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- [00:00]
A
What's the last piece of business you said no to? Right. And the answer to that question is very important to me.
- [00:09]
B
Welcome back to another episode of the Sales Frontlines. As always, this show is brought to you by the Frontlines Tech's go to media platform for all things go to market. We've spent the past four years interviewing 1500 go to market leaders about how companies are bringing their technology to market and scaling their teams. One thing we've heard over and over again is that strategy usually isn't the problem. Execution capacity is. As teams scale market, marketing, sales and cx, they start to hit capacity. They know what needs to be done, but they don't have the bandwidth to execute fast enough. And getting headcount approval isn't easy. That's why we built embedded gtm. We embed full time operators into marketing, sales and CX teams so execution can scale without adding headcount or payroll. It's all powered by our pre vetted network of GTM operators based in Latin America, which means 50 to 70% lower cost without ever sacrificing quality. If execution is a bottleneck for your team and you want to scale without adding headcount, you can learn more Frontlines IO embedded gtm. Mention you're a loyal listener and we'll give you a 10% discount. Now with all that said, let's jump right into today's episode. Today our guest is Corey Kleinbauer. Corey, welcome to the show.
- [01:21]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [01:23]
B
Tell us about the very first product that you ever sold.
- [01:25]
A
Very first product ever sold. Well, I was going door to door for a manufacturer of borosilicate compressed fibers which that is used in compressed air production. So anything using compressed air where the clean air is needed. And there was a company located in Massachusetts where I live that created the borosilicate glass fibers and filtered things down at 99.99% micron. Right. So it was a remarkably durable and strong filter. And I would knock on doors at industrial parks and factories and wok plants and my hard hat's in the other room still after all these years. And I would try to diagnose the manufacturer manufacturing process and then give them a quote and ask for the business. And that was my first real sales job before I got into tech.
- [02:08]
B
Were you instantly hooked?
- [02:10]
A
I loved the idea of trying to synthesize very quickly the uniqueness of a business that was by far the most, and still is the most intoxicating part of the job is every business, although they share a lot of the same Challenges, they'll often have some of the same problems. And when you walk in a production line, when you are looking at from raw material to finish good, this is a process they've slaved over for a long time. And yet you come along and you're trying to find ways to improve it. And then of course, I believed in my product so we could make definable improvements in that. And that kind of put me into that kind of world of like, I want to learn problems. But I'll just tell you this one additional thing. My academic training, my early professional training was in the mental health field. So I came out of college with a full intention in advancing my education and working in the mental health field. And I did do some clinical work at like the VA and other places right out of college. And I did fall out of, I don't know, out of love really with that field for a lot of reasons. But the idea of getting to understand the background and coming up with approaches to improve the conditions, kind of the patient. Of course, I wasn't licensed to directly work with patients, but the concept of that I think transferred over pretty well to sales. So when I decided it was not going to be a psychologist, I said, what am I going to do? And I thought I got to sell stuff.
- [03:30]
B
Well, let's jump ahead in the timeline here and I feel like we could spend all episode unpacking your entire career, but let's jump ahead to what you're doing now because I think that'll really set the tone for what we're going to be talking about, which is really a masterclass for founders. So you are now a fractional CRO. Talk to us about your decision to go fractional.
- [03:48]
A
Okay, Absolutely. So my decision to go fractional was really an opportunity that was presented to me that I had to recognized. It was a point in my career where I've been successful and I had the opportunity to maybe have some freedom in terms of what I wanted to do. Maybe not just bury the gas pedal and you know, crush the W2 every year. So I decided to take a little bit of time off and do some skiing and spend some time outdoors and with my family. And then I got some phone calls from folks that I knew in my network. I've been around a little bit and people said, hey, what are you up to? Would you like to come work here? And I was actually saying no to a couple of full time offers. I decided, but right now I won't take some time. But what are you facing? Well, we really, our Growth has stalled. Well, maybe you could help us. Sure, let's talk about that. Let's talk about your issues, let's talk about your challenges. We'll get on a zoom call. And that started happening two or three times in a meaningful way over the course of a short period of time. And I just realized how it just reignited that desire to get in and dive in and specifically help deal flow and revenue growth. And I realized that the exciting part of it was doing this for several folks like different people, different companies at different stages of growth with different perspectives of the founder, different funding situations, different market positionings and market fit. And so I decided, you know, sometime about three or four months after that kind of initial entrance into just consulting with people I knew in the investment community and founders. I'm doing this full time and now it's been some time now I'm not turning back. This is where I love to be.
- [05:20]
B
Is there a sweet spot for you in terms of the types of companies that you work with?
- [05:24]
A
There is. I've worked with all kinds of companies. I've worked with consulting companies, med tech companies. But my real sweet spot is certainly SaaS. And that's what I'm most connected to. That's what I most understand founders mindset, but also a subset of that. I came out of the Salesforce ISV world, which is to say software companies, built on the Salesforce or the Force.com platform. And a lot of success. I had a lot of success. And the ecosystem that exists within Salesforce provides a lot of very unique opportunities for ISVs. And there were thousands of companies built on Force. And I realized, and I've even more so realized over the past six months, that my real skill set, although I've helped lots of companies modernize their go to market and sales motion, that the unique opportunities that exist within the Salesforce ISV community is really where I want to spend most of my time. It does not mean that I turn down quests or opportunities or strategy discussions with founders in other areas. But working within an enterprise ecosystem is a very unique opportunity for founders. And I try to help them recapture why they built on that in the first place and unstick revenue and grow their business.
- [06:35]
B
What are some of the pros and cons for founders listening in who aren't building in an ecosystem but maybe want to be building in an ecosystem like that?
- [06:42]
A
Well, some of the pros, and you know, it's one of these things that you have to realize who you're working with. So if you're working with a ServiceNow or Salesforce or any of these awesome organizations that opened up their APIs that, yeah, you now have the reach into a global community of companies that use this software. And that conventional wisdom says that that's going to provide you thousands and tens of thousands of prospects and salespeople that might recommend your product. But the biggest opportunity to operate an ecosystem is really in the partner ecosystem, in the selling infrastructure that exists within these companies. But if you're going to approach them, you're going to approach partners, you're going to Approach Salesforce or ServiceNow sellers to recommend your product, you really have to develop a solid understanding as to why you matter. Going into power in Dublin or New York or wherever it might be and saying, hey, if you recommend my product, you'll get this amount of commission. It's not going to close the deal. But if you can associate your product with the advancement of their message in helping them, the sellers and the sis, the systems integrators, to secure new logos or expand sites and improve retention, that's when you're talking their language. And it is infinitely. It's kind of an accelerant because a lot of companies just, they open up their doors and they stare at the phone book and they start making cold calls. But when you're inside of an ecosystem, you're kind of insular and it just provides you this advantage. But taking advantage of that is hard to do, right? And no one's going to be the path to your door. So you have to engage that ecosystem, which is a whole. It's a big reason as to what I'm doing, what I'm doing.
- [08:20]
B
What would you say are. I'm sure there's multiple. Like, what would be the biggest mistakes that you see founders make?
- [08:25]
A
I think this is a pretty common one. And no offense to any founders out there, but oftentimes founders, they get a great idea, they do the development, they come up with a great product, and they get market fit. I typically don't work with anyone who has established market fit, and that means paying customers. There's two questions, questions that come up to me a lot, and it really has a lot to do with two scenarios. Number one, they've hired a sales team. The founder has gone out and hired a sales team. They've posted a job. They've got two, three salespeople. And what they try to do is they try to impress upon the sellers the founder's own zeal and technical wisdom that they carry with them and say, if you talk about this, the Customers will buy. And the reality is that salespeople, myself included, can never fully adopt the zeal and the intensity of a founder at a trade show, at a cold call, during a discovery session, during a demo. So you've really got to onboard and manage these sellers in a way that it's a job that most founders haven't done before. They've always been technically oriented or deep in a certain domain or industry and they've never had to manage a salesperson before. So transferring their effectiveness onto a sales team is hard. So I see a lot of founders I talk to say, yeah, we hired some salespeople a few years ago, we let them go, it didn't work out, we brought a new guy in, or they hire a VP of sales and they just expect kind of magic to rain down. But it's related to the second thing that I see a lot, which is if you don't stay true to that icp, that ideal customer profile. So your product was made for a certain profile of customer and that can evolve over time. But largely you might be a solution that is tailored towards a certain industry in the mid market, in a certain appeal to your product in that market. Staying true to that market is really important, especially during growth phase, because what can happen, and it's a great validation of your product, but you will get two, three, four times a year an inbound request or an opportunity to sell to a much bigger company, a tier one, a blue chip. And it sounds exciting because the ACV is big and the opportunities are really big. But one thing I do see is that a lot of founders will kind of chase that opportunity and sometimes they win. And then they're all excited and the board's thrilled. But now you've got to implement, now you've got to support in a large company knows that they just jumped into a relationship with a smaller firm and there's a propensity for them to boss you around and really change your roadmap. And what it does is it colors your whole perspective. Your delivery organization, your support organization, even your sales organization isn't built for that market. And there's some big differences. So staying true. So I like to ask founders, what's the last piece of business you said no to? Right. And the answer to that question is very important to me because it's hard to build a very high efficient, high performing revenue engine if we're not true with certain icp. And that touches demand gen and account growth over time as well.
- [11:16]
B
What are some of the other questions you commonly Find yourself asking founders like that example you just shared.
- [11:20]
A
Sure. I definitely want to know what they're exit plan is. They have one. How we build the revenue engine can be affected by their plans for exit. I want to know their financial health of the company. Of course, there's no question. So do they need more funding? How do they see that happening? What kind of conditions do we want before that happens? Again, back to the exit. Really important we do keep an eye on like who's our ideal acquirer and what do they typically go get. And I'm not out there trying to hammer out deals for them to get acquired. But how we build this engine is very important if we're going to be looking at an exit in a three to five year time frame. Another question is I kind of want to know what I like to do with the first even before I take the engagement is interview different folks in the organization. The founder's perspective obviously runs everything. But I'd like to talk to the head of finance, I'd like to talk to the head of marketing if there is one. I'd like to talk to not a salesperson because if they know I'm coming in as a fractional, they're not going to give me genuine feedback. But I like to talk to key like delivery people, you know, people who are tasked with working with the end customer and just get their perspective and try to assure them that they're on a fact finding mission. Right. Not to tell on them. Right. So before I take an engagement, I usually spend about a month doing that kind of site work and then do a readout with the founder and say this is what I think we need to do. We come to an agreement and then we move forward.
- [12:42]
B
What else do you see founders do that just make you want to like bash your head against the wall of like founders stop doing this.
- [12:48]
A
Well, thank goodness we have them because they create jobs and they make things go around. There's a couple things that I wouldn't consider my. I've reported to boards before investors and you know, there's a couple of things that do make me crazy. Number one, get good at your data, your own internal data. No, we want to improve close rate. We have to start with understanding what the close rate is today. You know, in having a rich set of data, you don't have to have a mega, you know, reporting engine or a really expensive, you know, operations person. But having data and metrics on your business is really important. You can't just be chasing the last deal you closed and Just that's what you focus on. You need to look at retention, cost of sales, how are you allocating your marketing budget and what have you learned from your mistakes? So a lot of founders will place a bet they'll get it wrong and they have to have the wherewithal to admit that they're wrong. If they're going to invest tons of money in something like SEO, let's have a conversation about how that's changed over the past year because maybe the they don't know that. Right. Or maybe they're being advised by someone who isn't as in tune with the modernized kind of some of the AI driven demand gen practices that are out there today. Very effective. Right. So, and there's a lot of pretenders in that space that can provide you with service. So I think one of the mistakes that's another mistake is really sometimes they kind of don't let go of their preconceived notions as to how the business will expand. And it's important to think differently. So I do try to measure the founder's openness. Right. If I'm there to follow their playbook, then I won't take the engagement because I won't take anything that I don't think it can make a difference in for you.
- [14:24]
B
On the sales side, how do you think about the structure that an early stage founder should follow? So let's just imagine that, you know, I have a startup, I raise some money, I have my first few paying customers. Like is the first move to go and hire another salesperson? Is it to hire a sales leader? And if so, how senior should that leader be? Like in a dream world, what would that look like for you?
- [14:47]
A
In a dream world? I work with a client right now who's just built the most efficient company I think I've ever seen. And what he's done is he's hired some salespeople. I'm serving as a fractional for that company. And his salespeople there are salespeople, you know, kind of off the street. They're all special individuals. But it's not like we've gone and hired someone who is a engineer, for example. These are proven SaaS, salespeople who are mistage career. And what he's done, which I think is a brilliant move, is before they even talk to a customer, before they even have a chance to attend a sales call or discovery, they become certified in that product that he has a PSA product. I'm talking to a company called Aprica. Their product is Mission Control. It's project management, project service, automation. And every salesperson is deeply versed in the product where they can hold a very effective discovery. This afternoon we had a two hour demo. The salesperson did the two hour demo. And I think this is the way things are going. They do the adequate research, they engage with the lead when it comes in, they do discovery, they run beautiful discoveries. Of course he's created the documentation for all of this. As they've onboarded, they become certified in the product, they understand the product to a great length and as good as any pre salesperson he could hire. Right. And I think that not only is that wonderfully efficient, but you want to hire people that can hang with that. You want to hire people who are pliable enough to make this shift because they probably hadn't done that job this way before. And they also can talk to partners. They know our partner program, they understand, you know, what's in it for partners to work with us. And so the whole gamut of the revenue lifecycle. They also work with, install customers upsells, add ons, you know, retention, and it sounds like a lot, but it works. And I think that that is really a great model for the future. So as you go out there and look at folks kind of, you know, have an idea as to what's your ideal salesperson, are they out there? Maybe not. But we should work towards that goal and find people that would be willing to fit that mold. Right. To jump into. Also you do have to pay. I mean there's a lot of us that came up with a certain predetermination as to what salespeople should be paying. You want a thoughtful compensation plan and I've devised many of them. You want a plan that is reachable, attainable. It's like a reasonable growth goal on last year, a decent territory. But you also, you know, you want to make them kind of own a little bit of the demand genocide too. Not all of it, but some of it. Right. And you want someone who can maybe take on more than the salesperson. And one thing that I think is gone in terms of our market is when the salesperson gets onto a demo and says, hi, I'm Corey from XYZ company and thanks for being here today. If there's any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Now let me bring in Jerry the engineer to talk for two hours. Right. I think that's gone. I think you have to be versed in the product. You have to understand the problem you're solving. So the other thing I'll tell founders a lot is, you know, sometimes I'll ask for recordings of sales calls before I come on board, certainly if they have a recording of their pipeline call, because I want to understand the language that's being used. And if we hear things in the pipeline call like, this deal looks good, it's ours to lose. These are big red flags to me as a longtime sales leader. But I always tell the founder, look, whether we work together or not, there's three things I want you to ask and only three things I want you to ask in the pipeline call. What problem are we solving, what level in the organization are we at, and what is a mutually agreed upon timeline. I didn't say budget. I didn't say when the next demo is. I didn't ask you for a reader review calendar of the next three weeks. I just want to know these three things and you can give me all the anecdotes later. So I think a lot of it is like having that rigor, having that habit, asking have expectations, quota is rent and rent is due every month. Right. So that's some of the foundational changes that have to happen with a founder when they either oversee a sales group or maybe bring in a sales leader. Everyone must be customer facing. The last thing I'll say about that, Brett, everyone in the organization must be customer facing. Right? Absolutely critical.
- [18:47]
B
One thing that I keep hearing a lot about in my conversations with founders is it seems like this trend right now of people hiring ex people with that job to sell to that. So to explain that, because that probably makes no sense, we're seeing people who are saying, I'm selling legal technology, I am hiring lawyers to come in and be salesmen and sell it. Or we're selling to doctors. We're going to hire doctors to come in and be salesmen. Is that a trend that you're seeing as well?
- [19:12]
A
Well, boy, everything is turned upside down recently. I've seen a lot of that. I think in certain instances it's worked and it's been my recommendation, but not very often. Where I think it makes a lot of sense is in a highly technical like medical equipment. That does not necessarily mean I need a doctor, but it certainly means I need somebody with a academically strong technical aptitude. Right. And practitioner. Right. But that's very rare. I think what's really important is that you have to have bring someone in that knows something about the industry. I worked in retail, retail technology. I sold analytics to retailers for years. And yeah, I did own a small retail company at One point, but one thing I always tell my people is that I didn't hire retailers. But if you're walking into Armani or you're walking into any Polo, anyone like that, you better go to their store before you walk into their door. Okay? So we don't necessarily have to hire a VP of assortment planning from some high fi and retailer. In fact, they will burn out quickly with drooling job that is sales. But at the very least, we need to follow their social media, understand how they work. But when we walk through the doors of this store in retail, their doors open every day at 9am the brick and mortars, right? And my daughters are very used to going into a store. When I was working bringing AI and analytics to retailers, we'd walk into a store, we'd go to the mall, right? And be like, okay, go to the mall. I'm meeting next week with J. Crew and some other. We're going to go check out where they put their discounts in the back, right. We're going to see if they have a size problem. Problem. We're going to go through the sizes. Okay, look, they're understocked on this size, right. I'm going to diagnose the situation by being in the store. I'll even talk to the store manager. I've done that many, many times. Right. And they would make a plea to me. Oh, you're going to talk to corporate. Please tell them at Grange Village we only have small people. I don't need regular size or large size clothing. Right. It's just I remember one guy in Armand, he told me that once and you have to understand the vibe because you will be found out in under a second if you don't understand what they're facing. It's not about your product, it's about them. So really it's the curiosity, the effort, the legwork as they used to call it that matters more. Because sometimes you can have an industry expert come in with their own set of prejudices and you know how they used to run things. So it's really more about curiosity and a willingness to learn and submerge yourself in the brand of the customer you're talking to.
- [21:36]
B
Final question for you. So let's imagine that there's a conference and they're all founders who have product market fit. They're all going in and they have passed by the same billboard on their way in. If you could put one sales message there and that would be advice, what would you put on that billboard that you just want to scream and broadcast all of those founders.
- [21:54]
A
Oh, boy. What I'd say to them, what I say in that billboard, Brett, is nobody cares. Go sell more stuff. I mean, that might be in the fly in the face of what I said about the ICP and staying true to your market, but you've got to get people on the phone, and that is the hardest part of the job. It's harder than coding, it's harder than closing the books. It's harder than anything else. Is picking up the phone all hours of the day. If I have a client in Australia, I am fine with talking to them at 10pm at night, my time. You do what is necessary. And what often is the hardest thing about what's necessary is picking up the phone. I mean, I say pick up the phone, literally and figuratively. It's like, you know, reach out, do outreach constantly. Never stop trying to market and expand your business, regardless of whatever your head of engineering is telling you. Today is a sales day, right? Tonight is a sales night. You're going to always be trying to find people to listen to your pitch. And yeah, I think that's the most thing. Pick up the phone. I guess maybe I'd say that in that billboard.
- [22:53]
B
Pick up the phone. I love it. All right, we're going to wrap here for founders who are listening in, who are thinking, I need a Corey. I need you specifically, I need this Corey. Where should they go? Where should we send them?
- [23:02]
A
Sure. Corey is an easy name. Ey. Last name's a bit of a long one. Kleinbauer. KleinBauer. Just take two words, Klein and Bauer, and find me on LinkedIn. Corey KleinBauer. And you can go to my website, which is Kleinbauer Co. I also have a very recent and very special website I've put up in a service I've created called scaleisv.com and that is meant for Salesforce ISVs. It is a resource. It is a place to read and hopefully soon interact with other cohorts in the ISV community.
- [23:34]
B
Amazing, Corey. Thanks so much. It's been a lot of fun.
- [23:36]
A
I've enjoyed every bit of it. Thanks so much, Brett.