October 14, 2020 • 33 mins
Call my leads. Give me something to call. Sound familiar, if you said yes, then your sales and marketing teams are not aligned and likely driving your organization crazy. How do you fix it?
In this episode we talk with Shawn Finder, CEO of Autoklose, and discuss just how easy it is to align your teams. During this conversation he showcases the 5 simples steps to getting teams aligned and driving revenue.
If you need more help, check out the How to Align Sales and Marketing article from Hamer Marketing Group.
About Shawn Finder
Shawn Finder has always been an entrepreneur at heart. At age 24, Shawn entered the entrepreneurial world after competing as one of Canada's top-ranked tennis players. He started out importing packaging from the Orient and selling to top retailers in North America. However, knowing he always loved selling and list building, he founded ExchangeLeads in 2013 which helps his company build quality lists for outreaching new prospects. This was followed by his new venture Autoklose in 2017 that combines both sales engagement and list building all-in-one platform.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfinder/
- Twitter::@autoklose
- Instragram: @sfinds
- Website: www.autoklose.com
- B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales
- 673 Years of Sales Excellence Book: https://autoklose.com/books/salesleaders
About Hamer Marketing Group
Sales and marketing have been at each others throats for years. Marketing only cares about brand, and sales only wants leads who are ready to buy. This classic misalignment of teams has catastrophic impact on company moral and ultimately the revenue. In this episode of Summit Podcast we sit down with Shawn Finder, CEO of Autoklose, and discuss what it takes to align these two bickering teams.
Shawn outlines the simple ways to improve communication across teams, get the most out of collaboration, and how he’s been successful at driving high volume growth when the sales and marketing leaders are on the same page. As the episode progresses we discuss:
- Understanding you audience
- 5 Tips to aligning sales and marketing
- Using outbound techniques to drive revenue
- How to setup your teams for optimal production
For more insight on how to align your teams, check out our article on How to Align Sales and Marketing.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyle Hamer (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the summit, the podcast,
where we bring you knowledge andinsights from industry leaders
and professionals, no fluff,just real people, real results
in ways to help your business.
I'm your host Kyle hammer, andI'm on a mission to find secrets
to success in business.
We're having real conversationsto get you from here to there.
Today's guest joining us on thesummit is Sean finder.
(00:33):
Sean, welcome to the show.
Also, happy to be here with youtoday, And we're, we're really
excited to have you for thosethat you don't know.
Sean, Sean is one of Canada'stop ranked tennis players, uh,
and he took his game into theentrepreneurial world at age 24,
started a packaging and what wasimportant packaging and selling
it to North American retailers.
(00:55):
Uh, that wasn't enough.
He got the bug of, I need to getinto software and data and do
some more things.
And so in 2013 he founded acompany named exchange leads
that, uh, that company helpedsales teams and businesses alike
target and build lists to sellinto.
And then in 2017, he leveragedthat into a new venture called
autoclose to combine both salesengagement list building and go
(01:19):
to market strategy.
Did I miss anything, Sean?
Or is there anything you'd liketo share with us?
You got a pretty clear, it's apretty wide range of stuff, but
yeah, it started out inpackaging more of my first
entrepreneurial venture thanauto closing, then parlayed that
recently a few years ago now inDatto close.
That's great.
Today's today's topic that we'regoing to be chatting about is
(01:39):
sales and marketing, gettingthem aligned.
Why is it so hard?
Sean recently wrote an articleand posted it on LinkedIn called
sales and marketing alignment,five best practices for best
results.
So Sean, can you kind of justtake us through at a top level,
first of all, why do you thinkit's so hard and what are some
of the things that you think arebest practices?
Well, I think the bestpractices, as you know, I think
(02:00):
you have to have, I'm more intothat almost that revenue
officer, chief revenue officer,the managing manager nowadays,
where you need to have bothsales and marketing, because you
have to be a light because yourmarketing needs to know your
message, but also your salesguys need to know that message
when they're doing theiroutbound, that could be cold
calling, emailing, et cetera.
(02:20):
Um, so one of the best productsthat we've done is we've
implemented like Slack, forexample, where we can have our
marketing and sales peoplepublicly in the same, in the
same kind of category.
And they can all be seeing,okay, what articles are we
posting?
Okay, what does our, you know,what does our marketing doing?
And then marketing it, see whatour sales doing.
So I think it's very, veryimportant nowadays, especially
that you do have that alignmentbetween sales and marketing and
(02:42):
they're not, you're not makingthem kind of two separate
entities, you know, it's, it's,it's really interesting.
Cause I think the smaller, thebusiness you are, it becomes
very, very, very important.
And I think there's some pointwhere businesses lose that and
then it kind of becomes this,you know, fisticuffs, well, in
my silo over here, we do this.
Then letting your silo, you dothat.
Well, don't come over into mysilo.
(03:03):
Don't go over here.
What, what point do you think itis for businesses as they grow,
where that really becomesdifficult to maintain that level
of transparency, communicationand keeping teams aligned?
Shawn Finder (03:13):
Yeah.
Well I think as soon as you havean SDR team, so a sales
development representative teamand account executives, you need
to have that alignment becauseyou know, one of the biggest
things that I find is thebiggest mistake with salespeople
in general is they don't knowtheir buyers for something.
They don't know who's thatperson that's actually buying
their product, but you need tomake sure that marketing is
marketing to that person that isactually buying your product.
(03:36):
Therefore, you know, if you'reselling to a CEO, a CEO is, you
know, pains and gains.
I like to call them might bedifferent than a national sales
manager, sales pains, and gains.
You want to make sure that onceyour sales team has that niche,
that market that's actuallybuying your product or service,
then marketing is writing thoseblogs, writing those content,
doing those tweets around thatexact vertical or the exact
(04:01):
persona.
And I think that starts as soonas you start to develop.
And you know, as you said, it,startups, small companies have
been wearing a lot of hats, butonce you get that SDR team
account executive team, you needto make sure that is aligned
between market.
Kyle Hamer (04:16):
So, you know, that brings up, it brings up an
interesting question.
Where does the SDR team reside?
Do you think that the SDR teamresides inside of marketing or
it resides inside of sales?
Shawn Finder (04:25):
I actually don't put an, either one I put under
the demand gen umbrella.
Um, and the reason why is wehave SDRs that are sometimes
doing marketing tactics ormarketing tactics.
Um, but also they're stillsupposed to fill our account
executives calendar with demos.
Um, so we originally had themonly under the sales umbrella
(04:46):
and they weren't touching basewith marketer or anything, but
we'd actually slowly put theminto that marketing, um, as
well.
So I would say it's still abouta 70, 30 split, 70% sales, 30
some marketing, but, uh, that'sgreat that you brought it up.
Cause I think a lot oforganizations don't have their
SDRs going into the marketingbucket and they're more sting on
the sales side.
Kyle Hamer (05:07):
So you talked about some of the things that are at
least talked about, Hey, werealized that there are some
things here that we need to haveour STRs doing from marketing.
Can you give us some exampleswithout giving away your secret
sauce?
Shawn Finder (05:18):
Yeah.
So, you know, for marketing, forexample, we have them online on
LinkedIn a lot.
Um, we have them, you know,posting all of our blogs, trying
to engage conversations with ourblogs because I think the number
one thing you have to domarketing or sales or anything
is building relationships.
Um, so we have our SDRs, youknow, on the sales side, they're
trying to drive those leads, buton the marketing side, they're
really trying to just buildthose relationships, get them
(05:40):
nice and warm, get them toslowly raise their hand and then
try and take them for more ofthat marketing MQL, 10 sales
qualified leads.
Kyle Hamer (05:48):
It's it's, it's interesting because you know,
when you look at, you look atthe ecosystem that is marketing,
it's a big, huge world.
And when you're in, when you'rein startup mode, if you're, if
you've done anything as itrelates to EOS and, and you
know, maybe you've read the booktraction, it's all about focus,
right?
Staying hyper focused on what'smost important.
And it sounds like for you guys,what's most important for your
(06:10):
sales organization at this pointis, is building relationships.
When you, when you look at yourideal customers and you look at
the activities that your, yourteam is doing, what are the
items or things that your salesteam expects marketing to do to
help them build relationships?
Shawn Finder (06:27):
Great question.
Um, we've got marketing.
So one thing that, you know,over the last four months since
Kobe started is working reallywell as webinars.
So what we expect us to do is weexpect our marketing team to,
you know, get some good peoplethat have good analysts that can
bring good qualified, you know,two, 300 people to a webinar
that our sales team can afterreach out to them, stressed
(06:48):
jurors actually reach out to allthe registers on those webinars.
So sales is dependent onmarketing to do all those
webinars set up the landingpages, set up the zoom links, be
a host, engaged with them andset all those up, try and get
one to two a month.
But that's basically what ourteam's been using to generate.
A lot of our leads is goingdoing those webinars and then
taking the rest of the yards orour STRs reaching out to those
(07:10):
people that attended orregistered.
I'd try and get them to have ademo with our account executive.
So there's a whole cycle.
I mean, you know, it's, it'sgreat that you brought that up
and this, this conversation isgoing on with between sales and
marketing is it takes all ofthose different teams to be
aligned, not only salesmarketing, but like content
writing, everything has to bealigned, um, to make sure that
(07:31):
your SDRs are going to besuccessful.
And when your STRs looksuccessful, your sales teams is
successful as well.
Kyle Hamer (07:37):
It's interesting that you mentioned, you
mentioned webinars because Imean, with the, with the global
outbreak of the pandemic, peoplebeing ordered to stay at home, I
mean, here, here in Texas, we'retrying to reopen the state.
We're not doing very good rightnow, but that politics and
personal beliefs aside for aminute, when you look at it,
it's, it is forcingorganizations, sales
(07:57):
organizations, groups that werehistorically shoulder, shoulder,
elbow to elbow, pull up to thebar, go shoot, go shoot golf.
You know, they would buildrelationships differently to
look at their, um, their funnel,their engagement and how they
build those relationships inentirely different, different
light.
One of the things that I've seen, um, historically being on the
(08:17):
marketing side of things, uh, isthat a lot of sales reps are
resistant.
Even SDRs are resistant to callfolks after a webinar.
Cause they're going well, Idon't know what to say.
What's the point.
Hey, did you like it?
Like so, so how do youstructure, what does marketing
give your SDRs or sales enableyour SDRs?
(08:38):
When you're calling those two,three, 400 leads afterwards,
what are the talking points are?
Or how are they setting that up?
So it's not just a show up andthrow up, but it's actually that
developing a relationship thatyou
Shawn Finder (08:49):
Amazing question.
So our SDRs are trained to whenthey do reach out to the people
from the is, we're not doing itin a salesy way.
We're trying to call and say,you know, as you said, Oh, how
did you find out how to findover?
If there's one takeaway from itthat your company is currently
not doing?
And they're like, Oh, well, youknow, we're not, we're not
really successful in our leadgeneration.
(09:10):
Oh, you're not successful inyour lead generation.
Well, this is what, you know,this is how people we know do it
, et cetera.
So we try and find out from thatwebinar, from that call, what is
that one to two challenge?
What are those one to two painpoints that, that person's
company is currently happening?
Is it filling the top of thefunnel?
(09:31):
Is it the bottom of the funneland gets to the bottom of the
funnel?
And it's not something we canhelp with.
Well, then we're going to referyou to people or company that
could help you.
So I think one thing that peoplehave to recognize nowadays is
instead of the solution selling,you have to be more consultative
selling.
You have to get in and buildthat relationship.
And if your product or serviceis not going to sell itself and
(09:53):
they don't need it, help them inanother way, because down the
road, they will still becomeyour client.
Kyle Hamer (09:58):
That's it?
You know, the, uh, Dan tire fromHubSpot says this all this time.
He's like, I don't, I don't callpeople up and say, uh, for a
sales rep that it's now alwaysbe closing.
It says now about always behelping.
And it sounds to me like that'sbeen, that's been put into your,
into your mix.
You know, when you, when youthink about the SDR, it seems to
(10:21):
me like there are specificelements you're looking for in
that, in that person for youguys, as you, as you look at
them, kind of being this hybridin this bridge between sales and
marketing, are there specificthings that you like
characteristics or traits or, orqualities you look in order to
somebody to be successful inthat position?
You're going to,
Shawn Finder (10:40):
I always tell this to people.
They ask me why, when I actuallyhire an SDR, I look for two
things.
One, they've worked at a bank ontheir resume.
Okay.
And I'll explain why in asecond.
And number two, they played acompetitive sport.
And the reason why I do both isthe competitive sport is because
(11:01):
sales is competitive.
You want to close the deal.
You want to book those.
You're telling me to get 16demos.
I want to get 25.
So they've got to becompetitive.
And I always look for you.
Have they played any highschool, sports, university
sports on their resume?
Now the bank one people ask,well, why do you hire people
that work to fake?
Or why do you look on a resumefor banks?
Because a bank trains people tobe the best SDRs.
(11:24):
They train them on the phone.
They train them to be Telemark.
They train to the emails.
So when they come to yourcompany, you don't have to spend
four months training them on howto make a cold call.
You've already, they've alreadybeen traded on somebody else's
wallet.
The banks have already paid forthem to be they're coming to you
already trained.
So those are the twocharacteristics I would say.
I look at for any SDR, but notonly STR I look at for any
(11:47):
person on my sales team, I havea, I have a girl named Malisa.
She played national basketballfor Serbia.
I always look for, have youplayed a competitive sport or
have you at least worked at abank?
Kyle Hamer (11:58):
That's interesting.
So how does that with those twocharacteristics?
How does that help?
I mean, I know how that helps insales, right?
How does that help on themarketing side?
So now that they're kind ofsitting in this 70, 30 role, how
do those characteristics playinto what marketing is doing?
Shawn Finder (12:14):
Great question.
So marketing's more somethingthey have to be, it takes, it
took a little bit of time.
I would say for the first fourmonths they were strictly doing
the sales role.
And then we slowly had to getthem involved in the marketing
because marketing is verydifferent.
You know, you got to be verycreative and marketing and not
every sales, you know, salespeople, for example, I know
personally, I'm, I'm a greatsalesperson, but I'm not the
(12:35):
most creative guy and you needto be creative with different
things in marketing.
So I would say it's more of, um,and I always liked doing this in
every company shadowing.
Even though if you're inmarketing, you should still shut
out the sales team.
You should still shuttle thesupport team, the operations
team, same with sales.
And that's kind of the way youlearn.
Now, you're not going to, youknow, you might be able to find
(12:56):
it's gonna be tough to findsomebody, an expert sales person
, an expert marketer, but yougotta try and find that balance
that they're willing to learn.
And that's anothercharacteristic.
So they're willing to learn andthey're willing to give, they're
willing to adapt.
They can be in sales, but aslong as they really want to
learn.
And I know this with one of ourguys in our company, he started
off in marketing, moved to salesbecause he's young enough, he's
(13:18):
in his twenties.
You got to, you always got tokeep learning more and growing
as a person.
Um, so I don't think it happensovernight, but I do think it's
something that if you could findsomebody that's coachable and
adaptable, those are two othercharacteristics I would look at
Kyle Hamer (13:34):
You've.
Um, I mean, you've obviouslybeen in sales, been successful
cause this is company numberthree, right?
You're building a team when youguys are, I think you shared
with me, what are you, how bigare you now?
About 36 people.
Okay.
So, you know, approaching 50, 50to 100 brings a different set of
challenges, a hundred plusbrings another set of
challenges.
Shawn Finder (13:52):
It brings challenges.
Kyle Hamer (13:56):
Uh, well, I'm not, I'm not, I am not mitigating any
of the challenges you're facing.
Now.
I just, you know, as the companygrows, the kind of the
benchmarks are at 50, from 50 toa hundred is an entirely
different growth period.
And then from a hundred, ahundred up, I think it's a
hundred to 500 is another set ofgrowth challenges.
Um, and, and there'sentrepreneurs that will argue
with me that the, the benchmarksare different.
(14:17):
But when you look at the, themarketing counterparts at U S so
I assume you, the sales leader,right?
Um, you are the sales leader,correct?
Shawn Finder (14:27):
I, I mean, I used to be the full sale there, and
now I kind of jumped in just forthe bigger deals and the
negotiation in a baseball game.
I come in on the eighth, theninth.
And let's just say that.
Kyle Hamer (14:39):
Alright, fair enough.
So, um, you've been a salesleader.
What are the, what are thethings that you want to see from
your, from your marketingcounterparts that make you like,
wow, they've really got ourback.
They really understand whatwe're doing.
I mean, you mentioned shadowingand willing to learn and adapt,
but the most successfulmarketing relationship you've
(15:00):
had or the most successful onesthat you've seen, what are you
looking for in that counterpart?
Shawn Finder (15:04):
I think, you know, you know, nowadays you can't
just rely on outbound.
You can't just rely on inbound.
I think one thing that I look atfrom our marketing team and we
continue to improve this, theinbound leads, we always focused
on being an outreach platform,reaching out and having our team
call and email.
But now we've kind of moved ourrower.
(15:25):
You know what?
Let's do the marketing stuff.
Now that might help us fivemonths from now where just
because nest yard's getting 16,20 demos, we'll have the website
bringing 16, 20 demos.
You know, so what we're lookingfor right now, and one thing
we've doubled down on Kyle and Iwish I did this two years ago,
probably the biggest mistake asan entrepreneur was never
(15:45):
focusing on SEO.
I never focused on SEO.
And now our website trafficincreases when your website
traffic increases, then we'regetting the leads.
But one more thing I would sayfor marketing is I always tell
people I've told marketing andsales.
This volume is not everything.
If I'm giving you a quota to hit16 demos a month as an SDR in my
(16:06):
marketing team, I'm saying,bring in 16 inbound leads.
I'd rather have eight that arequality than have 16 that are my
account executives on, in withinfive minutes.
They're not, pre-qualified,they're not even a good fit for
our product.
So I think one thing I do lookat for marketing is not only to
bring in the lead of bringingthe right people, because not
only if, if you bring in thewrong people, not only are you
(16:28):
hurting our sales team, butyou're also hurting the time our
account executives are spendingon non qualified leads.
So I think that is a marketingand sales thing that we need to
have higher quality than highervolume.
Isn't it,
Kyle Hamer (16:42):
Isn't that hard for you though, as an entrepreneur
and somebody who's, you know, aleader in the business to say, I
want you to be more focused andbe, be more exclusive versus
saying, well, yeah, we can serveeverybody.
I mean, at what point in yourentrepreneurial career did you
say, Oh, it's more valuable tomeet higher target versus I'll
do anything for anybody.
Yeah.
Shawn Finder (17:01):
Yeah.
So what I, what I did was I, atthe beginning, our marketing and
sales team, they would just lovebringing in demos.
They would bring demos in and wewould get, we've got so many
demos and then I would go onsome of them because I would
like to, I go into psycho intoevery aspect of my business.
We're still small enough that Ihave to still not micromanage,
but be involved.
So I would go on a call andwithin the first 30 seconds, I
(17:22):
can tell that it's not a fit andit's wasting my time.
It's wasting their time and it'swasting our marketing's time and
potentially your marketingbudget.
Um, so what happened was wereally started to focus on
quality and what we do now is,you know, we use, for example,
an online scheduler likeCalendly, but we pre-qualify
with three to four questions tosee, are they the right fit?
So let's use, for example, sayyour right fit was companies
(17:45):
that have 50 to a hundredemployees.
And the leads you are gettingwere preneurs.
At least, you know that beforeyou go on a call with them and
spend an hour with them, thatyou're not wasting your time.
And that's kind of what I'mtrying to get out of my
marketing guys and my sales guysright now, let's focus on the
ones that we can actuallyprospect and close.
Then just focus on, we'll get,guess what?
(18:07):
We hit our KPI this month,
Kyle Hamer (18:09):
Move forward.
That really, I mean, that in andof itself forces the two teams
to align around a commonpersona, a common customer type,
it forces conversation.
What are, I mean, you said thatyou, you know, you have a
hyperactive Slack channel, whichI think a lot of, a lot of
companies probably do right now,a weather or Microsoft teams or
(18:30):
Google Hangouts, whatever, youknow, pick your flavor.
But what are the, I mean, whatare the specific things that
that marketing does or thatsales does to ensure that you're
always continuing to optimizeand fine tune the fine tune,
that quality, make sure that thequality is coming in at the
target rate that you want.
Shawn Finder (18:46):
So we, we do a lot of KPIs, a lot of analytics, if
our marketing team does awebinar to a hundred people,
we'll tell them, you know, werate, we rate that lead on the
10th and then they'll see ascore at the end of the webinars
saying, okay, the score, youknow, to our qualified lead, the
score was like a 71% or it wasit 92%.
And then from there we go, okay,who were the ones from the, from
(19:07):
the registry that were reallygood?
Oh, well look, there are peoplethat were in California, in
Texas that were inmanufacturing.
Well, then we cover Margareeteam focus on those two States
and manufacturing.
So we really believe in a lot ofanalytics, but one thing when
you mentioned Slack, anotherthing that really helped
ourselves is everything ispublic.
(19:27):
Even every sale that comes intoour company is public and Slack.
So if I sold something for athousand dollars today, it goes
in such everybody has fullvisibility of development,
operations, marketing, sales, etcetera.
And this goes back to the firstset of we've been very
successful as far as our teamculture is like a family, um,
because everyone's involved inevery department, everyone's
(19:47):
shot on each other and everyoneknows a little bit about
everything Mark, and there's alot of a marketing, but they
still know a very little bit ofsales, operations and things.
That's another thing that's veryimportant to keeping everything
at your company, very public andnot having marketing hype stuff
from sales and sales hire stuff.
Kyle Hamer (20:02):
Well, in, in, you know, it's, it's interesting in
a lot of the conversations that,that I find myself in with, with
different companies, there's aneven bigger gap between sales
and marketing and operationswhen it comes to, you know,
what's the, what's the feedbackloop or what's the, what's the
customer journey like marketingwill focus really, really,
(20:22):
really intently on what's thecustomer journey until I hit
submit.
And then somebody hits, submit,and sales is like, I didn't even
know I got to leave.
Right.
And then sales will focusreally, really hard on, on sales
velocity and pushing somebodythrough the sales funnel and
getting it to close.
And then they're like, well, Ididn't know what happened when
we go to invoicing or how theyget set up on the system.
(20:43):
Right?
So as a small company at 36, youhave the, you have the
opportunity to create thatvisibility.
What are some things that youmight share as findings or, or,
uh, wins things that came to therealization where, Hey, we've
got to create this transparencyinside of organization, as we
grow that other businesses thatare larger or other
entrepreneurs that arestruggling with things that I
(21:05):
just, would've never thought of,that stuff that as you went
through, you were like, Oh, wow.
Yeah, that's really,
Shawn Finder (21:09):
Yeah.
And there's a, there's a lot ofdifferent things that we do.
Um, you know, for example,marketing might have a goal to
get people on a 14 day trial.
Um, or we might have to makemarketing might have a global,
where did that lead come from?
So when our sales guys know thatthat lead came from a webinar,
LinkedIn, our own platform, etcetera, it's just more
knowledge.
(21:29):
So when they get on that call,they can say, Oh, you were on
the webinar with Kyle hammer.
How'd you like the webinar?
You know, it's the same thing.
So tonight, no one really canbecome from Facebook or LinkedIn
because the personality issomething that from Facebook and
LinkedIn and all the othersocials are very different.
So I think one, one thing is theinsight.
Also, for example, if somebodycomes to a landing page, but
doesn't fill up the landing pageor they fill out the landing
(21:51):
page and they download two booksand three newsletters,
everything is different.
So I think the key is, you know,use your, your CRM and have
marketing and sales bothinvolved there that you can
almost put where that lead comesfrom, how long they've been a
lead hell, you'll even scorethem from a marketing
perspective.
Because for example, we useMailChimp for our marketing
(22:12):
newsletter.
And then what we do is we giveour IRS DRS.
Here's a list of our five starpeople from our MailChimp that
have really engaged in ourcontent every Tuesday.
So I think there has to be thatalignment.
Everything has to be tracked andeverything has to be put
somewhere.
So a sales team doesn't have tocall Mark and go, Oh, so what
about this?
It has to be all in one place,um, and consolidated so that you
(22:36):
can really focus on who thatlead is, where they came from.
How long have they been a lead?
What source did they come from?
What, where did they come from?
What did they watch?
How long did they watch?
How long were they on thewebinar, et cetera.
Kyle Hamer (22:48):
You know, it sounds to me like you guys spend a lot
of time with, with KPIs data andlooking at a velocity across all
of the different, the differentelements, a couple of questions
about that.
What are, what would you say areyour favorite KPIs?
So things that you're like, Hey,if I could only run my business
on two or three things, it wouldbe these three things.
And I would know that we weregoing to be successful.
(23:08):
What are, what are thosenumbers?
Shawn Finder (23:10):
Well, the obvious one first, we make sure our
revenues grow every month, right?
But from a marketing, um, I'mall about growth.
And from marketing, as Imentioned, SEO has been a very
big contributor.
We've been doing link buildingand SEO.
I actually really liked lookingon a daily basis on our website
traffic it's it's, it hasnothing to do with revenue, but
(23:33):
it shows me that every singleday that goes by more and more
people are visiting our websitemore and more people are getting
in front and article is gettingin front of them.
So those are the ones revenueobviously is the, um, and I
always like to know, um, youknow, our newsletters, how many
more people are downloadingstuff, are they downloading our
(23:53):
eBooks or downloading stuff?
Because I still think content isKing and content and marketing
is what's going to drive thefuture.
Um, so I always look at how areour numbers going up?
How's our website going up?
And the third one is, uh, do wehave enough revenue this month
to pay our expenses,
Kyle Hamer (24:11):
The plight of every entrepreneur, right.
Do I have to take on cash?
Do I have to take on debt or doI, do I have enough revenue
coming in to pay them?
Shawn Finder (24:19):
Yeah, we we've been lucky.
We've been profitable now forover a year.
So no outside funding, we'restill bootstrapped.
And, uh, even during occupy,during COVID, we actually had
our best three months ever, but,uh, I've been, I've built it
very lean that if COBIT ever hitand we get zero sales, I can
still hold the business for sixmonths and be tired.
Kyle Hamer (24:37):
That's that's great.
So I've talked to a lot of, I'vetalked to a lot of businesses
that have, um, that are in whatI would call the sales and
marketing software space.
Cause that's what I would,that's how I would classify auto
close.
Um, even though you're a dataand a software company, it's
kind of, I would classify, I'vetalked to a lot of businesses
that, you know, they, they havea lot of the similar principles
(24:58):
you, which is createtransparency and what's going on
with, are we booking business?
Are we not?
Um, where are we at?
How long can we run?
If, if, if we have zero salesand then ultimately, you know,
building a lean team, that'screating this higher level of
visibility.
There's a lot of traits thatwe're seeing or that you're
sharing with me that we'reseeing in other businesses that
(25:18):
are, that are bootstrapped,right?
They didn't have to take onmoney.
And my personal opinion abouttaking on debt in, or, or an
investor is, is at the second inwhich it's no longer about your
customer, it's about raisingcapital or, or taking off it
changes.
It changes how you think itchanges how you behave and
you're no longer, you're nolonger 100% focused on the
(25:39):
customer.
It doesn't mean the customer isnot important, but now you have
two customers, right?
You've got this, this idea of ashareholder or an investor or,
or bank, right.
A debt, um, and, and yourcustomer and you have to
balance, well, what's moreimportant for this particular
month.
And what's more important forthis.
Shawn Finder (25:55):
And you're, you know, you, you don't have
somebody down your throatsaying, here's the here's half a
million dollars go hire 25people in the next two months.
You know?
So I think it's definitely, um,it's, we've been boosted up, we
know we're growing.
Um, but I think, you know,especially with subscription
models, now it accumulates monthover month that, you know, it
took us, I would say a year, ayear and a bit before I can kind
(26:17):
of pull away a little bit.
Um, and we had like, you know,break even.
Um, but, um, it takes a lotlonger, but obviously it's a lot
more that I don't have to answerto anyone then, then going into
a board meeting every quarterand having to give a, a
statement on why we're Croft,why would this area, you know, I
stayed away from all that.
Kyle Hamer (26:37):
Well, you know, and, and I, and I think that's the,
that's the beauty of whatyou've, you've learned.
And you've parlayed since youplayed tennis, right?
I mean, in many ways, uh, yourcompetitive sports background
and in your, your achievementsin that there is some,
self-reliance where it's like,Hey, I don't need a coach, but I
don't need somebody to come inand save me.
(26:57):
I don't need to do this.
I can do this by myself, setthis up so that it, you know, it
will win or lose based on myefforts, my team's efforts, not,
you know, whether there's a twoand a half million dollar round
of funding this particularquarter.
Yeah.
Shawn Finder (27:13):
And, and you just, you know, to be honest, the
reason why I'm kind of not thereason, but one of the reasons
there's tennis, as an example, Ialways was a singles player.
And the reason why is, if you goplay doubles, you don't have to
rely on your doubles partner tonot have an off day for you to
win that match where I like tobe in control when you're, when
you're playing singles.
One-on-one, if you have a badday, you lose your phone, but in
(27:35):
doubles, you know, there's twoof you up to rely on.
So I've always liked to play thesingles and not the doubles.
Kyle Hamer (27:42):
So, uh, out of curiosity, what's the most
exciting thing for you as itrelates to, you know, the
pandemic?
Not that there are, um, youknow, you've had the best three
months in the business, butentrepreneurs typically see
changes in market shifts likethis, that, that, that expose
opportunity.
And so when you look at themarket opportunity, what are
(28:04):
some of the things that are mostexciting about the current
market dynamics for you?
Shawn Finder (28:07):
Well, I think with the current market dynamics, I
think that a w a email as achannel is continuing to grow.
Um, I think a lot of peoplecan't really call officer's that
people start working unless youhave a direct dial.
But I think, um, the one thingI, well, two things I would say
a is consolidation.
So a lot of people now arelooking at consolidating
platforms, consolidating tools,consolidating finding a tool
(28:28):
that other CRM sales all in one.
But I would also have to saythat, you know, really, really
focusing on, um, how to alwayshave a good top of the funnel
right now.
I think it's the most importantbecause pandemic or note
pandemic, you need that top ofthe funnel, your revenue might
slow down during the pendant,but we all know it's gonna, it's
(28:49):
all gonna, you know, it's goingto disappear at some point, but
it's all going to get back tonormal.
So the most important thing isto continue to fill your top of
the funnel, even though youmight have short term or
revenue, when things do get backto normal sooner, hopefully,
hopefully they still prospect tostill make sales and to still
(29:10):
grow your business.
Kyle Hamer (29:11):
You're one of the, um, I was talking with a second
with Neil Benedict a couple, acouple of weeks ago on the show.
And we were talking about theshift in dynamic for outside
sales reps, field sales.
Right.
And I think one of the thingsthat's most interesting about,
uh, specifically what you dowith auto close is, you know, in
the past, they might've had a, aterritory map or a list or a
(29:31):
group of key accounts, peoplethat they would go call on
scheduled lunches or coffee ordifferent things.
Those, those particular salesreps learning a new in the
business, learning that, Hey,maybe I don't need to pay, you
know, a hundred thousand dollarsa year to have this rep and have
them on the road the whole time.
They may not be true, but thedynamics and the shift that's
(29:52):
happening, I think is reallyinteresting for a business like
yours and what it means fortaking a field sales rep and
having them be more targeted,having them be more efficient
in, in the longterm impact of,uh, on the businesses being, Oh,
wow.
What was once a pretty expensiveluxury?
(30:14):
If you will, a necessity, that'sa luxury, um, can now be
something that we can fold inand we can do something that's
splendid, it's more of a hybridrole and it's much more
profitable or much moreeffective for our business to,
to scale up.
I think that overall, I, I videopodcasts.
Video is very important.
Um, people won't be able to gofor coffees with those potential
(30:36):
prospects, like they used to,um, it'll be more video.
So I think everyone has toadapt.
And I think with all the new,you know, zoom, for example, you
can just see how it skyrocketed,starting to get familiar.
I get on video and build thosevideo.
Do video emails, do video,everything to really speak to
that prospect is going to be thenew norm for at least, I think
(30:57):
at least a year, year and ahalf.
And we have no idea how thatwill.
I mean, you, you, you, uh, Ithink demand metric in
vineyards, putting on a state ofthe union as it relates to
what's going on with video andemail, I think that's today or
tomorrow, but from a, um, from achange, you do something for
eight, 12 to 18 months to amarket, uh, as it relates to
(31:18):
being remote and shifting thecommunication channel, that's
going to introduce all kinds ofnew opportunity, a hundred
percent and, um, you know, goback to your point of it's all
about building relationships.
Sean has been great to chat withyou on the show today.
Uh, give us the, give us thehigh level, you know, two minute
pitch about auto close, andthen, you know, share with the
(31:41):
guests, how they can get aholdof you.
So auto closes and all in onesales engagement platform that
has a built in B2B database.
Therefore you can automate notonly your prospecting, but
search and filter through ourdatabase of over 30 million
contacts for whom you want toemail.
Um, if you want to get in touchwith me, Shaun S H a w
(32:03):
n@autoclose.com and that'sautoclose with the K um, follow
me on LinkedIn.
I'm very active on LinkedIn.
Um, and you can reach out to meanytime there, um, and also
visit our website autoclose.com.
We provide a lot of content onmarketing, sales, alignment, um,
and different things.
And we're more than happy toshare that with you.
That's awesome.
Well, thanks again for being aguest today, for those of you
(32:24):
who didn't know, Sean, you knowhim a little bit better, and you
also have some really goodinsights on how to build a sales
and marketing team that can talkto one another, tolerate one
another, and is set up for hypergrowth.
This is Kyle hammer, and thishas been the podcast of summit.
We'll talk to you again nextweek.
Hello, and welcome to the summit, the podcast,
where we bring you knowledge andinsights from industry leaders
and professionals, no fluff,just real people, real results
in ways to help your business.
I'm your host Kyle hammer, andI'm on a mission to find secrets
to success in business.
We're having real conversationsto get you from here to there.
Today's guest joining us on thesummit is Sean finder.
(00:33):
Sean, welcome to the show.
Also, happy to be here with youtoday, And we're, we're really
excited to have you for thosethat you don't know.
Sean, Sean is one of Canada'stop ranked tennis players, uh,
and he took his game into theentrepreneurial world at age 24,
started a packaging and what wasimportant packaging and selling
it to North American retailers.
(00:55):
Uh, that wasn't enough.
He got the bug of, I need to getinto software and data and do
some more things.
And so in 2013 he founded acompany named exchange leads
that, uh, that company helpedsales teams and businesses alike
target and build lists to sellinto.
And then in 2017, he leveragedthat into a new venture called
autoclose to combine both salesengagement list building and go
(01:19):
to market strategy.
Did I miss anything, Sean?
Or is there anything you'd liketo share with us?
You got a pretty clear, it's apretty wide range of stuff, but
yeah, it started out inpackaging more of my first
entrepreneurial venture thanauto closing, then parlayed that
recently a few years ago now inDatto close.
That's great.
Today's today's topic that we'regoing to be chatting about is
(01:39):
sales and marketing, gettingthem aligned.
Why is it so hard?
Sean recently wrote an articleand posted it on LinkedIn called
sales and marketing alignment,five best practices for best
results.
So Sean, can you kind of justtake us through at a top level,
first of all, why do you thinkit's so hard and what are some
of the things that you think arebest practices?
Well, I think the bestpractices, as you know, I think
(02:00):
you have to have, I'm more intothat almost that revenue
officer, chief revenue officer,the managing manager nowadays,
where you need to have bothsales and marketing, because you
have to be a light because yourmarketing needs to know your
message, but also your salesguys need to know that message
when they're doing theiroutbound, that could be cold
calling, emailing, et cetera.
(02:20):
Um, so one of the best productsthat we've done is we've
implemented like Slack, forexample, where we can have our
marketing and sales peoplepublicly in the same, in the
same kind of category.
And they can all be seeing,okay, what articles are we
posting?
Okay, what does our, you know,what does our marketing doing?
And then marketing it, see whatour sales doing.
So I think it's very, veryimportant nowadays, especially
that you do have that alignmentbetween sales and marketing and
(02:42):
they're not, you're not makingthem kind of two separate
entities, you know, it's, it's,it's really interesting.
Cause I think the smaller, thebusiness you are, it becomes
very, very, very important.
And I think there's some pointwhere businesses lose that and
then it kind of becomes this,you know, fisticuffs, well, in
my silo over here, we do this.
Then letting your silo, you dothat.
Well, don't come over into mysilo.
(03:03):
Don't go over here.
What, what point do you think itis for businesses as they grow,
where that really becomesdifficult to maintain that level
of transparency, communicationand keeping teams aligned?
Shawn Finder (03:13):
Yeah.
Well I think as soon as you havean SDR team, so a sales
development representative teamand account executives, you need
to have that alignment becauseyou know, one of the biggest
things that I find is thebiggest mistake with salespeople
in general is they don't knowtheir buyers for something.
They don't know who's thatperson that's actually buying
their product, but you need tomake sure that marketing is
marketing to that person that isactually buying your product.
(03:36):
Therefore, you know, if you'reselling to a CEO, a CEO is, you
know, pains and gains.
I like to call them might bedifferent than a national sales
manager, sales pains, and gains.
You want to make sure that onceyour sales team has that niche,
that market that's actuallybuying your product or service,
then marketing is writing thoseblogs, writing those content,
doing those tweets around thatexact vertical or the exact
(04:01):
persona.
And I think that starts as soonas you start to develop.
And you know, as you said, it,startups, small companies have
been wearing a lot of hats, butonce you get that SDR team
account executive team, you needto make sure that is aligned
between market.
Kyle Hamer (04:16):
So, you know, that brings up, it brings up an
interesting question.
Where does the SDR team reside?
Do you think that the SDR teamresides inside of marketing or
it resides inside of sales?
Shawn Finder (04:25):
I actually don't put an, either one I put under
the demand gen umbrella.
Um, and the reason why is wehave SDRs that are sometimes
doing marketing tactics ormarketing tactics.
Um, but also they're stillsupposed to fill our account
executives calendar with demos.
Um, so we originally had themonly under the sales umbrella
(04:46):
and they weren't touching basewith marketer or anything, but
we'd actually slowly put theminto that marketing, um, as
well.
So I would say it's still abouta 70, 30 split, 70% sales, 30
some marketing, but, uh, that'sgreat that you brought it up.
Cause I think a lot oforganizations don't have their
SDRs going into the marketingbucket and they're more sting on
the sales side.
Kyle Hamer (05:07):
So you talked about some of the things that are at
least talked about, Hey, werealized that there are some
things here that we need to haveour STRs doing from marketing.
Can you give us some exampleswithout giving away your secret
sauce?
Shawn Finder (05:18):
Yeah.
So, you know, for marketing, forexample, we have them online on
LinkedIn a lot.
Um, we have them, you know,posting all of our blogs, trying
to engage conversations with ourblogs because I think the number
one thing you have to domarketing or sales or anything
is building relationships.
Um, so we have our SDRs, youknow, on the sales side, they're
trying to drive those leads, buton the marketing side, they're
really trying to just buildthose relationships, get them
(05:40):
nice and warm, get them toslowly raise their hand and then
try and take them for more ofthat marketing MQL, 10 sales
qualified leads.
Kyle Hamer (05:48):
It's it's, it's interesting because you know,
when you look at, you look atthe ecosystem that is marketing,
it's a big, huge world.
And when you're in, when you'rein startup mode, if you're, if
you've done anything as itrelates to EOS and, and you
know, maybe you've read the booktraction, it's all about focus,
right?
Staying hyper focused on what'smost important.
And it sounds like for you guys,what's most important for your
(06:10):
sales organization at this pointis, is building relationships.
When you, when you look at yourideal customers and you look at
the activities that your, yourteam is doing, what are the
items or things that your salesteam expects marketing to do to
help them build relationships?
Shawn Finder (06:27):
Great question.
Um, we've got marketing.
So one thing that, you know,over the last four months since
Kobe started is working reallywell as webinars.
So what we expect us to do is weexpect our marketing team to,
you know, get some good peoplethat have good analysts that can
bring good qualified, you know,two, 300 people to a webinar
that our sales team can afterreach out to them, stressed
(06:48):
jurors actually reach out to allthe registers on those webinars.
So sales is dependent onmarketing to do all those
webinars set up the landingpages, set up the zoom links, be
a host, engaged with them andset all those up, try and get
one to two a month.
But that's basically what ourteam's been using to generate.
A lot of our leads is goingdoing those webinars and then
taking the rest of the yards orour STRs reaching out to those
(07:10):
people that attended orregistered.
I'd try and get them to have ademo with our account executive.
So there's a whole cycle.
I mean, you know, it's, it'sgreat that you brought that up
and this, this conversation isgoing on with between sales and
marketing is it takes all ofthose different teams to be
aligned, not only salesmarketing, but like content
writing, everything has to bealigned, um, to make sure that
(07:31):
your SDRs are going to besuccessful.
And when your STRs looksuccessful, your sales teams is
successful as well.
Kyle Hamer (07:37):
It's interesting that you mentioned, you
mentioned webinars because Imean, with the, with the global
outbreak of the pandemic, peoplebeing ordered to stay at home, I
mean, here, here in Texas, we'retrying to reopen the state.
We're not doing very good rightnow, but that politics and
personal beliefs aside for aminute, when you look at it,
it's, it is forcingorganizations, sales
(07:57):
organizations, groups that werehistorically shoulder, shoulder,
elbow to elbow, pull up to thebar, go shoot, go shoot golf.
You know, they would buildrelationships differently to
look at their, um, their funnel,their engagement and how they
build those relationships inentirely different, different
light.
One of the things that I've seen, um, historically being on the
(08:17):
marketing side of things, uh, isthat a lot of sales reps are
resistant.
Even SDRs are resistant to callfolks after a webinar.
Cause they're going well, Idon't know what to say.
What's the point.
Hey, did you like it?
Like so, so how do youstructure, what does marketing
give your SDRs or sales enableyour SDRs?
(08:38):
When you're calling those two,three, 400 leads afterwards,
what are the talking points are?
Or how are they setting that up?
So it's not just a show up andthrow up, but it's actually that
developing a relationship thatyou
Shawn Finder (08:49):
Amazing question.
So our SDRs are trained to whenthey do reach out to the people
from the is, we're not doing itin a salesy way.
We're trying to call and say,you know, as you said, Oh, how
did you find out how to findover?
If there's one takeaway from itthat your company is currently
not doing?
And they're like, Oh, well, youknow, we're not, we're not
really successful in our leadgeneration.
(09:10):
Oh, you're not successful inyour lead generation.
Well, this is what, you know,this is how people we know do it
, et cetera.
So we try and find out from thatwebinar, from that call, what is
that one to two challenge?
What are those one to two painpoints that, that person's
company is currently happening?
Is it filling the top of thefunnel?
(09:31):
Is it the bottom of the funneland gets to the bottom of the
funnel?
And it's not something we canhelp with.
Well, then we're going to referyou to people or company that
could help you.
So I think one thing that peoplehave to recognize nowadays is
instead of the solution selling,you have to be more consultative
selling.
You have to get in and buildthat relationship.
And if your product or serviceis not going to sell itself and
(09:53):
they don't need it, help them inanother way, because down the
road, they will still becomeyour client.
Kyle Hamer (09:58):
That's it?
You know, the, uh, Dan tire fromHubSpot says this all this time.
He's like, I don't, I don't callpeople up and say, uh, for a
sales rep that it's now alwaysbe closing.
It says now about always behelping.
And it sounds to me like that'sbeen, that's been put into your,
into your mix.
You know, when you, when youthink about the SDR, it seems to
(10:21):
me like there are specificelements you're looking for in
that, in that person for youguys, as you, as you look at
them, kind of being this hybridin this bridge between sales and
marketing, are there specificthings that you like
characteristics or traits or, orqualities you look in order to
somebody to be successful inthat position?
You're going to,
Shawn Finder (10:40):
I always tell this to people.
They ask me why, when I actuallyhire an SDR, I look for two
things.
One, they've worked at a bank ontheir resume.
Okay.
And I'll explain why in asecond.
And number two, they played acompetitive sport.
And the reason why I do both isthe competitive sport is because
(11:01):
sales is competitive.
You want to close the deal.
You want to book those.
You're telling me to get 16demos.
I want to get 25.
So they've got to becompetitive.
And I always look for you.
Have they played any highschool, sports, university
sports on their resume?
Now the bank one people ask,well, why do you hire people
that work to fake?
Or why do you look on a resumefor banks?
Because a bank trains people tobe the best SDRs.
(11:24):
They train them on the phone.
They train them to be Telemark.
They train to the emails.
So when they come to yourcompany, you don't have to spend
four months training them on howto make a cold call.
You've already, they've alreadybeen traded on somebody else's
wallet.
The banks have already paid forthem to be they're coming to you
already trained.
So those are the twocharacteristics I would say.
I look at for any SDR, but notonly STR I look at for any
(11:47):
person on my sales team, I havea, I have a girl named Malisa.
She played national basketballfor Serbia.
I always look for, have youplayed a competitive sport or
have you at least worked at abank?
Kyle Hamer (11:58):
That's interesting.
So how does that with those twocharacteristics?
How does that help?
I mean, I know how that helps insales, right?
How does that help on themarketing side?
So now that they're kind ofsitting in this 70, 30 role, how
do those characteristics playinto what marketing is doing?
Shawn Finder (12:14):
Great question.
So marketing's more somethingthey have to be, it takes, it
took a little bit of time.
I would say for the first fourmonths they were strictly doing
the sales role.
And then we slowly had to getthem involved in the marketing
because marketing is verydifferent.
You know, you got to be verycreative and marketing and not
every sales, you know, salespeople, for example, I know
personally, I'm, I'm a greatsalesperson, but I'm not the
(12:35):
most creative guy and you needto be creative with different
things in marketing.
So I would say it's more of, um,and I always liked doing this in
every company shadowing.
Even though if you're inmarketing, you should still shut
out the sales team.
You should still shuttle thesupport team, the operations
team, same with sales.
And that's kind of the way youlearn.
Now, you're not going to, youknow, you might be able to find
(12:56):
it's gonna be tough to findsomebody, an expert sales person
, an expert marketer, but yougotta try and find that balance
that they're willing to learn.
And that's anothercharacteristic.
So they're willing to learn andthey're willing to give, they're
willing to adapt.
They can be in sales, but aslong as they really want to
learn.
And I know this with one of ourguys in our company, he started
off in marketing, moved to salesbecause he's young enough, he's
(13:18):
in his twenties.
You got to, you always got tokeep learning more and growing
as a person.
Um, so I don't think it happensovernight, but I do think it's
something that if you could findsomebody that's coachable and
adaptable, those are two othercharacteristics I would look at
Kyle Hamer (13:34):
You've.
Um, I mean, you've obviouslybeen in sales, been successful
cause this is company numberthree, right?
You're building a team when youguys are, I think you shared
with me, what are you, how bigare you now?
About 36 people.
Okay.
So, you know, approaching 50, 50to 100 brings a different set of
challenges, a hundred plusbrings another set of
challenges.
Shawn Finder (13:52):
It brings challenges.
Kyle Hamer (13:56):
Uh, well, I'm not, I'm not, I am not mitigating any
of the challenges you're facing.
Now.
I just, you know, as the companygrows, the kind of the
benchmarks are at 50, from 50 toa hundred is an entirely
different growth period.
And then from a hundred, ahundred up, I think it's a
hundred to 500 is another set ofgrowth challenges.
Um, and, and there'sentrepreneurs that will argue
with me that the, the benchmarksare different.
(14:17):
But when you look at the, themarketing counterparts at U S so
I assume you, the sales leader,right?
Um, you are the sales leader,correct?
Shawn Finder (14:27):
I, I mean, I used to be the full sale there, and
now I kind of jumped in just forthe bigger deals and the
negotiation in a baseball game.
I come in on the eighth, theninth.
And let's just say that.
Kyle Hamer (14:39):
Alright, fair enough.
So, um, you've been a salesleader.
What are the, what are thethings that you want to see from
your, from your marketingcounterparts that make you like,
wow, they've really got ourback.
They really understand whatwe're doing.
I mean, you mentioned shadowingand willing to learn and adapt,
but the most successfulmarketing relationship you've
(15:00):
had or the most successful onesthat you've seen, what are you
looking for in that counterpart?
Shawn Finder (15:04):
I think, you know, you know, nowadays you can't
just rely on outbound.
You can't just rely on inbound.
I think one thing that I look atfrom our marketing team and we
continue to improve this, theinbound leads, we always focused
on being an outreach platform,reaching out and having our team
call and email.
But now we've kind of moved ourrower.
(15:25):
You know what?
Let's do the marketing stuff.
Now that might help us fivemonths from now where just
because nest yard's getting 16,20 demos, we'll have the website
bringing 16, 20 demos.
You know, so what we're lookingfor right now, and one thing
we've doubled down on Kyle and Iwish I did this two years ago,
probably the biggest mistake asan entrepreneur was never
(15:45):
focusing on SEO.
I never focused on SEO.
And now our website trafficincreases when your website
traffic increases, then we'regetting the leads.
But one more thing I would sayfor marketing is I always tell
people I've told marketing andsales.
This volume is not everything.
If I'm giving you a quota to hit16 demos a month as an SDR in my
(16:06):
marketing team, I'm saying,bring in 16 inbound leads.
I'd rather have eight that arequality than have 16 that are my
account executives on, in withinfive minutes.
They're not, pre-qualified,they're not even a good fit for
our product.
So I think one thing I do lookat for marketing is not only to
bring in the lead of bringingthe right people, because not
only if, if you bring in thewrong people, not only are you
(16:28):
hurting our sales team, butyou're also hurting the time our
account executives are spendingon non qualified leads.
So I think that is a marketingand sales thing that we need to
have higher quality than highervolume.
Isn't it,
Kyle Hamer (16:42):
Isn't that hard for you though, as an entrepreneur
and somebody who's, you know, aleader in the business to say, I
want you to be more focused andbe, be more exclusive versus
saying, well, yeah, we can serveeverybody.
I mean, at what point in yourentrepreneurial career did you
say, Oh, it's more valuable tomeet higher target versus I'll
do anything for anybody.
Yeah.
Shawn Finder (17:01):
Yeah.
So what I, what I did was I, atthe beginning, our marketing and
sales team, they would just lovebringing in demos.
They would bring demos in and wewould get, we've got so many
demos and then I would go onsome of them because I would
like to, I go into psycho intoevery aspect of my business.
We're still small enough that Ihave to still not micromanage,
but be involved.
So I would go on a call andwithin the first 30 seconds, I
(17:22):
can tell that it's not a fit andit's wasting my time.
It's wasting their time and it'swasting our marketing's time and
potentially your marketingbudget.
Um, so what happened was wereally started to focus on
quality and what we do now is,you know, we use, for example,
an online scheduler likeCalendly, but we pre-qualify
with three to four questions tosee, are they the right fit?
So let's use, for example, sayyour right fit was companies
(17:45):
that have 50 to a hundredemployees.
And the leads you are gettingwere preneurs.
At least, you know that beforeyou go on a call with them and
spend an hour with them, thatyou're not wasting your time.
And that's kind of what I'mtrying to get out of my
marketing guys and my sales guysright now, let's focus on the
ones that we can actuallyprospect and close.
Then just focus on, we'll get,guess what?
(18:07):
We hit our KPI this month,
Kyle Hamer (18:09):
Move forward.
That really, I mean, that in andof itself forces the two teams
to align around a commonpersona, a common customer type,
it forces conversation.
What are, I mean, you said thatyou, you know, you have a
hyperactive Slack channel, whichI think a lot of, a lot of
companies probably do right now,a weather or Microsoft teams or
(18:30):
Google Hangouts, whatever, youknow, pick your flavor.
But what are the, I mean, whatare the specific things that
that marketing does or thatsales does to ensure that you're
always continuing to optimizeand fine tune the fine tune,
that quality, make sure that thequality is coming in at the
target rate that you want.
Shawn Finder (18:46):
So we, we do a lot of KPIs, a lot of analytics, if
our marketing team does awebinar to a hundred people,
we'll tell them, you know, werate, we rate that lead on the
10th and then they'll see ascore at the end of the webinars
saying, okay, the score, youknow, to our qualified lead, the
score was like a 71% or it wasit 92%.
And then from there we go, okay,who were the ones from the, from
(19:07):
the registry that were reallygood?
Oh, well look, there are peoplethat were in California, in
Texas that were inmanufacturing.
Well, then we cover Margareeteam focus on those two States
and manufacturing.
So we really believe in a lot ofanalytics, but one thing when
you mentioned Slack, anotherthing that really helped
ourselves is everything ispublic.
(19:27):
Even every sale that comes intoour company is public and Slack.
So if I sold something for athousand dollars today, it goes
in such everybody has fullvisibility of development,
operations, marketing, sales, etcetera.
And this goes back to the firstset of we've been very
successful as far as our teamculture is like a family, um,
because everyone's involved inevery department, everyone's
(19:47):
shot on each other and everyoneknows a little bit about
everything Mark, and there's alot of a marketing, but they
still know a very little bit ofsales, operations and things.
That's another thing that's veryimportant to keeping everything
at your company, very public andnot having marketing hype stuff
from sales and sales hire stuff.
Kyle Hamer (20:02):
Well, in, in, you know, it's, it's interesting in
a lot of the conversations that,that I find myself in with, with
different companies, there's aneven bigger gap between sales
and marketing and operationswhen it comes to, you know,
what's the, what's the feedbackloop or what's the, what's the
customer journey like marketingwill focus really, really,
(20:22):
really intently on what's thecustomer journey until I hit
submit.
And then somebody hits, submit,and sales is like, I didn't even
know I got to leave.
Right.
And then sales will focusreally, really hard on, on sales
velocity and pushing somebodythrough the sales funnel and
getting it to close.
And then they're like, well, Ididn't know what happened when
we go to invoicing or how theyget set up on the system.
(20:43):
Right?
So as a small company at 36, youhave the, you have the
opportunity to create thatvisibility.
What are some things that youmight share as findings or, or,
uh, wins things that came to therealization where, Hey, we've
got to create this transparencyinside of organization, as we
grow that other businesses thatare larger or other
entrepreneurs that arestruggling with things that I
(21:05):
just, would've never thought of,that stuff that as you went
through, you were like, Oh, wow.
Yeah, that's really,
Shawn Finder (21:09):
Yeah.
And there's a, there's a lot ofdifferent things that we do.
Um, you know, for example,marketing might have a goal to
get people on a 14 day trial.
Um, or we might have to makemarketing might have a global,
where did that lead come from?
So when our sales guys know thatthat lead came from a webinar,
LinkedIn, our own platform, etcetera, it's just more
knowledge.
(21:29):
So when they get on that call,they can say, Oh, you were on
the webinar with Kyle hammer.
How'd you like the webinar?
You know, it's the same thing.
So tonight, no one really canbecome from Facebook or LinkedIn
because the personality issomething that from Facebook and
LinkedIn and all the othersocials are very different.
So I think one, one thing is theinsight.
Also, for example, if somebodycomes to a landing page, but
doesn't fill up the landing pageor they fill out the landing
(21:51):
page and they download two booksand three newsletters,
everything is different.
So I think the key is, you know,use your, your CRM and have
marketing and sales bothinvolved there that you can
almost put where that lead comesfrom, how long they've been a
lead hell, you'll even scorethem from a marketing
perspective.
Because for example, we useMailChimp for our marketing
(22:12):
newsletter.
And then what we do is we giveour IRS DRS.
Here's a list of our five starpeople from our MailChimp that
have really engaged in ourcontent every Tuesday.
So I think there has to be thatalignment.
Everything has to be tracked andeverything has to be put
somewhere.
So a sales team doesn't have tocall Mark and go, Oh, so what
about this?
It has to be all in one place,um, and consolidated so that you
(22:36):
can really focus on who thatlead is, where they came from.
How long have they been a lead?
What source did they come from?
What, where did they come from?
What did they watch?
How long did they watch?
How long were they on thewebinar, et cetera.
Kyle Hamer (22:48):
You know, it sounds to me like you guys spend a lot
of time with, with KPIs data andlooking at a velocity across all
of the different, the differentelements, a couple of questions
about that.
What are, what would you say areyour favorite KPIs?
So things that you're like, Hey,if I could only run my business
on two or three things, it wouldbe these three things.
And I would know that we weregoing to be successful.
(23:08):
What are, what are thosenumbers?
Shawn Finder (23:10):
Well, the obvious one first, we make sure our
revenues grow every month, right?
But from a marketing, um, I'mall about growth.
And from marketing, as Imentioned, SEO has been a very
big contributor.
We've been doing link buildingand SEO.
I actually really liked lookingon a daily basis on our website
traffic it's it's, it hasnothing to do with revenue, but
(23:33):
it shows me that every singleday that goes by more and more
people are visiting our websitemore and more people are getting
in front and article is gettingin front of them.
So those are the ones revenueobviously is the, um, and I
always like to know, um, youknow, our newsletters, how many
more people are downloadingstuff, are they downloading our
(23:53):
eBooks or downloading stuff?
Because I still think content isKing and content and marketing
is what's going to drive thefuture.
Um, so I always look at how areour numbers going up?
How's our website going up?
And the third one is, uh, do wehave enough revenue this month
to pay our expenses,
Kyle Hamer (24:11):
The plight of every entrepreneur, right.
Do I have to take on cash?
Do I have to take on debt or doI, do I have enough revenue
coming in to pay them?
Shawn Finder (24:19):
Yeah, we we've been lucky.
We've been profitable now forover a year.
So no outside funding, we'restill bootstrapped.
And, uh, even during occupy,during COVID, we actually had
our best three months ever, but,uh, I've been, I've built it
very lean that if COBIT ever hitand we get zero sales, I can
still hold the business for sixmonths and be tired.
Kyle Hamer (24:37):
That's that's great.
So I've talked to a lot of, I'vetalked to a lot of businesses
that have, um, that are in whatI would call the sales and
marketing software space.
Cause that's what I would,that's how I would classify auto
close.
Um, even though you're a dataand a software company, it's
kind of, I would classify, I'vetalked to a lot of businesses
that, you know, they, they havea lot of the similar principles
(24:58):
you, which is createtransparency and what's going on
with, are we booking business?
Are we not?
Um, where are we at?
How long can we run?
If, if, if we have zero salesand then ultimately, you know,
building a lean team, that'screating this higher level of
visibility.
There's a lot of traits thatwe're seeing or that you're
sharing with me that we'reseeing in other businesses that
(25:18):
are, that are bootstrapped,right?
They didn't have to take onmoney.
And my personal opinion abouttaking on debt in, or, or an
investor is, is at the second inwhich it's no longer about your
customer, it's about raisingcapital or, or taking off it
changes.
It changes how you think itchanges how you behave and
you're no longer, you're nolonger 100% focused on the
(25:39):
customer.
It doesn't mean the customer isnot important, but now you have
two customers, right?
You've got this, this idea of ashareholder or an investor or,
or bank, right.
A debt, um, and, and yourcustomer and you have to
balance, well, what's moreimportant for this particular
month.
And what's more important forthis.
Shawn Finder (25:55):
And you're, you know, you, you don't have
somebody down your throatsaying, here's the here's half a
million dollars go hire 25people in the next two months.
You know?
So I think it's definitely, um,it's, we've been boosted up, we
know we're growing.
Um, but I think, you know,especially with subscription
models, now it accumulates monthover month that, you know, it
took us, I would say a year, ayear and a bit before I can kind
(26:17):
of pull away a little bit.
Um, and we had like, you know,break even.
Um, but, um, it takes a lotlonger, but obviously it's a lot
more that I don't have to answerto anyone then, then going into
a board meeting every quarterand having to give a, a
statement on why we're Croft,why would this area, you know, I
stayed away from all that.
Kyle Hamer (26:37):
Well, you know, and, and I, and I think that's the,
that's the beauty of whatyou've, you've learned.
And you've parlayed since youplayed tennis, right?
I mean, in many ways, uh, yourcompetitive sports background
and in your, your achievementsin that there is some,
self-reliance where it's like,Hey, I don't need a coach, but I
don't need somebody to come inand save me.
(26:57):
I don't need to do this.
I can do this by myself, setthis up so that it, you know, it
will win or lose based on myefforts, my team's efforts, not,
you know, whether there's a twoand a half million dollar round
of funding this particularquarter.
Yeah.
Shawn Finder (27:13):
And, and you just, you know, to be honest, the
reason why I'm kind of not thereason, but one of the reasons
there's tennis, as an example, Ialways was a singles player.
And the reason why is, if you goplay doubles, you don't have to
rely on your doubles partner tonot have an off day for you to
win that match where I like tobe in control when you're, when
you're playing singles.
One-on-one, if you have a badday, you lose your phone, but in
(27:35):
doubles, you know, there's twoof you up to rely on.
So I've always liked to play thesingles and not the doubles.
Kyle Hamer (27:42):
So, uh, out of curiosity, what's the most
exciting thing for you as itrelates to, you know, the
pandemic?
Not that there are, um, youknow, you've had the best three
months in the business, butentrepreneurs typically see
changes in market shifts likethis, that, that, that expose
opportunity.
And so when you look at themarket opportunity, what are
(28:04):
some of the things that are mostexciting about the current
market dynamics for you?
Shawn Finder (28:07):
Well, I think with the current market dynamics, I
think that a w a email as achannel is continuing to grow.
Um, I think a lot of peoplecan't really call officer's that
people start working unless youhave a direct dial.
But I think, um, the one thingI, well, two things I would say
a is consolidation.
So a lot of people now arelooking at consolidating
platforms, consolidating tools,consolidating finding a tool
(28:28):
that other CRM sales all in one.
But I would also have to saythat, you know, really, really
focusing on, um, how to alwayshave a good top of the funnel
right now.
I think it's the most importantbecause pandemic or note
pandemic, you need that top ofthe funnel, your revenue might
slow down during the pendant,but we all know it's gonna, it's
(28:49):
all gonna, you know, it's goingto disappear at some point, but
it's all going to get back tonormal.
So the most important thing isto continue to fill your top of
the funnel, even though youmight have short term or
revenue, when things do get backto normal sooner, hopefully,
hopefully they still prospect tostill make sales and to still
(29:10):
grow your business.
Kyle Hamer (29:11):
You're one of the, um, I was talking with a second
with Neil Benedict a couple, acouple of weeks ago on the show.
And we were talking about theshift in dynamic for outside
sales reps, field sales.
Right.
And I think one of the thingsthat's most interesting about,
uh, specifically what you dowith auto close is, you know, in
the past, they might've had a, aterritory map or a list or a
(29:31):
group of key accounts, peoplethat they would go call on
scheduled lunches or coffee ordifferent things.
Those, those particular salesreps learning a new in the
business, learning that, Hey,maybe I don't need to pay, you
know, a hundred thousand dollarsa year to have this rep and have
them on the road the whole time.
They may not be true, but thedynamics and the shift that's
(29:52):
happening, I think is reallyinteresting for a business like
yours and what it means fortaking a field sales rep and
having them be more targeted,having them be more efficient
in, in the longterm impact of,uh, on the businesses being, Oh,
wow.
What was once a pretty expensiveluxury?
(30:14):
If you will, a necessity, that'sa luxury, um, can now be
something that we can fold inand we can do something that's
splendid, it's more of a hybridrole and it's much more
profitable or much moreeffective for our business to,
to scale up.
I think that overall, I, I videopodcasts.
Video is very important.
Um, people won't be able to gofor coffees with those potential
(30:36):
prospects, like they used to,um, it'll be more video.
So I think everyone has toadapt.
And I think with all the new,you know, zoom, for example, you
can just see how it skyrocketed,starting to get familiar.
I get on video and build thosevideo.
Do video emails, do video,everything to really speak to
that prospect is going to be thenew norm for at least, I think
(30:57):
at least a year, year and ahalf.
And we have no idea how thatwill.
I mean, you, you, you, uh, Ithink demand metric in
vineyards, putting on a state ofthe union as it relates to
what's going on with video andemail, I think that's today or
tomorrow, but from a, um, from achange, you do something for
eight, 12 to 18 months to amarket, uh, as it relates to
(31:18):
being remote and shifting thecommunication channel, that's
going to introduce all kinds ofnew opportunity, a hundred
percent and, um, you know, goback to your point of it's all
about building relationships.
Sean has been great to chat withyou on the show today.
Uh, give us the, give us thehigh level, you know, two minute
pitch about auto close, andthen, you know, share with the
(31:41):
guests, how they can get aholdof you.
So auto closes and all in onesales engagement platform that
has a built in B2B database.
Therefore you can automate notonly your prospecting, but
search and filter through ourdatabase of over 30 million
contacts for whom you want toemail.
Um, if you want to get in touchwith me, Shaun S H a w
(32:03):
n@autoclose.com and that'sautoclose with the K um, follow
me on LinkedIn.
I'm very active on LinkedIn.
Um, and you can reach out to meanytime there, um, and also
visit our website autoclose.com.
We provide a lot of content onmarketing, sales, alignment, um,
and different things.
And we're more than happy toshare that with you.
That's awesome.
Well, thanks again for being aguest today, for those of you
(32:24):
who didn't know, Sean, you knowhim a little bit better, and you
also have some really goodinsights on how to build a sales
and marketing team that can talkto one another, tolerate one
another, and is set up for hypergrowth.
This is Kyle hammer, and thishas been the podcast of summit.
We'll talk to you again nextweek.
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