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- [00:01]
Kevin Dunn
Hi folks. Welcome to agency unfiltered, the HubSpot Solutions Partner Podcast. I'm your host Kevin Dunn and Agency Unfiltered is a weekly web series and podcast that interviews the owners, founders and executives of agencies and services providers from around the world about whatever it takes to grow and scale. This week's guest and our first guest after inbound 2023 is Matt Bolian, CEO and co founder of SuperD. Matt brings his unique perspective from both the solutions partner and now App partner side on why managed services agencies and other people centric organizations can be difficult to scale. Matt shares why a scaling strategy is so important, how partners should be prioritizing the pathways towards scale and what opportunities are in front of those partners who are able to leverage the right systems, teams, processes and technologies for scale. And we then hone in on the idea of tech enabled partners where technology across the app ecosystem, including tools like SuperD, can enable and support the growth of partners, including help with quick and efficient deployments for their clients, post implementation adoption and usage from frontline users and collaborative administration across the platform. Agency Unfiltered begins right now. Hey Matt, welcome to the podcast Agency Unfiltered. How we doing?
- [01:42]
Matt Bolian
Fabulous. Can I call you kd? It's fabulous to be here. Kd. Thank you for, thank you for the invite.
- [01:48]
Kevin Dunn
Do you go by mb, MDB and db? Oh you got the middle.
- [01:53]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [01:54]
Kevin Dunn
Are you, are you an acronym email sign off guy? Like initials? Like are you MDB when you sign off on emails?
- [02:02]
Matt Bolian
No, and that's only, only because we have a client and they're called mdb. So.
- [02:08]
Kevin Dunn
All right, so I can see why that would be very confusing. So I get a call there. Yeah, there's, there's some people out there that. Yep, my default stance is initials on my sign off and you know, I'm not one of those people but know I respect that energy when I see it.
- [02:19]
Matt Bolian
I'm just, I'm Matt right now or I go by Hero, like hero names. So I go big bad Reds, which is my video game name.
- [02:27]
Kevin Dunn
Love that. Gamer tag.
- [02:29]
Matt Bolian
Gamer tag. Yeah.
- [02:31]
Kevin Dunn
Well Matt, you know I think few things that we're going to get into today, I think maybe the primary, the real entree of the, the discussion today is going to be scaling, you know, managed services organizations. And we know like humans, right, Human led people led organizations historically relatively difficult to scale. And so I think we'll get into the role technology could play in that. But I also know like business venture wise, you know, we've seen Superd and we've seen some of the things play out, the connection with obviously Rev Partners. And so I think there's a couple different things we can talk about. And so if that feels good to you, maybe the best place to dive in is actually the business side of things. Right. So familiar, clearly with RevPartners. Obviously you've been a guest on the podcast before, but now with the SuperD brand, talk to me a little bit about the genesis of this idea, what it looks like and like, you know, you've made that shift and that pivot. I'd love to learn more of the history behind it.
- [03:32]
Matt Bolian
Yeah. So I, number one, I come from a SaaS background and when we got into HubSpot and I say we, Brendan Tolson and I, my co founder of our partners, when we got into HubSpot, both of us come from SaaS. And so a lot of our first clients were all B2B SaaS companies. But we got in it. We were like, hey, we. This ecosystem is about to explode. So we did it. It was like, hey, we doing sales. We knew salesforce. I knew in Dynamics and we were making a decision, it was really between those two and we accidentally found HubSpot. I saw it. Hey, this is the future. So we said it, but like this is a future but we don't know anything about it. So you can't. Rather than like doing customer research and we was like, let's build a service company. Sure, let's build a service company. Bit naive, but that's what we said.
- [04:21]
Kevin Dunn
No, the system that everything that we'll figure it out. It's just, yeah, let's offer some managed services and go from there.
- [04:25]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, yeah, let's figure it out. And we're going to run everything like SaaS. Right. And so from the beginning we're like, we're going to never do anyway. So let's understand the problem sets that customers inside HubSpot spot are running into. Let's understand this ecosystem so we can actually play. So when we, we did that and going through Rev Partners and doing the trying to. We really wanted to be elite really quick so that we could understand the use case have enterprise customer sets. And, and then we found some like we, we thought we found a problem and that's where super, the genesis of super is from. Hey, let's do a service company. Let's understand this. Let's find a problem and. And then we're going to run. We're going to create a distinct separate company that maybe even will run antagonistically against our service company. And so we're not worried about like so we, we create a product that helps service companies scale and we're like the biggest problem is we need to change the ecosystem itself and increase capacity of the HubSpot so we can go up market. And there's like we found this adoption issue but super quite frankly make could technically hurt rep partners. And so like we made this like we're so, so when we did it we needed a distinct company because we don't want to dilute the the goals. We have two separate goals and I'm now running Super 100% don't work in rep bar. So you think of the genesis. It's this happens in the Atlassian marketplace, this happens in the Salesforce marketplace and this has happened in any marketplace. You start a service company and that service company starts to spawn solutions and you'll start seeing more of those for app. App partners that find these problem sets will start to create more and more solutions.
- [06:07]
Kevin Dunn
Yep. No, I think that's a fair hypothesis. And then Matt, you have to know, right Agency unfiltered, no free advertising here. We call them the competitors, the incumbents. But you know, we're not just out here name dropping any other, you know, systems out there in the ethos. Right. But hey, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole necessarily but this was interesting. We and then you almost hit it but then you know, you directly answer my question which is fair but you're like hey, we're going to do a services organization but we want to run it like a B2B SaaS company. What does that mean? How would what does that change about running that services business?
- [06:35]
Matt Bolian
That's three. It's three set. That's three principles. Principle number one is we do, we do not charge hours. So everything we do is going to be run as a retainer. We use the word retainer agency. We never, we actually don't use the word retainer, we use the word subscription. So that's number one. Number two is we will create a art. We don't have a delivery hand, we have a product hand. So when we think about our delivery we actually structured it like a product. And so we have, we actually have a product engineer team that standardized everything from the very, very, very beginning. And then number three is when, if you do subscriptions, when you think about finance, it's all about the evaluation of the company. And then you have, and how you do. We have upgrades, we have downgrades, we have contract, expansion, contract. And so like how we run CS is is also explicitly about how mimicking SaaS companies. So when you think about this too it's like how we structured the company and assign assets and and people reflects how a SaaS company would run a subscription business. And so that's what we did.
- [07:46]
Kevin Dunn
No, that's. Yeah, it's good to know versus retainer delivery versus product. Love that note too about product engineering kind of scoping out and scaling those processes. But then to your point the additional the dimensions in which account expansion growth can occur. Love that.
- [08:00]
Matt Bolian
Correct.
- [08:01]
Kevin Dunn
So all right, so you had mentioned hey, we're here to solve the problem and it sounds like with super the problem was scaling managed services orgs or agencies. Right. Like those people centric type businesses. So that's the problem. What's your interpretation as to why that is such a prevalent problem?
- [08:18]
Matt Bolian
I'm going to change. That's one half the problem. So the problem is a CRM is a product but we have holistically as a industry of CRM implementations even in Salesforce or Dynamics or if you go way back, SAP it is we treat them as implementations and they were distinct discrete starts and finishes. I am PMP like you two. Kevin. So like I mean so I get it but like that's an issue and the reason it's an issue is because it's actually a CRM is a living organism and it's an internal product that's used for end users that has customers and those customers are your sales reps, those customers are your CS, your CSMs. And if they don't adopt it, your ROI on the system is zero.
- [09:09]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah.
- [09:09]
Matt Bolian
And so we go through a, it's just like the website. Like you go through these, you need a growth driven CRM. So the real problem, how do we sustain and training. How do you systemically change how adoption's done on a CRM?
- [09:24]
Kevin Dunn
Yep. So I think the fundamental framing of CRM in the implementation as being a finite start and stop versus all right. How do we have a more strategic approach to ensure frontline user adoption? Right. And that's going to yield the success overall. So like that's, that's the other half of the problem is I hear yeah.
- [09:40]
Matt Bolian
Every new process that's added, whether it's a lead routing process is a feature set that must be adopted or the data inside the system's not accurate and you can't use it and then you create an Excel spreadsheet. So the question is how. The question we're solving first is how do you get adoption on A CRM that's so super first answers that question. So the way you do it is you can like you can embed the documentation that you do. You always run these 50 page documentations. Nobody reads it. How do you embed documentation directly inside it? How do you give just in time learning, equipping people where they work, when they work. That's what super addresses. And what we found is nobody wants to create any of that documentation.
- [10:27]
Kevin Dunn
Maybe it's not always a thing about want. It's who has the time, the bandwidth, the space, the capacity. Right.
- [10:32]
Matt Bolian
It's yeah, yes. And, and we feel like in fans, like who's doing this in the HubSpot ecosystem? It's partners. Partners are the bread and butter. Partners are the like are what? And partners are so important for the HubSpot. And so we, we, we, we, we created the ability to digital adoption but then went hey, what do partners need to be able to do to do implementations and what do they need to be able to do to create quick deploys and then create adoption and be an admin easier. And so answering that question together is what super ended up doing.
- [11:06]
Kevin Dunn
And so if I think about it more broadly too, it's like okay, the problem's twofold. Scaling these types of people, centric orgs and then the framing in long term utilization like growth driven CRM adoption, those are the two halves. We're here to say that there are some technical like technology can be applied to solve these problems. Are there other considerations? Right. So sure, for frontline user adoption, contextualized training. Right. Surfacing resources in the location in which they're running into issues. But is there like a, is there a broader philosophy on like technology in and of itself? Super. Being one of those that's like, you know, I guess the question I'm asked is how should I be looking to solution the problem with technology more broadly? Right. Knowing that obviously we, we can see here that super is an example of, of a technology solution that does that.
- [12:00]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, you're, I like how you're saying this and it goes to this, the bigger, broader problem for partners and you're hit, you're hitting it is this idea of a service, how do, how do you scale a business? And partners in HubSpot are fundamentally people. Like you have to recreate people and you have to recreate processes and you have to teach them. And so the question is, are there tools? And we think about this when we're doing revpartners, are there tools where we can get really good at training, get really good at implementing that will decrease risk, increase capacity and increase margin. And anything that does that is what you start to call tech enabled. And it increases the valuation of your company because it's not people centric. And so what we're thinking about for partners is how do we increase the value of the company we're running and anything that does that mean, it really mean decrease risk of people and increase the ability to print money. Right. And so it's like print out print results.
- [13:00]
Kevin Dunn
And so it's a categorization. Right. Like these businesses partners is the example here. Like they should be the category like the layers tech enable. They want to be a tech enablement tech enabled firm. Right. Because to your point, all right, that's an uptick in capacity, a widening of margins and then overall business value can climb there too. Yeah.
- [13:20]
Matt Bolian
Yes. And there will. Yes. And so that's the answer the problem we were trying to do. And so that is. And so when we were building Rev Partners, the question we were asking, hey, how what tool would we want that would help, that would help us scale if we were starting over all again.
- [13:39]
Kevin Dunn
Sure. Yep.
- [13:40]
Matt Bolian
And that.
- [13:40]
Kevin Dunn
Well, and I can imagine, yeah. Your experience with Red Partners, we can now see why that would help inform what the, what the product is that you want to develop. Right. It's like, okay, we start as services, feel the pain acutely and that's going to inform a solution that we know, you know, would solve a major problem that we ourselves dealt with.
- [13:56]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, right. Yeah. And this is, and I know you're probably going here, but like you think about the HubSpot ecosystem is we have to have tech enabled partners as, as, as the demand increases for HubSpot. Right.
- [14:10]
Kevin Dunn
And so yes, I want to touch on the, the ecosystem directionally and we'll get there in a moment. I think to kind of tease out tech enabled or what tech enablement looks like for partners. I think you hit on a couple of them. All right, how do we find tech to efficiency gains in training and implementation. Like what are those subcategories? Where else does does tech enablement occur?
- [14:31]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, tech enablement often refers when you're talking about it as I have a proprietary piece of technology that allows me to compete against my competitors faster. Like that's what, that's what tech enabled. So when you think about like that is developing tools internally, often that is a, hey, I have a way to track attribution that's done outside of HubSpot. That's totally mine because I can do it it better and build It So it's like those type of softwares the way I, the way we did at RevPartners, we didn't build anything like that. We used. We just looked at systems that could help us move faster. So for us that is loom video first. Everything we do is a loom video that is for us to do. Like how are we building reports initially? We start with data box. Right. We did everything in data box that allows us to move faster. So it's those type. How are you building those systematically into your implementation so you can systemize and standardize and thus move faster?
- [15:34]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah, so it's really, it's really kind of stack. It's literally the partner, the tech stack for your business. Right. And so understanding the apps that are going to unlock. Right. The these streamlined processes or improved process, improved outputs, etc. Yeah, loom, right, yeah, we're talking tech stack.
- [15:51]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, yeah. And a lot of partners in the past will do something like I, I have a integration in the marketplace that's specific to NetSuite. I created it, I own it, and I am the now the partner that, the expert partner in NetSuite and it'll be a public in the marketplace. But it's also. That's like becoming tech enabled, right?
- [16:09]
Kevin Dunn
I guess. Let me ask you this, right? So it's like, sure, I'm a partner and I could list the four apps, the text, the tech that my team uses and here are all the use cases for that. How is saying I'm tech enabled different than being able to cite what tech stack looks like across my workflows and processes? You know what I mean?
- [16:29]
Matt Bolian
So like, yeah, and I use the word tech. From this perspective, tech enabled would hold up to the standard of a outside investor coming in, looking, and they're asking the question, can I, if I remove the founders, can I guarantee the success of the services being implemented over and over again? So the more tech enabled you are, the easier the question is to answer that.
- [16:57]
Kevin Dunn
Yes.
- [16:57]
Matt Bolian
So do I do all my. Do you have, do you have a processing Tech enabled, can be process enabled Almost. Right. Do you have a process that leverages tech that makes you move faster? And it could be a proprietary combination of public technology.
- [17:12]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah. All right, that makes sense. Yeah. It really comes down to. All right, letting the machine work itself. To your point, founder removal. Right. And then also just over and over again, Consistency. Right. Those two things, if you can answer that question, that's the difference between maybe just. Yeah, good. Tech stack versus I am a tech enabled business.
- [17:28]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, correct.
- [17:30]
Kevin Dunn
Cool. So you Mentioned the ecosystem. Let's go into that this mentality. Right. Is this you know, synonymous? You know, are they synonyms? Right. Building a tech enabled organization and moving where the ecosystem is going in HubSpot. Right. We're talking about moving from traditional, I don't know, inbound marketing agency services to technical consulting and systems integration and solutions architecture design. Is tech enabled firms and tech consultants, is that synonyms? Does one yield the other? I guess the question is the intersection or the overlap of these two concepts.
- [18:08]
Matt Bolian
I think you could do be inbound focused and I'm going to define inbound as providing unknown like awareness to conversion into like coming into a funnel. You could be tech enabled and do inbound marketing and you can be very technical just doing about marketing. So I Tech enabled is different and it more means does your business model have a higher margin than others and tech enabled is most best represented by the margin of the business and it can be reflected in your gross margin and your cost of goods sold versus and it doesn't necessarily in the profit but your EBITDA reflect an ebitda.
- [18:51]
Kevin Dunn
So nope. That's helpful. Yep. So it's, it's, it doesn't have to be, you know, a sticking point on the types of services this business is either offering or hoping to offer. Right. Across the spectrum. If we're going to take the HubSpot ecosystem as a reference point here, regardless of service offering and where it fits in.
- [19:10]
Matt Bolian
Regardless.
- [19:11]
Kevin Dunn
Right. You still have the opportunity to be a tech enabled firm and that you know is a business model that would yield greater margins and have a higher value. Right. To the ticket ticketed price for the business.
- [19:23]
Matt Bolian
Yeah. And I think technology will have to justify this is like does this piece of technology and the question is it's not roi, it's does this affect my margin? Because it's a deeper question often.
- [19:40]
Kevin Dunn
Now you know, for the partner program at HubSpot. Right. I think you know there's, there's fairly conversations had about team size in the role that plays in finding your corner of the partner program or like finding success. Right. I don't know if that's, you know it should be a one to one correlation but I know it's, it comes up and so where does establishing you know a tech enabled process or operation, how does that impact team size or team growth? Are tech enabled firms allowed to grow teams? Find more, you know, success with the existing team size that they have? You know, I guess where's the, where's the connection there?
- [20:27]
Matt Bolian
Yeah. A tech enabled firm. So let Me talk traditionally because just to put this in context is I'm asked the question differently. Can a could a solutions partner last year one person starting off could they be a tech enabled service? The answer is not really. Right. Like you are doing the work and so tech enabled again it's all about margin. It's not about per people and so tech enabled means I don't need a larger team but I can have more revenue. So it really starts at your first three to four to five hires and it's that when you're creating your processes. Am I And it's that problem set for a HubSpot partner is it's really really hard to answer because there's nothing that truly makes you a tech enabled Service Implementing Hubs HubSpot Sure. You have like there's no way someone's got to go in that system and make those workflows.
- [21:32]
Kevin Dunn
Yep.
- [21:32]
Matt Bolian
Someone's got to go in that system and create those properties. Yeah. So just as a point hope that answer your question.
- [21:40]
Kevin Dunn
I think it does. Right. I think really in the you've. You've revisited the point. So it's like it's. It's the helpful distinction here. Right. And it's all about margin. Right. And so sure you know teams can be looking to grow or but at the end of the day right. Being tech enabled means that you will have improved margins with the existing team and system that you have today. Right. Regardless of what your goals are to team size other otherwise it's going to.
- [22:05]
Matt Bolian
Improve the profitability of your specifically gross margin. So your cogs for delivering your cost of goods sold for delivering are lower and you may this is you may a technical service may be over then invest in research and development on a product team that's building into their tech enabled service that make that continuously drives lower their mar or increases their cost of goods served. So that's what we it's just an example.
- [22:34]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah. So if I'm tuning in again. Yep. I have a tech stack here the tools I use and for what but I don't know if I can definitively answer that question. I think you would pose you know if we remove the founders are we going to see you know guaranteed success sustained so how do I make that transition and you know obviously reach that tech enabled label.
- [22:55]
Matt Bolian
Yeah I would I'm going to answer this in the HubSpot the HubSpot ecosystem or and then as a also a partner is partners have three there's like three fundamental thing or maybe four that founders are doing. Number one can I repeatedly create demand which is marketing. So founder led marketing. I was doing that for RPA as an example. I was a founder led marketer where I was like the face in doing marketing. I'm not doing that anymore. So can I take that out and still do it? Can I repeatedly collect demand? That's just sales. Can you have a sales process that people are following that you can actually collect the demand? Can I repeatedly deliver the demand that was sold which is delivery and then can I ensure it's paid which is finance? So you have those four, you have these four places and you could call those the fundamentals of revops, right? But you have those four places in each one of those you need to be able to say yes to without a founder being there.
- [23:58]
Kevin Dunn
You go ahead, go ahead.
- [23:59]
Matt Bolian
Yeah. Now tech enabled, you don't need to be tech enabled to any of those. There are large organizations, I mean smartbucks, like look at them, they don't, they don't have the founder doing those things and they're executing very well. You do not need to be tech enabled to build a large company. What tech enabled allows you to do it allows you to grow faster, more profitably with less risk. So the question then becomes are there things? And usually tech enabled is, is not on sales. So think about like a SaaS company. SaaS companies have expensive sales, expensive marketing, but where do they win? It's in their products. Their products often run at 85% to 90 like percent margin. So they can, they can afford large organizations that are focused on sales and marketing, creating demand and collecting demand and then cs. So if I was focusing on tech enabled, it's you need to get delivery of your product and the tech that allows you to do that portion well, that's where you experience margin.
- [25:00]
Kevin Dunn
And so regardless of HubSpot ecosystem participation or not, tech enabled means more profit, faster growth and less risk. Right now those in and of themselves are going to be beneficial for an organization and reason as to why they would want to become tech enabled. Are there additive opportunities available if you achieve that tech enable bid status in the HubSpot ecosystem specifically? Right. Like is there a HubSpot ecosystem spin to this opportunities wise for solutions partners?
- [25:33]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, I'm gonna just side note, here's a question. Is using HubSpot mean your tech enabled? The answer is no, period. But it makes you process enabled. And that, that is what you think about like why does a company buy HubSpot? Just a point. Like they are buying something that's standardized on. So what they can get Sold they can increase value because they have a repeatable process to take founders out. Okay. And repeated.
- [25:59]
Kevin Dunn
And I bet you could say I didn't mean to cut you off here Matt but like you could say that too for any system. Right? Like oh, you know, we use data box for our reporting. Does that make you tech? We use loom for our you know, video first engagement. Does that make you check the existence? No. Obviously the HubSpot CRM platform is a little wider than that. But still like that point could be made. Right.
- [26:17]
Matt Bolian
Regardless it's how it's used often tech in the HubSpot ecosystem and I'm going to talk. This is why I think it's important to focus on delivery. So can you make sales more efficient and effective? Yes. Can you make your website and your marketing ops more efficient and effective? Yes. Can you make CS more efficient effective? Yes. Can you make delivery more efficient effective? Yes. It's a project management system but then it ends there or reporting system. But someone still has to configure HubSpot in the HubSpot ecosystem. This is the problem we went to go fix out for super and like you need sandbox to production. You can't do it today. You have to copy workflows and list and forms and emails and sequences and you can't even super push a button move it. Done. I won't re. I won't. I have a very specific way I'm doing real estate or manufacturing and I know that industry in and out because I've done it and I have a specific pipeline with training built in. Push a. But like you can now take that and it used to be 25 to 40 hours of work becomes 15 seconds.
- [27:21]
Kevin Dunn
That's cloned like niche designed template, verticalized template that you have in one portal we know works well now you're just dragging it across with a click of a button.
- [27:31]
Matt Bolian
Correct. And it is where you can now scale frameworks and ideas, not people. And that's the thing tackling. And when you think about SaaS products, what, what how they build and why they build it's all that is what you do. You build something that allows you have margin on delivery and HubSpot hasn't had be able to do that before.
- [28:00]
Kevin Dunn
Should partners be thinking about tech enablement, consultancy or like what's the servicing opportunity here to help other businesses, their customers, their prospects, their clients become tech enabled themselves. Right. What's this? What's the service offering the service packaging around that?
- [28:16]
Matt Bolian
Yeah, this is the movement and you see this, this will be with when you have honestly every elite partner in some platinum, every partner, you're starting to see these apps come out, right. This even have HubSpot Ventures putting something in happily which has a service for helping partners build apps. It is find something that you've seen over and over again, a problem you solved and then create an app and then institutionalize that into your delivery mechanism and then you're tech enabled. It could be a Net suite integration for HubSpot. It could be integration specific, it could be industry specific lead routing for field services. It could be whatever. Like you start to see those, you can start to build an app and, or choose other people's apps and, and build your service around those things. And you, and you're increasing, you're increasing margin. Right? Because you don't need people to do those. You now have apps that you understand that you've either built or you're leveraging.
- [29:20]
Kevin Dunn
I mean we know the app because. So first off, my hypothesis is clearly it's easier said than done to go build app A right like tall order, tall ask where do I even start to hire the right folks to allow me to do that? And so you may be, you know, all right, the quicker path towards technical is to seek out, you know, the apps in the ecosystem today and the kind of second half of that recommendation knowing it's, I don't know, thousand plus, 1300, 1500 apps. How am I navigating that? And you know, what are the criteria I should be looking for considerations to, to find the right, you know, corner of that. Right?
- [29:56]
Matt Bolian
Oh yeah. Here's how I just give you how we approach our rep partners and there this is some philosophical things. And I'm not saying the ripe. This is just how we did it.
- [30:08]
Kevin Dunn
Sure.
- [30:09]
Matt Bolian
So number one is to, to build something around a product, you must know it in and out. So I'm a big believer. And go go deeper with fewer. Okay. So you know, you have to just. So number one, you're picking less and going deeper and that could be. I am the HubSpot gong person.
- [30:30]
Kevin Dunn
Right.
- [30:30]
Matt Bolian
I'm the HubSpot. There is a entire agency. An entire agency and they literally called. I do Zoom Info and HubSpot. Right. So go like find like go. So that's number one, just philosophical. Number two, how do you find those criteria? So one of the things I always looked at, the first question I ask because as a business, what's the, what's the most valuable part of a business? It is money that can be guaranteed. It has multiples on it. So if I have a reoccurring revenue stream, it is, it is. Depending on what the environment is, it can be 3x to 15x that that revenue stream. So the question I always ask is what is your partner program and do I get reoccurring revenue? And for me it was yes.
- [31:15]
Kevin Dunn
No.
- [31:15]
Matt Bolian
If you say no, I'm not entering your partner program.
- [31:18]
Kevin Dunn
Yep. So I mean, yeah. All right, what's. How am I filtering my list? Yeah. Revenue generated, you know, revenue share of partner, you know, affiliate, whatever. Right. Like the existence of that is going to be the starting point. That's your philosophy.
- [31:33]
Matt Bolian
Yep, yep. And then number three is will this internally if adopted, what is the percentage it will and if it's hypothetical, like how many hours will it save? How many hours will it save when I am delivering a solution and just think about it that way. And so you just like how much is my per. If it's a hundred dollars an hour that we know we or $50 an hour in cost and it saves me 10 hours, it's worth $500. And then it's scaled over a certain amount of times and you do those three things, it's really easy to do. Or just those two things. Do you have reoccurring revenue and how many hours will it save? And then pick one or two of those.
- [32:09]
Kevin Dunn
Yep. And I can imagine again you want to sort from the top how many hours it'll save. It really it's just another way to look at how much value will this bring right. This tool if installed to the right people in the right place. And so yeah, you want to sign up for one that you know, has citable value and impact, has revenue sharing opportunities. But then I think the overall guidance too is deeper with fewer. Right. Something you know, it's not unlike you know, niches and riches. Right, Riches and niches.
- [32:34]
Matt Bolian
Yes. And a good point of that is. And don't what I wouldn't get caught up in is are you going to give me leads? Are you going to do coco marketing with me? Here's the reality. Um, being, being a thing that helps people, being like that helps people come. Tech enabled people spend their time when other people care like you spend time with people when they care about you. So if you demonstrate that you care about them, they will come and they will give you the leads and you'll become a preferred partner and you, they then you'll co marketing will come out and you'll start to get more from that relationship. It's not one plus one equals two. It is One plus one equals three. When you, you go deeper with fewer. It's why you, it's why, it's why people should pick a CRM and get really good at one CRM.
- [33:20]
Kevin Dunn
Yep. So it's almost like, you know, some of the, some of the criteria others may have. Oh, what are the lead gen opportunities? What are the co marketing opportunities? It's more so let that be the fruit that bears, you know, based on your, your commitment and ability to, you know, sell, install, et cetera. So that's the outputs of the relationship, not something you're demanding as you know, the starting the inputs, whatever it might be.
- [33:42]
Matt Bolian
Exactly. Yes.
- [33:43]
Kevin Dunn
No, that's helpful if folks want to, you know, go through this process, identify right through the criteria you've suggested. Okay. I think directionally, you know, this is where I want to hitch my wagon. I think the, the app or the apps that I, you know, we really want to be able to be the experts on. Other than just letting your sales commitment resell implementation of do the talking. Any recommendations on how to establish deeper roots and stronger relationships with them? You know what I mean? Even if leads co marketing like we. You mentioned, those are outputs. But like how do I, how do I really, you know, get entrenched in that organization? Does that make sense?
- [34:27]
Matt Bolian
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to restate the question. How are you attractive to the, to the, to the app partner or the, or the other the tool? Yep. I'm gonna give three things and just because again, this is me experiencing, I'm. You're attracted to people who talk about you and publicly share that you're awesome. So if a good way to get someone's attention is to talk about their solution on LinkedIn, evangelize, be an advocate. Like, be an advocate, number one. Number two, just send them an email saying, hey, I am putting this. Here is the opportunity that I'm now leading you in. And here is something that I'm including you in. Thank you for showing me this. Would you like. And just like period, send that. So keep them informed. And then number three, use them. Don't just be talk or bluster. Like actually use it because they, they have it. They have all the data in the background. They can see who's using what.
- [35:23]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah. Just not an empty purchase, you know, but like you're talking about. Yeah. Demonstrate power usage for yourselves. Drink the champagne. Yep. Yep. Matt, as we come up on time, you'd mentioned, hey, one of the most important considerations is the number of hours it will save. Right. Like when you're validating apps just to quickly revisit super, what function within super or what, you know, what component of it do you find to be the most impactful or valuable? Right. Like what aspect of super specifically, you know, tends to save know users the most time?
- [35:57]
Matt Bolian
I'm gonna say two. There's one that's really easy to understand and what sells it very quickly and there's one that doesn't isn't actualized until after people are in it. So number one is I'm gonna give two sales audit. So think of the time to just build a dashboard. If you have a dashboard or you have a workflow that you've built in more than one instance, you're literally choosing to do it the hard way because often it'll be five hours and that can literally become 15 seconds. And so that people see that and it's, it's quite, it's very easy to think about how much value this brings. That's number one. Number two is we talked about is your CRM is a product and if people adopt it and so how are people adopting, how are they being trained and who is training them and how do you increase the lifetime value which like the LTV thinking like subscription, how you increase the LTV of your clients. It is, they see you all the time. And so if you can use super to like actually implement and you are as part of their implementation in their CRM with experts and they see your loom videos telling you how to create deals, even if you're not working with them anymore, they will come back to you. So it is the. It is. Hey, this is not saving hours, but it's literally going to like. It will save hours in the sense that people actually use the system you created and you don't have to answer Slack messages over and over again. So it's those two ways.
- [37:20]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah, love that. And I mean again, some secondary long term benefits of just having your face, your looms, your content be visible in app always pertinent. Yeah. I mean even if you're not actively engaged with them, like man, that's, that's a continued positioning of yourself as a support thought leader. Right. Available resource.
- [37:37]
Matt Bolian
Love that. Exactly.
- [37:39]
Kevin Dunn
All right man, let's wrap here. Final question. I know you've seen it now normally. What's the strangest part of agency life? I don't know, man. What's the strangest part of tech enabled life?
- [37:48]
Matt Bolian
Right, and the strangest part of tech enabled life is. Oh gosh, you asked me a question. I was already for Kevin.
- [38:01]
Kevin Dunn
Tech enabled life I By design, man, by design. You know what I mean? We got to get the organic reactions to that.
- [38:09]
Matt Bolian
Okay, so I'll say this. So when I was a rising revpartners, I sold a person. You sell a service, you sell a feeling. And so doing your first couple sales is, is not, it's not as hard because you're selling yourself and you are the. You're personally delivering and it's. You're doing services. Selling product is totally different. Especially that going to 0 to 100k AR and 100k to 1 million. It is, it is. You're selling a dream at the beginning which like here's what we're going to do, I promise, you know, get this 90% discount as we do it. Please bear. Early adopter has been weird. So it's like really hard to get started but much faster afterwards where doing service company is really easy to get started and harder to scale. And it's about this, if you don't become tech enabled, it's really hard to scale a people organization where SaaS is fundamentally tech enabled.
- [39:07]
Kevin Dunn
So good, good answer. Yeah, well, well Matt, appreciate you coming on. Obviously always enjoy, you know, hearing what you got going on, learning about super but more broadly too tech enablement, being a tech enabled organization, what that unlocks margins, profits, value and then obviously some servicing and some opportunities ahead of partners as we take a look at the app ecosystem. So a ton here. I appreciate you coming on. It's always good catching up.
- [39:34]
Matt Bolian
Thank you Kevin. Stay awesome, keep doing it big and stay super.
- [39:40]
Kevin Dunn
Thanks Matt and for tuning in. This has been another episode of Agency Unfiltered.
- [40:08]
Matt Bolian
Sam.