:55):
And so most of our deals nowland with them.
Both.
And that's a sign that it'sworking and it goes faster and
people understand that.
It's kind of the same ICP versuspreviously it was end of like
some reps knew how to sell one,some reps knew how to sell the
other.
There were just things that wereearly signs that it wasn't
necessarily working that well.
Dan Balcauski (25:17):
Yeah.
And it's such a tempting placefor companies to end up because
you're like, Oh, well, themarketing, talks to the sales
operations team.
Right.
They're right next to themtalking, but you know, then you
go to market and you're like,wait, this is, we've now split
our, we've got too little woodbehind too many arrows and it's
(25:38):
just really difficult to makethat transition, um, you decided
to actually kill the product.
And it's an interesting scenariobecause it's one, like
sunsetting a product is one ofthese things that is not on the
bucket list of every productleader, but it's one of these
things that you don't get to dovery often, so it's one of these
things where you're like, youget asked to do it, you're
(26:02):
really, your end goal is to makeeveryone the least mad at you as
possible.
Walk me through that decision.
And I guess, were there any sortof takeaways, if you could like,
there's a junior PM here whereyou're like, if you ever have to
send a product, like make sureyou do X, Y, Z, like any words
of wisdom that you'd be able toshare from that experience.
Evan Liang (26:20):
Yeah.
So I think the biggest thingabout it is opportunity cost.
So the resources that we weredevoting to that product
actually allowed us to developthe new product bookend.
So we wouldn't have been able tolaunch the new Bokeh product if
we hadn't done that.
So if you take a step back,that's absolutely the right
decision from a productmanagement perspective.
That being said, what we did dois we tried to be as customer
friendly as possible.
(26:40):
So we gave them a long heads up,we explained it to them.
Now, a lot of the customers didhave both products.
So, So it was not like if youdid this wrong, you could be
risking the main business,right?
So we had to do it verycasually.
We gave people plenty of headsup.
We gave them our rationale forwhat we were doing at it.
And I'll be honest, for a lot ofcustomers, we're just like, Hey,
look, we're not going to We'renot going to build new features
(27:03):
on here.
That makes sense.
So there's no new featurescoming on here, but we'll let
you use this for another year,two years, etc.
Until this until this deadline.
And actually the trick is weactually did let some very few
customers continue to use it onthe notion that It's just code
that's not getting updated.
As I said, so, so, so, so we letthem slowly migrate off and let
(27:23):
them choose how to do it.
Internally the one thing we diddo is assign a line extensive.
So I did take that AR of thatbusiness.
And I told my board, I was like,that AR is just gone off our
books.
No, we're not counting it.
No thing is so like, if somechurn hits on that business, no
one gets penalized.
We're not trying to retain it.
But also if you sell it.
(27:44):
Which we don't want anyone to dobecause that was the biggest
cost you don't get any creditfor.
So there's no incentive foranyone to keep that business.
What ended up happening was thenthe our account manager saw a
great opportunity to take thatbudget and reallocate it to our
other if you will so they werelike, oh, this is free money I
know this company has thisbudget now that they're not
using how do I go get more ofthat into my other existing
(28:06):
business?
So a couple of methodologiesthat I plan and the team worked
well together But time framegiving the customers more time
allowing that and, but but stillgetting the majority of your 80
percent of your resources was atthe sales, marketing, product,
R& D teams shifted over allowedus to make it fairly smooth.
I don't think we lost a singlecustomer who was just really mad
at us for how we acted and threwus out of the other part of the
(28:29):
business.
Dan Balcauski (28:30):
Well, well, congrats.
That's a, it's a hell of a tightrope to walk.
So I heard a couple of goodthings there, which is clear
communication to the customerswith a good amount of time for
them to transition effectivelygood communication to the board
and then aligning incentives.
I think that's the aligningincentives thing is so huge.
And, I spent all my time in thepricing world and, you missed
(28:52):
that.
Upfront, right?
If they're transitioningperpetual to subscription,
right?
And it's like, well, perpetualthey get to, this big, chunk of
the lifetime value right upfront versus subscription.
And the company's trying to sellboth, right?
Like, Oh, why didn't sales guyssell on our fancy new
subscription product?
Right.
And similarly, if you've got a,you try to go from subscription
to a pay as you go model.
Right.
And it's like, Oh, well, thesales folks are happy because
(29:15):
they're getting paid their fullbonus on, you go.
Expected usage on a pay as yougo, but like, but those
customers never actually grow.
Like, and so, the managing thoseincentives is huge.
Not saying it's the only thingthat matters, but it's often
forgotten.
So, worth double clicking on.
As we kind of were talking aboutearlier, I, one of the
interesting areas, like you'replaying in this whole world of
(29:38):
go to market broadly WithLeanData And so, One of the
things we mentioned earlier wasthis evolution of this new
concept of a buying group.
Why is this becomingincreasingly important in B to
B?
How is this different from maybewhat people have thought of as
like account based marketing?
Evan Liang (29:57):
yeah, exactly.
So I think it's the realizationthat there's a lot of change
going on the go to market andsome of the old metrics like
MQLs have not been working.
Just the companies were not justnot delivering the efficiencies
that we expected, the metricsaren't working, sales and
marketing alignment isn'thappening.
And so the notion of buyinggroups is just going from, Hey,
marketing is just deliveringleads to account based marketing
(30:19):
is, Hey, we're doing targetaccounts.
So what actually the sellers andthe best sellers have always
been doing this is theyunderstand that within a
company, there's a select groupof people, a buying committee
that actually makes the purchasedecision.
And the buying committee hasbeen getting bigger, especially
with the harder economic times.
It used to be like, in the boomtimes, maybe one person can make
a business decision for a smalllevel of business.
(30:39):
Now it's like 9, 10, 11 people.
Your CFO is always involved.
You've got procurement.
So there's this notion thatmultiple people are involved,
and the best sales repsunderstand that and naturally do
that.
So this is not a notion that'schanging sales, really.
It's the fact that instead ofdelivering just this random
person, or just like, hey,there's someone that the
company's looking at you, it'sto actually deliver multiple
(31:01):
people who are showing interestin your product area.
Add a specific company that is abuying committee.
Now Salesforce your CRM wasoriginally set up this way.
There's something called contactwith role.
So it's that, that was orig sooriginally set up this way.
But it required the salespersonto do everything.
They had to find a lead, convertit to a contact, and add it with
(31:21):
the contact role.
Guess what?
No salesperson's ever doingthat.
Like, no one, maybe one person.
But, no, no one was actuallydoing that.
The changes, the technology hasevolved to allow that, and then
the need on the go to marketteams has evolved to say that
you have to have this level offidelity.
And so those combination of thetwo is leading a lot of,
especially larger enterprises,to understand that They have to
(31:43):
work at the buying committeelevel.
This is especially true as thebiggest companies, because if
you think of someone like hugelet me think, they're like, I
don't know, like the SIEM orstuff like that.
They don't, it's not aboutaccount base, where they're
trying to penetrate into newaccounts.
They've sold to everyone.
Everyone's a customer.
It's about how many other SKUsand how many multi products in
your share of wallet withinthere, right?
(32:04):
Or even your renewal.
So that's a big change where ouraccount base is really great
for, like, early stage company,venture backed company,
penetrating into new accounts,right?
But what if that customer isalready one of your customers?
What you need is expansion.
Selling them multiple products,etc.
Those are buying committees.
That's not account base.
Does that
Dan Balcauski (32:23):
Interesting.
Interesting.
Well, well, and I feel like,this is a place where maybe a
picture's worth a thousandwords.
Cause in my head, as you'retalking and maybe you could I'll
help kind of describe what thepicture I'm seeing, and you can
tell me where maybe it's wrongis, if we just imagine right,
the big circle is it accountsand inside there, maybe I've got
a Venn diagram of overlappingother smaller circles that are
(32:46):
all these buying committeegroups.
And so, yeah, like I.
Account based marketing onlyreally looks at the big circle.
And maybe, I mean, maybe it payssome attention to, okay, yeah
there's somebody in there whomakes a purchase decision versus
is just an influencer.
Maybe there's some sort of, roleconfiguration, but understanding
that like, okay, there's, for a,if we're trying to sell,
(33:08):
whatever, a piece of marketingsoftware versus a piece of sales
software, like those are both inthe, This is usually structured
like the words SEO, Rendering,Marketing, Sales, Appliances,
Proch pesticiding and those arewhat they do a is that they
maturity into more and more Lookat this.
Everything in there is great.
So this is an example of whatbanking and banking services
might look like but
Evan Liang (33:24):
yep.
I think you're absolutely right.
It's like lead is too small,account is too big, buying
groups is just the middle, theright side, the Goldilocks.
Dan Balcauski (33:31):
All right.
Goldilocks view of that.
Got it.
And so, so I guess for maybefolks who are, have been in
either a traditional leadcentric world or an ABM world
Like how did, how they measuresuccess when using a buying
group model change?
Like I, you threw out a bombthere before in the, MQLs are,
(33:52):
don't work.
And I'm sure we you're sure youget a lot of agreement from
listeners on their experiencewith MQLs.
But I guess, as you kind oftransition to this model let me
take a step back.
One thing I've heard aboutproblems of companies trying to
implement ABM, maybe going froma traditional lead centric model
is like internal KPIs don't evensupport that transition, right?
(34:16):
So as people are starting tothink about buying groups, is
there another transition theyneed to go through
organizationally or KPIs to makethis successful?
Evan Liang (34:23):
Yeah, so I do think it is a digital transformation,
just to be clear.
It's not something just flip ona switch.
So it is a transformation, but Iencourage people not to
necessarily just cut over on dayone, it's to run both sets of
metrics keep your traditionallead metrics or account based
metrics and add these buy groupsultimately is measured on
success of pipeline.
(34:43):
So it is one that aligns prettywell with sales but you're not
looking for, you may not belooking for, Hey, number of
leads.
Where I think one of mycustomers called the second lead
syndrome.
So if all you are saying is youget a single lead, you may
ignore the second lead, right?
Because you're not getting paidfor it on the same company.
And that could be a reallyimportant person.
And so, so I think buying groupsis just taking it more at the
(35:05):
opportunity level.
And you're going to be measuringpipeline.
You're going to be measuringASP.
You're going to have a closerate.
These are, These would be thesome of the metrics, but they're
not like radically new metrics.
But it ultimately is aboutpipeline and increasing your
chances to close and notspending time on things that
don't make a lot of sense.
But most of the companies I knoware trying to run both metrics
(35:28):
in parallel for a while beforemaking that transition.
Yeah,
Dan Balcauski (35:32):
so don't pull the plug on day one and do a hard
cut over cause you're there's apitfall doing that.
There's some dragons waiting inlate for you.
So, so if folks are sort ofinterested in trying to start.
They said, Oh, Evan, that allsounds great.
Buying groups sound interesting.
Sounds like maybe we're nothitting the mark or the current
go to market.
Like, besides like not doing ahard code over on day one and
(35:54):
folks are just like trying tofigure out how to start, like,
how do you recommend folks evenstart sort of figuring out what
this thing is and how to sort ofbring it into the organization?
Evan Liang (36:02):
so I think the analyst group that's been really
pushing this the longest andthey've published a whole bunch
of articles out there would beForrester.
So I'll give them credit.
They've been on this.
By the way, they invented theMQL.
This is the old seriousdecisions, folks.
So they've realized that themodel has shifted.
And so they've been publishing alot of information out there.
I would approach this.
Our analysts like TerryFlatterty, Amy Hawthorne, and
(36:22):
Vicki Brown have really beenpushing this initiative.
And so there's a lot ofmaterials that they're putting
out there.
LeanData ourselves are alsoaggregating a lot of
information.
We've Put together some someguide books around it.
Some authoritative guide tobuying books.
And we're just trying to publishout the thought leadership.
Certainly you can follow me onLinkedIn.
I'm just Evan Liang is just theshort handle for me on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn and we arepublishing, we have like
(36:44):
communities around it.
So we're trying to gather thethought leaders in and around
buying groups to really espousewhy it's working.
And we do have a case studiesabout successful companies like
Siemens, Palo Alto Networks, etcetera, that have moved to this
motion.
Dan Balcauski (36:57):
Awesome.
Well, I will definitely putthose links in the show notes
for listeners so they can makesure to follow up on that.
Evan.
I could talk to you all day butI do want to be respectful of
you and the audience's time.
I'd like to wrap it up with acouple of rapid fire questions.
You ready?
Evan Liang (37:10):
Sure thing, go for it.
Dan Balcauski (37:11):
Well, I'm going to wave the magic wand.
We take your responsibilitiesall away.
You have one year to go studyany subject you want in depth.
All your other responsibilitiesare taken care of.
Lead data continues on itsgrowth path.
Your family's fine, but youcould dedicate all your time to
just immersing yourself in onearea of study.
What do you study?
(37:31):
Why?
Evan Liang (37:33):
Yeah, so I think the area well, actually, two
answers.
One academic interest area, I'vealways loved econ.
So, to me, what's happeningwith, like, economics and all
that stuff is something that I'mreally fascinated about.
So that would be one, so I'llcheat.
Secondary, just like if I was togeek out on just free time, it'd
probably be like World War IIhistory.
So I am a World War II geek.
I like to read about history andsome of those stuff, the things,
(37:56):
so those probably would, maybeI'll double major.
So those two.
Dan Balcauski (38:00):
Double major is acceptable.
And yeah, the history seems tobe a big topic on that question.
So, look, when you think aboutall the spectacular people
you've had a chance to workwith, learn from, is there
anyone who just pops to mind,has had a disproportionate
effect on the way you thinkabout building and leading
companies now?
Evan Liang (38:17):
Yeah, so I was very fortunate that some of the early
folks that I worked with reallyearly in my career at Battery
Ventures are still with us andhave been backing me and those
two people.
So, two so Ravi Mohan was myinitial boss at Battery
Ventures.
He ended up backing me throughShasta Ventures in my early
venture.
So, definitely has been a mentorthroughout my career and I owe
him a lot.
And then there was a secondperson there who's still on our
(38:37):
board, David Hartwig, who's atSapphire Ventures.
And both of them have beeninstrumental to me throughout my
career, but also as friendsalong the whole entire way.
Dan Balcauski (38:44):
Well, if you think about maybe pick one Roshi
or David and like, is anythingsort of stick out in terms of
the best piece of advice thateither one of those has ever
given you?
Evan Liang (38:54):
Oh, interesting.
I don't know if it's like onespecific thing that they've said
but I would say that they've oneof the things I really value is
just really being candid andstrong transparency and so I
think for for Rovi for sure,he's not afraid to call it as it
is and so, but I think the goodthing is he'll give me the
advice and he'll let me learn myown mistakes, but he'll remind
(39:16):
me.
And he was like, I told you thatfive years ago.
Like, I was like, okay, I justneed to learn my own lessons.
But I appreciate you giving methe room to figure that
Dan Balcauski (39:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, well, and keeping it realwith the the venture capital
learning cycles of five years,like, see how I told you I have
five years for now?
Like, but you know, that's howtheir investments work.
So, yeah.
Look being a leader of a scalingSaaS company could be taxing in
multiple ways.
Are there ways that you keep youyourself on the top of your game
intellectually, emotionally,physically?
Evan Liang (39:45):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I think, this is a
marathon, not a sprint.
Especially as you look at likeexit outcomes for SaaS companies
have really really elongated.
We all thought, to buildsomething in scale.
So I think the main thing is,yeah, you have to, Keep keep
yourself healthy and stuff likethat.
And so for me, it's just sleep.
So I make sure I get a solideight hours and I always have
throughout the entire way.
(40:05):
And so that, that balance isreally important is that you're
never trying to burn yourselfout because I mean, the hardest
thing is if you burn out, thenthere's no hope really for how
do you keep everyone else'sspirits up in the company.
Dan Balcauski (40:18):
Was there a point that changed for you where did
you used to be a believer andlike, Oh, I could just grind it
out and, get four hours and justkind of, perpetual or was there
a Matt Walker moment whereyou're like, Oh yeah, this is
it.
Evan Liang (40:30):
Not really.
I think actually it has beenfairly consistent throughout.
So I would say, actually, a lotof the work stuff and maybe the
family stuff, I mean, there'scertainly times when my kids
were young, I wasn't quitegetting that.
But as my kids have gottenolder, I think that is something
that I have prioritized.
It's important from a wellfunctioning perspective.
So, never really tried to taketoo much like caffeine or stuff.
(40:53):
So I actually don't drinkcoffee.
So, getting so, getting to sleepin the morning is enough for me.
So,
Dan Balcauski (40:58):
Oh man, well, I'll have to learn your secret
some other point about thecoffee.
I've got a too much of anaddiction.
Well, look, if I gave you abillboard and you could put any
advice on there for other B to BSaaS CEOs trying to scale their
companies, what would it say?
Evan Liang (41:12):
I think what should I say, it's a marathon, not a
sprint.
So I think think long and, trynot to have there are a lot of
ups and downs, but try tosmoothen it out in some respects
for both yourself and youremployees.
Dan Balcauski (41:23):
I'd love that.
So marathon, not a sprit youalready mentioned a couple of
different links.
Any other ways that folks wantto learn more about LeanData or
follow you around the internet,anywhere we should send them?
Evan Liang (41:33):
No, I think primarily that we're we're kind
of using LinkedIn a lot more.
I mean, obviously, you can go toleandata.
com and our website, and we havea lot of great information there
as well.
Dan Balcauski (41:41):
Awesome.
Well, we'll put those links inthe show notes for our
listeners.
Everyone that wraps up thisepisode of SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Evan for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips for our listeners,if you found this conversation
as enlightening as I did,remember subscribe so you don't
miss out on future episodes.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.