Duane Dufault on this episode
Duane Dufault, CRO of Time Doctor, shares the story of how he drove a 30% ACV increase and cut sales cycles by 30 to 40 days in just six months, not through flashy AI hype but by methodically fixing broken foundational processes first. Dufault inherited a go-to-market engine plagued by data corruption: a trial registration flow that took ten days to deliver leads, attribution that was 80% wrong, and lead routing that sent SMB prospects to enterprise reps in the wrong time zones. Rather than jump on the AI bandwagon, he spent six months rewiring the plumbing, eliminating a manual data enrichment step, fixing the trial page, and cleaning up the CRM layer so that sales reps actually had usable information.
The core insight is that AI is only as good as the data it consumes, and layering AI on top of broken foundations guarantees failure. Once Dufault's team had clean, fast-flowing data and clear ICP definitions rooted in common use cases rather than rigid industry labels, he then layered in AI agents that actually multiplied his team's impact. His approach reframes the ICP as a living document that shifts every six months based on market signals and use case wins, not a static definition. He emphasizes that 50% of a sales leader's time should be spent coaching reps to ask discovery questions sharp enough to unsettle prospects, and AI prep agents now feed account executives the signals and context they need to strike while the iron is hot. Dufault closes by sharing his current obsession: using AI to surface negative intent signals from unknown senior stakeholders above his champion, so his team can get ahead of the black swan churn problem that happens when executives above the champion make decisions in closed rooms his CSMs never see.
What we cover in this episode
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0:22
The 30% ACV win and sales cycle cut How fixing trial registration flow and lead routing delivered measurable revenue impact in six months.
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2:09
Finding the biggest domino to knock down Duane's framework for identifying the highest-leverage problem using Tim Ferriss's minimum viable progress concept.
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6:13
Speed to lead was ten days and why Outsourced PDR team doing manual data enrichment on inbound forms created massive friction before reps got leads.
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9:57
80% of attribution was wrong Poor data flow through three systems into the CRM meant marketing couldn't optimize campaigns or the founder nearly killed the program.
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14:52
Golden BBs, not silver bullets Duane's philosophy that revenue gains come from stacking micro-adjustments over time, not one magic lever.
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16:38
ICP as a living document that shifts every six months How Time Doctor evolved from selling primarily to BPO to discovering strength in legal and insurance, requiring ICP to be flexible.
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25:44
Use case over ICP definition Focusing on the specific problem a business solves matters more than rigid industry or persona definitions for routing and messaging.
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34:36
Nothing in AI would have been possible without the foundation Core lesson that applying AI to broken data is why so many AI initiatives fail and reps claim AI doesn't work.
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35:43
50% of your time should be coaching Sales leaders must spend half their time coaching reps to ask thought-provoking discovery questions, not closing deals themselves.
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39:43
AI prep agents and showstopper discovery questions Using agents to generate contextual, persona-specific questions like billable hours complaints that cause prospects to pause and reconsider.
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41:34
The black swan churn problem Identifying negative intent signals from unknown senior stakeholders above the champion to prevent surprise churn from closed-door decisions.
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46:40
Why the CRO has to roll up their sleeves on AI Revenue leaders must understand the tech layer and data flow because AI amplifies broken foundations and enables great ones.
The lines worth sharing
AI is only as good as the data layer that it feeds it. If you apply an agent on top of broken data, you get excuses that AI doesn't work.
Duane Dufault · 4:04
It's not a silver bullet. It's a bunch of golden BBs. All these little things stack up to that revenue number.
Duane Dufault · 14:52
If you're a sales leader and you're not spending minimum 50% of your time coaching and sitting with your reps, you're not doing your job.
Duane Dufault · 35:43
Nothing in AI would have been possible if we didn't fix the foundation first. You can't apply AI to broken systems and expect it to work.
Duane Dufault · 34:36
Common questions from this episode
How did Time Doctor increase ACV by 30% and reduce sales cycles?
Duane fixed three foundational issues: speed to lead (reduced from 10 days to hours by eliminating manual data enrichment), attribution (80% was wrong due to poor data flow), and lead routing (ensuring SMB and enterprise leads went to the right reps). Then he layered AI on top of a clean data foundation.
Why does Duane say AI won't work without fixing the foundation first?
AI is only as good as the data it ingests. If your trial registration flow, attribution, and lead routing are broken, you're feeding agents garbage data. Duane spent six months fixing the plumbing before applying any AI to ensure the foundation was clean and fast.
How should sales leaders think about ICP in a changing market?
Duane treats ICP as a living document that evolves every six months based on market signals and use case wins, not a static definition. He focuses on the common use case customers need solved rather than rigid industry or revenue rules.
What is the black swan churn problem Duane is solving next?
Champions develop great relationships, but decisions above their heads can kill deals. Duane is using AI to surface negative intent signals from unknown senior stakeholders so his team can get ahead of surprise churn from closed-door decisions.
How does Duane use AI agents in his sales process?
He uses prep agents to feed account executives signals and context before calls, outbound agents to build persona-specific discovery questions, and CSS agents for existing account insights. All agents depend on the clean data foundation he built first.
What percentage of a CRO's time should go to coaching versus closing deals?
Duane says minimum 50% should be coaching and challenging reps to improve, not closing deals yourself. If you have to step in and close, you have the wrong team and reps lack the fundamental discovery and solution-selling skills to survive AI-enabled competition.
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Read the full transcript · 70 KB · Duane Dufault
Eddie0:04Welcome to Go to Market Science. In this podcast, we share tangible, actionable playbooks from the trenches working as go to market strategy and rev ops consultants for our clients here at Union Square Consulting and candid conversations with revenue leaders in the market that have been there. Now let's get into it.
Eddie0:22All right. Welcome to another episode. Today we're talking about setting the foundation for AI and go to market. How time doctor grew ACV by 30% and reduced sales cycles in six months by redesigning their fundamental go to market processes and then layering on AI agents. My special guest today is Duane Defaults. Your time. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us today.
Duane0:45Yeah. No, it's it's great to be here. It's, it's a it's going to be a fun conversation. Cover some topics that, I don't feel like it talked about enough, out in the interweb of the world's because some some of it's not sexy to do, but necessary.
Eddie0:57Yeah. So what we're going to talk about today is how you grow ACV by 30%, how you cut sales cycles by 30 to 40 days, down from, you know, originally 90 days, which is a massive accomplishment. And this is not just about AI. You did a lot of fundamental things that had an impact directly on revenue before we even get to AI.
Eddie1:15But then if we have time, I want to talk about how you're using AI agents today. And most importantly, like how you rebuilt the foundation to support it all. You had a complex, a trial registration process that we're going to get into, connecting through three different systems to the CRM. As a result, you're missing half your necessary data to route leads, and the attribution CRM was massively over built.
Eddie1:37So you rebuilt the trial process, you cleaned up the lead flow, you cleaned up 90% of the issues associated with attribution. Prioritize the right leads and applied AI for outreach. There's a lot there. I'm excited to dive into it. So I'll start by asking you, can you can you summarize the story for me? How do we go from trial registration to CRM, clean up to AI to 30%, you know, higher ACV?
Rachael1:59Like, you know, when you first shared this with me, like trial registration really, like, okay, we're really deep in the weeds here. But as you explain it to me, there's a lot behind it. So maybe you could summarize this for the audience.
Duane2:09Yeah. Well, one of the things that I do, I try to focus on, is I really try to find, I pulled it from Tim Ferriss book a long time ago for our workweek, which was, you know, what is the biggest domino you can knock down to get to minimum viable progress, right? Not minimum viable product, but what's the first and most important thing you can get towards progress?
Duane2:28And so here what I did, I just followed the bouncing ball backwards of like where, where is the most important thing that's hindering our ability to get to leads. Right. Because a lot of people argue like, oh, trials, they don't convert or it's at freemium or it's wherever. It's like, well, you got to kind of pull back and look at what is the number one source of leads that you have coming in right now, and how do you optimize for that first?
Duane2:50And then you add other things. And so that's how we got to the trial registration page, is the number one submitted form on our site at the time, I think still is today. And there were a lot of problems connected to that. So it's like go solve the biggest, most important problem in the business first. So that way everything else after that becomes a lot easier to optimize.
Eddie3:06It makes a lot of sense. And I'm a big believer in this domino effect and setting the foundation. You know, you and I were talking offline about how like, it seems like every post on LinkedIn these days is, hey, I released this AI agent and we booked 75,000 meetings, you know, each week and you're like, really? Okay, cool.
Eddie3:21Like, did that actually drive revenue? And, you know, there's this, like massive FOMO. We're all feeling right now. We all need to adopt AI tomorrow in every area of go to market in every area of the business. And I'm all for that. But it's not going to work if you don't set the right foundation. And so what you're talking about is this very granular issue that had really serious impact on your entire go to market and resulted in an actual impact on your revenue, which is what we're all here to talk about.
Duane3:49Yeah. And the I think is interesting because every time I see some of those posts, I'm like, oh, you'll see a brand new business no one knows about. And you have no data to operate on so that you don't have to worry about, poor data, because I is only as good as a data layer that it feeds it.
Duane4:04Notice all those posts are all about booked meetings, not completed meetings. Are opportunities created? But it's the challenge with that is you have to start at every modern tech company where they're implementing are not the number one source of information and where the leverage is the sitting in your data, whether that's CRM data or product use data.
Duane4:22Hopefully you can merge those two and really get, really moving on that stuff. But it's you have to start where the data is coming in, and then that's going to where you're going to optimize it. And if the data coming in is not accurate, it's not clean, that it's not simple and it's going to be very, very hard to, to do anything with, let alone apply an agent on top of that.
Duane4:41Because if you apply an agent on top of your data, that's when you get the excuses from other people like, oh, I doesn't work. It's like, well, you got to unpack it first because what are you feeding it? You have to start there. So with the trial, it was that was a number one source of poor data coming into the CRM for many different places.
Duane4:58It was very impossible just to run traditional go to market reports, sales pipeline reports, attribution reports, sales cycle reports, because everything was getting convoluted. You know.
Eddie5:07We see this every day and I have conversations with heroes every day about issues like this. And inevitably, oftentimes, it's just not the priority to fix. Like you and I were talking offline about how a lot of crows don't understand, you know, the technology at this level of depth, which is one issue. But, you know, even when I was putting together notes for this call, I'm thinking like, okay, so you go to the trial registration page, you enter some data, it goes to three different systems.
Eddie5:30It gets to the CRM. Why do you as a CRO care? And I think you've partially answered that already because it's impacting revenue. But I guess the question that I have in my mind is is how did you identify that? Like, okay, this is where we need to roll up our sleeves and fix this. Like, what were the things that you saw before the journey that said, man, if we fix this, this could really make an impact.
Duane5:50It starts from the like. This is where it's important for crows, to have sold before. Like if you've never sat in that seat, an account executive trying to figure out what's happening with the leads that you're getting, how do you actually reach out to the right people? And so it came from really interviewing all the sales reps, all the speakers, even the CSM to figure out, like, what is their day to day look like and what do they handle.
Duane6:13Walk me through how they currently use the CRM. And it just came all it all always came back to that same thing of the the stuff that's in front of them isn't correct. It's all over the place. It comes in randomly. And even back then when I first got a company, they had kind of two teams that were in charge of quote unquote, fixing the data before I ever got to an account executive and, and then shit.
Duane6:36So my notes were back then it was like the speed to lead for an account executive was ten days after form submit. And like that baffles me because it should be within a few hours. And so one of a really, really big red flags for me was they had an outsource PDR team that was doing manual data enrichment on an inbound form, and then they would hand that off to an SDR, who would then do outbound calls to that inbound form and then hand it off to an account executive.
Duane7:03And I remember asking the question like, why is this process in place? And it was, oh, to fix the data. I'm like, well, why don't you just fix the data at the source and then remove that and you can have your speed to lead go from ten days to a day. And that was one of the first things that we really did was reconfigure that.
Duane7:21And then it went straight to the account executives. So the speed, the lead was cut and basically reduced by ten x at that point. And that was one of the leading indicators or leading causes for an increase of ACV, because you can get to the lead as soon as possible. So I was just following the bouncing ball after sitting in the day life of what the seller, did.
Eddie7:40I think it's a really great way to look at it. And if you look at it, let's sort of the opposite way you explain it and just say, okay, like our speed to lead is ten days because it's a massive problem. It's not a great leap of faith to think like, if we reduce that from ten days to two hours, we're going to see higher conversions.
Eddie7:54I mean, we all know that typically the first vendor to respond to a lead wins that deal. And, you know, many argue that we should be responding in five minutes at least with a hot like hand razor lead, which I would think a trial registration would qualify for. You know, if not a couple hours, but like ten days, like at that point in time, they've already had multiple meetings with their competitors.
Duane8:14Yeah, yeah. And that's the mentality I've always had is, is anytime because that's how we buy. It's how I buy. If I'm submitting a form for demo or trial, I'm doing it with two other companies at the same time. And so it's like the at that time, the business was still kind of like in that transactional mode where they're like, oh, we're going to only sell to low hanging fruit if you want to right now.
Duane8:32See you later. Right. So there's a lot of sales skill set stuff that we've implemented and kind of revamped in the last couple of years. But the number one priority was are the kind of executives getting the right leads at the right time and going all the way back to the trial registration page. It was like, well, if that's the number one lead source at the time, let's make sure that's dialed in so it gets to the account executives properly, and they've got the visibility to go and reach out to that prospect.
Eddie8:56You know that's another really great component. I mean, one of the things that like we talk about a lot in our content and I talk about with cross, when I'm on calls with them, is like, how do we pick the one thing that matters the most? I mean, you mentioned like the biggest domino, right? And so a lot of times I'll say, okay, like if you can fix one thing in the next 90 days, would it be new business or not?
Eddie9:12Revenue retention. Okay. Let's say we pick new business. Let's drill down a layer deeper. Would it be closing the deals that you're generating right now or generating more new deals? Okay. Like let's add another layer deeper. Is it inbound or outbound. And then you keep drilling down and down and down. And in your case you're saying, well this is like our number one lead source, if I heard you correctly.
Eddie9:29So it makes sense to say, okay, our number one lead source has a ten day sales cycle. Or let's just say let's back that up our number one lead source. We want to improve it okay. What are the issues here. Well we have a ten day, lead response time. Like okay that's an obvious thing to fix. I'd love to hear a little bit more, though, about the other things that you fixed in this, in this flow.
Eddie9:48So you mentioned like having not having the right data to even root the lead. You mentioned attribution issues. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Duane9:57Yeah. And I start with attribution, because it's near and dear to my heart, because if you want your inbound lead organization, your all aka your marketing lead organization. Right. And attribution is incorrect or like because at the time, I think like 80% of our forms and that's your direct. But when you dug into the actual analytics, they weren't it was just getting reset through the different transformations data was going through.
Duane10:23So when we fix that, then we actually fed the right data back into a marketing team so they can optimize their campaigns properly to send more of the best business. So and before then, though, it was almost like, I had a conversation with the founder back then and he was like, what if we just shut off marketing?
Duane10:39I was like, whoa, hold on. Like, let's actually make sure we're looking at the right data because it wasn't correct. Like I said, 7,080% of the attribution was showing direct and we all know what that means. But it was it was just very, inaccurate decision making when it came to where we put our dollars inside of our marketing campaigns.
Duane10:55So, you know, if sales leaders aren't concerned about attribution, then they're not providing the right feedback into marketing to get them more leads. So the key thing was making sure that the number one source of our leads, which at the time was our paid media campaigns, we were getting the right data back into them so they can optimize them to send us better leads more often.
Duane11:16And the other, the other one was what was your other question?
Eddie11:21We talked about attribution and also lead routing.
Duane11:24Lead routing. Yeah. Sorry. So lead routing, you want to send, like I said in the beginning, was in the right leads to the right reps. So we have SMB, mid-market and up markets account executives. And you want to make sure the right leads go to the right reps. Because if you send in SMB leads or not market rep, it's going to be worked completely different.
Duane11:41The time time frames, their sales process, their outreach, how how they manage, you know, either call it a PSC or trial, however you want to look at it, it's going to be different. They're going to sell differently. And so we were having issues with lead routing and assignment to the account executives. People were getting leads that were SMB North America, who are a market rep in APAC.
Duane12:00And so it was just constant switching back and forth. Reps were having to, you know, either a wake up at 1:00 in the morning to do a demo or they're having to handle leads back and forth, which then they weren't doing it right. Scrims screwing everything up. So the lead routing is actually one of the things, even today, I have my hands in on a weekly basis, making sure that that stuff's being done right, because speed lead and going to the right rep is extremely important.
Duane12:24But yeah, attribution and lead routing were some of the key things that were not working correctly. And those are the two one of the two things that when we fixed that area of the registration page, made a dramatic improvement because we again, like if you've got leads coming in in, you know, eastern Europe, you want to make sure it's going to the right in that region.
Duane12:44So that way they can be they can follow up. They can they can do the sales process that in a timely hour for the prospect, not just having a rep in California try to work, a deal that's in the Philippines. Like, that's just not going to work for the prospect.
Eddie12:58Yeah. And I mean, these are the fundamental things that I think just burns so much, you know, capital, time, people, etc.. I mean, every sales job I've ever had, I felt like I was dealing with issues like this. And then I walked in the sales Salesforce one day and just like all these issues were gone and it was just like mind blowing to me.
Eddie13:16And it was like, okay, they had like dialed all this stuff in. And I don't mean to say the sales force is perfect and there's tons of stuff that like, I hate it and don't even get me started on their whole Cpq implementation, which was with like, not the same company that I acquired like a month later.
Eddie13:31And, you know, they're not perfect, but like, for the most part, like, all this stuff was just dealt with and I could just sell. And in previous jobs, I just had to deal with all these issues. And I think it's such a powerful thing. And if I go back to sort of like this, this prioritization where we drill down and do your go to market and say, okay, like the thing we want to fix are these inbound leads.
Eddie13:50And specifically what we want to fix are these leads that are going to going to trial you then fix your attribution. You're able to say, okay, like these are actually coming from our ad campaigns. So now we know where to double down on ads. You also look at this and say, okay, we fix the data layer. Now we know how to route these leads to the right rep, which should improve our conversion rates and our average deal sizes and all and our sales cycles and all these things.
Eddie14:14Right. So we're fixing these fundamentals and we'll get into AI. But whatever it is you are doing or will do with AI, you have to have this stuff in place first. Because if you just send these leads over, you send the the SMB lead over and you've got like an AI workflow for enterprise US or it just doesn't have the data to discern the two things, like you're just going to get like a really terrible result.
Duane14:36Yeah, it's it's going all the way down to are we collecting the right information from the lead when it comes in all the way down to is it the proper company name for that personalization token, like little things like that make a difference. And I get the question often like, hey, what's the one lever that you can pull in?
Duane14:52Like, they're not it's not one lever. It's it's like, I heard this phrase. It's not a, it's not a golden it's not a silver bullet. It's a tiny golden. It's a bunch of golden beams. Right. And it's like all these little things that you do over time that stack up, that add up to that number. And oftentimes as a CRO, when you're in the middle of these things, it's really hard to look back and say like, oh, we did all of these things that led up to today, and there's not one that you can point to though, like, oh, that was the big thing.
Duane15:20That was a big thing. It's just like you stack these micro adjustments over time that end up leading to an improved process. And you look back on the year and I go through an exercise where it's like, I look at all the things that were changed and sometimes that list is really long, but it's like we couldn't have got to where we're at without doing all of those.
Duane15:37And you have to as a CRO, you know, it's like the number one perspective. The lens that I use is what makes it easy for a sales rep to sell. And how can I remove as many obstacles and I take that same lens and apply it to our product? Good. Our plug flows because whatever the sales rep is is experiencing is amplified in the product for a customer journey.
Duane16:00So thinking about all these little micro changes, these, you know, golden BBQs that we're shooting, they all have to stack up to how much revenue we bringing in, how much revenue are we keeping and how much is it costing us to do that.
Eddie16:12You know, I completely agree with that perspective. And at the same time, like if you ask me, like, what's the silver bullet I want to go with like account identification or some flavor of that. And so I actually wanted to ask you, like, is there any aspect of this, like are there any times where you'd get a trial registration and you'd say, like, we're not going to call that, person, or we're going to have a different workflow to Deprioritized it?
Eddie16:33Or did you call every trial registration? And they were all ICP, all qualifying, all worth working?
Duane16:38If it was all qualified and all worth working, we'd have a much bigger organization. No. There has to be a level of prioritization like you have to all the way down to the fundamentals. Like if you don't have your ICP, your personas and your use cases and your positioning dialed in, then you don't really know what you're selling to.
Duane16:54And so as leads come in, whether it's from a demo form, whether it's from an outbound process or, you know, you've got some AI, SDR enrichment thing, it has to funnel through your ICP. It has to. So if you get leads that come in that you know you won't close, why would you waste a salesperson's time to call them?
Duane17:13Because then they're going to all three of equality. Salesforce is going to walk them through the process. And so how do we reduce that friction and frustration for the sales rep. Well we want to make sure we send the right leads to the right reps. And so there's definitely an area of prioritization. Like we have segments where we got your VSB is very small businesses.
Duane17:30Those go through the self-serve journey like go let them go through the product. And if they convert and expand that's great. We'll pick up the indicators and figures to help them throughout the way, but it's like we have to prioritize the right leads based on our ICP personas use cases, and that's always the filter that we pass it through, even even when we do, pipeline reviews, whether up market reps.
Duane17:51And we're going through it, it's like, that's the lens that we use. Are they the right sir have has that type of customer gotten success from this before? Do we have, relationship with the right stakeholders and are we checking the box, making sure we have the right things from them? And so you constantly have to pass your go to market funnel through that filter.
Duane18:08And then, lo and behold, when you have that filter, the ICP personas dialed in, that's a version of the data layer that can feed an agent that helps with that process to better prepare account executives and help filtering.
Eddie18:21That's great. So let me ask you this. Like, let's say that we have an enterprise account or their enterprise accounts that are not ICP for you. And if they happen to fill out like a trial registration, what do you do with that?
Duane18:30If they're up market and they're coming to us, they're coming to us for a reason, right? There's enough opportunity there, or there's a high enough opportunity there where we can waste a little bit of time doing, diving into it. So if an enterprise customer, you know, does come to our site, fills out a form, they've taken the time to fill out a form and reach out to us, we're gonna at least give them a phone call.
Duane18:49We're going to go through the initial evaluation phase, maybe give them 1 or 2 calls and then evaluate if it's necessary to create the deal and move it forward. But we're going to try to disqualify them quickly. We're on the lower end of the market. You should have a process in place to do that. You should have an automation.
Duane19:03You have an agent, a qualification agent that can do that without having human intervention. So it's it's if you look at it from the old school, funnel matrix. Right. You've got your problem aware problem identification, and you start doing the research when, when you have the enterprise customer that comes in, that's the side you want to get them in as early as possible, but you want to push the smaller ones down that buying funnel as far as you can before you absolutely need a human to, intervene.
Rachael19:31Quick pause. Everything we talk about on this show diagnosing go to market ops, prioritizing projects for revenue, impact processes, metrics, insight, building a predictable go to market engine. We've built frameworks for all of it. They're free and unguarded on our website, Union Square consulting.com/frameworks link will also be in the show notes. So make sure you check that out.
Rachael19:54All right. Back to the episode.
Eddie19:57I think where I was going with that is just trying to understand. And I have these questions for myself is like, okay, you've got like the right industry, the right revenue range, but what other attributes are important to define your ICP? And for us, there's like a lot of nuance with it. For example, it's really hard for us to work with cross that like don't understand these things like you do if they're just like, hey, like, I want to just implement Salesforce to make more sales calls.
Eddie20:18We're like, we're going to have a tough uphill battle here. And so those things are important for us. But where I was getting at is, are there, companies that, you know, fit your industry in revenue range that are still not ICP? And if so, what do you do with them?
Duane20:32Well, it's it's a really good question because if you think 4 or 5 years ago, maybe even a little bit beyond that, if you went to your CMO or VP of marketing, or if you went to the CEO and said, hey, our ICP is changing, they would do it. Think you're insane. But now I feel like the ICP definition maybe not the core one, but it's like how we define and look for our ICP is evolving like every six months.
Duane20:56So you may be winning in the market in a certain ICP or an industry a year ago, but now you're seeing that your sales team is kind of struggling to close. Those sales cycles are extending. You're having to include more stakeholders. The buying community grows, but then all of a sudden there's this little pocket of industries that are starting to sell, and you're not really not really seeing it.
Duane21:16Like I'll give you an example. So with time, doctor, for a decade they sold really well into BPO. So outsource agencies and we started seeing a ton of like insurance financial. And that's where we really lean into. But then in the last year we've seen a lot of it kind of shift towards legal and, and not so much.
Duane21:35Yeah. It's like legal. And companies are really need that level compliance and oversight on their, on their process. But that was never any of our messaging. But we saw that because we seen activity. People come into our site sales that were coming in, but we really weren't earmarking them as like priority ICP. So they weren't getting the attention that they need.
Duane21:53So in and so it shifts. I think the nuances need to be there about your core use case and the value that they get. And you can track that and the intent signals and the actions that they take. But you have to be comfortable with what's working now. And can we double down on that and not being stuck in well, this is our ICP.
Duane22:11This is what we sell to. We've sold them for ten years. It's like, well, the rate at the market changes. You have to be open to the signals that you're being pulled into and have a system in place that allows you to make those micro pivots and adjustments to capitalize on that traffic.
Eddie22:24Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, we used to actually do work directly for private equity firms. We still do a lot of work with them by serving their portfolio companies. But like literally one day we're just like, no more private equity as direct customers. And I remember like, we literally like, I was on the phone with this one PR firm and I'm just like, hey, we're not going to work with you anymore.
Eddie22:43And it wasn't like we canceled min contract. It was like at renewal. And I'm like, hey, you know, I really appreciate your business, but, you know, you're basically paying us, what are they paying us? They're paying us per year about what we're charging now per month. And, I was just like, we can't do it anymore.
Eddie22:58And he was so upset with me, and, I'm just like, I'm sorry. And this is a major pivot for us, but, you know, for me personally, it came down to like, are we going to be the best in the world at helping private equity firms source investors and potential deals? And I looked around the market and I was like, there's three other companies that do this way better than us.
Eddie23:17And I used to work in private equity, so I understand the industry and that was a small advantage. But I'm just like, you know what? Like these companies are way bigger than us. They're way better than us. Like one of them is literally sitting in the offices of Blackstone. Why am I trying to compete with these guys? Like, I think we've lost this race, like, let's go.
Eddie23:32Let's go somewhere else where, you know, the things that I'm more passionate about and that we can, like, double down on. And for me, it comes down to like it's full cycle. It's not just sales. It's also what are we talking about in our marketing content. It's how do we develop our product or in our case, our service offering.
Eddie23:46How does that like virtuous or vicious cycle repeat? And I'm looking at this and I'm just like, how can we just pick this narrow niche and just be the best in the world at that? And every single day waking up and going, how can we get better and better and better at this? And if we're spread too thin, we can't do this.
Eddie24:00And this is where I struggle, because it sounds like a great concept and it's a little bit easier for me to do this because I'm just like, just, you know, I've got like, the blinders on and like, I put on marketing content and, you know, make sales calls and we're just like, this is the only thing we're focused on.
Eddie24:15But when you have a larger organization and you say, this is our ICP, you get these leads that come in and then it's like, are you going to say no to that business or not? And that becomes a really difficult question to answer. You got this revenue target to hit and you're saying this is our ICP, but then this other customer comes out of the woodwork.
Eddie24:29Do you take their business or not?
Duane24:32And it's a very I mean, deja vu because what I had tied an acquisition back into me once I went out did its fractional stuff, for about three years. And I remember going through that same phase in the first year is like anyone that wants to give me money, I'm going to help them. And it was like every, every customer that I had, I think I had like 12 at one time.
Duane24:51They were all different and there was like three, three of them that was like bread and butter. I didn't know what to think about what need to get done. And they were my favorite customers. And so I had a at a coach that was like, why don't you just work more with those ones? Because and lo and behold, all the other ones, they were just like low cost.
Duane25:06It was like discounts, like crazy. And so it allowed me to kind of kind of weed out the customer book and then really focus on these ones and then get more customers like that. And then since you're an expert in that field, you can charge more. It has a bigger impact on the business. And and, you know, take that learning into this to this day.
Duane25:24And it's like, well, it's not so much. And I think people get wrapped up in ICP and personas. It's like at the end of the day, there's a common use case, a common thread between anyone that gets value from your business. And I think ICP and like personas is really good for messaging, and marketing copy marketing content.
Duane25:44But where it all drills down to it, they're all for at least for time, doctor. They're still searching for a solution with 1 or 2 common use cases. And so if you can if you can focus on solving that use case, you no longer care about the ICP definition. It's like if if they need this use case solve for and you have those playbooks defined in the system, then you empower and train your sellers to know how to navigate that instead of being rigid with scripts, then you can sell to quote unquote anybody, but then you can put the guardrails on after that to where you can get really specific on the use case you're
Duane26:16solving for, regardless if it fits your perfect ICP, because they can come in on the perfect ICP definition, but then they only want to use the small part of your product, and then they cost you a lot of money to maintain. And so it's it's it's centralizing more around the specific problem, an outcome that you're getting a business to almost ignoring the ICP definition a little bit.
Duane26:37And it's like, are they getting value from the specific thing that we help them with? And then how does that apply to a different industry? Because then you're focused on solving a problem and providing a solution that you're really, really, really good at instead of trying to appease to a couple areas in the market because you sold to them before and they happen to pay you a lot of money five years ago and not that much anymore.
Eddie26:57Yeah, I think that's a that's a great way to look at that. And, you know, the way we look at this is, you know, we've got this B2B SaaS company like yours that comes to us and it's like, this is great. And then we have a professional services company that comes to us and they've got 25, 50, 100 salespeople.
Eddie27:11They've got recurring revenue. They've got to figure out how to like, retain and expand their customers. And I'm like, everything we're doing for that B2B SaaS company, we can replicate for the professional services firm. Maybe it's they don't have as much recurring revenue. There's a little bit less focus on retention and expansion. But like a lot of the same playbooks apply with private equity.
Eddie27:28It's just like night and day different. And in many cases, like when I'm on the receiving end of a sales pitch, you know, and for some reason, like I'm gravitating towards, you know, like, you know, financial solutions or whatever, you know, if you're trying to pitch me like an accounting system, like I don't, it doesn't matter to me that I'm in a particular industry.
Eddie27:44Maybe there's some nuance there. What matters to me is that I'm a small business owner, and that I actually own the company. And I think that that changes everything. And so maybe if NetSuite is trying to pitch me, it's just like I have no interest in that. Like, all I care about is like, is my PNL accurate?
Eddie27:58And do I know how much cash I'm going to have in the bank, like in six months? And, you know, whatever industry I'm in, I don't know how much that necessarily matters. So your point about the use case, I think is really, really important. But we're going off track. Oh sorry. Go ahead.
Duane28:11Like yeah I was gonna say like I had the same experience with the calling tool. We were trying to move away from a provider and some of the, it's I'm 6 or 7 different demos with different, you know, calling tools for SaaS companies. I'm like, they're still not hitting the mark. And then I had one tool pop up and I took a demo from and they're technically advertised as like a call center software.
Duane28:34And I wasn't even on my radar. No one ever reached out to me and I got referred to them. And then we end up going to the demo. I'm like, this is exactly what we needed. We're not a call center. Yeah, but we had this. We had the same problem, the use case that that tool provided. And it's just interesting that that companies get so wrapped up in their ICP and persona definition that they kind of forget about the actual problem or solving.
Eddie28:54Yeah. And I think it's really important. I think the reason I focus so much on industry is, is like when I worked at Salesforce, I covered software, professional services, media and advertising. And like I said, professional services and software had some similarities. But then you get an immediate advertising and they're like, well, we have these insertion orders and we have to track like, we sold this insertion order for $100,000, and we've only served $50,000 of ads, and we need $50,000 left.
Eddie29:16And how do I build Salesforce to track that? And I'm like, I did three years of that, and I still don't know the answer to that question. And it's just like every time I go into that meeting, I'm just like, I don't understand your industry. And it's just like, I have only got so much like bandwidth in my head to try to, like, solve various problems and then like every once in a while, you get the curveball and I get a customer that's like, we do commercial air conditioning installation on like the top of skyscrapers.
Eddie29:40And I'm like, oh boy, this is going to be a lot of work for very little payoff.
Duane29:44Yeah yeah yeah. No, yeah. No, it's all about the use case in the, in the problem you're solving. Like if you can narrow it down to that then, like, I don't think customers really care if you know their industry. They want to know if you can solve their problem.
Eddie30:00Absolutely. I want to know, like, as a buyer, I want to know that you understand the context of what I'm dealing with. Yeah. You know, and I'm trying to think of a good example here that's like industry agnostic, but there's so many things in my business that I'm trying to solve for, and I don't care if you know anything about my industry.
Eddie30:16I care if you know about that particular thing that I'm trying to solve. And what I want to know is like that. You've worked with a customer that's faced the same issue. That's like me in, relevant respect. So, like, for me, a lot of times it's small business owner like, cool. You did all this wonderful stuff for Pepsi.
Eddie30:30I don't care, like, I'm not Pepsi. Like, why are you sending me the Pepsi case study? But anyway, we're way off track. Let's get back on it. One of the things that I wanted to do here, I wanted to paint some context, and it does kind of tie back to the conversation because for crows and other revenue leaders that are listening to this and they're hearing all these things, I want them to understand a little bit more about your team.
Eddie30:52So could you tell me a little about the size and the structure of your team? Like how many reps do you have? How many were an enterprise, how many are SMB stars, etc.? Just kind of paint a picture so that like people listening to this kind of know what they're comparing notes to.
Duane31:04Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, if you talk to Carl Norton about optimizing account executives and you'll realize they've got 100 days on their team, you're like, oh, that's a different, different story.
Eddie31:12Well, also in a really transactional scale, which is super important to the story that we did in our podcast. And like, oh, like the reason why I discovered it matters because it's a transactional sale.
Duane31:22Yeah, ACV matters a lot. And we have an element of that on our team. We've got an SMB account executive team. Right. So I'll do kind of high level, at one point, I was your quintessential CRO. I owned marketing, SDR sales, solutions partners, CSS support. It was all underneath the umbrella in the beginning, and the whole goal was to just get a handle on things, develop the leaders and then section it off.
Duane31:48So now on our on at our company marketing is no longer under under my guess control or management hierarchy. This they have to see the table which is great. I have the dotted line in and so now with CSS and sales partners and solutions, that's not only the umbrella of revenue, it's on, on on those teams.
Duane32:06There's about, I think somewhere between 60 and 70 people total. And so we've got, 4 or 5 SMB account executives, we've got 4 or 5 upmarket, and mid-market account executives. And then on the CSS side, it kind of matches with a couple more. So we've got our SABC's team that's about 5 or 6 people. And then our upmarket CSS and team, I think is at five people right now.
Duane32:27Then our solutions team has, the six people. I think it is. So it's it's kind of like, handfuls. It's not like huge teams, but when you add it all up, you know, you've got your middle managers in there as well. So you've got your director of SMB, director of upmarket, both on the CSS side and you get your director of solutions.
Duane32:45And so there's there's a broad team, but it's not any it's not outweighing or a massive team on either end. I really try to balance between sales. Yes. So that way when there is sales letter sales assist a deal, they've got someone on the other end to kind of help them through that journey. And the playbook. And the process is different for an SMB customer versus an upmarket customer.
Duane33:05So they kind of have their path through the business. So it's not a massive, you know, 50 person sales team or a 20 person SDR team. We really function off of 2 or 3 stars, and that's optimized through a director of business development who is kind of like our AI, pioneer on our team, who came from the kind of executive team.
Duane33:24So he nerd it out and really liked AI and really leaned into it. So he's the guy that helps us optimize clay. All of the enrichment on that stuff, building the a genetic outbound flows that helps circumvent marketing to help build pipeline outside of our paid campaigns. So it's it's we're really trying to lean into a genetic revenue generation through the different areas.
Duane33:46So I don't know if that answers your question. Kind of went on a tangent there, but that kind of gives a little bit of the layout.
Eddie33:51No. That's great. I mean, your tangent went into my next question. So now that I understand, like the layout, you know, kind of taking us back to our story. So you kind of fix these foundational elements. You you fix the issue with the trial registrations, you fix the lead routing, you fix the attribution. You're understanding where these leads are coming from.
Eddie34:06You've got the data enriched. You're getting responses really quickly. This is having all these downstream effects, you know, improving your ACV, shortening sales cycles. All this stuff makes obvious sense. It's like, well, if you go from taking ten days to respond to a lead to two hours, it stands to reason you're going to like, win more deals. Bigger deals.
Eddie34:23Yeah, win them faster, obviously, because there's literally ten days that are gone from your sales cycle. So then now that you've got that foundation, tell me a little bit more about how you train the team and how you're using AI to, to amplify that.
Duane34:36Yeah, yeah. And so that the two different threads on that one, I would say nothing in I would have been possible if we didn't kind of fix the foundation. I'll just start.
Eddie34:46There. Oh, there's a sound bite.
Duane34:48Yeah. It's like like you can't you can't do that. Because if you try to apply AI to Broken Foundation, you're going to be part of that group that says AI doesn't work like, well, you can pick any tool in the market. Now with the advancements the last six months, that's going to work for you. If your foundational layer is done right.
Duane35:04But for me, when I say genetic revenue, it's like all about empowering the human. It's like having a prep agent for the account executive. So that way they get all the information that they need. You know, what signals what activities, what campaign do they come on on? You know, what's their activity if they're in a trial, where are they doing?
Duane35:20So that way the account executive knows what's going on. And can strike while the iron is hot. You can follow up properly. And then that also leads into the training. Right. So training and coaching, if you're a sales leader listening to this and you're not spending minimum 50% of your time coaching and sitting with your reps, not doing your job like a direct manager is, primary focus is to make sales happen through your executives.
Duane35:43If you're having to step in and close deals, you've got the wrong team. Like, especially nowadays that that that model worked ten years ago. But as a sales leader, direct line sales leader, you have to be coaching and challenging and pushing your reps to get better. So the way that that we've implemented coaching here, like we use models like spin selling gap and challengers at the foundation.
Duane36:05Right. So you got to really instill that into the organization. But the key thing that that we've done is instead of just teaching them scripts and methodologies, we apply the framework from our customer's perspective. This is where ICP stuff does come in and where the use case comes in, because you have to take the training and coaching guidance with sales team beyond that, because that's where I've seen I actually take people's jobs as they can't take their skill set and apply it to the customer.
Duane36:34They're just surface level. That's where you have AI voice qualification agents. And outbound SDR type stuff really take over because if an account executive can't take it from your basic discovery into how you deliver the value to that prospect in the selling process, your jobs at risk. So that's one one area we've really focused on for sales in CSS coaching, because it's very similar, is you have to be able to apply your expertise from the company that you're at to unpack the real pain that they're experiencing and help deliver a solution.
Duane37:06So you've got to really dig in from a discovery perspective. Ask challenging like thought provoking questions, not just what did you do before coming to us? It's like the buyers are smart. They know what's happening. They've been to your website, they've talked to other competitors. So you ask really basic surface level crap, you're going to lose authority in the first 10 or 15 minutes or when it when we talk about sales coaching and training methodologies, how quickly can I get that account?
Duane37:33Executive asking thought provoking questions and getting that prospect to think differently about their current situation, because you have to unsettle them from the current reality and when. Yeah, go ahead. I was like, I was just gonna say.
Eddie37:44Like this, like this goes back to me about like the ICP and the account focus, you know, in my case, like, what the what I've sold, I've only sold basically two to maybe three industries in my whole career. So 25 years of selling to basically 2 or 3 industries. So I just know them like front back, top, top to bottom.
Eddie37:59But more specifically to your point, I know the use cases that are relevant in those particular industries, like, yeah, I've sold into private equity. That doesn't mean that like I know how private equity does like fund level accounting. I have no idea how that works. So if you threw me into that world, it would be all new for me.
Eddie38:15And I would hope that if I was doing that, that'd be the only thing I'd be focused on, because that's really hard to learn. How does a private equity firm do fund level accounting? If you don't understand that, how are you selling a fund level accounting solution? And I think I, I struggle with this because I see reps that are covering like 50 different use cases across 50 different industries and 20 different like buyer personas.
Eddie38:35And you're bouncing from one thing to the next to the next. It's like how can you do anything other than just say, like, you know, the old Sandler submarine? Like, well, what have you done to try to solve this so far?
Duane38:45Yeah. And this is this is where I feel like I has helped a lot in the sales world, because you can if you have a solid account executive that understands the mindset of a good seller. And when I say that, it's like the best sellers I've worked with have just been annoyingly curious. They don't just rest on their laurels and get the answers that they want and move on.
Duane39:11It's like they don't move on from topics until they get to the root cause. And so you can plant one of those sellers in any situation, any scenario, and they could become effective in the first month just by getting curious around their best customers and the mention of like the 50 reps or 50 ICP different use cases. This is where I feel like has made the biggest impact, because you can empower that rep who's got that solid fundamental to get those insights and get those questions that can be their copilot to really help accelerate that, because you can be relevant in a new situation very quickly.
Duane39:43If you've got the foundation for the AI and then combined with that skill set of the account executive, so you can have that truly skilled account executives be powered up by the information they need to have that right little curiosity, like show stopper questions like, I've got an agent right now, that we're improving to where it's that they have a persona that comes in at a type of company.
Duane40:05They came in this campaign and they had this level of intent data on the website and signals it can generate showstopper questions that get relevant like that. And so instead of asking generic questions, you can ask a question of like, hey, how often, how often do you have, because we saw in the bpos business outsource companies, really big ones.
Duane40:22Some of the biggest on the planet account executive can come in that room and ask a question similar to how often do one of your customers complain about the amount of billable hours that show up on their invoice, and you don't have an answer for it?
Eddie40:34Solid question.
Duane40:35Yeah, right. And and that right there causes them to stop and think. It's like actually I don't know. Great. Let's dive in.
Eddie40:46I love that it's making me stop and think.
Duane40:50I said that question on purpose now. Yeah, but that's where coaching in AI combines, where it's like you can develop the AI and the agent based on that solid data layer and foundation. When you have all that ICP and all those things figured out and combined with a sales rep who has that fundamental skill, that's when you really start to take off.
Duane41:09It's when you have the seller who hasn't developed those skill sets, try to apply it to the agents like the recipient of the agent's information. They don't know how to use it.
Eddie41:20Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So we don't have a lot of time left. But with the time we do have I want to unpack as much AI stuff as I can. So what else are you guys doing in AI or what else can you share with the audience about what's working for you, or what you think will be working for you with AI?
Duane41:34Here's the thing. And this is where, I get the feedback from from our CEO. He's like, you're the most unique sales leader, I've ever worked with. And so one of the things I'm trying to work on right now is, so the other existing customer, they buy from you, you believe for a year, and you develop this champion relationship and stakeholder alignment.
Duane41:54But oftentimes decisions come from above your champion that end up getting your customer churned. And what I'm trying to develop is like, how do we get the insights of, of, unknown senior stakeholders that are showing indicators that are negative on our account? So it's like combining something like a sixth sense or whatever that pulls up. I'm looking for negative intent signals for stakeholders that are above our champion, so we can get ahead of churn and help impact retention.
Duane42:22So instead of just looking at intent signals and activity from within the people that we know, which is easy, you can get that natively in HubSpot, right. But it's it's trying to get visibility on what's the black swan, what's the unknown unknown? How do we identify the stakeholders that are not currently in our in our buying group for existing customer?
Duane42:39And then can we find negative intent signals that may lead to potential churn? Because, you know, every every SaaS company has this scenario where we have a great customer and it's been obvious for 5 or 6 years, you go on site with them, have that ever do the whole thing. You do a case study and they want to do beta stuff with you.
Duane42:56In the two months later, they're gone. Well, that was a decision that was made above their head that you, as a CSM or a company didn't have insights on because you didn't have a relationship with that person. So that's one of the things I'm trying to figure out is like, how do we how do we do that? How do we get visibility on the conversations and actions that are happening above our champions heads, and then we can help them navigate it and do some champion coaching around.
Eddie43:19How where do you even get data for something like that?
Duane43:22I don't know, that's sort of trying to figure out is like, how do we because I know it's out there, but it's so much of AI and so much of the optimizations is everything that you already capture. And and it's more about like, how do you present and optimize the data and intensive that you already have, but how do you get that visibility on the stuff that you really don't have yet?
Eddie43:42Yeah, I mean, it's so relevant. I was just on a call, this morning which which was with a company that was a customer. And we're trying to pitch, you know, helping them specifically with their new business, Outbound Motion. And then they're sharing with me like, hey, like the CEO is turning over. The owner of the company is like stepping in.
Eddie43:59We had massive like, retention issues. All this stuff is like coming down and it's like, oh wow. Yeah, like and so we can't move forward with anything. And it's like, yeah, I get it. And I fully get it. And I'm not having a conversation with that owner of the business. And it's a large business. So it's kind of interesting to think about like the owner of the business, like stepping back in and it's yeah, I mean, so many of these decisions are made with things happening like the you have no exposure to, but like, where would I?
Eddie44:28It's like this private company. I can't get access to their, like, retention rates, like, publicly. So. So it's an interesting thing to solve for.
Duane44:35Yeah, there's things that are happening out in the market that you can potentially see. But how do you capture that. It's you know, and that's it's an interesting thing. That's all I got to say. It's going to be challenging to build because we have all the other stuff. Right. It's like you have your, your outbound agent that's, you know, capturing intense signals and building the messaging and crafting it based on, you know, micro agents based on personas.
Duane44:55You've got the prep agents for the account executive bringing the information in that helps them with the follow up and the follow through. You know, you've got your CSS agent that does the same thing for existing accounts. And I'm like, it's still only looking at the information that's already in front of us. Like, how do we how do we get outside of that a little bit and get ahead of any retention issues that we have for our target customers?
Eddie45:15Yeah, I mean, where my head's at with that kind of stuff is like, okay, you've got the data in your your ecosystem, you've got stuff in your CRM, in your marketing tools, in your email. You also, of course, have company websites which you can now like take AI and go, you know, dig to those those websites and uncover more information.
Eddie45:32I don't know how it relates to your particular issue where you're saying like there's like stuff happening inside of this closed door room. But where my head's at is if you set the foundational layer right and you say, okay, like we got all our data together, all of our systems are connected, here's the data set that we have.
Eddie45:46We've got our marketing intent data. We've got our third party sixth sense intent data. We've got our thermographic data, our, you know, our technical graphic data. We got all this stuff from Claire. We got the stuff from zoom info. We put it all together. Now we like take the AI and go research. You know, the, the website or there's an issue with accessing LinkedIn.
Eddie46:03But if you can get around that, like go access this data on LinkedIn, anybody that's writing any content, like what is their content setting, how do you put all this stuff together to answer questions like the one that you're asking? And this to me is really, really interesting, but you can't do any of that if you have like a foundational data layer that's completely broken.
Duane46:20Yeah, yeah. And the part of that too is for me, I, I can't hand that off to anyone in my organization to consult because no one else in our organization is going to know what good looks like. And so I have to go do that stuff. I have to get hands on and go build the model, build the framework and start implementing those things myself.
Duane46:40Because again, like I so new in the market, I maybe there's someone on your team that may, you know, nerd out and really enjoy it. But like you as the as the corporate executive CRO or VP of sales in the next 12 months, like to figure out these hard questions, you're going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the work yourself.
Duane46:57Like that's what I'm doing. Resetting some of the responsibilities on our team. So I've got time on my calendar to write and go solve that problem, because it's been a question I've been asking our team for six months. It's like, you know, so if you want to solve hard questions in the business, especially today, like you as the as the senior leader of the business, you've got to roll up your sleeves and go do that work.
Duane47:18You can't pass it to your team to go figure it out.
Eddie47:20This is the number one thing that I've seen, like with, you know, the non AI stuff for the last 15 years of selling and implementing Salesforce and HubSpot and all these other tools is look like, okay, let's say that you have that right person. The person that understands go to market, that understands Salesforce and HubSpot, and they're geeking out on the AI.
Eddie47:36And we happen to have people like that, which is great. But use the CRO still need to sort of own the outcome. And so even if it's something as simple as implementing Salesforce, like I've seen success or failure being dictated solely on this, because at the end of the day, if you say, here's the outcome, I want where you're going to build.
Eddie47:54In your example, we're going to build this research agent and it's going to pull all this data. It's going to here's the prompt. It's going to run all this stuff. And this is what it's going to spit out. If you're not owning the outcome to say, okay, this is now like producing the output that we want. And then hopefully by extension, producing the revenue that we want or contributing to producing the revenue that we want, then it's just going to fail miserably.
Eddie48:15And I've just seen this again and again over 15 years. If, however, you've got the right person in place and you can delegate 99% of the work, all you need to do is check in periodically and say, okay, like, where are we are with this? Is this doing what it needs to be doing, what's the next milestone, etc.?
Eddie48:29Let me provide feedback as the person that's running the revenue team and understands the nuance and context that you, Mr. Go to Market Engineer, miss go to market engineer probably don't understand because you haven't run a revenue team before.
Duane48:42Yeah. And the thing I have on my in my gym, at my house, on the, on the mirror I see every morning is like no one's going to care about as much as you do. Yeah. And so that that's like one of my measures on projects and initiatives and stuff that I lean in on and on the outcome, it's like, do I care enough?
Duane48:57It would be okay if this fails. And if the answer is like, no, this has to work, then I'm going to own it. Well, I.
Eddie49:02Just like this is another lens that I always like. So I just had a daughter a little over a year ago, and it's like, I have no idea what I'm doing, just like every parent, right? But like, I care about that more than anything, like every parent. And it's like, I don't trust anybody with my kid. And it's not because I think I'm smarter than them.
Eddie49:18It's just I care more, you know? And I don't say I don't trust anyone with my kid. Like, we have a nanny and she's great, but like, there's still you're like, constantly like, just like I said, you're checking and making sure everything's going the right way because you care so deeply. And I think like that, that passion of that care for whatever it is you're doing, whether we're talking about kids or the gym or go to market, if you're just like, we have to make this work.
Eddie49:40In my 15 years of working with crows and revenue leaders and trying to do things like Salesforce and HubSpot, now I Jason Lumpkin, just posted about this today. If you're just committed to say, like, no matter how many iterations we have to go through, we're going to find a way to make this work. It's most likely going to work unless it's just an impossible thing that nobody will ever achieve.
Duane49:57My challenge is I love what I do, and I can find a way to get passionate and care about every aspect of it because I enjoy it. And so my problem is finding the things that care more about that get my attention to ownership on the outcome. Because I work in every area of the business on the sales side.
Duane50:15Right. Good. The marketing teams I've done, PPC stuff back in the day. I've been in the account manager. I've been on the solution, see him as a consultant. So I see all these areas and as a Sierra or as a sales leader, you really have to take a step back. And like, what is the most important thing that needs your time and attention that you care about?
Duane50:30Because if it needs your attention and time and time, you don't care about it. July is going to suck, right? So you have to be able to prioritize your time and pick what is that big domino that you're going to own. Then you're going to knock down. By the way, if you need any advice on daughters, I have four of them.
Duane50:45So,
Eddie50:47You know, we're just going through sleep training and teething, like, it's it's exhausting, but it's just like, oh, I know the problems are just going to get bigger and more complex, but right now, it's just like, am I getting enough sleep, you know? And it's really all it is. It's not super complicated so far.
Duane51:03Yeah, yeah. That's good. It's when you complicate that stuff is one of my favorite sayings is, fancy fails, simple scales. And it works across everything you do in life. It's if it's too complicated, if you got, you know, if you're trying to raise your kid on an alarm clock and schedules and this and that, wherever, it's like, it's going to get too much, too, too quickly, and you're going to forget about caring about the kid.
Duane51:23Same thing in business if you're trying to over operationalize things and engineer stuff and you forget that the simple way is just download the CSV and upload it in the system, you don't need an API connection. Do that until it hurts because then you're going to really know what works.
Eddie51:37Yeah, it's funny. Like if you have another minute, I'll share one example and then we can wrap. I lost like maybe 25 pounds of fat this year. And I started off with like the whole like crazy excel sheet. Macros measure everything and it's so complicated. And what I centered in on because I've been on this journey for maybe I guess like last January is when I really, really started, like sticking to it.
Eddie51:59But there was like a lot of trial and error before that. And then what I landed on was, is I was like, I eat the exact same breakfast every day, and I have a protein shake every day. So then what that leaves me with is if I want a certain amount of protein and calories, if I just divide that number by two, then lunch and dinner are the same.
Eddie52:14So for example, today my lunch was pork chops and French fries. But they're like baked fries, so they're healthy. And so then I created another sheet that just says, okay, I need 54g of protein per meal. So pork chops, 54g of protein is 212g of pork chops. And I put it right on the fridge. So it's like, okay, cool pork chops for lunch, I need 212g of protein.
Eddie52:33Here's the calories I have left. Then there's another chart for like the potatoes. And it's like 300g of potatoes will fill up my calories. Boom boom boom. It's so simple. It's just every meal is like exactly the same thing. Yeah, I'm not eating pork chops for every lunch, but replace the pork chops with steak or hamburgers or whatever.
Eddie52:48And it's just like, I need this many calories and this much protein. And if I go out to a restaurant, I pull out like ChatGPT and I'm like, how much of this burger can I have? And it tells me and I'm like, all right, cool. I'm getting three quarters of this cheeseburger and go home and I'll be good to go.
Duane53:01Yeah, yeah. To simplify it. Like, you know, even even with weight loss and stuff, we oftentimes people skip over the most important things, which is the foundation of health. Drink enough water and get enough sleep.
Eddie53:12Yeah. Is really important.
Duane53:14Like you want to you want to get fit, lose weight, feel better, prioritize your sleep. It's one of the things I've done in the last few years, because I used to be the six hour power guy, and I was like, no, like, get seven and a half, eight hours, prioritize the sleep, you know, and set your life up to where you don't have to be at a call at 6 a.m. every day, like, you know, adjust it.
Duane53:32But simplify it like simple scales. Simple.
Eddie53:36Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us today. This has been awesome. If people want to stalk you on LinkedIn, where can they find you?
Duane53:45LinkedIn is probably the easiest. It's honestly, it's where most of my old stuff used to go, but LinkedIn is probably the easiest. I'd respond to DMs. I comment on things randomly. I know use the comments on your stuff all the time. I need to get more active on LinkedIn. I used to be a lot more active, but you know, when you're running a business, sometimes that's what goes to the wayside.
Duane54:01But yeah, LinkedIn probably the easiest thing.
Eddie54:03Right there with. Yeah. Well thanks for joining us today. Yeah.
Duane54:06No I appreciate it.
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Eddie54:21We help our clients with everything from annual planning to improving processes and go to market, implementing systems to support those processes and go to market AI. We're always happy to offer a free consultation to help you identify the best opportunities to improve your go to market engine, with or without our help. You can find us at Union Square consulting.com and the info will be in our show notes.
