July 14, 2025 • 27 mins
In part 2 of our talk with Reachdesk founder Alex Olley, we discuss Reachdesk’s bold go-to-market strategy, which aligns every function, marketing, sales, and customer success, around one shared goal: revenue. It details how compensation, planning, and cross-functional collaboration eliminate any friction and drive focus. The episode also reveals how a London startup broke into the US market by going all-in with a differentiated value proposition and a 5x return on investment (ROI) guarantee.
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Episode Transcript
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Matt Best (00:00):
Thank you for joining us on the Growth Workshop
(00:01):
Podcast for part two of ourdiscussion with Alex Olley. We
talked ahead of the recording ofthis podcast about you attribute
some of your success in the USto your own methodology when it
comes to kind of selling. Talkto us a little bit about that.
Alex Olley (00:16):
Yeah, I was exposed to sort of the world of Account
Based Marketing before, and Ifeel like, as it were, that we
don't really use as muchanymore. It used to be 2021, it
was a buzzword. ABM, say,There's everything...
Jonny Adams (00:27):
What is Account Based Marketing? Before we jump
in, you're gonna share that in amoment. We can just for the
listeners...
Alex Olley (00:33):
Account Based Marketing is essentially this
flip funnel approach, ratherthan sort of an inbound method.
You're you're selecting youraccounts, your it's essentially
good B to B, selecting youraccounts. You're orchestrating
campaigns around those in areally narrow fashion, rather
than trying to boil the ocean.It's kind of just flipping the
inbound model and turning on itshead. It just doesn't fit in
loads of organizations. Ifyou're running a model within an
(00:54):
org where you're trying togenerate qualified leads, ABM is
always in conflict, and so itjust, it's kind of tried to eke
its way in, and it gets forcedout really quickly. My method is
sort of like clean slate, right,start from scratch, and it was
born out of my frustration ofhow I saw things. I saw that MQL
conflict with ABM, but it wasbasically I used to hate the
(01:19):
fact that our marketing teamwould celebrate that there would
be 150% target, and sales wereat 50% so one team's going,
we're doing really, really wellhere, and the others going, we
just tanked like that. That wasone of the worst courses. And
you I think that's just reallybad for an organization to be in
that position.
Jonny Adams (01:34):
Can I clarify what you're talking about? Because
they've hit target? Are yousaying that there were separate
metrics for the two differentdepartments? Metrics to the
market? Because we buzz aboutmarketing sales alignment. One
of our core propositions isaligning marketing and sales
functions for the greater good.Sounds like they were
misaligned. Possibly they'rereally misaligned. And just for
the listeners, the what I'mhearing is the misalignment was
the fact that the KPIs in themarketing team were what MQL and
(01:57):
the sales team was,entertainment, revenue,
interesting. So that sort of theproxy is misaligned on KPIs.
Alex Olley (02:03):
Exactly. What I do, everyone is focused on the same
goal, which is revenue marketingas well. So that's the starting
point in this all bound method.It's not inbound, it's not
outbound, it's not ABM, it'sthat everyone in my go to market
team is focused on us hittingthe revenue goal from the
graphic designer in themarketing team to the demand
(02:25):
gen, to the BDR to the AU, weall care about by hitting our
number in this quarter. Guesswho celebrated with me?
Marketing celebrating, BDR,celebrating. It's not sales.
Just going, Oh, we're awesome.Everyone's going, we all did
this together, and they allbelieve it. And so you start by
saying your target as a team isthis number, and if we don't get
there, we have failed, right? Sothat's the starting point there.
(02:47):
We don't talk about MQL, so wedon't talk about leads or
database volume or anything likethat. We do have to look at like
pipeline pacing and back thatinto the revenue number, but
ultimately, we don't really careif we if now everyone's really
happy, right? What I then did isI thought to really stay true to
that everyone therefore has tohave a comp plan. They're all
gonna have skin in the game. Sorecently hired a demand gen
(03:08):
manager. I said, right, by theway, this is your salary, and
you can earn this much on top ifwe if we hit our sales number,
and if you go above that, it'suncapped. And he kind of looked
at me and say, this isn't ajoke. Is this a joke? It's not a
joke, because I need you to buyinto this, because I think that
if you do, if you don't, and Isaid, hit these mqr numbers,
he'd probably go and hit them,whereas now he's thinking, these
(03:31):
are all the things I can do tohelp sales hit their number. And
those are the conversations Isee. I see marketing team, or go
into the office marketingsitting with sales, and they ask
that question, what can we do tohelp you close more deals?
Right? Obvious answer, yes. Getfrom sellers, I want, I want
more meetings, right? But wedon't really have this
conversation. It's like, well,actually, we've got this massive
account, and we need your helpto accelerate them doing these
things. So you get reallycreative with it. So everyone
(03:54):
has a comp plan, and I'm nottrying to pay them less than
their market value. I'm tryingto pay them way above. And you
see very different behaviorsfrom doing that, and because
when you've done that, you'vegot everyone on aligned to
revenue. Everyone isincentivized to do it, so
they've got skin in the games.They're always trying to beat
the number. You can then startto do the things that remove the
(04:15):
friction for the buyer. You canstart ungating all your content,
because you're not trying tocapture a lead. For the sake of
saying, I generated a lead,you're saying, well actually, I
mean, I don't know about youguys, but I can't remember last
time I entered my email or phonenumber into a form, I don't
think people want that anymore.And the more we do that, the
more we frustrate our buyers.And so by having this, this,
(04:37):
this, this mindset towardsrevenue and not having to gamify
the system, you free up yourteam to do the things that your
buyers actually want in 2025right? Which is removing the
friction, which is not just, youknow, once the meetings happen,
see you later, that's it. We'vethrown it over to you. It's
integrated campaigns, wherepeople are working together on
like, Is this really the rightICP marketing is going up. We've
(04:59):
looked. All the close one deals.And actually we think we should
be targeting these guys instead.They could have said we could
generate loads of leads, butactually they're saying, no, we
want to target these guys in areally precise fashion, because
we know the win rates, sales,cycle lengths and ACVs are
optimum there. So we're going toreally focus on here. We're
going to cut out a lot of this.This is marketing saying this,
by the way, right? And thereforewe're going to be running these
(05:20):
campaigns because sales, we wantto help you win more, and that
and that is that is a world thatI think most people want to live
in. It's just really hard to getto you, because the way that
organizations are built, yeah,get in the way.
Matt Best (05:32):
It's fascinating. And I think that clients, I love the
bit around actually, we end updoing what the client wants,
rather than just being laserfocused. There is a reality
though, Alex, I guess. And somepeople listening to this might
be going, Yeah, but we do needto have certain amounts of
control over what people aredoing, and there's this balance
of, you know, autonomy andagility within the team to be
able to make those decisions. Doyou find, have you seen through
(05:57):
this approach, any issue withany sort of too far on the right
or the left side of the kind ofthe road that we're going down,
that means we're sort of in theverge that's a terrible analogy,
but hopefully it makes sense interms of, how do we keep
everybody how do we keepeverybody focused and not
getting distracted? Clearly,they're focused on that end
goal, but they still have to goon a journey to get there.
Alex Olley (06:17):
Yeah, honestly, no. Like I can do. First foremost,
there's never been an argumentin my business where we're going
that was a sales lead or thatwas a marketing lead, right?
Just, just think about how bigof a problem that is, just how
wasteful that conversation is.So because you eliminate things,
I think you spend your timedoing the things that matter.
(06:37):
But you know, a lot of thisultimately, is down to planning.
Now I still do look at salesvelocity by channel, which I
think is the most importantmetric. And you can I do look at
Pipeline created by channel, butultimately as because it's about
revenue. I look at the sources.I still look at inbound, I look
at events, I look at outbound,AES generating their own
pipeline. I do still look at theare we creating enough
(06:58):
opportunities? What's the winrate, the ACV and the sales
cycle length, you know, thestandard sales velocity
calculation. I break it down asone and then by channel, and I
do look at the which ones aregenerating the most revenue
right now, if you've got aproblem and it's down, first
conversation is, well, can wefix it? Now? I do see a lot of
excuses out there saying thatoutbound is dead and doesn't
(07:18):
work anymore. I think it's justbecause it's really hard and it
doesn't get the attention itdeserves. We had an outbound
problem in outbound problem ayear ago, and I've spotted it
because we're generating, notnecessarily fewer opportunities.
They're just not closing at highenough rate. We're not
generating enough revenue offthe back of it. Let's inspect
that now. Let's double down, andthis way you start digging. I
have this concept of snorkelinglike snorkeling is just like
going on the surface and youstart diving down and going
(07:41):
right. What is the actualproblem? Is it because we're
targeting the wrong accounts? Isit because we don't get enough
volume? But ultimately, I tryand link it back to revenue, and
so I look how many opportunitieswe're creating from that
outbound source. What is the winrate? The ACV is actually okay.
We're not closing enough ofthem. Sales cycle length is
really long. All right. Nowlet's try and find the ones that
actually do fit where we want togo, and let's reverse engineer
those. Okay, back to yourquestion. That's when the
(08:04):
planning comes in. And I'mrelentless on focus on a small
number of things, rather thanletting things just go off the
rails into the verge as you say,yeah, you then just got to have,
like, really systematic ways ofmaking sure that these
initiatives are being managedproperly. That's where leaders
come in. That's their job,right? They've got to be able
to, just like, put theguardrails up and get this is
what we're doing. Yeah, fine.We're gonna do some experiments
(08:25):
on one side, but this is what weneed to fix. This is what's
gonna be optimum result for thebusiness in terms of revenue.
Now, let's agree these are thethree things we're gonna do.
Let's get them done. And we'rejust really regimental with our
approach to how we get stuffdone. Where it goes wrong is
when you go, we've got thisidea. And it was like, whose job
is that? Is that mine? Like,should I be doing it? Where is
(08:46):
it being tracked? Like, what dowe need to do? It doesn't get
written down anywhere. There'sno like, weekly thing. And the
way I've kept it in check, Isuppose, is we have my favorite
meeting of the week, which isthe go to market ops meeting,
right? And in that meeting youhave customer success, account
management, rev ops, sales andmarketing, everyone that touches
the customer right, they're allthere. And we're all talking
(09:08):
about the same thing. How can weimprove retention? How can
improve net retention? How canwe improve pipeline, pacing,
sales? And we're all workingtogether. And that's where the
initiatives, literally, there'sa thing. It's like top
initiatives. And we go, let's gothrough these. How are we doing
on these? For example, we'retalking them. We're not talking
about them as a sales team ormarketing team customer success,
that everyone has a voice there,and that's that. That's the, I
(09:29):
think, the perfect state whenyou're getting the feedback from
the voice of the customer, aswell as what you want to achieve
going forward, from like a, whatyou would perhaps describe as a
go to market standpoint, bringall that together and manage it
properly. You're operating in adifferent world.
Jonny Adams (09:45):
It's really interesting what you're sharing,
because we are so aligned in theway that you are delivering in
your business. But we do it as aday to day job to educate the
world on. That alignment ofthose customer facing teams, and
what do you think inhibitsbusinesses? Because you said
(10:06):
something about the way thebusiness is structured, but I'd
like to unpack that. What is itthat inhibits them to do that
marketing, sales alignment,motion internally.
Alex Olley (10:16):
Yeah, look, if you're a massive company, it's
really hard. This is like, Ithink the first, the first
reaction, if someone who was ina billion dollar company were
listening to this, like, there'sso much legacy there, this is
going to take years to to changesomething, there's that sort of
lack of desire. Perhaps, I thinkit's about incentives. Like, my
favorite, one of my favoritesayings is, show me the
(10:38):
incentive. I'll show you theoutcome. If you put people in a
position where they arepersonally incentivized and
collectively as a team, changewill happen. And comp plan I've
spent, I think I've spent athird of my time thinking about
compensation. I never used to dothat, but I think compensation
drives the right behaviors. AndI have to admit to you as well,
(10:58):
I think I, over the years, I hadto, I had to remove people that
didn't buy into that, peoplethat were too used to that. You
need people that buy into thatvision and that way of thinking.
Because if you put somethingthat's incentivizing someone
that doesn't feel good and theydon't feel great about it,
they're going to be doing stuffbehind closed doors that
essentially the antithesis ofwhat you want. So you've got to
(11:19):
have the right people on boardthat buy into it. You have to
incentivize them. I think that'sthe number one thing that gets
in the way, is that comp plansand compensation incentives are
built in a way that can begamified. I use that word
intentionally, by the way, I'mstill shocked by how many
companies one don't incentivizepeople. I talked to you about
incentivizing marketing. I thinkeveryone should do that, by the
way. So either they don'tincentivize them, and when they
(11:41):
do, it's based on vanity metricsthat can be gamified a lot of
the time. Other than sales,sales is pretty easy, but I
just, I think, I'm not surewhere, where this stems from,
but I think people just need tothink about that a bit more.
Jonny Adams (11:53):
Yeah, it's really helpful to get your your point
of view, because that's the dayto day. We work with
organizations that, you know,half a million, a billion,
possibly, and we're trying tobang that drum. But you know, if
you're a C suite individualthat's been working there for 15
years, in a in a financialservice organization, Jonny, I
get what you're talking about,but just not interested in that
(12:14):
alignment at the moment. But thevalue that you can get out of
aligning those functions is it'sincredible, right?
Alex Olley (12:19):
It's huge, yeah, and again, big lesson for me. It's
one of those Fergusconversations where I remember
saying, like, I think we'regonna be doing this. And I
remember saying to me, like,What'd your customers think? Oh,
it's a good question. I feltreally stupid. All of a sudden,
there's all, how often do youhave the voice of the customer
essentially informing what you,what you what you're going to do
(12:42):
as a as a company, but it'sreally important as a go to
market unit, and that those arethe moment, the moments where
things did change like theychanged massively, because
essentially, we're all here andbuilding businesses for the
benefit the customer, andwithout that voice in the room,
Matt Best (12:58):
And we so often get into that with our with our
what's the point?
clients, right? Jonny, and we'rethinking about created various
different processes, customerjourneys, all of that kind of
good stuff, but it's stilllooking at it from the internal
lens and never validating thatwith the client. But has anyone
tested this? Like, how do weknow that that's the truth?
Yeah. How are we checking thatthat's still working? How do we
(13:20):
know that's still the same, likeyou talk just even earlier, just
around the way things havechanged in terms of the number
of people who are just going topick up a cold call that's in a
relatively short amount of time.So it's always changing. So sort
of cut. Yeah, we did customerjourney mapping 20 years ago.
This is why our sales processlooks like this. Well, maybe you
should have a look again.
Alex Olley (13:41):
Yeah, exactly. And actually, I think we digress,
because your original questionwas that, how did that
methodology help us in the US?Right? I've tried going into, I
think, I think every businessI've been part of, we've either
tried to go into the US oranother major territory. And
that's that sort of way ofthinking. That methodology, just
like it did, break downbarriers, it did mean that we
could easily translate things,and it helped us speed up big
(14:05):
time, because we weren't tryingto put barriers in our own ways,
let alone the customer. Butthat's one of the hardest things
we had to do, was get into theUS, because I failed so many
times. When you go into newterritories, the territory plan
and ownership is like the numberone thing that gets in people's
ways. Like you've got an AE inLondon who's been working
snowflake in the US, and nextyou know, you've got an AE in
the US and says, Well,snowflake. And we're like, Well,
(14:27):
hang on a second. We actuallydon't have territory maps. We
have dynamic ways of pumpingenough opportunities and signals
to reps so that they can thenwork them. Because I believe
that we shouldn't wait for acompany to be ready to buy. We
should be getting therebeforehand. Like, it's usually a
month or two beforehand, right?And so we don't have this sort
of territory static map that weuse anymore. And again, because
(14:50):
as a team, we're trying to getto the revenue number it was, I
didn't really matter so muchanymore. We kind of just, like,
removed the conversation quitequickly. It helped us big time
with how we think about, like.Outbound as a motion previously,
I'd have conversations withfinance in previous businesses
saying, Well, this STI isn'thitting their number. They're
just not hitting their number.We need to put them on
(15:11):
performance plan. I was like,this str is actually creating a
ton of revenue because their winrate is 35% and even though
they've only hit 50% of theirops number, they're 120% to
revenue pacing, and that's whatI care about. And about. And
it's those things that I thinkare dangerous, that we often
lose sight of what's actuallycontributing to revenue, because
we're looking at these metricsthat actually perhaps are
(15:32):
leading indicators more thanlike, the final metrics that
really matter for individuals.And instead, it translates into
this guy now feels really goodbecause he's making an impact to
the team, and he's incentivizedto do that too.
Jonny Adams (15:43):
I've been to a number of conferences just on
this, you know, making it intothe US, and our organization,
parent company, is in the US.We're one of 20 organizations
that amongst that, that businessconcept. We're one of the only
ones outside of the US. So weknow the US market really well.
We've got a really strong alumniwithin our business, individuals
(16:03):
that have spun out of our parentcompany to work in the likes of
Tableau and other organizationsin the marketplace. But people
do say, Well, how do I make itinto the US? Like you've talked
about your framework, but what'sthat sort of thing that you you
know, other than the methodologythat you got? But what was that
one thing that you think neededto get into the US?
Alex Olley (16:20):
I think that for us, there are actually two things.
The number one thing about goingto any new territory is going
all in. I see too many companiesthat just dip their toe and go,
I think we're going to try andgo into the US often they wait
too long. They wait till they'veraised more money. But even when
they do, they don't want to makesacrifices. And we made every
sacrifice. I'm not gonna say Isacrificed myself, but I went
there. I'd actually only been toSan Francisco for like, a
(16:42):
weekend conference beforebasically, essentially deciding,
I'm going to take this to theUS. As I said before, the reason
why we went to the US is becausethe market was massive. That's
the number one reason whyeveryone wants but the market
readiness was, was, was theleading indicator. We knew that
we'd have fewer headwindsselling this in the US. And so
why? Like, this is 2019, so justbefore COVID, but you needed
(17:04):
boots on the ground. You neededface to face interaction. And
because people were usinggifting and direct mail in their
outbound their sales process,customer success, it was just
way easier. So I was like,that's just an easier
opportunity. Now we launched inthe US six months after
launching the business, right?So a London startup, four
blokes, we're gonna go to theUS. And everyone laughed at me.
(17:24):
They're like, you will fail.It's gonna go horribly wrong.
You don't know what you'redoing. You should wait five
years try and get it to like,15, 20 million error raise a big
round and then go into the US.And I just ignored everything. I
was like, we're gonna go all in.We hired a US CEO. We thought
that was really, reallyimportant, partly for
fundraising, but also we neededsomeone over there who's going
(17:46):
to be, like, a big culturedriver. We brought people with
us. I've always said, if you'regoing to do something important,
you've got to sacrifice yourbest people. And sometimes
that's like, that doesn't makeany sense, but it's one of my
biggest learnings, if you'regonna do something really
important, put your best peoplethere. And so I take certain
people along with me, and theywould actually show people how
(18:07):
to sell. Like, go back to focus,talking about a lot. I remember
him saying to me, your numberone job right now is to teach
people how to sell, reach desk.That's it. I was like, that's
such good advice. I was like,Well, I've got AES. You can sell
it way better than me. So let'sget them to do part of the
teaching too. So you bring yourbest people, you go all in. We
put almost all of our budget interms of marketing and
(18:28):
everything into the US. Wedidn't leave much behind for for
the the EMEA market. And I thinkgoing into these new
territories, I've done it withother companies and into other
regions, when I think done well,you go all in, but you cannot
dip your toe the moment you do,you may as well pull out. And if
you're not ready to do that,don't bother in the first place.
Yeah, that was the lesson. Nowit's not all gravy. I mean, we
(18:49):
were very lucky in that thefirst customer we signed when we
landed in the US was zoom info.Now that's pretty handy for two
reasons. One, it's like we canuse that as a reference.
Everyone we are selling to B toB, sales and marketing people.
They all know that logo. Butalso what they were doing is,
because they're using digitalgifting in their process,
(19:09):
they're sending that beforeevery discovery call. They're
sending like a, I think it was a$7 Starbucks that's all like,
look forwards being soon. Here'sStarbucks and us, and it was a
powered by reach desk at thebottom. Now think about how big
that company is, and how many ofthose are being sent out. A lot,
hundreds of that. Hundreds of1000s. So we'd get loads of
companies saying, I've beengifted by zoom info, and they
tell me that it's you or I sawit was you guys. What's all this
(19:31):
about? So it just that wasjammy. So look, we got lucky in
some ways, but we did go all inwhere it really changed. Was one
of the best executed things Ithink I've ever seen in my life.
And I don't know if you'refamiliar with Vern harness,
scaling up methodology, and it'sessentially like a company wide
cohesive strategy that allowsyou to get everyone on literally
(19:51):
one page. And it starts withyour values, your purpose, your
mission, your vision, yourvision. There was this moment
where it was, I think we spenttwo hours every. Day for two
months working on this, me andmy founders, yeah, and the
purpose, mission, vision,values. That was, I think we
kind of defined that quitequickly. But there's these parts
where you check, it's like achecklist you have to complete.
(20:12):
And so you talk a lot about,what are your differentiating
activities? And there's a reallygood question you can ask
yourself, is, what are weprepared to be bad at? That's a
really powerful question to ask,because when you're thinking
about differentiation, you can'tbe great at everything, and I
think that's where a lot ofcompanies fail. A lot of teams
fail. So we were askingourselves a quote, like, we're
prepared to be bad at this, thisand this, but we are. We're
willing to be great at being theinternational player that takes
(20:35):
personalization seriously, andyou can measure ROI, those are
our three things, and everythingis about those three things, and
what that does is that foldsinto what you call your brand
promises. These are promisesyou're going to make to a
customer. I'll give an example.Our promise to all of our
customers was that you will beable to measure the impact of
direct amount of gifting. That'squite a new concept for most
people, particularly me. Thatwas the world I was. I couldn't
(20:56):
measure it, so I wanted that tobe part of our promise. Now
every company makes promises tocustomers, right? And it's
created a lot of skepticism. Sowhat you do is, then you back
those up with guarantees. So wesaid you'll be able to measure
the impact of direct moneygifting on your pipeline
creation and essentially closingmore deals. We then spent about
a year building one specificproduct to allow to do that,
(21:19):
because we're like, that's oneof our three things we're going
to lean into that we could buildall these other things. These
other things, these cool thingsthat our competitors doing.
Let's make it this one thing,right? Let's make ourselves
really good at that, that hasthat attribution in it. So you
can weight your attributionmodel within our platform, so
that when you send a gift, andit creates a meeting to say
that's attributes back togifting. Great. That's really
hard to do, by the way, becauseit's an offline channel. And
here was the powerful piece. Wethen said, for every dollar you
(21:43):
spend, you'll get at least $5back. So that's the guarantee.
So people are like, Oh, it'skind of a no brainer. I was
like, here's how we really makeit a no brainer. If we don't,
we'll refund you the difference,and bam, with this London
company that no one really knewto going all in on the US with
this, like, really focusedstrategy and these really clear
value proposition that made it abit of a no brainer. And, you
(22:05):
know, we talk about, are you anice to have, or you must have?
I'm in the camp where I like itto be, am I a no brainer? And
that's the position where, whenI say that to people like, Oh,
brilliant, because we're not,we're not a must have. So it
kind of frees you up a littlebit. But it's funny, I met the
CEO of our biggest competitorabout a year and a half after do
that. I think we launched it inq1 2022, I think we needed 200%
(22:28):
of our number. We didn't thinkit would be executed this well,
because every pitch we weregoing in, they were like, what's
the difference between you andyour competition? Well, it's
these three things, and we knowyou care about these three
things. And here's the promiseand here's the guarantee on each
of them. And people are right,and then they go to the
competition saying, reach us isguaranteeing this ROI and what
are you guys doing? So our winrate against our bit all of our
competition was about 90% we'dwin almost every single deal.
(22:50):
And inevitably, what you expectto happen is that they're gonna
start copying that what we do on5x ROI guarantee as well. Great,
but they haven't built a productthat actually allows you to
measure it right? And so our winrate went up a little bit more
because it's like we've actuallywe're the only guys that can do
this, and we lent into ourstrengths and what we wanted to
be about as a business. And Ithink if you're going to go into
(23:11):
somewhere like the US, don'tjust go all in, go in with,
like, a really focused,differentiated strategy that
sets you wells apart and makesyou a no brainer. I think that's
where you win.
Jonny Adams (23:20):
It's a conundrum that you hear a lot in
marketplace, and you know thatthat lure of the US, but you've
just answered the question, butthen just 10x that, with that,
without response. And I canpersonally just say thank you so
much, Alex for that, for thatlittle snippet, because that is
gold
Matt Best (23:35):
Yeah, the going all in is a is a brave thing to do,
isn't it? Like you've got to youwent and spoke to a bunch of
businesses about that, they'd belike, oh, yeah, but what's the
risk? Like, what's the risk ofthat? I'm not suggesting you
didn't consider the risk. I'msure you did. And you also would
have considered, like, What thewhat your expected ROI is. So
you make sure that that sort of5x number isn't, isn't seeing
(23:56):
you writing checks and creditsback to clients all the time.
But it's a really brave thing todo, but also recognizing that
you can't just do part of it. Imean, I've spent, I spent a
number of years in SaaSstartups, scale ups where you're
sort of like, you know, to yourpoint, you're like, Oh, we just
give that a try. And then we go,we do not even half a job. We do
a sort of Third, we do it, youknow, third at best, probably
(24:18):
less than 25% of a good job. Andthen we go, kind go, Oh, that
was rubbish. Yeah, wow. Can wedo expect? What's going to
happen if you don't go, ifyou're not really backing
yourself and kind of going allin, then, yeah, how are you
going to get the outcome thatyou want? And I think it's that
I don't know if you'd use theword bravery. Do you see it as a
bravery thing? It feels itcertainly, hearing that story.
(24:39):
It's a bit like, you know, goingback in time to, Can't you think
of the Romans? You think of theVikings. They didn't just send,
like, two of their mediocreblokes on a ship and expect to
conquer another country, didthey? They lifted the whole
that, you know, their winningteam, their best of the best,
and they left the rest at homewith the hope that they come.
That, but they knew that theywouldn't succeed unless they put
(25:01):
it all in this. They put it all in.
Alex Olley (25:03):
Yeah, we had this thing called the big, hairy,
audacious goal, the bee hang andwe all that was actually the
starting point was that, wheredo we actually want to get to?
Because if you're not clear onthat, and you're not aligned on
that, then trust me, you'renever gonna because one of you
is just gonna get I can't do it.And like one of my I suppose
strengths and weaknesses at thesame time is that I'm just
relentless. I won't I will notgive up until we've achieved
(25:26):
what we've set out to do. And Iexpect everyone else around
that. But when you give peopleclarity around this is where
we're going, people wantpurpose. They want to be on the
journey. They need to be clearon where you're going. And when
you get everyone on the samepage about that, the bravery
kind of doesn't become a thinganymore, because it's just like,
this is where we're going, andhere's everything that cascades
(25:46):
underneath that. These are allthings we're going to do. Yes,
it's going to change, butsubstantially this is what we're
doing. It just helps everyone.Helped our product team, helped
sales, marketing, our messaging.I don't remember a time where
people like, what are we doing?Like, I've been part of four
startups before this, and howwas that? Was 80% of time it's
like, what we doing? Why are wedoing it? And that slows you
(26:06):
down when you when you've workedon something that hard for so
long, that is so wildlydifferentiated, and you put so
much effort into it, you don'treally see the change. I
remember bringing it to like, myteam, and they were like, Whoa.
Are we doing this? I can'tbelieve we get to do this. When
you see that reaction, you justthink, I can run through walls
and like, if you get it right.When you see that reaction, it
(26:26):
just energizes you to go, oh,wow, we actually are going to do
this together.
Matt Best (26:30):
Yeah, that's a fantastic place for us to end
today's conversation. Toeveryone listening, join us for
part three as we continue this conversation.
Thank you for joining us on the Growth Workshop
(00:01):
Podcast for part two of ourdiscussion with Alex Olley. We
talked ahead of the recording ofthis podcast about you attribute
some of your success in the USto your own methodology when it
comes to kind of selling. Talkto us a little bit about that.
Alex Olley (00:16):
Yeah, I was exposed to sort of the world of Account
Based Marketing before, and Ifeel like, as it were, that we
don't really use as muchanymore. It used to be 2021, it
was a buzzword. ABM, say,There's everything...
Jonny Adams (00:27):
What is Account Based Marketing? Before we jump
in, you're gonna share that in amoment. We can just for the
listeners...
Alex Olley (00:33):
Account Based Marketing is essentially this
flip funnel approach, ratherthan sort of an inbound method.
You're you're selecting youraccounts, your it's essentially
good B to B, selecting youraccounts. You're orchestrating
campaigns around those in areally narrow fashion, rather
than trying to boil the ocean.It's kind of just flipping the
inbound model and turning on itshead. It just doesn't fit in
loads of organizations. Ifyou're running a model within an
(00:54):
org where you're trying togenerate qualified leads, ABM is
always in conflict, and so itjust, it's kind of tried to eke
its way in, and it gets forcedout really quickly. My method is
sort of like clean slate, right,start from scratch, and it was
born out of my frustration ofhow I saw things. I saw that MQL
conflict with ABM, but it wasbasically I used to hate the
(01:19):
fact that our marketing teamwould celebrate that there would
be 150% target, and sales wereat 50% so one team's going,
we're doing really, really wellhere, and the others going, we
just tanked like that. That wasone of the worst courses. And
you I think that's just reallybad for an organization to be in
that position.
Jonny Adams (01:34):
Can I clarify what you're talking about? Because
they've hit target? Are yousaying that there were separate
metrics for the two differentdepartments? Metrics to the
market? Because we buzz aboutmarketing sales alignment. One
of our core propositions isaligning marketing and sales
functions for the greater good.Sounds like they were
misaligned. Possibly they'rereally misaligned. And just for
the listeners, the what I'mhearing is the misalignment was
the fact that the KPIs in themarketing team were what MQL and
(01:57):
the sales team was,entertainment, revenue,
interesting. So that sort of theproxy is misaligned on KPIs.
Alex Olley (02:03):
Exactly. What I do, everyone is focused on the same
goal, which is revenue marketingas well. So that's the starting
point in this all bound method.It's not inbound, it's not
outbound, it's not ABM, it'sthat everyone in my go to market
team is focused on us hittingthe revenue goal from the
graphic designer in themarketing team to the demand
(02:25):
gen, to the BDR to the AU, weall care about by hitting our
number in this quarter. Guesswho celebrated with me?
Marketing celebrating, BDR,celebrating. It's not sales.
Just going, Oh, we're awesome.Everyone's going, we all did
this together, and they allbelieve it. And so you start by
saying your target as a team isthis number, and if we don't get
there, we have failed, right? Sothat's the starting point there.
(02:47):
We don't talk about MQL, so wedon't talk about leads or
database volume or anything likethat. We do have to look at like
pipeline pacing and back thatinto the revenue number, but
ultimately, we don't really careif we if now everyone's really
happy, right? What I then did isI thought to really stay true to
that everyone therefore has tohave a comp plan. They're all
gonna have skin in the game. Sorecently hired a demand gen
(03:08):
manager. I said, right, by theway, this is your salary, and
you can earn this much on top ifwe if we hit our sales number,
and if you go above that, it'suncapped. And he kind of looked
at me and say, this isn't ajoke. Is this a joke? It's not a
joke, because I need you to buyinto this, because I think that
if you do, if you don't, and Isaid, hit these mqr numbers,
he'd probably go and hit them,whereas now he's thinking, these
(03:31):
are all the things I can do tohelp sales hit their number. And
those are the conversations Isee. I see marketing team, or go
into the office marketingsitting with sales, and they ask
that question, what can we do tohelp you close more deals?
Right? Obvious answer, yes. Getfrom sellers, I want, I want
more meetings, right? But wedon't really have this
conversation. It's like, well,actually, we've got this massive
account, and we need your helpto accelerate them doing these
things. So you get reallycreative with it. So everyone
(03:54):
has a comp plan, and I'm nottrying to pay them less than
their market value. I'm tryingto pay them way above. And you
see very different behaviorsfrom doing that, and because
when you've done that, you'vegot everyone on aligned to
revenue. Everyone isincentivized to do it, so
they've got skin in the games.They're always trying to beat
the number. You can then startto do the things that remove the
(04:15):
friction for the buyer. You canstart ungating all your content,
because you're not trying tocapture a lead. For the sake of
saying, I generated a lead,you're saying, well actually, I
mean, I don't know about youguys, but I can't remember last
time I entered my email or phonenumber into a form, I don't
think people want that anymore.And the more we do that, the
more we frustrate our buyers.And so by having this, this,
(04:37):
this, this mindset towardsrevenue and not having to gamify
the system, you free up yourteam to do the things that your
buyers actually want in 2025right? Which is removing the
friction, which is not just, youknow, once the meetings happen,
see you later, that's it. We'vethrown it over to you. It's
integrated campaigns, wherepeople are working together on
like, Is this really the rightICP marketing is going up. We've
(04:59):
looked. All the close one deals.And actually we think we should
be targeting these guys instead.They could have said we could
generate loads of leads, butactually they're saying, no, we
want to target these guys in areally precise fashion, because
we know the win rates, sales,cycle lengths and ACVs are
optimum there. So we're going toreally focus on here. We're
going to cut out a lot of this.This is marketing saying this,
by the way, right? And thereforewe're going to be running these
(05:20):
campaigns because sales, we wantto help you win more, and that
and that is that is a world thatI think most people want to live
in. It's just really hard to getto you, because the way that
organizations are built, yeah,get in the way.
Matt Best (05:32):
It's fascinating. And I think that clients, I love the
bit around actually, we end updoing what the client wants,
rather than just being laserfocused. There is a reality
though, Alex, I guess. And somepeople listening to this might
be going, Yeah, but we do needto have certain amounts of
control over what people aredoing, and there's this balance
of, you know, autonomy andagility within the team to be
able to make those decisions. Doyou find, have you seen through
(05:57):
this approach, any issue withany sort of too far on the right
or the left side of the kind ofthe road that we're going down,
that means we're sort of in theverge that's a terrible analogy,
but hopefully it makes sense interms of, how do we keep
everybody how do we keepeverybody focused and not
getting distracted? Clearly,they're focused on that end
goal, but they still have to goon a journey to get there.
Alex Olley (06:17):
Yeah, honestly, no. Like I can do. First foremost,
there's never been an argumentin my business where we're going
that was a sales lead or thatwas a marketing lead, right?
Just, just think about how bigof a problem that is, just how
wasteful that conversation is.So because you eliminate things,
I think you spend your timedoing the things that matter.
(06:37):
But you know, a lot of thisultimately, is down to planning.
Now I still do look at salesvelocity by channel, which I
think is the most importantmetric. And you can I do look at
Pipeline created by channel, butultimately as because it's about
revenue. I look at the sources.I still look at inbound, I look
at events, I look at outbound,AES generating their own
pipeline. I do still look at theare we creating enough
(06:58):
opportunities? What's the winrate, the ACV and the sales
cycle length, you know, thestandard sales velocity
calculation. I break it down asone and then by channel, and I
do look at the which ones aregenerating the most revenue
right now, if you've got aproblem and it's down, first
conversation is, well, can wefix it? Now? I do see a lot of
excuses out there saying thatoutbound is dead and doesn't
(07:18):
work anymore. I think it's justbecause it's really hard and it
doesn't get the attention itdeserves. We had an outbound
problem in outbound problem ayear ago, and I've spotted it
because we're generating, notnecessarily fewer opportunities.
They're just not closing at highenough rate. We're not
generating enough revenue offthe back of it. Let's inspect
that now. Let's double down, andthis way you start digging. I
have this concept of snorkelinglike snorkeling is just like
going on the surface and youstart diving down and going
(07:41):
right. What is the actualproblem? Is it because we're
targeting the wrong accounts? Isit because we don't get enough
volume? But ultimately, I tryand link it back to revenue, and
so I look how many opportunitieswe're creating from that
outbound source. What is the winrate? The ACV is actually okay.
We're not closing enough ofthem. Sales cycle length is
really long. All right. Nowlet's try and find the ones that
actually do fit where we want togo, and let's reverse engineer
those. Okay, back to yourquestion. That's when the
(08:04):
planning comes in. And I'mrelentless on focus on a small
number of things, rather thanletting things just go off the
rails into the verge as you say,yeah, you then just got to have,
like, really systematic ways ofmaking sure that these
initiatives are being managedproperly. That's where leaders
come in. That's their job,right? They've got to be able
to, just like, put theguardrails up and get this is
what we're doing. Yeah, fine.We're gonna do some experiments
(08:25):
on one side, but this is what weneed to fix. This is what's
gonna be optimum result for thebusiness in terms of revenue.
Now, let's agree these are thethree things we're gonna do.
Let's get them done. And we'rejust really regimental with our
approach to how we get stuffdone. Where it goes wrong is
when you go, we've got thisidea. And it was like, whose job
is that? Is that mine? Like,should I be doing it? Where is
(08:46):
it being tracked? Like, what dowe need to do? It doesn't get
written down anywhere. There'sno like, weekly thing. And the
way I've kept it in check, Isuppose, is we have my favorite
meeting of the week, which isthe go to market ops meeting,
right? And in that meeting youhave customer success, account
management, rev ops, sales andmarketing, everyone that touches
the customer right, they're allthere. And we're all talking
(09:08):
about the same thing. How can weimprove retention? How can
improve net retention? How canwe improve pipeline, pacing,
sales? And we're all workingtogether. And that's where the
initiatives, literally, there'sa thing. It's like top
initiatives. And we go, let's gothrough these. How are we doing
on these? For example, we'retalking them. We're not talking
about them as a sales team ormarketing team customer success,
that everyone has a voice there,and that's that. That's the, I
(09:29):
think, the perfect state whenyou're getting the feedback from
the voice of the customer, aswell as what you want to achieve
going forward, from like a, whatyou would perhaps describe as a
go to market standpoint, bringall that together and manage it
properly. You're operating in adifferent world.
Jonny Adams (09:45):
It's really interesting what you're sharing,
because we are so aligned in theway that you are delivering in
your business. But we do it as aday to day job to educate the
world on. That alignment ofthose customer facing teams, and
what do you think inhibitsbusinesses? Because you said
(10:06):
something about the way thebusiness is structured, but I'd
like to unpack that. What is itthat inhibits them to do that
marketing, sales alignment,motion internally.
Alex Olley (10:16):
Yeah, look, if you're a massive company, it's
really hard. This is like, Ithink the first, the first
reaction, if someone who was ina billion dollar company were
listening to this, like, there'sso much legacy there, this is
going to take years to to changesomething, there's that sort of
lack of desire. Perhaps, I thinkit's about incentives. Like, my
favorite, one of my favoritesayings is, show me the
(10:38):
incentive. I'll show you theoutcome. If you put people in a
position where they arepersonally incentivized and
collectively as a team, changewill happen. And comp plan I've
spent, I think I've spent athird of my time thinking about
compensation. I never used to dothat, but I think compensation
drives the right behaviors. AndI have to admit to you as well,
(10:58):
I think I, over the years, I hadto, I had to remove people that
didn't buy into that, peoplethat were too used to that. You
need people that buy into thatvision and that way of thinking.
Because if you put somethingthat's incentivizing someone
that doesn't feel good and theydon't feel great about it,
they're going to be doing stuffbehind closed doors that
essentially the antithesis ofwhat you want. So you've got to
(11:19):
have the right people on boardthat buy into it. You have to
incentivize them. I think that'sthe number one thing that gets
in the way, is that comp plansand compensation incentives are
built in a way that can begamified. I use that word
intentionally, by the way, I'mstill shocked by how many
companies one don't incentivizepeople. I talked to you about
incentivizing marketing. I thinkeveryone should do that, by the
way. So either they don'tincentivize them, and when they
(11:41):
do, it's based on vanity metricsthat can be gamified a lot of
the time. Other than sales,sales is pretty easy, but I
just, I think, I'm not surewhere, where this stems from,
but I think people just need tothink about that a bit more.
Jonny Adams (11:53):
Yeah, it's really helpful to get your your point
of view, because that's the dayto day. We work with
organizations that, you know,half a million, a billion,
possibly, and we're trying tobang that drum. But you know, if
you're a C suite individualthat's been working there for 15
years, in a in a financialservice organization, Jonny, I
get what you're talking about,but just not interested in that
(12:14):
alignment at the moment. But thevalue that you can get out of
aligning those functions is it'sincredible, right?
Alex Olley (12:19):
It's huge, yeah, and again, big lesson for me. It's
one of those Fergusconversations where I remember
saying, like, I think we'regonna be doing this. And I
remember saying to me, like,What'd your customers think? Oh,
it's a good question. I feltreally stupid. All of a sudden,
there's all, how often do youhave the voice of the customer
essentially informing what you,what you what you're going to do
(12:42):
as a as a company, but it'sreally important as a go to
market unit, and that those arethe moment, the moments where
things did change like theychanged massively, because
essentially, we're all here andbuilding businesses for the
benefit the customer, andwithout that voice in the room,
Matt Best (12:58):
And we so often get into that with our with our
what's the point?
clients, right? Jonny, and we'rethinking about created various
different processes, customerjourneys, all of that kind of
good stuff, but it's stilllooking at it from the internal
lens and never validating thatwith the client. But has anyone
tested this? Like, how do weknow that that's the truth?
Yeah. How are we checking thatthat's still working? How do we
(13:20):
know that's still the same, likeyou talk just even earlier, just
around the way things havechanged in terms of the number
of people who are just going topick up a cold call that's in a
relatively short amount of time.So it's always changing. So sort
of cut. Yeah, we did customerjourney mapping 20 years ago.
This is why our sales processlooks like this. Well, maybe you
should have a look again.
Alex Olley (13:41):
Yeah, exactly. And actually, I think we digress,
because your original questionwas that, how did that
methodology help us in the US?Right? I've tried going into, I
think, I think every businessI've been part of, we've either
tried to go into the US oranother major territory. And
that's that sort of way ofthinking. That methodology, just
like it did, break downbarriers, it did mean that we
could easily translate things,and it helped us speed up big
(14:05):
time, because we weren't tryingto put barriers in our own ways,
let alone the customer. Butthat's one of the hardest things
we had to do, was get into theUS, because I failed so many
times. When you go into newterritories, the territory plan
and ownership is like the numberone thing that gets in people's
ways. Like you've got an AE inLondon who's been working
snowflake in the US, and nextyou know, you've got an AE in
the US and says, Well,snowflake. And we're like, Well,
(14:27):
hang on a second. We actuallydon't have territory maps. We
have dynamic ways of pumpingenough opportunities and signals
to reps so that they can thenwork them. Because I believe
that we shouldn't wait for acompany to be ready to buy. We
should be getting therebeforehand. Like, it's usually a
month or two beforehand, right?And so we don't have this sort
of territory static map that weuse anymore. And again, because
(14:50):
as a team, we're trying to getto the revenue number it was, I
didn't really matter so muchanymore. We kind of just, like,
removed the conversation quitequickly. It helped us big time
with how we think about, like.Outbound as a motion previously,
I'd have conversations withfinance in previous businesses
saying, Well, this STI isn'thitting their number. They're
just not hitting their number.We need to put them on
(15:11):
performance plan. I was like,this str is actually creating a
ton of revenue because their winrate is 35% and even though
they've only hit 50% of theirops number, they're 120% to
revenue pacing, and that's whatI care about. And about. And
it's those things that I thinkare dangerous, that we often
lose sight of what's actuallycontributing to revenue, because
we're looking at these metricsthat actually perhaps are
(15:32):
leading indicators more thanlike, the final metrics that
really matter for individuals.And instead, it translates into
this guy now feels really goodbecause he's making an impact to
the team, and he's incentivizedto do that too.
Jonny Adams (15:43):
I've been to a number of conferences just on
this, you know, making it intothe US, and our organization,
parent company, is in the US.We're one of 20 organizations
that amongst that, that businessconcept. We're one of the only
ones outside of the US. So weknow the US market really well.
We've got a really strong alumniwithin our business, individuals
(16:03):
that have spun out of our parentcompany to work in the likes of
Tableau and other organizationsin the marketplace. But people
do say, Well, how do I make itinto the US? Like you've talked
about your framework, but what'sthat sort of thing that you you
know, other than the methodologythat you got? But what was that
one thing that you think neededto get into the US?
Alex Olley (16:20):
I think that for us, there are actually two things.
The number one thing about goingto any new territory is going
all in. I see too many companiesthat just dip their toe and go,
I think we're going to try andgo into the US often they wait
too long. They wait till they'veraised more money. But even when
they do, they don't want to makesacrifices. And we made every
sacrifice. I'm not gonna say Isacrificed myself, but I went
there. I'd actually only been toSan Francisco for like, a
(16:42):
weekend conference beforebasically, essentially deciding,
I'm going to take this to theUS. As I said before, the reason
why we went to the US is becausethe market was massive. That's
the number one reason whyeveryone wants but the market
readiness was, was, was theleading indicator. We knew that
we'd have fewer headwindsselling this in the US. And so
why? Like, this is 2019, so justbefore COVID, but you needed
(17:04):
boots on the ground. You neededface to face interaction. And
because people were usinggifting and direct mail in their
outbound their sales process,customer success, it was just
way easier. So I was like,that's just an easier
opportunity. Now we launched inthe US six months after
launching the business, right?So a London startup, four
blokes, we're gonna go to theUS. And everyone laughed at me.
(17:24):
They're like, you will fail.It's gonna go horribly wrong.
You don't know what you'redoing. You should wait five
years try and get it to like,15, 20 million error raise a big
round and then go into the US.And I just ignored everything. I
was like, we're gonna go all in.We hired a US CEO. We thought
that was really, reallyimportant, partly for
fundraising, but also we neededsomeone over there who's going
(17:46):
to be, like, a big culturedriver. We brought people with
us. I've always said, if you'regoing to do something important,
you've got to sacrifice yourbest people. And sometimes
that's like, that doesn't makeany sense, but it's one of my
biggest learnings, if you'regonna do something really
important, put your best peoplethere. And so I take certain
people along with me, and theywould actually show people how
(18:07):
to sell. Like, go back to focus,talking about a lot. I remember
him saying to me, your numberone job right now is to teach
people how to sell, reach desk.That's it. I was like, that's
such good advice. I was like,Well, I've got AES. You can sell
it way better than me. So let'sget them to do part of the
teaching too. So you bring yourbest people, you go all in. We
put almost all of our budget interms of marketing and
(18:28):
everything into the US. Wedidn't leave much behind for for
the the EMEA market. And I thinkgoing into these new
territories, I've done it withother companies and into other
regions, when I think done well,you go all in, but you cannot
dip your toe the moment you do,you may as well pull out. And if
you're not ready to do that,don't bother in the first place.
Yeah, that was the lesson. Nowit's not all gravy. I mean, we
(18:49):
were very lucky in that thefirst customer we signed when we
landed in the US was zoom info.Now that's pretty handy for two
reasons. One, it's like we canuse that as a reference.
Everyone we are selling to B toB, sales and marketing people.
They all know that logo. Butalso what they were doing is,
because they're using digitalgifting in their process,
(19:09):
they're sending that beforeevery discovery call. They're
sending like a, I think it was a$7 Starbucks that's all like,
look forwards being soon. Here'sStarbucks and us, and it was a
powered by reach desk at thebottom. Now think about how big
that company is, and how many ofthose are being sent out. A lot,
hundreds of that. Hundreds of1000s. So we'd get loads of
companies saying, I've beengifted by zoom info, and they
tell me that it's you or I sawit was you guys. What's all this
(19:31):
about? So it just that wasjammy. So look, we got lucky in
some ways, but we did go all inwhere it really changed. Was one
of the best executed things Ithink I've ever seen in my life.
And I don't know if you'refamiliar with Vern harness,
scaling up methodology, and it'sessentially like a company wide
cohesive strategy that allowsyou to get everyone on literally
(19:51):
one page. And it starts withyour values, your purpose, your
mission, your vision, yourvision. There was this moment
where it was, I think we spenttwo hours every. Day for two
months working on this, me andmy founders, yeah, and the
purpose, mission, vision,values. That was, I think we
kind of defined that quitequickly. But there's these parts
where you check, it's like achecklist you have to complete.
(20:12):
And so you talk a lot about,what are your differentiating
activities? And there's a reallygood question you can ask
yourself, is, what are weprepared to be bad at? That's a
really powerful question to ask,because when you're thinking
about differentiation, you can'tbe great at everything, and I
think that's where a lot ofcompanies fail. A lot of teams
fail. So we were askingourselves a quote, like, we're
prepared to be bad at this, thisand this, but we are. We're
willing to be great at being theinternational player that takes
(20:35):
personalization seriously, andyou can measure ROI, those are
our three things, and everythingis about those three things, and
what that does is that foldsinto what you call your brand
promises. These are promisesyou're going to make to a
customer. I'll give an example.Our promise to all of our
customers was that you will beable to measure the impact of
direct amount of gifting. That'squite a new concept for most
people, particularly me. Thatwas the world I was. I couldn't
(20:56):
measure it, so I wanted that tobe part of our promise. Now
every company makes promises tocustomers, right? And it's
created a lot of skepticism. Sowhat you do is, then you back
those up with guarantees. So wesaid you'll be able to measure
the impact of direct moneygifting on your pipeline
creation and essentially closingmore deals. We then spent about
a year building one specificproduct to allow to do that,
(21:19):
because we're like, that's oneof our three things we're going
to lean into that we could buildall these other things. These
other things, these cool thingsthat our competitors doing.
Let's make it this one thing,right? Let's make ourselves
really good at that, that hasthat attribution in it. So you
can weight your attributionmodel within our platform, so
that when you send a gift, andit creates a meeting to say
that's attributes back togifting. Great. That's really
hard to do, by the way, becauseit's an offline channel. And
here was the powerful piece. Wethen said, for every dollar you
(21:43):
spend, you'll get at least $5back. So that's the guarantee.
So people are like, Oh, it'skind of a no brainer. I was
like, here's how we really makeit a no brainer. If we don't,
we'll refund you the difference,and bam, with this London
company that no one really knewto going all in on the US with
this, like, really focusedstrategy and these really clear
value proposition that made it abit of a no brainer. And, you
(22:05):
know, we talk about, are you anice to have, or you must have?
I'm in the camp where I like itto be, am I a no brainer? And
that's the position where, whenI say that to people like, Oh,
brilliant, because we're not,we're not a must have. So it
kind of frees you up a littlebit. But it's funny, I met the
CEO of our biggest competitorabout a year and a half after do
that. I think we launched it inq1 2022, I think we needed 200%
(22:28):
of our number. We didn't thinkit would be executed this well,
because every pitch we weregoing in, they were like, what's
the difference between you andyour competition? Well, it's
these three things, and we knowyou care about these three
things. And here's the promiseand here's the guarantee on each
of them. And people are right,and then they go to the
competition saying, reach us isguaranteeing this ROI and what
are you guys doing? So our winrate against our bit all of our
competition was about 90% we'dwin almost every single deal.
(22:50):
And inevitably, what you expectto happen is that they're gonna
start copying that what we do on5x ROI guarantee as well. Great,
but they haven't built a productthat actually allows you to
measure it right? And so our winrate went up a little bit more
because it's like we've actuallywe're the only guys that can do
this, and we lent into ourstrengths and what we wanted to
be about as a business. And Ithink if you're going to go into
(23:11):
somewhere like the US, don'tjust go all in, go in with,
like, a really focused,differentiated strategy that
sets you wells apart and makesyou a no brainer. I think that's
where you win.
Jonny Adams (23:20):
It's a conundrum that you hear a lot in
marketplace, and you know thatthat lure of the US, but you've
just answered the question, butthen just 10x that, with that,
without response. And I canpersonally just say thank you so
much, Alex for that, for thatlittle snippet, because that is
gold
Matt Best (23:35):
Yeah, the going all in is a is a brave thing to do,
isn't it? Like you've got to youwent and spoke to a bunch of
businesses about that, they'd belike, oh, yeah, but what's the
risk? Like, what's the risk ofthat? I'm not suggesting you
didn't consider the risk. I'msure you did. And you also would
have considered, like, What thewhat your expected ROI is. So
you make sure that that sort of5x number isn't, isn't seeing
(23:56):
you writing checks and creditsback to clients all the time.
But it's a really brave thing todo, but also recognizing that
you can't just do part of it. Imean, I've spent, I spent a
number of years in SaaSstartups, scale ups where you're
sort of like, you know, to yourpoint, you're like, Oh, we just
give that a try. And then we go,we do not even half a job. We do
a sort of Third, we do it, youknow, third at best, probably
(24:18):
less than 25% of a good job. Andthen we go, kind go, Oh, that
was rubbish. Yeah, wow. Can wedo expect? What's going to
happen if you don't go, ifyou're not really backing
yourself and kind of going allin, then, yeah, how are you
going to get the outcome thatyou want? And I think it's that
I don't know if you'd use theword bravery. Do you see it as a
bravery thing? It feels itcertainly, hearing that story.
(24:39):
It's a bit like, you know, goingback in time to, Can't you think
of the Romans? You think of theVikings. They didn't just send,
like, two of their mediocreblokes on a ship and expect to
conquer another country, didthey? They lifted the whole
that, you know, their winningteam, their best of the best,
and they left the rest at homewith the hope that they come.
That, but they knew that theywouldn't succeed unless they put
(25:01):
it all in this. They put it all in.
Alex Olley (25:03):
Yeah, we had this thing called the big, hairy,
audacious goal, the bee hang andwe all that was actually the
starting point was that, wheredo we actually want to get to?
Because if you're not clear onthat, and you're not aligned on
that, then trust me, you'renever gonna because one of you
is just gonna get I can't do it.And like one of my I suppose
strengths and weaknesses at thesame time is that I'm just
relentless. I won't I will notgive up until we've achieved
(25:26):
what we've set out to do. And Iexpect everyone else around
that. But when you give peopleclarity around this is where
we're going, people wantpurpose. They want to be on the
journey. They need to be clearon where you're going. And when
you get everyone on the samepage about that, the bravery
kind of doesn't become a thinganymore, because it's just like,
this is where we're going, andhere's everything that cascades
(25:46):
underneath that. These are allthings we're going to do. Yes,
it's going to change, butsubstantially this is what we're
doing. It just helps everyone.Helped our product team, helped
sales, marketing, our messaging.I don't remember a time where
people like, what are we doing?Like, I've been part of four
startups before this, and howwas that? Was 80% of time it's
like, what we doing? Why are wedoing it? And that slows you
(26:06):
down when you when you've workedon something that hard for so
long, that is so wildlydifferentiated, and you put so
much effort into it, you don'treally see the change. I
remember bringing it to like, myteam, and they were like, Whoa.
Are we doing this? I can'tbelieve we get to do this. When
you see that reaction, you justthink, I can run through walls
and like, if you get it right.When you see that reaction, it
(26:26):
just energizes you to go, oh,wow, we actually are going to do
this together.
Matt Best (26:30):
Yeah, that's a fantastic place for us to end
today's conversation. Toeveryone listening, join us for
part three as we continue this conversation.
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