444: Salesbricks: How a Failed Go-to-Market Strategy Sparked a Breakthrough

Summary

Episode 444: Salesbricks: How a Failed Go-to-Market Strategy Sparked a Breakthrough

Release Date: May 22, 2025

In this episode of The SaaS Podcast, host Omar Khan engages in a deep conversation with Jonathan and John, the co-founders and CEOs of Salesbricks. Salesbricks is a platform designed to help startups streamline their sales processes by automating quoting, billing, and payment collection, thereby accelerating deal closures and reducing manual workloads.

---

Founders' Background and Inspiration

Jonathan shares his journey leading up to the creation of Salesbricks, highlighting his extensive experience in revenue operations within early-stage startups. He identifies a recurring set of challenges faced by these companies, such as inconsistent pricing, spreadsheet-based quoting, prolonged contracting processes, and lack of clear revenue visibility.

Notable Quote:

"Success starts with failure."
— Jonathan [03:23]

This philosophy underscores Jonathan's belief in the importance of overcoming struggles and near-death experiences to build resilient companies and effective founders.

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The Genesis of Salesbricks

In 2021, Jonathan teamed up with an engineer he met and successfully raised a million dollars from sales leaders who recognized the same pain points he had experienced. The initial vision was to build a comprehensive solution tailored for enterprise companies with complex workflows and established systems. However, this approach led to significant challenges:

• Long Sales Cycles: Enterprise sales often took months due to extensive approvals and resistance to changing existing systems.
• Product Misalignment: The product was overbuilt for large companies, making it cumbersome and less appealing to their target market.

Key Insight:

"The sales cycles took months, approvals dragged and there was often a lot of resistance to ripping out their existing systems that forced a hard pivot."
— Omar Khan [01:03]

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Pivoting to Early-Stage Startups

Realizing that their initial focus on enterprise clients was misguided, Jonathan and John decided to pivot towards early-stage startups. This strategic shift involved:

• Simplifying the Product: Stripping down features to cater specifically to the needs of startups.
• Refocusing on Founders: Building the platform around how founders actually sell, ensuring the solution was lightweight and easy to integrate.

This pivot resulted in dramatic improvements:

• Accelerated Sales Cycles: Deals closed within days instead of months.
• Enhanced Lead Generation: Each contract sent out through Salesbricks included a "Powered by Sales Bricks" link, turning every transaction into a potential warm introduction and subsequent deal.

Notable Quote:

"They're mostly using Sales Bricks to send out digital contracts that look like a checkout flow, making it as easy as buying a pair of shoes from Nike."
— Jonathan [32:50]

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Growth and Current Metrics

As a result of the pivot, Salesbricks experienced significant growth:

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): Approximately $1 million.
• Customer Base: Over 100 customers globally.
• Team Size: A dedicated team of 22 professionals across various regions, including Asia and the United States.
• Transaction Volume: Processing millions of dollars in SaaS and AI transactions weekly, with peak activity between 8 to 9 PM when founders are most active.

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Sales and Marketing Strategies

Initial Challenges with Enterprise Clients

The founders initially faced difficulties with enterprise clients due to prolonged sales cycles and the complexity of existing systems. Despite securing meetings, conversions were low, and they struggled to reach decision-makers like CEOs.

Transition to Inbound and Referrals

By shifting focus to early-stage startups, Salesbricks leveraged their existing network and referrals effectively. Their customers became active promoters, leading to a steady stream of high-intent leads.

Notable Quote:

"If people are not giving me their list of problems before the actual meeting, I start to figure out, is this a high intent prospect or are they just in the window shopping phase?"
— Jonathan [28:03]

Outbound Efforts and Their Decline

While Salesbricks initially invested in outbound strategies, they found the conversion rates disappointing. Outbound efforts yielded numerous meetings but few actual customers, leading them to prioritize inbound and referral-driven growth.

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Product Design and Customer Experience

Salesbricks differentiates itself by designing digital contracts that mimic B2C checkout experiences. This user-friendly approach not only simplifies the purchasing process but also enhances the likelihood of successful conversions.

Notable Quote:

"We've designed Sales Bricks to look and feel exactly like buying something in the B2C world."
— Jonathan [33:02]

This design philosophy has resonated with customers, who appreciate the seamless and intuitive experience compared to traditional, cumbersome methods like DocuSign.

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Hiring Challenges and Team Dynamics

Initial Hiring Missteps

In the early stages, Salesbricks faced significant hiring challenges:

• Overreliance on Junior Talent: To manage costs, the team onboarded numerous junior engineers. However, this strategy backfired as these individuals required extensive training and management, leading to decreased productivity.
• Negative Return on Investment: The time and resources spent on mentoring junior hires resulted in a negative impact on overall productivity.

Strategic Adjustments

Realizing the pitfalls of their initial hiring approach, Salesbricks made strategic changes:

• Focus on Experienced Talent: They shifted to hiring more experienced professionals who could operate independently and contribute immediately.
• Emphasis on 'A Players': The company adopted a philosophy of building an "A player" team, ensuring that high-performing individuals thrive while underperformers are let go to maintain team morale and productivity.

Notable Quote:

"Salesbricks needs to be a place where A players thrive. If you keep the C players on for too long, the A players get burnt out."
— Jonathan [38:32]

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Lessons Learned and Key Takeaways

1. Understand Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Initial assumptions about the target market can lead to misalignment. Continuous validation through sales interactions is crucial.

2. Flexibility in Go-to-Market Strategies: Being willing to pivot based on market feedback can lead to significant breakthroughs and sustainable growth.

3. Importance of Team Composition: Building a team with the right mix of experience and talent ensures higher productivity and fosters a positive work environment.

4. User-Centric Product Design: Simplifying complex processes and enhancing user experience can differentiate a product in a competitive market.

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Final Thoughts

Jonathan and John's journey with Salesbricks underscores the importance of adaptability, customer-centric design, and strategic team building in the SaaS landscape. Their ability to pivot from enterprise clients to early-stage startups not only salvaged their go-to-market strategy but also propelled them towards impressive growth and market relevance.

For those interested in learning more about Salesbricks or connecting with the founders, visit salesbricks.com or connect via LinkedIn.

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This episode provides valuable insights for SaaS entrepreneurs and startup founders looking to refine their go-to-market strategies, optimize their sales processes, and build effective teams.

Transcript

[Amber]

Foreign.

[Omar Khan]

Welcome to another episode of the SaaS podcast. I'm your host Omar Khan and this is a show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business. In this episode I talk to Jonathan.

[Amber]

Festejo, the co founder and CEO of.

[Omar Khan]

Salesbricks, a platform that helps startups close.

[Amber]

Deals faster and take the manual work out of quoting, billing and getting paid.

[Omar Khan]

Before launching Sales Bricks, Jonathan spent years.

[Amber]

Leading rev ops inside early stage startups.

[Omar Khan]

His job was to fix the same.

[Amber]

Problems every time pricing was inconsistent, quotes lived in spreadsheets, contracts took forever and.

[Omar Khan]

Nobody had a clear view of what revenue was coming in. In 2021, he teamed up with an.

[Amber]

Engineer he'd met and raised a million dollars from sales leaders he had worked with people who'd felt the same pain and backed him to fix it.

[Omar Khan]

The duo spent a year trying to.

[Amber]

Build the right product before they sold anything, but they built it for enterprise companies, teams with complex workflows, big budgets and systems already in place. The sales cycles took months, approvals dragged and there was often a lot of resistance to ripping out their existing systems that forced a hard pivot. They stripped down the product, focused on early stage startups and and rebuilt everything around how founders actually sell. And that one change unlocked everything.

[Omar Khan]

Sales cycles dropped to days, founders showed up prepped to talk about real pain.

[Amber]

And the product itself started generating leads.

[Omar Khan]

Every time a customer sent a contract.

[Amber]

A tiny Powered by Sales Bricks link at the bottom turned into their next warm intro and often their next deal.

[Omar Khan]

Today, Sales Bricks is doing around a.

[Amber]

Million dollars in arrival with over 100 customers and a global team of 22. In this episode you'll learn why early.

[Omar Khan]

Sales conversations with enterprise teams felt promising.

[Amber]

But led them in the wrong direction for months. How a powered by link at the.

[Omar Khan]

Bottom of a contract outperformed outbound as.

[Amber]

A repeatable growth channel. What their outbound efforts got wrong and.

[Omar Khan]

Why even 15 book meetings a week didn't lead to customers.

[Amber]

We talk about the unexpected signals that.

[Omar Khan]

Told them they'd found the right ICP.

[Amber]

Before the first call even happened, and.

[Omar Khan]

How hiring junior talent slowed them down.

[Amber]

And why rebuilding the team around a players changed everything. So I hope you enjoy it.

[Omar Khan]

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[Amber]

Jonathan, welcome to the show.

[Jonathan]

Thanks Amber.

[John]

Happy to be here.

[Amber]

Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you?

[John]

I do.

[Jonathan]

It's quick.

[John]

It's success starts with failure.

[Jonathan]

I think my whole life I always wanted to start a company and reading books, listening to people's stories, watching interviews, you always hear the good stuff. You never really hear about all the.

[John]

Struggles and near death experiences.

[Jonathan]

But those are the things that actually.

[John]

Make a company, make a founder and make an entrepreneur.

[Jonathan]

And we need to celebrate more of that stuff. So it's one of the quotes that I would share with my, my team and my, my friends and my kids. And it really helps position people to.

[John]

Understand what they're getting into.

[Amber]

Yeah, I love that. I don't, I don't know if it was, whether it was Sarah Blakely or somebody else. Maybe I got this wrong. Who, who said back in their childhood they had this thing where at dinner her dad would always ask like what did you fail at today? And they would celebrate that. And it kind of ingrained this thing into her mind that it was okay to fail and it was almost encouraged because hopefully there's some upside as well as you kind of go through that process. But yeah, that's a good one. Okay, so tell us about sales bricks. What does the product do, who's it from for, and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[John]

Yeah, so Salesbricks is a deal closing platform.

[Jonathan]

We help B2B SaaS founders and AI founders monetize their product. So there's a lot of jobs to.

[John]

Be done from commercialization of your product.

[Jonathan]

So pricing your packaging, quoting deal, shaping with your customers and prospects to executing the deal, getting paid and then understanding what your revenue is. We handle all that within our platform.

[John]

And we're really focusing on companies that are early. So anywhere from half a million dollars.

[Jonathan]

To $2 million in ARR, they're starting.

[John]

To feel the pain and suffering around orchestrating all these jobs to be done.

[Jonathan]

And we, we make it easy with just a few clicks.

[Amber]

And so is this primarily for sales led motions?

[Jonathan]

It's a good question. We, we are first targeting companies that are sales led. That's typically where a lot of those jobs to be done is painful and it kind of takes a lot of time. So we're starting to realize that is the problem space we want to focus on. But as companies start to grow, they.

[John]

Activate more go to market motions. They need to have two motions.

[Jonathan]

So PLG sales led, sales assist. We help them juggle that and we're building product to help serve them as they start to grow in those, those go to market requirements.

[Amber]

Great. Give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of revenue, customers, size of team?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, so we are about a million dollars in ARR. We have over 100 customers today and.

[John]

We'Re processing millions of dollars of SaaS and AI transactions on a weekly basis.

[Jonathan]

So fun fact about sales bricks, majority of transactions actually happen at night.

[John]

So when founders are selling to other.

[Jonathan]

Founders after their day job they start.

[John]

To do all the back office stuff.

[Jonathan]

And buying software is one of them.

[John]

Our peak time for closing deals is.

[Jonathan]

Around 8 to 9 o' clock at night.

[Amber]

The magic hour.

[Jonathan]

That's where all the transactions and contracts get signed.

[Amber]

Great. And then size of team, I think you told me earlier it's 20 or so people.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, we're about 22 people right now.

[John]

And we're global so we have a few folks in Asia as well as the United States.

[Amber]

And you've raised about 11 million.

[Jonathan]

That's right.

[Amber]

Okay, great. So the business was founded in 2021, four years ago. Where did the idea come from and what were you doing at the time?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, so I was running revops and finance for a lot of early stage.

[John]

Startups my whole career after college.

[Jonathan]

Um, and I realized a lot of.

[John]

Companies had the same exact problem over and over again.

[Jonathan]

I worked for four A16Z back companies. I always hire number one to go solve the, the revenue problem.

[John]

How do you build a process?

[Jonathan]

How do you actually bill a customer? How do you, you know, sign a cost customer? And, and everybody had the same problem.

[John]

The founders were inventing their own process.

[Jonathan]

And by the time the company grew up to over a million bucks, it becomes a painful, you know, inefficient process. And so I come on board to go build all the infrastructure for the business. And about in 2018 I, I had my first kid and I still live the, the 14, 15 hour days of, of working in the office and there was a moment where I felt really stupid. I was my first, my kids first Halloween trick or treat and I was in my big dinosaur dinosaur costume. And while I was, you know, while my kid was going through the trick or treating experience, I was sending out.

[John]

Docusigns within my costume and my, my.

[Jonathan]

Wife was like.

[John]

Like, you're supposed to.

[Jonathan]

Be here right now and yes, you're here, but you're not here. And I had like 15, 17, you.

[John]

Know, a bunch of people texting me like, hey, when's the docusign out?

[Jonathan]

Oh, I need to make a revision.

[John]

Oh, we need to send out the.

[Jonathan]

Invoice to this customer otherwise we're not going to get paid this month. And all this stuff was happening because.

[John]

I was a choke hold for the process.

[Jonathan]

And I realized like, hey, I don't.

[John]

Want to get fired by my wife. I, I need to be a father.

[Jonathan]

But I also need to help run the business. And I said there, there must be a better way to do things. And so it really planted the seed.

[John]

In my mind to go build a company.

[Jonathan]

You know, I'll go ahead and work my ass off, but I could, if I could protect a bunch of parents from, from this experience and they could actually live a work life balance but.

[John]

Also still run the business. That'd be great to start a company.

[Jonathan]

That will impact and provide that type.

[John]

Of technology for folks.

[Jonathan]

And so Fast forward to 2021 was really the idea of like, hey, why can't I have a build a rev.

[John]

Ops in a box for companies to.

[Jonathan]

Go close deals but not have to.

[John]

Do 90% of the busy work for men.

[Amber]

Yeah, I mean that sounds like a great mission to focus on and solve. I guess one question I'd have for you is most people wouldn't say I'm working these really long hours and to get more balance, I'm going to go and launch a startup that just sounds like you're, let's say out of the cold, into the fire or whatever that quote is. So was it more about that was when you had that kind of seed planted but you didn't act on that until things changed a bit.

[Jonathan]

You know, I always wanted to start.

[John]

A company my whole life, right?

[Jonathan]

Like I invented a lot of things. I tried to do a startup in my college years. I just love building things that add value. So I don't think I ever thought my life would be, you know, filled with careers that, you know, was six.

[John]

Seven hours a day.

[Jonathan]

So I think there's a little bit.

[John]

Of me saying, hey, I want to actually build something for myself.

[Jonathan]

I actually want to be proud of something that, you know, the impact I have in, in, in an industry or the world. And so a mix of that plus.

[John]

Like, hey, I really understand this problem.

[Jonathan]

Space was kind of the reason why I started sales bricks. And even though I work, you know.

[John]

Longer than eight hours a day, which is kind of a requirement for founders.

[Jonathan]

When I come home, I feel energized. I feel like I've been, I've impacted, I've added value to companies and to other founders. And when I see my kids, I'm like, hey, like, you know, I could pause for a little bit and hang out with you knowing that I've, I've helped a bunch of founders close millions of dollars. Today.

[Amber]

Your co founder is John. How did you guys meet and what were the first initial steps you took to turn this idea into something real?

[Jonathan]

John was a husband of a gal I used to work with at two companies. One of them was Lithium Technologies and.

[John]

The other one was Signal Effects, which.

[Jonathan]

Got acquired by Splunk. She ran deal desk with me. She was in the fire on the ground floor running 24 7, like, you know, generating contracts and negotiating renewals with, with our customers.

[John]

And so she, she understood the problem. So one day I actually said, hey.

[Jonathan]

Like, I'm thinking about starting a company.

[John]

It kind of automates our jobs out.

[Jonathan]

And what do you think about it? And she's like, you know, she saw the PowerPoint, she's like, My husband's going to go build it for you.

[John]

He's an engineer.

[Jonathan]

And so we, I met John many times before that actual event. But like, we formally had these conversations when we went to Santana Row one one weekend and we just talked about the problem and he was, he was all game for it.

[John]

So that kind of really started the.

[Jonathan]

Whole process of, of, of kind of.

[John]

Ideating the, the official business.

[Amber]

And so once you had him on board with this idea, was it still a part time thing for a while? Like, how long did it take for you guys to jump in with both feet?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I think we were kind of thinking about what we were going to do and how we're going to build.

[John]

The business for about two months.

[Jonathan]

Obviously we were just ideating, but I.

[John]

Think two months after we both quit.

[Jonathan]

Our jobs, we foregoed a lot. Like I was, I got a lot of promotions in my previous careers and it got me to a very pretty comfortable salary. And you forego that when you start a company, but, but you're so excited about the opportunity. The Upside that for six months we weren't taking any revenue, we weren't taking a salary. We got some funding from some folks that I worked with in the past, God bless them. They, they took a huge bet on me in the early days without even a product. But to me that felt like that's.

[John]

A lot of responsibility.

[Jonathan]

I'm going to save that money for buying computers and, you know, for incorporating the company.

[John]

But we didn't take salary for about six months.

[Amber]

And how much, how much did you raise? Was kind of like, was it just a friends and family kind of around?

[Jonathan]

It was a friends and family. I think it was about 250,000. Amongst, you know, top sales leaders in the SaaS space.

[John]

Travis Patterson, who I used to work with, he was the head of sales.

[Jonathan]

At a few companies that I worked at. Mark Cranny, who is one of the early partners at Andreessen Horowitz, I worked.

[John]

For him for about two years.

[Jonathan]

I've learned so much in the process.

[John]

Of working under Mark. He was the first guy that ever.

[Jonathan]

Dragged me to a fundraising, you know, powwow with a bunch of top tier VCs and, you know, Silicon Valley. I grew up real fast working with Mark and so having him put some money in the company was amazing. His friends put money in my company. One of the founding CROs of Okta, who had the opportunity to ring the bell there when they went public, put a bunch of money in our company. And so that started kind of the.

[John]

Friends and family round.

[Jonathan]

And after that we raised about 750 from a company called Surface Ventures, a seed wing and RTP Global who invested.

[John]

In Datadog in the early days.

[Amber]

I mean, that initial raise, I mean, you didn't even have a product at the time, Right. Because you spent about 18 months building the right product before you really focused on go to market and kind of seriously in terms of customer acquisition. So what did you use to raise money? Were you just going around and showing a slide deck or was it more social proof? Because one person had put some money in based on knowing you and that was kind of added a bunch of credibility.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jonathan]

So for us it was really talking about the problem space because these investors were sales leaders. They knew that there was a huge problem in the quote to cash and deal negotiation phase of the sales process.

[John]

They understood what we were building.

[Jonathan]

I didn't have to do a slide deck.

[John]

They've worked with me for years and.

[Jonathan]

They'Re like, I trust you. This problem is definitely a problem. I face it today. My peers face it. And usually they're excited to go and put some money. In the early days I think obviously they're coin operated. So 25k check here, hopefully in 5.

[John]

Years, 5 to 10 years becomes millions of dollars.

[Jonathan]

And as founders, like that's, that's my job is to make these guys and gals super rich. Like they're capitalists and we love capitalists. That's what moves, that's what helps us businesses grow. But yeah, that was, everyone was very excited about solving this problem with me.

[Amber]

Right. So tell me about the decision and why it took you almost two years to get to the point where you could have a product that you felt comfortable enough to go and sell. Seriously?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I think because we're in the fintech space, because we touch revenue, we touch transactions, we had to build a very, very stable product in the early days. Otherwise one small issue, you lose your trust with your, your prospects and your customers. So we spent a lot of time.

[John]

Really focusing on building and architecting the right product. Even Salesforce today, like they, they struggle.

[Jonathan]

To, to perfect cpq which is, you know, in the old term, that's effectively.

[John]

What we're building here is a configure price quote.

[Jonathan]

And they gave up on it like about six months ago. They said hey, we're going to stop, we're going to deprecate this product.

[John]

It's a very mission critical product.

[Jonathan]

Like sitting on people's pricing and packaging and product catalog is no joke. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of serving various businesses and whether it be AI software, hardware companies, sitting on empowering people's price book is very, very mission critical. And we had to go invent and architect that CPQ the complete opposite way.

[John]

Of what Salesforce did.

[Jonathan]

They do, they've architected so that as.

[John]

You make changes to your pricing, your.

[Jonathan]

Packaging, it generates and exhausts thousands of rows of permutations that gets queried for your order builder, that gets queried for an entitlement check for sales mix. We had to undo every one of those architectural decisions that they made and said hey, how do we shrink this.

[John]

And how do we make this very lightweight?

[Jonathan]

One day people are going to be.

[John]

Buying software with a few clicks of a button.

[Jonathan]

The information needs to pass to the vendor quickly so that they can design and power that user experience within milliseconds.

[John]

If they bought only 10 licenses, they.

[Jonathan]

Should only have access to invite 10 people.

[John]

That check has to happen within milliseconds.

[Jonathan]

You can't do that with Salesforce cpq.

[John]

What Salesbricks is building is to build that architecture.

[Jonathan]

So that experience, that customer experience when buying software, when buying AI, is very fast.

[John]

And so we had to spend a.

[Jonathan]

Lot of time really thinking about this properly. And I have no regrets around how much time we've spent on kind of.

[John]

Really building the core product.

[Amber]

Devil's advocate, you say you have no regrets, but I know one of the things you also told me earlier was in hindsight we overbuilt, right? We try to do this all encompassing product for everybody and had to kind of dial that back and get very focused on a specific icp. So totally understand in terms of getting the product right and having trust when you're touching people's anything to do with revenue, right, is like super sensitive, high kind of trust thing. But tell me about what happened with the overbuilding.

[Omar Khan]

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[Jonathan]

I think there's no doubt that almost.

[John]

Every B2B SaaS company has a problem around quote to cash.

[Jonathan]

So, so that actually became a. The first problem that we had.

[John]

It was just a very big market.

[Jonathan]

We thought that we would build our product initially for enterprise companies. And so I came from enterprise. I felt very comfortable building enterprise features. It just naturally what pushed me to build salesbricks in the early days and in reality we realized that they're not.

[John]

The right ICP for us.

[Jonathan]

These enterprise companies though, they have that problem. The analogy I like to use is like, hey, the house I live in.

[John]

Is way too small or the house.

[Jonathan]

I live in is really breaking and falling apart. But people tend to not move because the cost of moving, both financially and.

[John]

Also in terms of time and effort, is just way too high.

[Jonathan]

And so although they might live in.

[John]

A house that has asbestos on the.

[Jonathan]

Ceiling, they're like, I'd rather not move and die of asbestos. I'd rather dive asbestos than die of like the efforts of moving my family.

[John]

Out of the house.

[Jonathan]

In many ways we realize these enterprise.

[John]

Companies don't want to change their system.

[Jonathan]

They don't want to change their wings.

[John]

And we kind of built for those companies early.

[Jonathan]

We didn't do enough interviews and research with kind of the market. I realized the enterprise had a problem because I lived in that space. What we really should have been serving.

[John]

Was actually the early stage companies. They're the ones who actually start to form a habit in their early days.

[Jonathan]

Of doing quote to cash a different way. It's very monotonous, medial. There's just so many things to be done. It's very manual in that regard.

[John]

Those are the ones that we should be serving.

[Jonathan]

And so we kind of went the opposite direction. And I think for that reason, our messaging was a little bit weird. We weren't fast at acquiring logos. And so what we've done is we've stripped away a lot of that product complexion and, and we're really focusing on these companies that are anywhere from half.

[John]

A million dollars to 2 million. Those are the ones where it's like.

[Jonathan]

Hey, Stripe is starting to become a pain in the ass for me from a billing perspective. I'm starting to hack it.

[John]

I'm starting to build my entire infrastructure.

[Jonathan]

On top of Stripe when they realize.

[John]

They'Re actually becoming a sales LED motion.

[Jonathan]

So those are the companies we should.

[John]

Really be going after. And we've been making some changes to.

[Jonathan]

Really support and justify that move. Going down market was best for us originally.

[Amber]

When you were targeting enterprise, how long did you do that? How many times did you have to hear no before you decided to focus on a different icp?

[Jonathan]

I think the first year of going to market was probably a good, kind of like how long we've been kind.

[John]

Of focusing on that.

[Jonathan]

I think the key area in the situation that made us realize we're going after the wrong ones was when our sales cycle started to take three months. And though we had a lot of.

[John]

Champions within the go to market team.

[Jonathan]

The finance person was like, hey, all.

[John]

Of our revenue is on this process.

[Jonathan]

Or this incumbent solution that we've been.

[John]

Using for three years, four years.

[Jonathan]

We just couldn't get a yes from the people who actually signed the contracts. And we never had access to the CEOs in these type of sales cycles.

[John]

But now as we start to go.

[Jonathan]

Down market, we talk directly to the.

[John]

Founders and the CEOs of the company.

[Jonathan]

Who actually are doing and feeling this pain and getting access to them leads to like, we've had a sales cycle where it took five days and we got a pretty decent, you know, five Figure deal. And, and those are signals that say.

[John]

Hey, yes, this bet is starting to pay off. Selling to the CEOs and founders are.

[Jonathan]

Actually the right way to go about this.

[Amber]

Now that's not an uncommon situation. A lot of founders are in the same place where they think they know their ICP until they realize it's the wrong icp. Can you tell me a little bit about the process you went through to figure out who to focus on instead?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I think it's just a matter.

[John]

Of those sales conversations that you've been having.

[Jonathan]

So what is the pattern that you're seeing as you start to get yeses.

[John]

And even no, like no's and even yeses.

[Jonathan]

I think for us, like we didn't.

[John]

Have a particular exercise or process of it.

[Jonathan]

It was just a lot of founders coming back in our sales team, like coming back to these internal calls and saying, hey. Like we're getting people to say, hey.

[John]

This actually makes a lot of sense.

[Jonathan]

But you know, they just don't want.

[John]

To make the change right now and they're going to continue to hack their processes.

[Jonathan]

Today it was just a lot of internal conversations amongst us team within salesbricks to understand, like, what does our gut tell us about how we should focus on these companies? And many times it's also feature requests. These companies, though, they are giving you their money, they're asking you to go build things that really only represent a feature that only 20% of your customer base needs. And until this day, some prospects of ours are saying, hey, we need to go build up this integration or this particular feature. And those are red flags for us to say, hey, we might not be.

[John]

The right fit for you at this moment.

[Amber]

Yeah. Okay, so tell me about how.

[Omar Khan]

You identified.

[Amber]

Okay, there's a new icp, we're making a new bet. Right. We have this hypothesis based on everything we've sort of learned and discovered so far that enterprise is the wrong way to go. Early stage startups are probably a better ICP for us. What happened once you made some changes to the product and you started reaching out to these, these customers or potential customers? What, what was different? What did you sense was going on? Did, did closing a sale immediately become easier? Did you initial. Initially. See, so, okay, there's some signs of success here, but we're not, we haven't quite nailed our messaging or whatever. How did that transition happen?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I think some of the signs that we started to play in the right ICP was again, faster sales cycles. So people were starting to feel this pain. They were Willing and able and very.

[John]

Excited to meet with us.

[Jonathan]

There's no, let's push this meeting out to next week, let's push this meeting out to next month. None of that happened. There's genuinely a pain and suffering and they're excited.

[John]

They're the first ones to show up on the sales call.

[Jonathan]

They're like, I'm ready to tell you about my problems. In fact, they would prep us. They're like, hey, like, we're meeting next week.

[John]

But I just wanted to list out.

[Jonathan]

The problems that we're having so that we can make our 30 minutes next week as productive as possible. That is a good sign that, that to me is like, these guys have a pain in the problem. And the CEO is spending 30 minutes.

[John]

20 minutes writing this up so that when we do meet face to face, we're as productive and we're chipping away.

[Jonathan]

At the evaluation as much as possible. And I started to use that. And if people are not giving me their list of problems before the actual meeting, I start to figure out, is this a high intent prospect or are they just in the window shopping phase? We started to go down market. Those are the types of things we saw. So faster sales cycles, more engaged folks within their team.

[John]

The other problem that we're starting to.

[Jonathan]

Encounter is these people.

[John]

When we acquire them as a customer, they're asking us to go build all.

[Jonathan]

These things in our product.

[John]

But they actually make a lot of sense.

[Jonathan]

And for me, I would have never.

[John]

Thought that we would need to go build this stuff out. When we ask other customers within our.

[Jonathan]

Base, like, hey, would this feature make.

[John]

A lot of sense?

[Jonathan]

They're like, I was just about to ask you if you could build this out and they're helping you actually formulate your roadmap. And the roadmap, you know, when you take a step back from it, it's like, this is actually not what I.

[John]

Intended to go build.

[Jonathan]

But actually when we, if we build.

[John]

This, it makes a lot of sense.

[Jonathan]

So. So for me, like the aha moment, it's like, I'm not telling my EPD.

[John]

Team to go build stuff.

[Jonathan]

That's the I went too high up market problem. When you go and you hit your.

[John]

Icp, it's like, hey, the customers are actually telling you to go build out these cool things.

[Jonathan]

And for us, we're energized. We're like, oh, paying customers asking us.

[John]

To go build this.

[Jonathan]

And when we build it, it's like.

[John]

We get thumbs up.

[Jonathan]

We start to see more GMV process through our platform. Within their org specifically and they go.

[John]

Ask us to go build the next.

[Jonathan]

Best feature as well as the next step. So in many ways, like I'm no longer an inventor, my customers are, but that's really very healthy for our business in many regards. But as a founder, as we start to define who our ICP is and.

[John]

We start to evolve and grow with.

[Jonathan]

Them, there's a little bit of inventing that still needs to happen. From the founding to team.

[Amber]

Love that. Okay, so the first 20 or 30 customers that you got, you said to me were from the founder Rolodex. I think it's funny because if I told my kids Rolodex they'd be like what is that? But we all know what that means, right? And then like all startups, you tried outbound cold calling, didn't have a huge amount of success with that and you were getting a lot of low quality leads coming through. So I'd love for you just to talk about some of the challenges you face there and then tell us a little bit about what did work with referrals, like what exactly did you figure out and get working as a growth channel.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, so, so I had a break, a big network in terms of like you know, sales leaders who I used to work with, they leave the company, they become the first sales leader in startups. And so I'd say about 30, 30.

[John]

Of our first customers were, were Rolodex.

[Jonathan]

From, from my, you know, from my network. And then as they started to, to buy our product they would, you know, you know, share that with, with their peers and we eventually we're having like.

[John]

Referrals from within the Rolodex.

[Jonathan]

But don't get me wrong, like we did do a lot of outbounding and.

[John]

We still do at sales bricks in some regard.

[Jonathan]

But the outbounding motion is in my.

[John]

Opinion very much dead. It's like you're reaching out to somebody.

[Jonathan]

At the wrong time, but they somehow are nice to you to go take a 30 second pitch and then they are intrigued and they have a meeting with you. But then there's really no pain or.

[John]

They don't understand the pain yet.

[Jonathan]

And so even though we have like 10, 15 meetings booked per week on an outbound motion, the conversion rate of those companies finding sales bricks as a solution to go solve a problem is very low. So we're not going to fight that anymore.

[John]

And I think we're starting to see a lot of inbound from our customers.

[Jonathan]

So just a little bit of TL Dr. About our product Our customers are.

[John]

Using salesbricks to send out digital contracts.

[Jonathan]

Those digital contracts are powered by a URL and they look like a checkout flow. I would compare it to maybe like buying a pair of shoes on Nike, for example.

[John]

There's a product section on the left and there's a cost table on the right.

[Jonathan]

We've designed sales bricks to look and feel exactly like buying something in the B2C world.

[John]

When you see and experience how easy.

[Jonathan]

It is to buy software using salesbricks.

[John]

A lot of our customers, customers, it resonates with them.

[Jonathan]

They actually often Compare their, their DocuSign or manual signing process and say, hey.

[John]

This was really cool experience.

[Jonathan]

How does that compare to my experience.

[John]

Of selling my software?

[Jonathan]

And I'd say about five, four to.

[John]

Five meetings per week are actually inbound.

[Jonathan]

Through that flow, that actual experience. And we're, we're starting to, to capitalize off of that in many ways.

[John]

And our customers are very nice enough to say, hey yeah, you should go.

[Jonathan]

Check out sales bricks. Every one of our transactions are powered through it and, and that's actually a.

[John]

Very high intent and high probability lead.

[Jonathan]

For us because they're founders, they're the ones who actually have the purse strings and they understand how things work in their business and they're the ones who actually make the decisions. And so they typically convert faster than if they were an IC type lead.

[Amber]

So is it the kind of the word of mouth referral or is it the integration in the product that like the link back or whatever? Like what is it that you think is driving those referrals?

[John]

It's basically a powered by button from salesbricks on that.

[Jonathan]

And I'd say about it gets clicked. Maybe for every 10 contracts that our customers send out, I think about four of them actually click that button.

[Amber]

Interesting.

[Jonathan]

That's actually something we've designed purposely and it's been, really much of it's been paying off for us at sales bricks.

[Amber]

Let's, we're going to have to wrap up soon, but let's quickly talk about hiring. So you, you know, you and John started this business 2021. You've grown to a team of, I think you said 22 people right now. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. You, you had some challenges along the way. Looking back, you felt like you hired too quickly, hired many of the wrong people. And it wasn't just we hired the wrong people. It actually led to you having to make a bunch of cuts not so long ago. Just tell me a little bit about what happened there.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, so we made some hires in.

[John]

The past at salesbricks where.

[Jonathan]

I wouldn't.

[John]

Say it's like we were hiring for.

[Jonathan]

Warm bodies but we, we needed people.

[John]

To fill the role. Right.

[Jonathan]

Back in two, two and two and a half years ago it was really hard to, to hire an engineer and we, we kind of let our guard down in terms of the, the experience and the quality of, of skill sets.

[John]

And we hired very junior people as well.

[Jonathan]

And so when you hire a lot.

[John]

Of junior people you might say hey.

[Jonathan]

The, the costs make sense. It's a third of a well experienced engineer. We're going to get effectively half the productivity. But if we add higher three of them, it's the same productivity in theory, right?

[Amber]

Yeah.

[Jonathan]

You're onboarding, you're teaching, you're actually enabling on the actual problem space that you're trying to solve it, you're solving and it requires a lot of management. And the managers at Salesbricks are also ICs like they're actually coding. They're the fastest coders at salesbricks. And so we realized it wasn't effectively the math formula that we're laughing about today. And in fact it's actually negative return. And so although they're going to be one day very powerful, life changing engineers in the world, we just don't have.

[John]

The infrastructure from a management perspective to.

[Jonathan]

Do that and to see them successful here. So about a year, year and a half ago we had to let go of those folks. I think it was good for them as equally it was good for us. And we've been investing a lot in.

[John]

Enablement on folks and engineers that we've.

[Jonathan]

Been hiring that have a lot of.

[John]

Potential and they're not junior but they're understanding the space that we're building in.

[Jonathan]

And we're starting to use AI in.

[John]

In kind of our development these days.

[Jonathan]

But I think hiring for us like we, it really taught us like we need to start hiring people that have a lot of experience, they can be self sustaining, they can be productive on.

[John]

Their own and actually teach the founder.

[Jonathan]

Sometimes how to do things the right way. So we made a lot of hires since then and very experienced folks and.

[John]

It'S been paying off ever since.

[Amber]

And was there something specific you did to raise the bar in terms of who was a yes hire?

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I think one thing that we.

[John]

Thought about is like salesbricks needs to be a place where a players thrive.

[Jonathan]

And so people who go above and beyond people who are very curious about what we're building and go above Their punching weight. And so for us, if you have this concept of your company is for A players, you really set the stage.

[John]

Around who should actually continue to be.

[Jonathan]

At the company and who we should say goodbye to. And when you think about there's C.

[John]

Players and there's A players, if you keep the C players on for too.

[Jonathan]

Long, the A players get burnt out, right. And it's not fair for them and they eventually leave and then you lose A players. A lot of productivity.

[John]

If you fire quickly.

[Jonathan]

And we had to do something like this about a month ago. It wasn't easy, but we had to rip the band aid from it. They were only at the company for about three weeks and we had to let them go because we are starting.

[John]

To live and.

[Jonathan]

We want to stay true to it. It's like salesbricks. This company is for A players, and.

[John]

We wanted to protect the A players.

[Jonathan]

By not putting in or keeping the C players. So that's one of the things that's been really helpful for me as we hire and also, unfortunately, we have to.

[John]

Fire sometimes as well.

[Amber]

Okay, on that note, let's wrap up and get onto the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you.

[Jonathan]

Sure.

[Amber]

Okay. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[Jonathan]

Hire people who are smarter than you. As a founder, you're not the smartest person in the room, and you should know that and you should embrace that. But hiring people who. Who are really good at their particular, you know, industry or the job that they perform is going to help you.

[John]

Be the smartest person in the room as well.

[Jonathan]

So, like, hiring people who are better. Elevate you, elevate the company, elevate your customers, elevate the product.

[Amber]

What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[Jonathan]

I would say amp it up by.

[John]

Frank Slootman from Snowflake.

[Jonathan]

Accountability, relentlessness, execution and accountability. Those are the things that will help a company move leaps and bounds.

[Amber]

What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[Jonathan]

Humility. I think knowing when you could, when you should say you're wrong, celebrate that and embrace people. Being wrong many times and often, but learning from it as well is important. But being somebody who's balanced and people can approach to someone who's not in the ivory tower, that's one thing I've been hopefully staying true to.

[Amber]

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[John]

My favorite productivity habit is to spend.

[Jonathan]

The very first 30 minutes of your day kind of making sure you set some Tasks and to be to use.

[John]

At a list and making sure that.

[Jonathan]

At the end of the day, you see what progress you made and you can rank yourself on how well you did.

[Amber]

What's a new crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[Jonathan]

I want to build an AI agent that can protect people's inbox from AI agents selling to them.

[Amber]

Oh, my gosh. I was just thinking about that the other day. It's like, we seriously need more of those types of products. So if you ever do that, I'll sign up for it.

[Jonathan]

As AI gets powerful, I get more and more inboxes. I'm like, I don't even have time to unsubscribe to these things.

[Amber]

What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[Jonathan]

About four years ago, I took a lot of acquisition money and bought in.

[John]

Cash, three Subway restaurants.

[Amber]

Oh, really?

[John]

Yes.

[Amber]

Wow. So you're running those now?

[Jonathan]

I had to sell them during COVID so no longer have them. But they were teachable moments for me around picking yourself up when you fall and having the opportunity to pick yourself.

[John]

Up is a blessing, especially in this country.

[Amber]

Yeah, yeah. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[Jonathan]

I love hanging out with my kids. My kid just started to play soccer. I'm into it more than he is, which is weird, but I love just.

[John]

Spending time with my family.

[Amber]

Awesome. Well, Jonathan, thank you for joining me. It's been a pleasure talking about the story of sales bricks and where you are today or how you got here. More importantly, if people want to check out sales bricks, they can go to salesbricks.com and if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[Jonathan]

You could LinkedIn me.

[John]

I'm always available.

[Amber]

Awesome. We'll include a link to your profile in the show notes. Awesome. Thank you. It's been a pleasure and I wish.

[Omar Khan]

You and the team the best of success.

[Jonathan]

Thanks, Omar.

[Amber]

My pleasure. Cheers.

[Omar Khan]

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