Nearbound Podcast #167: Building SaaS Credibility in a Skeptical World - Bobby Napiltonia
Jared and Bobby Napiltonia discuss the current SaaS GTM landscape, covering the future of subscriptions, AI in pricing and customer support, and evolving channel dynamics.
You Might Also Like
Nearbound Podcast #166: Pete Caputa’s Return: The Partner Led Startup Story
Nearbound Podcast #165: From Zero to $400M in Revenue - Finding Success in a Crowded SaaS Market with Jeff Cheal
Nearbound Podcast #164: Why Your SaaS Partnerships Aren't Delivering - Scott Wueschinski's Solution
It's no surprise 44% of salespeople didn't hit their number. Look at pavilions
information.
I'll tell you this is not me spewing stuff. The world is oversaturated with
stuff to sell
and the consumers done and they're thinking AI is the holy grail because it's
going to do things
differently. We're back at last. Welcome to the nearbound podcast.
I have a very exciting episode today. It's just me, but I'm bringing on the
very first guest
and probably my favorite guest. If you go all the way back to episode number
two of "Partner Up,"
that very first guest is the one, the only, Bobby Napolitonia. Bobby, it's so
good to be with you,
my friend. You're so kind to me. I can talk to you every single day with intros
like that.
You can be my front man anywhere. I go. I need to actually get you on payroll,
I think.
Though, same to you. Anytime you and I get on a conversation together, I know
the nearbound
summit one that we did back in November. Folks just absolutely love Bobby. As
we enter into a new
phase of the nearbound landscape and nearbound podcast in the future, there's
some pretty big,
exciting announcements that are happening all around this. I was like, I got to
bring Bobby back
on. He was my first guest. I got to get him back again because it feels like
the world has changed
because here's what's crazy, Bobby. That first episode that you and I recorded
was almost four
years ago. I was going to ask what time, four years ago, wow.
That's crazy. It was almost four. It was September of 2020.
Wow.
September of 2020.
It's amazing. How time flies?
Yeah. There's some stuff that's changed since that first one. I think you gave
us some timeless
lessons. I was going back and relistening to it and you gave us things like the
three by five
account planning and mapping strategy. You talked about the rise of the app
exchange and how your
GSI stories, blue wolf and purple moon and sky and how you took out Accenture's
big things.
So you gave us some timeless lessons that I think are still applying
partnerships.
But I wanted to zoom out and talk a little bit about the market because the
market always wins
and we're sitting at the precipice of unknown territory. You have this remit
where you've
been a CRO, you've been ahead of partnerships, you've had a little bit of
everything.
And you've looked at hundreds and hundreds of AI companies. Tell me, Bobby,
what the heck is
happening in SaaS, go to market land right now?
This would be a great story to unpack with in an entire series because we've
been actually
as a lifetime student of go to market. We take esoteric topics like that and
start breaking down.
Like, will subscriptions go away and win and wins the consumption economy?
And then who are the players that will be hurt most and can they pivot or will
they go away?
Actually, Bobby, I want to say it.
Salesforce, the next Lotus notes.
I actually want to stop there because there's one thing that I feel like is
very important.
You know, Jaco Vanderkweige, somebody by design?
So we did a podcast with him on the show and it was like the most depressing
podcast ever
because he basically was like, "It's over." And I was like, "You're saying it's
over?
Jaco's saying it's over?" He pretty much was. But one of the things that he
pointed out is like,
he's like, "Look, why do we trust brands in B2C? It's because whenever I order
something on Amazon
in its prime, it's going to be there in 24 hours. When I hail an Uber and it
says six minutes,
it's there in six minutes, I get these repeatability of outcomes. And then if
you look at all the SaaS
products that we've had over the past several years, I don't know about the
repeatability of
outcomes like nine times out of tenet. Even to do a renewal, I need to talk to
16 people.
You know, like, you know, there's a lot of things broken that like our consumer
lives
and then our B2B lives just are not matching up. And we think the arbitrage on
AI, for example,
is like, "Hey, maybe, you know, subscription going away, consumption. What
about outcome-based pricing?
We're actually just paying for the thing that I want, not for access to your
software."
That's been around for a while. Most CFOs puke and gag on it because they end
up looking at the
numbers and going, "There's no way I'm going to pay you X." I go, "Look, I'm
going to save you Y."
Well, I think you've struck a chord on it. And I think this is one of the
things I see people
not attacking. And maybe we shouldn't even reveal it on the show. But if you
think of AI and you
actually understand and look at business, you'd apply it, not necessarily where
you think you need
it because you're just telling me where we see the problems going, which is
really only attacking
a cost to sale, which just keeps adding on to that stuff that we're all trying
to chop wood
and chop away from versus attacking costs to goods. And when I start looking at
AI and where I apply
it, first group I ever take over when I go into companies, I want support. Why?
That's my customer.
I don't want some third-rate person saying words like deflection and don't call
me. I want to
love them up and find out what are the next things I can put in their pocket.
Because we all know
the easiest person to sell who's a happy customer. You just said, "Trust me,
trust me, trust me. Don't
go find someone new that you then go down the slippery slope one." I think the
problem also with
AI is that it's so cheap, easy, and ubiquitous that it's confusing. It really
is for people. It
reminds me of .com on steroids, but with somewhat of controls, meaning that it
's not true Wild West,
but there's Wild West in that we don't know how to adopt, deploy it. This is
where the channel will
change. And if you look at the segments that can most use AI, it's mid to low
long tail. They're not
going to have policies that say, "I can't help it." They're going to go, "I
need to stay in business.
Who can help me? Labor shortage is real." So if we start adding all of those
concoctions and we
start looking at the long tail, people are attacking it the wrong way. Why?
Because everyone's reading
the press. Too much sass over this, over that. Can this consolidate and
collapse? Guess what?
It's going to happen. It's going to happen because CFOs are just cutting off
and saying,
"I'm not signing anything." Start thinking about that. The tax for a sales
person is like $1,800
when you add all those systems up. How many recordings do I need to listen to
to come up with best
practices? I don't need 30,000 hours to listen to. I don't know my best reps.
It's no surprise
44% of salespeople didn't hit their number. Look at pavilions information. I'll
tell you this is
not me spewing stuff. The world is oversaturated with stuff to sell and the
consumer's done and
they're thinking AI is the holy grail because it's going to do things
differently.
There was this analogy going, I was talking about the Jocko episode that I
think he was spot on
about is that what happened to manufacturing? What happened to manufacturing
was there was this
cottage industry of suppliers that supported what the big manufacturers. You
had all of this
cottage industry of people that would make specialty parts and they sold to the
big things.
Then what happened is that robotics took over everything. It seems like with Go
ToMarket and SAS,
there's a very appropriate analogy is that the AI or the bot, so to speak, is
going to disrupt
the cottage industry of SAS vendors that are basically selling to what? SAS
vendors.
You shouldn't be selling to us anyway. That's the whole part. It was propped up
propped upness. When you start thinking of the house of cards, I think that's
what we're kind
of seeing in a way. I've struck a couple of cords there. I think the probably
the most important one
is for whoever the consumer is to find a trusted source. It's not going to be
the vendor calling
you. By the way, we know this. No one's taken an EDA, an SDR call, take a
meeting, to set up a
meeting to hear about. I want to know who's using what, how is it working, who
can I learn from?
So I think you're starting to see more activity and activity. Look, it's
-- You said it. You said it. It's from the book, "Nearbound in the Rise of the
Who Economy."
Screw all the BS. I need to talk to someone who's done the thing that I'm
trying to do.
100%. This is why it goes back to the regionality and who can I trust and what
's my patch in my
backyard? We'll come back to this where I believe the rep firm modeled from 25,
30 years ago. We
could end up having a concentration of knowledge in region. I mean, imagine
this, Jared. Let's just
say Bobby and Jared start a company tomorrow and I hire 50 VPS sales one in
every state.
Are you telling me we can't get to the 50 best customers in that state?
No, of course you could. Then what will we do? We'd have 2,500 customers from
50 people only
that would give us that wherewithal to get those references ability to get to
that next one.
You don't need 50 people selling the same things. It's not fair to an end user,
by the way.
You can't test it. You can't pilot it. It's going to be interesting who
survives and who wins.
Because again, it's .comish that has been well overfunded for AI for AI's sake.
Even the people who've executed best post sales force, because I think sales
force is
executed remarkably well, it's undeniable how well they've executed throughout
the
outbound, inbound kind of eras. The next best one is HubSpot. Then it looks
like Google's
probably going to snatch them up. There is some crazy consolidation happening
where
who had that on their 2024 Bingo card? Google's ad business is going to get
destroyed and disrupted
by AI. HubSpot's business is built around. He's going away. He'll do that. Not
AI.
Yeah, Kootie's going away.
It opens up a whole new, we can get into a front door story in people's
websites that are going to
suck moving forward because no one can do it. It's going to be really hard to
be a publisher.
I did a project for a company in the open source. They have 40,000 customers
for six months, and
then we hired a CEO last month. It's interesting. I believe there's going to be
three phases. The
first will be a red wall. Why? You can't come strip mine my stuff. The second
will be a pay
wall and the third will be an AI wall. This will happen and you'll see most
sites doing it.
You're already starting to see it for the big sites that have been brought up
by private equity.
Weather.com has done telling you the weather without knowing who you are.
Yeah. It's going to be a very interesting world, how the front door changes in
the
cookulous world and who, to your point, the Golden Goose is gone.
Is the Golden Goose the cookie? The Golden Goose is the ad money that we all
got.
Because think about this. You already know how big the ad budget is. Ad fraud
is projected
within the next two years to be bigger than the illegal drug trade. Cool.
Think about that statement. That's interesting. Think about that statement.
Oh my gosh. That's a big scare. It's crazy too, just like
tacitly, Bobby, what you're saying and kind of this shift to who. One of the
big luminaries on
LinkedIn is a guy named Chris Walker that's kind of a gadfly of the demand
generation kind of things.
He talks about dark social. One of the things that he talks about a lot is
putting self-reported attribution on your site. One of the things that we've
done and
reveal with Isaac and me is we put on the site, who sent you our way?
And you know what's hilarious is that people will put specific names of people
and they'll put specific companies or events and it's like, oh that's actually
why you came to
us is because of a person, a conversation. But then you go look at GA and what
do you think they say?
Oh it's because of this SEO. It's pay us more money and it's like that person
has no idea
whether or not that was influential. It's like sure they might have clicked
something after they
had a conversation. So good. I'm not saying get rid of content. What I'm saying
is that's not
the influential thing. It's not writing Google. It's the vegetable beside your
green dish.
Exactly, exactly. So that dichotomy is just like that used to be something that
's like
how did you hear about us was predominantly Google or something like that.
And now word of mouth with specific names is almost it's over 50%.
Because people ask what's the problem and then people go how do you solve the
problem?
Oh how did that work for you and it gets down to the specificity?
Yeah the actual like did you get the outcome? What's my problem? I don't want
to Google that.
Have you tried Google or something lately?
Of course it sucks. It's horrible. So who's the next G2 then? Because what you
're saying is if you
look at the intermediary that's what they did and Goddard came and solved a
need which is we can't
really trust Gartner. We need this middle market that can consolidate everyone
's perspective together.
I feel like we're bouncing all over the nearbound book. I kind of love this.
This is fun.
So what you think of the channel is that your book covers all aspects and there
is no one
one arrow in your quiver. You truly have to understand how you're going to
attack it.
Educate awareness, education, execution in each of those streams. Who are the
people that will
help you get there further faster and I guarantee you there's an ecosystem in
each one of those
sprints you would do. There are. So like there's this I've called it Bobby 4.7
star syndrome
right and I have this phrase that you know all games get gamed. So review sites
get gamed.
Like it's just you know all games get gamed. So you go to G2 or you go to any
of these sites and
everyone kind of has very similar ratings. All of them kind of sound the same.
And you're like
this this is no longer signal for me. It's just noise. Everyone's on it.
Everyone's got badges.
They're all top performers. What's the point? Well, Vinay Bogot, the CEO of
Trust Radius,
he really shocked me because I was talking trash about review sites and
no shade against Goddard because he's obviously one of the best.
No shade against him from my side. But I was trash talking review sites. Vinay,
the CEO of Trust Radius reached out to me and was like Jared, I agree with you.
And I went,
wait, you agree with me? And he's like here's a study of 2000 of our buyers.
And
what was 20 times, and I put this in the book because it was so good, what was
20 times more
important than the review score was the relevancy of the reviewer to me. Who?
Who? Right. So he's
changed his product to help people surface that. So for example, instead of
giving a score, it's
like, hey, let's say we know who this it's a return visitor or something like
that. It's an expansion
account. Let's make sure that on the homepage of the site or something, the
testimonial is from
someone like them, for example. Like that's just a better use. I have to dive
into this real quick
and take 30 seconds. So what you just said is why we have Dell around still. So
most of the companies
we work with, so I kicked off the go-to-market firm after we sold the Datab
ricks last year,
because too many people were calling and asking questions and I thought, let's
just start getting
some content out. And it ended up picking up thematic themes of which are worth
three particular
companies. But one really went down the path in which you just said, which is,
I can't just do
that that way anymore. How do I start tackling an industry differently? And
what we did is when you
come to the website, you heard me say the front door, you don't want to go in
unless you know
is there champagne in there? Is there something for me? Is there something that
I want and can I
identify back to Dell? Dell last one standing wide. When 30 years ago, when you
went to their site,
you'd self-identify, I'm a small business, I'm a government, I'm an education.
Why? Because early
on they knew this is here for you. And if you did that right, then you got to
hear the stories of
the people. Look, Salesforce did it right. We made the person, the hero, and
put your picture,
you go to Dreamforce, you see all your peers on the walls, you don't see any of
our people.
Right. Exactly. The customer's the hero.
Customers the hero. And I think we're coming back to that. The partner's going
to be the hero in
this next phase because they're going to make the customer succeed so they don
't get fired and
replaced by AI. Oh, look, I work with the robotics company. Now it's the number
one open position in
the world. We need robotics. Here's what I do know. You're not going to spend
for your kids $30
for a hamburger, but by the rate it's going, it's going to be a $29 McDonald's
hamburger.
I shocked the other day that I was like, wow, how did I? Legitimately, that's
been
the inflation on just McDonald's was out there. And it's like, well, if you don
't use our app,
right? So like you're paying like a 20 to 25% tax now if you're not using their
app. And I was like,
so push the labor to the person, make them do the work, right? For sure, for
sure. I mean,
look at that. Why would you not do that? Is to have someone observing it. But
no, we can't afford,
I mean, it's not just the inflation. It's the labor cost of people for any jobs
that we don't
really want to end up doing things for hence robotics, repeatable things that
we won't necessarily
get the value out of. But if I went down that path, I would tell you the number
one open position
for the blue collar workers welding. If you look around you, everything's weld
ed in some way,
shape or form this mean for our lives, you can't be down 2 million welders in
America to think
you're bringing in manufacturing back. Yeah, no, no way. We go back to your
schools,
trade schools need to light up again, because these things are going to need to
be fixed.
Yeah, I mean, there's so much that's going to change in the next, it's like
people
overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and they underestimate what
they can
accomplish in five. And I think that's a good heuristic for what's happening.
You kind of
writ large to business in, let's call it America, but the global economy is
that there's this hype
cycle where it feels like, okay, is this all going to happen in the next 12
months? But then we don't
look five years out and it's like, that's about five years have been pretty
crazy. The next five
years are going to be more. There's a lot of retooling and rebuilding and resh
uffling and new stuff
that with a past doesn't necessarily indicate the future on this one is, is
cluster computes come down. Look, the Nvidia story is insane how they've just
outpaced Apple. I mean,
we could go down there by the way, Microsoft, they're like almost three
trillion dollars already.
When I was in creative, we went and bought, we interviewed all three graphics
companies and they
were one, one, one's we interviewed was 3D of X, 3D Labs and Nvidia and we
ended up buying 3D
FX for the mood chip. They've been making a very easily been a different story
in the time, but
Jensen was a strong man, never wanted to sell. And that's why they are where
they are. They have
a great leadership. Oh my gosh. So Bobby, as of today, as of this is as of
today, it's 3.1 trillion.
There you go. 3.1 trillion. And what's Microsoft's market market cap like
and 3.26. So it's the second most valuable company in the world and it was
barely a trillion
dollar company 12 months ago. And from graphics chips? Yes. From graphics chips
. Well, they acquired
S3's assets that gave him the GPUs, Compute came on board that people could
program them. I mean,
there's a great story of just staying true to what it is that you know and do
and he did and
there's where they are. Look, so then that question, what happens to Intel?
Well, I'm talking to a
chip challenger, the chip that actually broke Moore's law for the first time in
like 30 years.
And so we're going to in this huge ship, it's played. It's like 360 chips and
one chip and they're
doing again big deals because you're going to see data centers come back, super
computers,
powers are going to be important and they're all going to be darned by partners
. No company is
going to have the wherewithal unless you're that large and you've got that much
of a big data set
and that money, right? Right. Beginning of the mainframe. This is mainframe 2.0
. I hate saying
that because people will laugh, but it's true. It kind of has centralized
computing's back. It
really is because cloud computing is just decentralized centralized. So what do
you think that does for
you know, the cottage industry of SaaS that was built around it? You know,
there was this
this interim mainframe 2.0. There was this cloud, you know, phase where there
was, you know, what?
200,000 ISVs that were built on top of AWS and Azure and GCP that were
facilitating some niche
processor workflow. Yeah. So they're in between there was something called
client server and that
was really big too. And that led to the SaaS because that lets you see because
you couldn't
know, you just hit the point, you couldn't afford to build a client server app
for niche markets
and SaaS allowed you to attack that last corner because you'd have to buy the
hardware software
support. You had to be a smee. I know how to do X very well and then you could
have a
vertical SaaS is hot now because horizontal doesn't work anymore because you
need to know my businesses,
my processes and I think that that's where you're going to start seeing the
specificity,
the technology can take you down for me, AI for me. Yeah, exactly. I think that
's
that's what a lot of people I think really miss with their partner programs,
Bobby. I'd love
your take on this is that like, you know, last couple weeks ago, I had Pete Cap
uto on. So from HubSpot,
he's, you know, another one of my mentors. And there's just the way that he
talks about driving
partner value is that like, look, partners for me are about helping reach
people that I never
would market or sell to otherwise. For example, you know, he's the CEO of Data
Box and they're a
BI analytics platform. So he allows agencies to white label and create
benchmark groups. So to take
data from, let's say, I sell to, let's say, lawyers, right? And I'm an agency
and I can take all my
legal clients and benchmark their SEO, their YouTube performance, their social
performance,
their website traffic, their conversion rates and go, Hey, you're really
performing down here.
You know, as a lawyer against this cohort, here's how we can help get you to
hear. So it's like,
it's it's niche data. The only that agency could have because it's their client
base. It's served
for a vertical for lawyers. And then that agency can create content and serve
their customers better
than DataBox ever could because how could DataBox go acquire a lawyer? Right?
Well, we have many
LLMs, maybe that actually each company can have their own. And to your point,
my special sauce
can end up being that. And we can go back to truly have IP that's yours because
it's the knowledge
based information. Yeah, you're you I mean, there's so many topics, but listen,
the SI's got to change
too, because I don't need you're doing different things. And so in the last six
months, I went out
and talked to a handful of the system integrators going, your world's changing.
You're not doing
that's how are you going to what's an a what's a gen AI SI look like? And you
know what? They're all
wondering because they're going to say do they have an answer out of doubt that
they don't
throw it up in the growth of the look no no is it just a great question. I've
talked to a handful
of people that fund the SI's too. They're all caught up in there's too much
work to be done on
snowflake too much work to be done in Databricks because if you start looking
at the masses of
icebergs moving, those icebergs have moved. And maybe you know you call it a
partner ecosystem.
I look at it as off balance sheet resources. What do I need to get done that I
can't afford that
someone else will do for me? Right.
Telling is being one of them. How about the demo? How about the upstream? You
know, we did this
the complete compliment extent take my corn, make me better. I mean, those are
the things I think
people will start learning and understanding. And then I as a domain expert
could actually get
back in the game because I got some assets and I could actually deploy them or
sell them or
leverage or use them. I love that phrase off balance sheet resources. If you
want to go
sound a little bit more sophisticated to your CFO, it's like, look, we're not
just talking
partnerships. We're talking off balance sheet resources and that's required.
And I came up with that when we went to pitch our CFO. It's funny you should
say that. And we
went to ask for our money for our department and they're like, look man, budget
, budget,
budget, but look, I'm going to bring X that will do Y and I don't have to pay
them anything
unless they perform. Wait, what? How much do you need? And can you guarantee
that will happen?
And it did. And it has and it works. Right. So you go and guarantee, but you
can guarantee
the model will work. Yeah, I think that that's one of the things I wanted to
get into you with
you about a little bit, Bobby, there's this kind of like scary thing that's
happening out in the
market for SaaS to go to market kind of writ large, so to speak. But there's
almost never been a,
well, there's not almost, in my opinion, there has never been a better time to
have some
conviction around partnerships, ecosystems and using nearbound to up level each
department,
right? That's, you know, partner and ecosystem is outside your walls. To me,
nearbound is about
how to get each of these departments to activate it, right? So it's not just
some silo department
that's working. It's like, how do you make each department do nearbound
marketing, nearbound sales,
nearbound success? And I think, you know, you've had the courage to go, you
know, toe to toe and
work with and work under folks like Benioff. And you've had to have the courage
to kind of risk
given all of the scary stuff happening in the market. I think people are
finally realizing,
I need to go have this hard conversation with my CEO and my CFO and my C-suite
and go, we need
to commit to a partner plan. And on all the CRO and CMO CEO conversations that
I'm having,
they're finally listening. Why? They don't have another plan.
They fail because they fail. If you're at the end of your road, what would you
do? You'd take
the last gasp and pray. You said the final prayer partner people, listen up.
It really is. By the way, a lot of these companies are at that point in the
ropes because they went
to the last two or three years and didn't read the tea leaves and understanding
, holy heck,
and they're not going to get more money. And people are looking at the
advantage. You're not.
By the way, and then we can talk about all the go-to-market technologies that
are overfunded over value.
They're going to languish and go away. No one can acquire them. They're too
expensive.
And none of them are real product. They're all nice as ease. I mean, think
about what you look
in your go-to-market stack. And if that company went out of business, would you
die? No.
There's not one that you could go out without them.
Yeah, the only thing that I would talk my own book for a second. So if I was
thinking reveal
and the death of the cookie, I think second-party data is going to become very
important.
So third-party data is going away with cookies. Right. Second-party data is my
partner's information about their customers. And that's that escrow database
reveal cross-beam.
I think that gets exponentially more valuable when the cookie list world
happens.
And you're like, hey, I really do need that to like, who am I targeting? Who am
I working with?
So like, that's a fundamental shift to network database. So I think there is
something fundamentally
new there. But for the most part, I would agree. Like the AI is going to
disrupt anything that
doesn't have a proprietary data source. And I think your partner's data, this
their connect
interconnected CRM is that proprietary data source. You can't get that anywhere
else
otherwise by opting in to cooperate and collaborate and work with those
partners. Otherwise, you don't
get it. You don't get it from a cookie or from Google anymore. Right. By the
way, back in the
day that was called EDI and we traded information to make the world a better
place.
Yeah, I mean, you had data.com, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was the thing. You
basically trade data
with Salesforce, right? Yeah, data exchanges have been around for a while. I
mean, that's why we
all have credit scores. Totally. 100%. So like that's been needed for B2B. I
was just talking my own
book for a second, obviously, you know, reveal all that. But so what do you,
what would be your
message, Bobby, for folks that have listened to this and been like, all right,
there's a little bit
of doom and gloom, but there's some, there's this partnerships moment nearbound
the book taking off,
nearbound as a category. What would be your clarion called the partner folks
out there right
now to like go have the courage or conviction to have that hard conversation
with the CFO, the CEO.
You know, you're actually just wondering, Jared, do maybe you and I go off
script and cuff and
do we want to go put together a webinar, how to approach your CFO? And I'm, you
know, you think
I'm joking. I get pained in calls all the time for people and I can't do the
one off just because
it doesn't scale. Hence why we fired up to go to market for my buddy and I said
we can maybe even
start cranking out content and who knows maybe you're a feeder of what are
people really needing
and we could fill out the gaps. And it's less about making money. It's more
about sharing the
knowledge so that the end user can then go, oh my god, I need some of that.
I'll go throw it to Shawnee on the content team right now and say, hey, Bobby,
and I want to do
thing on how to talk to your CFO should be like, okay, done. So that's the new
controller. Like,
you can't get a deal done without talking to your CFO today. So I don't know,
totally. Right. So
you made me onto that can be the best podcast webinar we ever have because
everyone would show
up knowing that unless you have those word off balance sheet resources, like
the things in
packaging up that you can show and scale. By the way, that's why our team
wanted Salesforce and we got
all the money of the four horsemen in the model. We proved that we were the
most efficient, most
effective and dominated the other channels. Right. And the four horsemen that
was partnerships,
marketing, sales, and success? No, sale. We didn't have success at the time. So
sales had EBRs
found, right? Then you had the salespeople, then you had marketing and then you
had partners and
so we'll measure men against those four categories. Close rates, deal size. Man
, I can tell you down
till like then that's asked what happened when, where, why and how because we
use PRM to capture it.
We build it, Eli and I together so we could actually consume what the world
needed.
I forgot that you called it the four horsemen because I remember, see, I listen
whenever you
talk, Bobby, actually do the things that you say. So like at Drift, I had the
fantastic four meeting.
There you go. Right. We called it the fantastic four versus the four horsemen.
And that was, you know, that was our segmentation was looking at each one and
making sure that we
were having hard conversations and I hated those meetings. I hated them, but
the only thing that
was worse than having them was not having them. Right. We're having the wrong
data when you went
to that meeting, not knowing where the effectiveness truly was. You know, that
's the sad part. And by
the way, this is where people go, Oh yeah, the marketing gets X percent, Y
percent, and then that's
where they fight for, Oh, I need X for brand and awareness. And there is some
validity to that. But
the best way to get brand and awareness is to have a killer product people love
. And then you don't
have to tell the world how good it is because they have. Right. And then you
just make it easy to,
you know, you make it easy for people to share and like,
consume it, consume it. Right. I mean, I've wrote, I thought about this a lot
because
I think the persona that's attaching ourselves, attaching themselves most to
nearbound that I'm
seeing right now come out of the woodworks that are very interesting
conversations is marketing
leaders, CMOs. So a couple of weeks ago, we published the nearbound marketing
blueprint. And it took
off. And so it was kind of like taking what was in the book on the marketing
chapters and sections
and kind of codifying it into building a nearbound account list. How do you,
how do you like one-to-one
partner account mapping, Bobby, you and me, we can do that all day. We sit down
with a partner,
we do some business planning and we go, okay, boom, here's the three by five
strategy with this
specific partner. But if you zoom out to the marketing leader, can they not do
the same thing?
And the answer is, yeah, if you have all of your partner ecosystem data, you
can kind of build your
nearbound account list and then work with five 10, 20, 50 partners to go bring
stories to them.
And the content creation framework that goes behind that, like how do you
actually create content
with dozens of partners is one of the things that's shifting, I think the most
right now that's
very fascinating because you really do need to start operating like a media
company. That's why
we've been successful is that we've been putting narratives out into the market
, not product features,
narratives. Here's this fundamental shift that's happening in the world. Don't
you see it, don't
you feel it. And then our partners are going, yeah, there's going to be winners
and there's going to
be losers. Here's how the winners are playing. And they come alongside because
they're like, man,
that message is so good. I want to be a part of that event. I want to tag you
on social. I want
to use your words. Like it's great media and great content that pulls the
market with you.
And then all of a sudden partner marketing is like, no, it's just marketing. It
's not like, hey,
here's this product feature. Can you like add this integration to some email
drip? It's like,
no one wants to do that anymore. Right. You know, back in the day, there were
words like co-op and
MDF. Do you know what those are? Yeah, of course. MDF still exists. It's just a
lot of times it's a
scam today. But they were real formalized programs and you as a channel partner
knew that I got 10%
MDF market development funds and probably 10% or 5% co-op. And if you bought
through two-tier
distribution, it was a shared model. And so manufacturers built that margin in
to actually
understand how to do that education awareness and that's going away because
everyone thought
we need to do it directly. That goes back to beginning of our conversation,
which is why
44% of salespeople missed their number last year. You shouldn't have been
selling to begin with.
There's no market for you. Right. You should have never hired you. The board
should never
ever let the CEO hire you. I mean, we go on and on and on about that. Yeah,
because we have
the boom. It's over saturation. It should have never happened to begin with.
And the thing that I think I talk about so much is there's just not
there's not enough expertise for that that customer. So like, you know, I like
saying the
same 10 things a thousand times versus a thousand things 10 times Bobby,
because I'm just I'm that
much of a simple minded man is that, you know, if I talk to a CRO and I ask
that CR, who do you
sell to? And unless it's gong, right? Where gong is like, well, we sell the
salespeople. Okay, good.
Good. Like you're in a good spot. You sell the salespeople, you're trading
salespeople,
and you use your product. Unless that is you. I think you're in a world of hurt
right now. Why?
It's like, oh, we sell to manufacturing CIOs. Okay, fantastic. How many sellers
on your team
have been manufacturing CIOs? The answer is none. The answer is none. And what
industry is that is
your median rep on? They're on their fourth or fifth industry. Like they're not
close to the
customer. They don't understand how to become a better manufacturing CIO, much
less a mediocre
or shitty one. Let me tell you about the supply chain. Right. You know, like
they don't even
know the supply chain. They would have no clue. It's like, and that's maddening
as a customer.
It's maddening as a buyer. We're stick a bit.
We're a ecosystem that actually has subject matter expertise that you can
leverage and drill down
on. Hence you can, you know, look, unless you're really big or you go vertical,
SaaS like Viva in your own that category because it's pharma, right? And then
you're very narrow,
but it's so big that narrow is good. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's the
case. But like,
you know, for the folks that are listening here, I think that's, you know, one
of my takeaways is
like you got to build some conviction around an industry and a problem and a
challenge.
It's not industry hopping so much and figure out what the heck you actually
care about
because it's not enough to understand a product. You have to understand the
outcome that the
customer is looking for. Right. Well, and the changes in the landscape of their
environment,
is the market, the market, is it regulatory or there are different things going
on?
Is it the cost of money manufacturing? I mean, there's so many aspects that you
as a seller would
never have. There's no way you could know that unless you came from that
industry.
That's where I'll give my Isaac. Isaac's not here to geek out with me on this
part,
but give our backgrounds a big shout out Austrian economics. You know, it's
market-based thinking
where like the market always wins in like the study of human action, it's you
need to be
obsessed with the market, not obsessed with your company or the model. The
market always wins.
The market always wins. And the reason which I'm an eternal student of go to
market for that
reason. Right. Right. And I'm, I can go down to esoteric things I look at to
try to understand
how they were sold, where they were sold through anywhere from, you know, how
did five hour energy
get dominant market share? They went into a gas station and said, I went in
front of that and
I'll give you 50 points of margin. What gas station only makes 50 points of
margin on anything? How
about none? So what would I put in front of my cash register? The thing that
everybody walking
in my gas station needs, energy. Now those economics have changed and they
probably get 5%
because the addiction has happened, the adoption has happened, and now they're
just going to milk
the machine. Absolutely. Absolutely. Bobby, parting words for the, the partner
leaders out there and
that, you know, I guess that's the call to action is that you need to shoot me
note on LinkedIn,
folks, if you're listening, saying, Hey, let's do that CFO talk with Bobby.
Tell us what you want to hear. Send us a note because we've got content to
share and just
don't know what you don't know. Yeah, I think that the CFO is definitely going
to be the most
important person I've connected with the gentleman. It's from my, like my, to
me, I never used CFOs.
He's got the strategy CFO Jack and it's interesting. I listened to them. I
actually turned a couple
of salesforce execs onto them just so that others could hear some of the riches
in the stories
because that that's truly and the CFO is going to be strategic. They're no
longer a bean counter.
They're going to be made and you see the CFO and CFO collapsing and consolid
ating so they actually
understand parts of the business. Yeah, that's, I mean, partner people persever
ance
day to day to day to the day that doesn't lie. Give the proof points. And if
you're not looking at
the ecosystem, I guarantee your competitors are and you may have already missed
that bus.
100% 100% Bobby, I could talk to you about a thousand things over the next
several hours.
It's a blast having you on the podcast every single time. We're going to need
to do an event.
So I'll ping Shawnee on that. We'll bring the CFO in. Thank you so much for
joining us today on
the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. All right, nearbound
. We'll see you around
until next time on the nearbound podcast.
Bye.