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Practical Go-to-Market guidance specifically for B2B software and service companies between $5MM-$50MM in revenue.
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#49: The 'Messy Middle' Of The Sales Cycle - Featuring Mark Fershteyn
What if you could revolutionize your sales process and empower your buyers like never before? Join us for a compelling discussion with Mark Fershteyn, the co-founder of Recapped, as we dissect the evolving landscape of buyer enablement in sales. Mark's transition from VP of sales to CEO offers a treasure trove of insights, especially for B2B software and services companies with revenues under $50 million. We navigate the 'messy middle' of the sales cycle, where deals often stall, and uncover how mastering the science of selling through process and preparation can transform sales outcomes. Discover how Recapped emerged as a powerful platform that unites buyers and sellers for more effective collaboration and builds stronger buyer-seller relationships.
Welcome to the GTM Pro Podcast, your essential audio resource for mastering go-to-market discussions in the boardroom. Here we share insights for revenue leaders at B2B software and services companies, especially those with less than $50 million in revenue. Why? Because the challenges faced by companies of this size are unique. They are too big to be small and too small to be big. This dynamic pushes revenue leaders into executive leadership without a lot of help or support. We are here to provide that support. Your journey to boardroom excellence starts now. Now, all right, welcome back to another exciting episode of GTM Pro. We're pumped to have Mark Verstain with us this week, and Mark is the co-founder of Recapped, and this is a space that we're going to be spending a little time in is around this whole concept of buyer enablement and the execution of deal process, and just there's so much that's changing in this environment right now, so we are really, really excited to have Mark here. So, mark welcome.
Mark:Thank you guys, really excited to chat. I know we've been having some really good conversations, so excited, yes, yeah, I feel like.
Gary:This is a continuation on a theme there's been a lot behind the curtain so far, but well, mark, just for the benefit of the audience, give us the you know the the 90 seconds fly by of of how you ended up here and we'll talk a little bit about the origin story of recap. So maybe hold on that, but just your career arc in general, yeah absolutely so great to meet everybody.
Mark:Mark Fershteyn, co-founder, ceo, and never thought I'd be a CEO of a company. I was five years ago. I was a VP of sales. Before that, I was a sales rep and a sales manager and I think, like most founders, just found myself solving the problem that I was a sales rep and a sales manager and I think, like most founders, just found myself solving the problem that I was very passionate about never thinking that this would be a business, just thinking it was a fun little side project and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Mark:But ultimately, if you're not familiar with the space, so we were actually one of the first, if not, I believe, the first collaborative deal room and mutual action plan and buyer enablement platform. Essentially, today it's really deal management and buyer collaboration and we could talk about that too. But we set out to solve a really, really big problem, which is, you know, when you're whether you're closing deals or managing clients or managing POCs or even onboarding customers we look at our sales cycle and it's hey, we have a stage one, we book the meeting, we do a discovery. Then there's this messy middle where a lot of things kind of just happen as these squiggly lines, and then either a deal pops out or it doesn't, and despite all of the tech that we have, it doesn't really solve that messy middle. And that's really where we focus. It's helping buyers and sellers unite and to merge their process and to be able to make sure that they're collaborating in a way that is mutually beneficial and helps deals get done at the end of the day.
Gary:Yep, wonderful, okay, bunch of questions in there. So, 2018, six, almost seven years ago now, but in many ways it feels like two decades ago because of what we've been through in the last three or four years. Right, you think about the acceleration of just video and digital, and, you know, I mean think about it. 2019, how many organizations actually recorded their calls? Yeah, right, it seemed, you know, yes, the gong and course were there, but that was like bleeding edge. So it's just crazy how far we've come.
Gary:But, but but for context. So for the, for the origin story, tell us a little bit about cause. You've got experience in a variety of deals, like we've talked about this before. Right, you've got more of what we would call the transactional sale, where maybe it's a sub 20 K ACV, it's a one or two call, close, it's, you know, quick discovery, get the demo, that process. But then, at the other extent, there's like much larger deals where you have multi-threaded conversations and maybe proofs of concepts and pilots and all of the. You know the messy middle, the messiest middle if you say but give us some context in terms of what your experience was and then what you saw at that time, which may be a little bit hard, because obviously a lot's changed since then.
Mark:Yeah, it's a really great question. I think we talked about this a little bit so I can I can refresh a little bit of it. But what? When I got started in sales I really struggled personally, right, and I always for me, when I got into sales I thought it was always kind of like the art of sales. It's oh, how charismatic can you be, how likable are you, can you make customers laugh, great. What I realized pretty early into my career is that's actually not the case. 80, maybe 90% of sales is actually the science of selling, which is the pure blocking and tackling. It's the process, it's following up, it's being on time, it's asking the right questions, it's being prepared. It's all of these things that I think almost anyone can learn. And then the art really just kind of separates the A from the A, plus, in my opinion, all right, and the different flavors, and it's a little embarrassing. But I got put on a pip and almost got fired because I was so overemphasized on the art and not enough on the science.
Mark:And when I kind of had this like come to Jesus moment where I sat down, I literally I was working at Citrix at the time.
Mark:It was a small startup that I got acquired and there was, you know, 20 sellers or so on the floor. I went and shadowed all of them and the one thing that I found that was uncommon, common amongst all of them was that they had a playbook that they religiously followed. Now, some of them that playbook was in their head. They weren't even really thinking about it, but some of them were very process driven and they had mutual action plans on deals. They were collaborating with customers in a level that I just didn't see anywhere else. And so I shifted and I forced myself to do that, and thankfully, I mean it changed my career. I went from literally on the brink of getting fired to 250, 300% of quota. President's Club moved into sales management and started implementing that playbook across all these different teams. And we used to joke they're like oh, they'll just throw Mark on the worst performing team, he'll put a playbook in place and we'll move into the next team.
Gary:The fixer.
Mark:you're the fixer, yeah and for me that was really fun. I got to come in help reps and I saw them struggling with the exact same thing that I was doing and it's like, hey, let's keep that you know, charismatic, lovable personality that you have, but let's just add some structure and rigor to it. And so I ended up doing that. And then when we launched it's funny, so like we launched Recap the week of COVID coming out as well, right? So we both had our beta come out at the same time. And at the time I mean, like you said, right, like Outreach and Gong were nice to have bleeding edge technology that nobody implemented. And so I think of deal rooms in a very similar position today, I think, five years from now, everyone's going to use them. They're going to be required because all your competitors are, but today we're still not there. And even at the time I remember reading an article, it was like, oh, there's 6.3 stakeholders in B2B deals and I was like, no, there's not, there's 12., there's 13.
Mark:I wish there were only six exactly, and that was in 2019, and so for me, I think like the biggest realization is it was kind of like part sales process and being able to make sure that the process was being handled but I saw the chaos is inevitable and I saw the complexity and the increase in complexity as inevitable. And the only solution, in my opinion, to complexity and the chaos is collaboration. If you have 20 people involved in deals, it doesn't matter. What else are you going to do? You can't just wave a magic wand and get rid of 19 of them. You have to bring people together.
Mark:And to your earlier point, I mean we see this in 10K deals, given the economics and given the market and everything like that, it's no longer reserved for enterprise. And to your earlier point, I mean we see this in 10K deals, right, given the economics and given the market and where everything is at, it's no longer reserved for enterprise. We have literally customers coming to us with a 7K ACV that they have to get seven plus stakeholders aligned on the same page.
Gary:Yep. That's crazy, yeah, and I'm sure it varies by what it is you're selling in industry segment and things like that, but you know we're seeing the same thing. It's even fairly modest ACVs that used to be just plunked down a credit card and go.
Mark:And.
Gary:I think that's, you know, be interesting at your perspective here. Partly it's the economic condition, but I also think it's the interconnected nature of the ecosystems into which any new tool needs to plug in. Right, it's like it's it's not just the standalone thing that does a role, it it actually only does work because it's ingesting data from some other set of tools and sending out a set of data to another set of tools to complete the workflow, and it's like, well, that's just inviting more cooks in the kitchen because everybody's got a perspective.
Mark:Well, if you think about it, if you have a number of stakeholders involved, a number of tools that they're using, and you multiply those two together every single time a new stakeholder gets invited or a new tool gets implemented on a platform, you're having exponential complexity. Yep, because we went on such a spending binge over the last two decades, we bought all these point solutions. You know we have 50 something tools. Some of them speak to each other, some of them don't. Everyone's afraid to make a change because it's like like a you know Jenga board, you pull something out, everything could go toppling down. Right, and so like it's it's. It's wild, but I mean that's the state of it. Right, like this is what we moved towards over the last 20 years.
Andy:So complexity is good for you, but it's also tough in that you're going to have some customers that are like just not, like they don't I call it situational awareness Like they don't even kind of realize where they're at relative to what they, where they need to be and how this, this tool, really will help them. So, in other words, said said a different way, they don't have the process to really get the value out of the tool. How, how do you deal with that? Like how, how are you, you know, getting someone from like kind of almost like being unaware to now I can, now I can kind of implement and now I can get value out of this?
Gary:And, and before you answer that, mark I was going to I was kind of in the same spot, andy, which is, um, taking it up a layer and thinking about okay, we talked a little bit about 18, 19, 20, when you started and, and now you fast forward to today, like how do you see the jobs to be done and how you know the way the technology landscape has changed and the way the buyer has changed, how those are getting solved? And I think that's related, like what are the core capabilities required for you know somebody to be able to solve them well? And if they don't have them, how do you?
Gary:how do you think about filling that gap?
Andy:It's related to what you just said, mark, like that's evolved over time, that situation, and then, like then there's probably varying degrees based on sophistication, almost, and you know where you fit well, but also what do you how do you deal, almost, and you know where you fit well, but also what do you how do you deal with? You know, almost like somebody who doesn't get it, but they know they have a problem, I'm assuming yeah, excellent question.
Mark:So if we think about the different maturity of different customers, right, we have some coming in that like, hey, we, we have this playbook, we've invested 20 years building it but no one's following it. Right, that's on the right side of the scale. On the very left side, you have someone that is a two person startup. They don't even know what a process is, they're just like happy to be landing customers. And then a lot of customers that fit somewhere in the middle. For what we found funny enough and I say this constantly is a lot of our customers actually don't even buy ReCap for ReCap. They buy ReCap because we're able to give them best practices and we're able to help educate them on how they should be doing it.
Mark:Recap is just a really easy way of enforcing that and driving it home, and I think that's how you should think about technology in the first place. Right, which we could talk about jobs to be done, but you shouldn't be buying a tool just to buy a tool. You should be buying a tool because it helps enforce or make something easier of something that you fundamentally believe in, if you believe that the best experience you could deliver to your customers is a really well-executed sales process, where every rep is prepared, they're asking the right questions, they're setting the right next steps, they're sharing the right content, they're delivering a Michelin star experience, not a McDonald's experience, then you're going to want to buy something like Recap. If you don't, that's great.
Mark:Maybe we, maybe we're not for you. But what was really interesting too is when we first started. You know, like one year in we were so focused on closing deals, right and and like being used for closing deals. But really quickly our customers started actually coming to us and saying hey, like, yeah, our sales cycle is good, it's two weeks, we're transactional, but our onboarding process takes three months. So we want it just for onboarding and so now fast forward a couple of years. More than half of our customers use us for post-sales in some capacity.
Gary:And now in addition to or exclusively Both. Yeah, okay, yeah, interesting.
Mark:Yeah. So 30% roughly use us just for onboarding and then the rest use us for both, and almost always that's the expansion opportunity for us. We'll land with sales, then solutions, engineers, then customer success Typically that process.
Gary:So with that in mind. So you described like having a good process. You know, if you take the one on the far right of the spectrum, somebody, that they have a really strong process. They've mapped it all out and now it's just there's so many reps, there's so many moving parts and pieces. It's really hard to inspect the stuff between the stages right To make sure that that's happening and that I can see that being an instant value prop For those that know they need it but don't yet have it. Do you provide them a them, a template or a blueprint that says, okay, well, if you don't have anything, here's Spiced, here's Medic, here's a tip for your size transaction and this is what good looks like. Is that how you kind of get them started?
Mark:That's exactly it, right. So we do a little bit of an audit. Essentially, we're only as successful as we know about their sales process and, more importantly I think, the buyer journey. So we come in and we help audit and we figure out where are the points of friction right, where is the incongruency that you see between reps right? Maybe some reps do a really great job running a POC, but others they go to 90 days instead of 30 days, things like that.
Mark:So we help really ingest all of this.
Mark:We come in and propose kind of like a V1 for them and almost always the feedback's like whoa, like okay, I didn't even think, I didn't even think about including this at this stage. And so we essentially help build them out a matrix of things that they need to do at a certain stage, and obviously we're not going to get it right day one, just like you don't get your messaging right on the website, just like your cold call scripts. This is a learning process, but we want to get to a place that's really good and really quickly, and then from there we just iterate and learn. And so, like we have custom templates, there's community templates. We actually have a new product coming out shortly. That's going to help do this for them automatically, so we're going to ask a couple of questions. Based on that, and based on some of the AI training models that we have across you know, almost a hundred thousand deals we're going to be able to suggest a process for them based on what we've seen other companies be successful.
Mark:And the other piece, too, is you may have a process, but it might be the wrong process, and so one of the things that we really focus on is finding the ideal path that buyers and sellers can go down, and it can be something completely different than what we have on paper, because maybe one rep you know Brittany, she's doing a fantastic job of this and it looks completely different than what you have in your you know, quote unquote sales process that you brought a sales trainer on to do whatever, but that's the one that works and that's the one that aligns with what the customer needs. That's what we should be replicating, not what's process just for process sake.
Gary:Yeah, yeah, um man, you're preaching to the choir there because, as we've talked about before, we're well, we've always been proponents of buyer-led growth. But now more than ever, you see, flipping of the sales process to outside in and you mentioned it at the very beginning, like the reps when you were, when you were a struggling early rep, and you went around to the sellers that were having success, they were effectively enabling the buyer to buy by bringing structure to the process right, right Mutual action plans, and driving to who needs to be involved. And let me help you and and and presumably you know you, when you're working with similar types of clients, their internal processes can be fairly related, and so you've got some patterns and themes there, which actually makes you a consultant of sorts, like let me teach you how the best people buy. And so now you fast forward to where you are today and it's I mean you may, we see this all the time Like well, we use medic.
Gary:I'm like, well, why do you use medic? It's a $5,000 ECV product. You don't need medic, you're overcomplicating it. So here's, you know here, and that's not how your buyer buys. So let's actually build a process around how the buyer buys so that you can and this is something that we're excited about this whole space about is today more than ever. The goal is confidence. Right, I need to deliver to the buyer the confidence that they need to make a decision, and it's in a world where you've got hundreds of options and a sea of information. I just don't have the capacity to wade through it, nor do I really trust all that information. It's like how do I, how do I help, get you there and make it so that you can confidently go to your other constituents, the other 12 people plus that you need to converse with, and somebody's got to lead the charge there, and you got to be confident in anticipating those questions.
Mark:I think you hit the nail on the head and I really actually worry because I think over the next five to 10 years we're going to see so much AI bloat. I wake up already with 200 emails every single morning and I am not the buyer on a lot of these, so I can only like when we joke with our customers, like I have a really great relationship with a global head of revenue enablement operations that a large firm that everybody knows. She wakes up to literally hundreds of emails that all say the same message more or less we're going to help you do X, we're going to help you do Y and I'll be Z, and so separating yourself through that noise is going to get really, really hard, and I think the way you do that is exactly what you said, which is by being authentic, by building that relationship, by delivering a really great experience and by being a trusted advisor. And sometimes that means you're going to have to disqualify deals and tell them that you're not a good fit, but when you are hey, andy, I know that this is your first time buying a platform like ours. Here's what other customers struggle with. Here's the plan of what we want to do. Here's the work back of you guys going live and seeing success. Here's the success metrics that other companies have seen. That's how you build trust. It's not, oh, our product is this and great and does this and this From the lens of your customers.
Mark:Every tool looks pretty similar, especially with vague landing pages and whatever else. We look like, okay, they all do x. So then you really want to separate in this. I think that's how you do it and yeah, I think, going back to your earlier points around jobs to be done, I think it ties in really well because, like I have a pretty controversial opinion. You know it. Usually sometimes it gets laughs, but I don't think any of the tools that we have today actually help reps close deals. Right, if we think about salesforce hubspot gong, uh, outrage, like, these are fantastic tools, but they have different purposes, right, and the reason I say none of them actually help you close deals because none of them help buyers buy. That's what's missing in that messy middle.
Gary:Yep, yeah. So let's go back to the jobs to be done, Because when you started it was around the we'll call it the digital sales room, the buyer enablement tool, what have you right? And so obviously, the space is you, your company, you guys have evolved quite a bit. What happened over that period of call it 2020 to where we sit today, and how have you responded to that? And what do you see is the kind of the trajectory, the art over the next couple of years is kind of the trajectory, the art, over the next couple of years.
Mark:So, going back to your earlier question, I think for any, I think the future has to not only be collaborative but it also has to be integrated right. Nearly every single customer that we talk to they always start with we don't want to add any more tools. We already have too many tools. We have a tool for everything. We're trying to cut down tools, and so we've been hearing this for years. This is not new. I think it's just hitting a critical point right now, especially given the economic factors. One thing that we kind of pivoted pretty hard into, let's say about two and a half, three years ago, is the vision that we have for Recapped and how I think businesses are going to really like structure their go-to-market is having a central operating system that actually helps to collaborate and consolidate all your content with clients in one place. That's the narrative that Salesforce kind of tried pitching us 25 years ago.
Mark:Right, it's going to be, the single place where things get done like it's not, it's a database, it's a really expensive one at that, and so I think-.
Gary:Internally focused database at that.
Mark:Exactly right, and so a lot of what we're doing here at Recapped is if we were to rethink Salesforce today, in a modern age, what would it be? Well, it wouldn't be reactive, it would be proactive.
Mark:It wouldn't be internal, it would be client facing and it wouldn't be for managers, it would be for the sales reps, and so that's how I think about it, like, and we have a couple ai features I'm really excited about because I think ai has actually allowed us to execute on that vision and I think we're going to see some incredible companies here over the next couple of months that we've seen already in the past couple you know, two years. But reps should not have to worry about the science of selling, like we started at the top of this call. They should show up, be an advisor, help answer questions, be their charming selves and know that when they get off their call, all of that content is automatically generated for them in a really nice and beautiful way that's presentable and shareable for clients so that they can then have guidance for the buyer, to be able to have those conversations when you're not in the room because they're not sellers, and what we can spend time there.
Gary:Yep.
Mark:As well as giving guidance for the rep on what questions to ask and how to do these things, and whether that's pulling in resources from Gong or First Party, being able to make sure that everyone is literally on the same page. That's how I think deals are going to get done. There's no other way.
Gary:Right, so I want to go back. You introduced this point. I want to unpack that, which is decisions are made when you're not in the room. So, now more than ever and I don't go back to the Gartner quote you had earlier about the number of, you know, sellers that were involved 6, 12, whatever the number, right? The other thing that you hear all the time is that the, the buyers are 70 plus percent through their journey before they come into sales. Right, it's only like 15 percent of the time that they're actually with sales. In the same breath, though, you hear that the impact that they have with that seller is exponentially more powerful than anything else that they do.
Gary:I still think that there's truth to that, depending upon where you are, but I'm almost we're starting to feel like there's so much noise out there that, to your point, like there are 50 tools in any category and and new ones popping up and basically frenemies, right? People that were partners one day show up, and now they're building what you built. So it's you know. From the buyer's perspective, it's like ah, I don't, I can't even begin to sort through all this stuff. So where they go for information is different than it's been.
Gary:It's not just do a Google search and pull up a website and, you know, figure it out it's communities, it's it's, you know, buyer services, it's um, marketplaces, it's all kinds of stuff. But now we get into that sales experience and then, and then, when we now to your point, I, the champion, need to go, take and ideally synthesize all this information to my internal stakeholders, so that they too have confidence that I did the work necessary to come to the right decision. And so let's unpack that a little bit for us, like, how do you see that? I mean that's truly. Bit for us, like, how do you see that that, uh, I mean that's that's truly the collaboration space, whereas before, to your point, the more junior seller was like okay, here's, here's our stuff, I'll flood you with content, throw it over the wall, good luck, let me know when you're ready to buy.
Mark:Yeah or hey, I'm going to go take you out for to a golf course and we're going to get a steak dinner, and then you're going to sign this check because it's one-on-one right?
Mark:Not the case, I think. A couple of points. So one thing that I want anyone listening I mean I know it's going to sound simple, but like something that you just always have to take in mind is like no matter how good you are, no matter how great you run a process, you can't get a deal done without the buyers right, unless you're writing a check to yourself. It just it doesn't work Right.
Gary:So like literally That'd be one way to unquote it.
Mark:Yeah, exactly Right. I've had reps that have tried, so you have to make sure that you're getting them up to speed. I think I remember reading a stat about a year ago 73% of champions feel very underarmed or extremely under armed when they go sell internally, so three fourths roughly of all champions. We give them all of these spreadsheets and PowerPoints and email threads and then they go and maybe have a five minute conversation with their boss about a six figure deal. That's not going to go anywhere, and so I think that's the first thing to keep in mind. The second piece we want to layer on the top of that is I genuinely think I'm pretty bleak about the future of AI long-term. I do think 80% of jobs are at risk of getting automated, and I do think especially to your point when it's the entry level SMB, something that could be taught to a model those reps are in danger, and so I think really, if I was thinking about my career early on, right now, as a rep or as a leader, I would really try and focus as much as I possibly can about what can I do that an AI model can't do. And it's to what you said right it's the complexity, it's the relationships, it's the standing out is truly great, and so I think all of that is going to come together and it's just going to be harder.
Mark:The other piece, too is that kind of came to mind, as you were asking is, I think your network and word of mouth is really good in the information phase, when you're first looking at categories or hey, I have a problem, does anyone have any recommendations? And it's also really good at the validation stage, which is, hey, I've narrowed it down to three vendors. Who has experience with these vendors and who can give you the best recommendations? Again, going back to that messy middle where you have actually the differentiation stage, that's really where it's tough and that's where sales reps are the most valuable in my opinion. Here's why we're different, here's who we work with, here are other companies. It's building that trust. You can't do that without the sales rep.
Gary:Yeah.
Mark:They need to be a coach and they need to be a guide.
Gary:They need to be a coach and they need to be a guide. Yeah, yeah, especially where, um, the you, you cause. You got you kind of brought up use case there. Right, it's like you're not quote unquote selling, that ours is the best You're actually aligning with. I've listened, I actually have lots of patterns where I see your problem elsewhere and therefore I empathize and I can tell you here's how people solve it specifically. So you're you're helping me better understand the problem and the options and the alternatives versus quote unquote selling.
Mark:And here's why we're not a good fit. Yeah, all right, which is very important. It's like hey, we might not be the good fit here's, and being very, very candid helps to build that trust and credibility.
Andy:So if we're looking at a couple of things, we see all the time which is the buyer's experience level, and so we often see that champion, especially having either bought software in a company like theirs before or not as one. So these are your clients and you're trying to shape them for success with your tool. The other side is they may have some variance as far as and it might be around size, certainly complexity of an organization, where the number of internal stakeholders and the complexity that they are encountering. There may be an IT team, there may be some technology review team or something like that, where there's variance for a single client of yours, both on the experience side, so they don't even know what they're getting into with with half of those internal stakeholders, and then the number of stakeholders and the complexity there. How do you deal with that? Let's just look at it as a. You know a four square matrix. You know experience and complexity and number of stakeholders. How do you?
Mark:how do you get into that with them? It's an incredible question, the I think a lot of it happens in discovery and discovery. When I say that it's not one call at the beginning, discoveries throughout the entire process. All right To your point. You need to figure out has this group and has this champion made decisions similar to this before? If so, what did that look like? What were the gaps? What was the friction that happened? What unforeseen last minute roadblocks came up?
Mark:Then we always advise our customers to really tailor the content that's in the digital sales room and the mutual action blend to the lowest common denominator of their stakeholders, because your champion might be an expert in what they're doing and they might know, but they might also have to bring in someone from legal who doesn't know anything about what a platform is or what it does. And if they come in at a level nine out of ten, when really they still need to even get the basics, now all of a sudden you have this gap and things get lost, and that's really like your champion needs to be able to convey the business value and the business outcomes that you are willing to deliver. It's not the features, it's not the product. Nobody gives a damn about that.
Mark:It's what are we going to solve and is this the highest priority for the business? And that's how they should be looking at it. So, whether that's case studies, whether that's FAQs, whether it's stories, all of that needs to be tailored to the lowest common denominator of the stakeholders, and you find that out through continuous discovery.
Andy:And so kind of what you're saying there is I totally get the lowest common denominator from a content perspective. Somebody has great experience in buying. It's still good for the potential stakeholder. And then kind of what you're saying there too if I may put a few words in your mouth is the stakeholder roles are going to be probably pretty consistent, even if it's somebody wearing multiple hats at a constituent organization, right? So, like the, the, the functions are going to need to be covered off on, even if it's not like an individual for every single situation.
Gary:Yeah, that's a good point. You can almost, as you were, describing that both the you know we've all hearkened back to points when we've bought software and I've myself I've shared this with Andy and Tiana I myself have been the champion of a product Like I had budget, I had, I had the usual stuff. I had budget, authority, need and timing. Um, what I didn't have were the keys to the platform kingdom into which it was going to integrate. That had to go into, you know, a roadmap discussion and, uh, it would.
Gary:That particular my version of the problem, when elevated what, what became moving the roadmap of another department in order to make this happen, was not on their radar and so it just fizzled out right. And so I think to you know, andy, putting words in your mouth a little bit, it's like that's kind of what we're getting at with the experience of the champion, which is, not only do you have experience, having bought software, implemented software, but at this company and you know with whom you need to, you know what you're going to run into. We as buyers, as buyer advisors, should be able to anticipate that and prepare you for those discussions Like, hey, for this to be successful, you're going to be need there, are they on board? You know, and and I love the idea of the lowest common denominator because now I can take that in a format that is consumable for that department to help them understand the business impact and why they need to make it a priority in their department, even though they're not the ones that are actually going to be even using the tool.
Mark:Absolutely Well. So a really interesting stat that we've seen over the last couple of years. We have nearly three times more stakeholders in the typical deal room than people even have as contacts in their CRM.
Gary:Wow, three times Wow 2.7, something right.
Mark:But we actually have a report coming out on this and there's all these secret stakeholders that are touching the deal. They call them shadow buyers, exactly Right. And so your champion might not even know who they are, or they're not even thinking of them as a stakeholder because, like, oh, they just read the content, they're not actually in front. But these are all levers that you have to pull Right, and so actually, one of the things that we started doing about two years ago with a lot of our customers is we help them build out a value matrix and an objection matrix. So it's not just hey, we are a conversational intelligence tool that does this, it's hey, we're a conversational intelligence tool. And here's a breakdown of every persona that's going to be in this deal why they care about this, what the objections they have and why we're the best that's helping to sell them, because those are intricate conversations that sales reps are trained over years to solve your champion does not know how to answer those questions.
Mark:Their job is not selling conversational intelligence platform, is being a project manager or whatever it is, and so being able to arm them, because you don't know what objections come up.
Mark:So that's why I always say like, let's do it to the lowest common denominator. Like, for example, for us. One of the highest performing pieces of content that we have that we just took for granted, is why can't I do this in my CRM? Like for us? We're like oh, it's a digital sales room, it's client phasing, of course, but there are stakeholders that aren't that familiar or that savvy. So, literally, literally, one of the highest pieces of engagement is here's why you can't do this in a CRM. Here's breaking down, and we have like a whole deck around that and that gets shared across the team, and so there's little things like this that could be stopping deals from moving forward. Right.
Gary:Yeah, I have to cause. I was literally thinking about this earlier. I was going to bring it up and now I have to bring it up.
Gary:So, uh, jen Allen Knuth just posted um, every deal has a, Bob is the way she described it, which is you know it is. It is the um. Okay, well, I, I'm actually not debating that your solution is better than what we're currently using or what have you. But now I've got all this change, or, you know, I've got all of this, this downstream stuff that I have to think about, and the more I think about all those things that need to happen for us to get to the promised land. It's like you know what? It's good enough, bob's good enough. You know, and that's a similar. What you bring up is similar, which is why can't this? Is we already paying for Salesforce? Why can't we just do it here? Just get creative with the fields in Salesforce and go figure that out as an example. So it's back to your point of pro, that's that net would never get caught in a sales stage. Right, it's like the sales, the process is. Make sure you overcome the inevitable objection about the good enough solution. Right, we all know it exists, but we don't like market as a stage, but now it's actually. That is a really important aspect of the buyer's buying process is actually answering all those inevitable questions that you know are there.
Gary:If you're using these tools, somebody in your organization who probably writes the checkbook, is going to ask can't we just do this with X?
Gary:And I think that's what we're seeing more and more, particularly with. That's why this whole idea of we're moving from an era where we subdivided workflows and we just kept dividing and subdividing and subdividing into more and more specific point solutions, and in an era where new logo growth is very, very hard, every company everywhere is now looking to their left and their right in the workflow and starting to add to solve the problem of the job to be done. And so just think about the sheer act of sending email in an organization. How many tools do you have that send email Like? You're paying for email like 57 times and and it's because we just keep you know. So that's therefore you know when in in almost any tool that you sell, that there is something in there today that someone somewhere who isn't as close to the situation is going to like don't we already pay for this? Doesn't this, or? You know, I thought this. I just saw this new product release from this company and they said they have it.
Mark:I love what you said. Right, if we take let's take that one step further, right? Not only do we have these tools, but someone on that buying committee probably rallied for that tool a year ago to get implemented. And now they have an ego because and they don't want to look bad in front of their peers because they helped push for this, but now there's a gap that's not being addressed by that, because either they didn't get the full picture or they bought too quickly or whatever reason, right? Or maybe you know sales reps said something happens, but whatever reason it is. So there's all these other little things, and that's why I keep going back to that Like what is the value for each individual person? Why is it important and why is it 10 times better than the current solution? Because I'm sure we've all read Joel's effect, but most decisions end in no decision.
Mark:Right and it's because that gap is not covered, and so I think that's that's our job as sellers, ultimately.
Gary:Yep, Yep. So, Mark, let's, so let's cover some more ground on recap then. So, as we think about that universe you've kind of talked about a little bit, but the first is around. Well, first of all, we need to make sure that we have a deal process that actually reflects how the buyer buys and anticipates what they're going to need and what questions they need answered right. Number one. Number two is that we have a system that actually tells us whether or not we're doing those things, and and now there's also some coaching and proactivity into that, right, so let's kind of pause there. That is an aspect of the recap platform that that I think has evolved quite a bit since you first started, right?
Mark:Yeah Well, I'm really excited. So over the next let's call it 60 days, we have essentially a slew of AI features coming out that are going to help kind of take this to the next level. But when I think about, like, the maturity of not only the recap platform but the space and how customers have used us, the lowest common denominator for that is really just content consolidation. And I think what I think a lot of vendors just haven't either matured to or are missing, is that there's this overwhelming focus on content, and this is why you see the high spots and the seismics. They all add on quote unquote digital sales rooms to their platform.
Mark:I don't believe that you could just add on collaboration as an afterthought, because it has to be core to what you're doing as a value. I think it's disrespectful to the problem, in my opinion, and that's why those platforms are like some of our biggest lead sources, because it's a really great entry point to it. I think content's important, but I don't know about you guys, but I've never won a deal because I shared the right PDF Right. I wish it was that simple. I have won and lost deals based on the process that I did and the way that I was able to arm my champions and guide them and be a trusted resource. And back to your jolt effect reference.
Gary:Sorry to interrupt, mark is that in many cases, sharing that content can actually hurt you? Yes, because I'm like. I'm not going to go through an eight-page PDF to figure out the answer, especially if I'm not the champion, I'm just like you know, it's like pass-fail.
Mark:Yeah, let me just flood you with 25 more case studies and white papers, when that's not really the true objection here.
Andy:Right.
Mark:And so you know, for us, we evolved away from content and more focused towards the process, and the next evolution is towards guidance.
Andy:And I think there's two levels to it.
Mark:One is on the buyer how do we help coach buyers on what to do, what content they should be looking at and what's helpful for others? Right, and so we have a lot of data on that. And then the other piece is helping reps. How do we bridge the gap between a brand new rep that just joined maybe they're 50 percent um optimization versus someone that's been there for four years and is in president's club? That gap, that's the biggest lever that leaders can pull. It's not getting your eight players to a plus, right, it's getting your b, c, d, your average rep to B plus or A minus. And so so much of what we're doing is helping. How can Recap just be a sales coach that's on their shoulder every single time? That helps them automate the admin work so they don't have to fill in their CRM. We do that automatically for them so we can help guide them on what questions to ask in their next call. And a lot of this information is in different sources, but it's not in the moment.
Gary:Right.
Mark:Right and like we're trying to listen, we're trying to be presentable, where we're thinking about what we're going to have for lunch. It needs to be right there and it needs to be centralized and it needs to be in a client facing way.
Gary:Yeah, so go back to your collaboration piece there, Cause I think you're right. That's the other piece of this. That's interesting is before it was effectively. We're just going to better organize the content that the buyer needs, so it's not wrapped up in various emails and individual downloads and web links and things like that Just make it easier for them to see the content that they need. But back to your point of like.
Gary:Unfortunately, sellers and marketers like well, if a little bit of content is good, then a lot is great, so I'm just going to keep stuffing that thing full until I can, you know, bludgeon you to death to get you to buy, um, but now you've got this, this idea, that can I actually interact with this thing and pull like, request certain things and, uh, you know, instead of being an email, actually make it a effectively it effectively a mini chat room, if you will Talk a little bit about that and how that's evolved.
Mark:Yeah, absolutely so. That's actually one of the things we're working on right now where we're able to help guide the buyers. When you open up a DocuSign, for example, it helps guide you onto the pages that you need to go and sign. Now, that's a very unsmart way of doing it, but instead of you're coming in to a room, instead of having just a prettier version of a Google Drive which is what I think a lot of digital sales rooms do wrong, that doesn't help anyone being able to say, hey, what are you trying to solve? Hey, you might be legal.
Mark:What are the objections that you're hoping to overcome? Great, oh, you want to learn this? Here we're going to point you. One of the things that we're thinking about is we have data on who's visiting the workspaces and once we start layering that in with historic data, we can say, okay, gary is head of IT. Head of IT traditionally looks at these pieces of content. Let's guide them to that piece of the content, and there's a lot of really unique ways that we can do that to help drive the buyer. So, because one of the things that we've seen from early testing is that customers are so much more open to being truthful with a chatbot than they are with a human being.
Mark:Because, they have to keep their cards close to their chest. They know that they're going to have to negotiate, but with a chatbot you're like, hey, here's my problems, here's what I'm solving this Now.
Gary:Whether yeah, so. So, yeah, you can see the power of that Cause if you imagine, um, you know, I think I mentioned in a previous conversation um, in a really unique twist of fate, I, the business that I ran, was actually part of the CIO organization and so, by osmosis, I got to see a lot of that process, um, and they were responsible for literally every piece of technology in this $250 million company. So you can imagine the amount of technology that that went through that uh that group, um.
Gary:But you take the example that you just provided, like somebody on the team knows that they're. You know somebody somewhere is wanting to buy a piece of software and they've got to go through whatever the you know, typical security review, whatever and um they get. In the past they would have been forwarded a PDF, which of course, doesn't answer any of the questions that they have, because they're very specific. And then they got a scheduled call and they got to get on top of it, right. And so now you have these digital sales rooms, presumably, or buyer enablement space, or whatever we want to call them, and they come in there and, you know, same kind of thing. It's still static information, right. But now imagine you come in and we know that it's Andy and Andy's like hey, andy, welcome.
Gary:You know, I see that you're, you know you're here. Which? Which section would you like to review? I'm here for, you know, data compliance and security, fantastic. What are the most important questions that you have? And and you asked the question it's like here's the answers to those or here's the things I think you need. How you know, to your point, it's like I I don't actually have to read the 300 page MSA or the terms of service, or you know that's legal from that perspective, but I don't. I, you know, I can get detailed questions about the nature of the integration and the data that you pull and all the things that are important to me that, quite frankly, your sales rep couldn't answer.
Mark:Yeah, right, and at scale right. You can every single rep couldn't answer on every single call.
Gary:Right, right, yeah, that's that's. That's part of the excitement. I agree it's like it's scary and exciting at the same time, but but I I agree with you, though I think you're going to have, you're going to have lots of situations there where it's there's going to be the application of AI for the benefit of the seller versus thinking about it's there to benefit the buyer.
Mark:Yeah Well, I think you have to. You have to do a toe in each in each pond, right, like you have to do a little bit of both, cause if you over-optimize on one like, at the end of the day the flip side to being focused on buyers is you still need to control the things that you can control Right. And so that's where the sales process portion comes in, and that's why I always keep saying, like the best experience we could deliver is a really tightly run process. Like I always compare and I say you know, when we onboard a new customer, or even through discovery, I say listen, if you were to judge your sales process and your buyer journey on a scale from McDonald's to Michelin star, what would it be? And most end up somewhere with an Outback Steakhouse which is delicious, right. Or, hey, some of my reps do a Michelin star experience, some of them are doing a Wendy's right.
Mark:Like it needs to be tailored like and it needs to be thoughtful and like in the future. We're certainly not there today because we're limited by technology, but not only can the room guide you, but I think the room first off, it's just a wrapper for all of these experiences and the content and consolidation, right. It's literally just the vehicle that should be mutable and it should change based on who's looking at it and eventually, the content should actually be generated based on who's looking at it and eventually, the content should actually be generated based on who's looking at it. So not only do I have a PDF, I have a PDF tailored for Andy because of these previous conversations that marketing has approved, and this is the foundation, right. We're making sure that the models aren't hallucinating or anything like that.
Gary:We're not there today, but that's the future, right yep, well, as you know, we could go on for another hour and a half here, likewise.
Gary:As, as Tiana said earlier, we need to land this plane. Um, but no, this was uh, it is. It is really exciting. I think you know the way that you have started. It's interesting how you, you know you start, we are, we all started with the same job to be done and now it's just how we solve. That job has changed a little bit, but at its core, it really is around enabling the buyer to buy.
Gary:I mean, go all again. I go all the way back to your, your, it's easy to look at that from a sales perspective, a sales rep perspective, early on and say, man, they're, they have mutual action plans and they have, you know this, this rigorous process that they won through. And that's what I need to go replicate and it's like well, why did it work? Why did that work? It's because the buyers want to know what to expect and you're giving them a way to buy and you're making sure that you give them what they need to buy and to buy with confidence. I'm like it's been in place forever. It's just we didn't call it that. We called it sales, and now I think it is definitely you know, just because what we talked about the ability to anticipate what is happening on the other, to know and to anticipate what's happening on the other side, and then and then the ability to facilitate that. There's a lot of different ways to solve that problems. But yeah, we're excited about the way you guys are going after it.
Mark:Thank you, we are too Sorry, andy.
Andy:No, it's very thoughtful, I just threw in there.
Mark:Appreciate it. I mean, listen, we've had a good amount of time to kind of refine our hypothesis right, and what's funny is like when we first started, we our first deck that we ever raised capital with was building the operating system of, you know, sales and revenue. But internally we're like, oh, that's going to be a 10 or 20 year goal. We're not going to be able to get there. Year and a half, two years ago, things shifted when, all of a sudden, ai hit the market and we're like whoa, we can actually make this thing a reality very soon. And we're not even scratching the surface. In some of the use cases and as tech gets faster, there's real-time enablement, there's real-time guidance. There's a lot of things that we're going to be able to do here over the next couple of years that we're just so thankful. For me, this started out literally as just a side project that I paid some contractors to build for my team initially, and now we're thankfully, know, thankfully. I like the bleeding edge of this. It's a. It's a fun journey, that's for sure.
Gary:Yeah, that's well. Congrats for the perseverance too, cause we know it's not easy. So keep fighting the good fight. Thank you, mark. Where can people find you, learn more about you and recapped.
Mark:Yeah, for sure, feel free to email me directly. Just mark at recappedio. You could check out recapio orcom. We bought that recently. Uh, as well as linkedin. You know I try and post every other day or so that's how I found your guys content love it. Um, yeah, it pretty easy to find yeah, awesome.
Gary:Well, we will put all those links in the show note as well. But Mark really appreciate it. Look forward to, you know, continuing the conversation and diving more into this as this evolves. So thank you for spending time with us.
Mark:It's my pleasure.
Gary:Thank you, guys for having me All right. Until next week, go be a pro. Bye. Thank you for tuning in to GTM Pro, where you become the pro. We're here to foster your growth as a revenue leader, offering the insights you need to thrive. For further guidance, visit gtmproco and continue your path to becoming board ready with us. Share this journey, subscribe, engage and elevate your go-to-market skills. Until next time, go be a pro.