0
SPEAKER_01
I m Mario Martinez, Jr., CEO and founder of Ingresso, and we are the creators of flymessage.io, the free personal writing assistant and text expander application.
0
SPEAKER_01
On each episode of this podcast, you will hear from sales leaders, practitioners, and influencers to help you grow your sales numbers at scale.
0
SPEAKER_01
So.
0
SPEAKER_01
Get your pen and paper or iPad and keyboard and start taking notes as you re now listening to The Moderate Selling Podcast.
0
SPEAKER_01
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Moderate Selling Podcast and I bring you
0
SPEAKER_01
not another venture capitalist talking about pre-seed and seed rounds to how to help startup companies.
0
SPEAKER_01
I actually bring you one of the best out there in the market.
0
SPEAKER_01
We re talking about Peakspan Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the late stage growth companies who are really killing it, millions of dollars in ARR.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I ve got with me today, my friend, Mr. Matt Malamuca, who is the co-founder and managing partner of Peakspan Capital,
0
SPEAKER_01
Matt, welcome to the show, my friend.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thanks so much, Mario.
0
SPEAKER_00
Really excited to be here.
0
SPEAKER_00
Appreciate you having me.
0
SPEAKER_00
I wish I was, wherever your background is, it looks glorious.
0
SPEAKER_00
It looks like Turks and Caicos-esque.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m sitting here in cold New York, but excited to be here.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, here s what I can say.
0
SPEAKER_01
When we go to raise our Series B and Peakspan invests in Vangresso, I ll be getting an office there.
0
SPEAKER_01
That ll be one of the requirements.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hey man, deal, deal.
0
SPEAKER_01
I love it, man.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, great.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m excited to have this conversation.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hey, thanks for joining us.
0
SPEAKER_01
Do me a favor for all of our listeners.
0
SPEAKER_01
I know who you are.
0
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, I ve been watching and talking with you for a long time, but just give a little background about yourself.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then we ll talk about why the heck are you here on a sales podcast in a moment.
0
SPEAKER_01
So do that.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then I ve got a very special question that I want to ask you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
0
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m Matt Bellamuco.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m a co-founder and managing partner here at Peakspan Capital.
0
SPEAKER_00
We are a growth stage investment firm.
0
SPEAKER_00
We ve got about $2 billion under management across three funds.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re investing out of a third fund that s a $600 million vehicle.
0
SPEAKER_00
We were founded and launched in 2015, so we re coming up on a decade old.
0
SPEAKER_00
Peakspan, there s a lot of different, hundreds, now thousands of investment firms out there.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of different flavors, even within growth.
0
SPEAKER_00
So Peakspan Capital is a growth stage investment firm.
0
SPEAKER_00
We ve got about 2 billion under management across three funds.
0
SPEAKER_00
Our third fund that we re investing out of actively now is a $600 million vehicle.
0
SPEAKER_00
We were founded in 2015, so almost a decade old.
0
SPEAKER_00
Our whole firm mantra is all about focus and specialization, hence why I m on the Modern Selling podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
So for us, all we do is B2B software.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I first started investing and partnering with companies,
0
SPEAKER_00
Back about 15 years ago, the B2B software universe was, you know, just focusing on that was kind of a narrow enough aperture that you could consider that a specialized or focused strategy.
0
SPEAKER_00
Fast forward to today, the market has become so massive and B2B software really permeates every element of daily life and business that we further segment and silo the universe within B2B to really try to focus and specialize and develop domain expertise so we re a really good partner with the companies we partner with.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so at our firm, you can lead and focus on, as partners, no more than three themes or subsegments within B2B.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I lead our sales technology practice, our marketing technology practice, and our hospitality tech practice.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s all I do.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I probably spend 50%, 60% of my time living, breathing, working with sales tech companies, reading the same rags that the entrepreneurs and operators that I m looking to partner with are.
0
SPEAKER_00
in the hopes of getting really steeped.
0
SPEAKER_00
And even from a first email from me or a first call, having a really strategic level of rapport versus the classic associate reaching out to a company and saying, tell me about your business and tell me about your market.
0
SPEAKER_00
Here s us as a firm.
0
SPEAKER_00
So we try to flip that model on its head.
0
SPEAKER_00
So B2B software only, theme focus only.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then we only invest in what we call the emerging growth phase of company development.
0
SPEAKER_00
What that means is companies that have stripped away some of the binary risk levers associated with classic early stage venture.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you ve got a real product, real customers, real revenue, really strong signs that there s a great market opportunity here and you ve developed a product and a solution that can satisfy a real acute pain point.
0
SPEAKER_00
Companies typically are anywhere from like 3 million of ARR on up.
0
SPEAKER_00
We ve gone lower and we ve gone significantly higher, but I would say 3 to 7 million of ARR is the sweet spot.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re looking for companies that are capital efficient.
0
SPEAKER_00
that have scaled to that level, typically on the back of grit, tenacity, blood, sweat, and tears, and not hundreds of millions of venture capital, which really, in my mind, reflects a DNA that will permeate the business as far and as long as you go, no matter how much you raise.
0
SPEAKER_00
The last point that I ll note, and then I ll shut up about us, I promise, is philosophically we re quite different than the classic venture capital firms.
0
SPEAKER_00
So we actually kind of think of ourselves and talk about ourselves as decidedly contra Silicon Valley.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what I mean by that is, over the last really 15, 20 years, there s been a lot of craziness in venture capital as an asset class.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s been some good and some bad in terms of investors and the implications on entrepreneurs.
0
SPEAKER_00
But what we ve seen is massive, massive, in particular, early stage funds, multi-billion dollar funds.
0
SPEAKER_00
And by virtue of managing so much capital at the early stage, we ve seen a lot of companies that raise too much too quickly at too high of a price, and then they get pushed by their investor to grow at all costs.
0
SPEAKER_00
And in doing so, reintroduce a lot of operational risk into the business.
0
SPEAKER_00
that can really desecrate the awesome value that you ve created to date before the investor comes in.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I can t tell you how many great two, $3 million era businesses that we see that raise a $40 million growth round and then are pushed to double their sales team overnight
0
SPEAKER_00
take their ad spend way through the roof and blow up their unit economics, and then the business literally goes to zero.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so the scary stat in venture capital that I ll cite is, as an investor, you re measured by your returns on the top end, of course, but also by what s called capital loss ratio on the bottom end, which is for every dollar I invest, how much goes to zero.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the scary stat in venture, which is hopefully not much of a secret anymore, is that the average capital loss ratio in venture capital over the last 12 years is 35.4%.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you invest a dollar or if you invest in 10 companies, over three and a half of those companies are literally going to zero.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s not oftentimes just because the business is poorly run or anything like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s actually because the investor
0
SPEAKER_00
is running a portfolio and pushing all of them to grow way faster than they could palpably digest in pursuit of a crazy outlier outcome, knowing a lot of them will burn out in the process.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so for us at Peakspan, we ve invested in about 50 companies across our three funds,
0
SPEAKER_00
And we ve only lost money one time.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so our capital loss ratio is about 1.4%.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that doesn t mean that we re the best investors in the world, or even that we re working with the best companies in the world.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re working with incredible entrepreneurs, don t get me wrong.
0
SPEAKER_00
But what that means is we are finding like-minded entrepreneurs, typically owner-operators that own a lot of their business.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s the first time they ve done this.
0
SPEAKER_00
They re looking for a collaborative partner and they are very pragmatic.
0
SPEAKER_00
about what the business is today and what it can be.
0
SPEAKER_00
And we re aligning with them on an ambitious but pragmatic set of objectives and outcomes.
0
SPEAKER_00
And importantly, maintaining the optionality that they have at that early two, $3 million stage to raise money, you can sell the company, you can get to breakeven.
0
SPEAKER_00
You should protect that optionality at each node of the journey in our mind.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so when we partner with a company,
1
SPEAKER_01
And we will align on, hey, you re 3 million of ARR.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we get to 10 in the next two or three years?
1
SPEAKER_01
And do so with good resilience.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then when we get to that first, we call it our first peak of value creation.
1
SPEAKER_01
We call ourselves peak span because we think company development is multiple successive peaks versus trying to sprint up the summit on day one.
1
SPEAKER_01
When we get to that first peak, we kind of recalibrate, take a breath.
1
SPEAKER_01
and then decide what to do from there with more data to assert what the right thing to do is.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so oftentimes that means raising a bunch more money.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oftentimes it means selling the company.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oftentimes it means getting to breakeven and never raising another dollar.
1
SPEAKER_01
And all those things are okay and should result in generational wealth for the entrepreneur and a good return for us if we re all kind of doing it in an aligned way.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we re not, again, pursuing that billion dollar plus outcome.
1
SPEAKER_01
when it s way too early to assert that that s even possible, if that makes sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it does make sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for that thorough response.
1
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate that.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is all very interesting to me, of course, because I m on the journey and the path, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And this is my second business.
1
SPEAKER_00
First was a service, now it s technology.
1
SPEAKER_00
And first time doing fundraising, did our friends and family, did our pre-seed.
1
SPEAKER_00
And today I just got our last set of docs.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m excited about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m very excited.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re taking it to the next level and it s do or die.
1
SPEAKER_00
Either I m going to fail or I m going to succeed, one of the two.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, congrats.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re a brave man overcoming your PTSD and talking to another investor after you just closed and talked.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, exactly right.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you know, it s an interesting market.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I will say, and people have heard me say this before on my podcast and all the listeners, that I used to say the hardest thing I ever did in business was bringing together seven small companies underneath one to form Legacy Vangresso.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now the hardest thing that I ever did in business was actually fundraising.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that has been a Herculean effort and it s taken, it s not as fast as I had wanted it to be.
1
SPEAKER_00
And unfortunately,
1
SPEAKER_00
the market is totally different, but we ll talk a little bit more about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do me a favor before I get too far ahead of myself.
1
SPEAKER_00
One thing, tell us one thing that nobody knows about you, even if they re looking at any of their, or all of your social profiles.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Matt, I m looking for something juicy.
1
SPEAKER_01
Something juicy, oh man.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve, let s see, I ve got, my wife is Cambodian.
1
SPEAKER_01
We have two daughters, a three-year-old Luna,
1
SPEAKER_01
and a five-month-old Leila.
1
SPEAKER_01
I will tell you, before I met my wife, I was a mid-20s-year-old from Boston who had been to, I think, London and Spain once.
1
SPEAKER_01
My wife is from Cambodia, grew up in Bangkok, and was incredibly international.
1
SPEAKER_01
Since I ve known my wife, I think we ve gone to over 40 countries together.
1
SPEAKER_01
We actually
1
SPEAKER_01
forego giving each other birthday and Christmas gifts and instead do two or three big trips a year.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now it s the four of us doing these trips.
1
SPEAKER_01
So big travel buff.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hey, that s pretty cool.
1
SPEAKER_00
The hard part is now that you ve got the four of you guys, you said three and a five-month-old?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, you ve got the car CC got to travel with the strollers.
1
SPEAKER_00
They get it.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember those days and dragging them onto an airplane and having to plan, you know, clothes and bags out.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Oh my gosh, we went through many strollers.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that, that was a T that was a tough time, but
1
SPEAKER_00
As soon as they get out of diapers and they get into walking on their own, uh, that s five, six, seven year old face.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a lot better.
1
SPEAKER_00
Travel is a lot easier.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ll tell you one thing, and then we can move on, because I could talk all day about kids.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like it s taken over my life.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve become one of those dads that just everything I say is about my children.
1
SPEAKER_01
But we ve actually been able to do no screen time for our three-year-old to date.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so she doesn t watch any screens, which is awesome from a cognitive perspective, I think.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it s detrimental when you re on a 24-hour flight to Cambodia.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you turn on the TV on the plane and she is uninterested and instead wants to play the entire time.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s a blessing and a curse because we can t just distract her with an iPad.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s that is so obviously that was a conscious effort that you ve made.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Very interesting.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I got to ask how then on a 20 hour flight are you entertaining?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like are you what are you doing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, man, I m dad is a very good storyteller.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s it s a lot of, you know, coloring books and sticker books.
1
SPEAKER_01
And just it s anything that we can we can figure out.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s brutal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hey, I commend you for that.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s funny when me my wife, when she was pregnant,
1
SPEAKER_00
We would go to restaurants and we would see families and no knock, this is you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hey, you do what you need to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
But we would see lots of families where they would, you know, have the kid sitting in the high chair watching something while they re trying to eat.
1
SPEAKER_00
And both my wife and I said we would never do that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And for the most part, we didn t do that too often, but we ended up getting there to the point where it was like, once you had both kids at three and a half years apart, one was the toddler, one was the newborn, like, if you wanted to eat, you had to do something, like, do this so I can actually take seven minutes to actually swallow my food.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you got to the point where you understood, like, why parents, I know, I personally do not agree with sitting there and having them watch the whole entire time.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s not my style, nor do I allow my kids to be,
1
SPEAKER_00
on the phone, any electronics, anytime at dinner.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re very religious about eating dinner together as a family every single night.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that includes going out into restaurants as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you ll never see us sitting there on our phones, four people at a table.
1
SPEAKER_00
That just won t happen.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I do understand when they re at that early age, it was tough, man, because you just don t have that time to focus on yourself or even swallow food without being getting thrown up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I want this, daddy this, tantrum that, too tired this.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, totally agree.
1
SPEAKER_00
Totally agree.
1
SPEAKER_00
All right.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, let s get into some meat and potatoes since your, your particular focus is around the sales and marketing space.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s talk about some first, before we get into the sales, talk about some of the market trends that you re seeing broadly versus 2023.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now you touched a little bit about that a moment ago, but let s dive deeper into some of those things.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I will say, and look, I truly sympathize and empathize with the plight that you alluded to earlier of raising money, which you re just going through, and I ve been in a really tough environment.
1
SPEAKER_01
Look, I ve been doing this for 15 years, and I will say 2023 is one of the tougher markets in software across the board that I ve seen.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s an interesting business called ProfitWell that s kind of a private software company, SaaS metrics dashboarding business.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they actually do this thing, they have visibility obviously by virtue of their product into private software company financials.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they actually aggregate all of their clients, they have about 34,000 private software clients that they aggregate into what they call the ProfitWell software, like SAS index.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s a good barometer of pre-IPO, earlier stage SaaS companies and how they re doing.
1
SPEAKER_01
And what s interesting is that aggregate profit well index, again, statistically significant, 34,000 companies, was growing 80% in early 2022.
1
SPEAKER_01
In early 2023, it was growing 38%.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then in December of 2023, that profit well index saw a negative growth rate, negative 4% for the first time ever.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so by what I mean by all of that is you can see the trend down and, you know, 2023 from that perspective was kind of definitionally a software recession, if you will.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so what we saw across the board was it was hard to sell software across categories.
1
SPEAKER_01
We saw a lot of businesses that pulled back the reins on spend, cut headcount across the board, and I think sales tech was no different there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sales technology and just sellers and sales organizations, broader go-to-market organizations were certainly impacted.
1
SPEAKER_01
We can get into some of that stuff as we talk about sales tech specifically, but we saw it across the board.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was a really, really tough time.
1
SPEAKER_01
The one thing I ll say is, again, with visibility across 50 companies, the company
2
SPEAKER_01
that we think reacted quite well to it, either in our portfolio or not, were the companies that if growth was harder to come by and that variable marketing expense and your sales team and SDR effort, if that return on that spend was not as efficient as you d like it to be and just growth was harder to come by, not because your solution sucks or anything like that, but because buyers were pushing decisions
2
SPEAKER_01
or cutting back spend or just renewing or even downselling on their existing solutions, the companies that continue to spend towards an ambitious growth plan when that growth just wasn t there to come by and ended up burning a lot,
2
SPEAKER_01
we think we re the ones that we re in a tough spot.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so for a lot of our companies, again, with the expectation and experience that growth was really harder to come by and a lot of go-to-market spend was really less effective and less efficient than it s been historically, a lot of our companies pulled back just to be able to weather the storm effectively.
2
SPEAKER_01
And hopefully, as we get into 2024 here, it s a bit of a soft landing and things will rebound and the purse strings will loosen a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are you actually seeing that things are loosening or are you hoping that they will loosen?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m hopeful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like to think of myself as a hand-wringing optimist.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m optimistic eternally, but I say, what can go wrong?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s kind of my MO as an investor.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I m eternally hopeful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think we re seeing some good signs that I do think things will
2
SPEAKER_01
will get back and be a little bit better than they were in 2023, certainly throughout 2024.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think Q3 and Q4 last year in particular were really tough.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I think it s too early to tell, but I m hopeful.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, what s interesting to me is that when there s hard times, when the market is tough,
2
SPEAKER_00
We generally see pullback on spending for companies in almost all areas.
2
SPEAKER_00
The one thing that I ve always struggled with is why would a company pull back on investing in the sales organization?
2
SPEAKER_00
I get operational efficiency everywhere else in the business, but the part that actually brings in the revenue would be the sales organization.
2
SPEAKER_00
So don t not invest in sales, reinvest back into sales, but
2
SPEAKER_00
make sure you ve got the right players on the bus.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s really key to be able to build out a focus on, all right, we may be in a recession, we may be having a difficult time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the other thing that I think an organization should do is we go back to our existing customer base.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we look at, we ve got modules, let s just say we ve got five modules to sell, five products to sell.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s the average number of products that each customer is purchased or bought or is using?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do we drive usage of those products if they already have them but haven t started using them so that that can drive ROI and stickiness?
2
SPEAKER_00
And number two,
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s assume you ve got five and your average modules is two products out of five that you ve sold to a customer.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you go and focus on the upsell?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so reinvesting back into the sales organization is so critical and so key, but yet I see a lot of organizations pulling back everywhere, including in sales.
2
SPEAKER_00
The reality of where I think the biggest fact that could be cut at is cut the people that aren t producing or haven t produced in the last 12 months, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or,
2
SPEAKER_00
throughout that 80% mark, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
They re there at 80% of that number that you ve set the goal at and reinvest with tools and technologies, capabilities and training.
2
SPEAKER_00
Don t cut that out because that is the lifeline.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you also see that trend?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a lot of good points in there that are worth unpacking.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think I totally agree with you.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think there s a couple delineations to make.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is, are you actually letting people go or are you just hiring less quickly?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I think that s the first important delineation where
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, up until 2023, really, like I spent 2020, 2021, 2022, these 2021 and two in particular were like incredible growth years across software.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so people were like really, you know, really growing and really hiring aggressively and spending a lot on variable, you know, variable spend and investing in, you know, go-to-market initiative, I m sorry, product roadmap initiatives that might have a longer term payout.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so what we saw and what I think is smart is
2
SPEAKER_01
to reevaluate the efficiency in particular of your variable spend, maybe hiring less quickly for things like development and engineering that might have a longer term payoff, but certainly agree with you.
2
SPEAKER_01
And especially if you have a more enterprise focused sales model with a long sales cycle that has a longer time associated with getting folks ramped up to productivity, if you slash a lot of your sales team, then you re going to be at a tough spot because when things come back, you need
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, six plus months for those folks to ramp.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I totally agree with that.
2
SPEAKER_01
The other thing I think that s important, too, that we saw a lot of companies kind of elegantly, you know, navigate the storm, if you will, were one of the companies I work with is called Cordial.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a large enterprise focused email marketing provider.
2
SPEAKER_01
They compete with Braze and Iterable and
2
SPEAKER_01
and Klaviyo, but they re kind of upmarket to Klaviyo.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in the 2021 and 2022 timeframe, the messaging about the value prop was all about kind of revenue generation, driving personalization at scale to increase revenue.
2
SPEAKER_01
They really intelligently dovetailed and refined their messaging to be more about consolidation
2
SPEAKER_01
and cost efficiency when that was more in focus.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I think, again, it s a little tone deaf when companies are hiring across the board as if it s 2021, spending aggressively on variable channels that aren t producing and are preaching a message and evangelizing a message that s really kind of falling on deaf ears.
2
SPEAKER_01
to the extent that it s more based on revenue when folks are focused on cost controls and, you know, maybe whittling down the increasingly convoluted tech stacks that they have in-house.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, gotcha.
2
SPEAKER_00
Makes sense.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s talk a little bit about, since we re on this topic of the sales line of business, reinvesting, can you talk about some of the trends that, especially since this is your specialized focus for your portfolio companies, some of the trends that we are seeing in the sales tech just more broadly?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, totally, totally.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I have the pleasure and privilege of working with a lot of great sales tech companies.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m on the board of a company called Cognizant that is in the sales intelligence space.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s actually a great case study, by the way, in our model.
2
SPEAKER_01
When we partnered with Cognizant in 2019, there were about 2.5 million of ARR.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our first proverbial peak that we aligned on was how do we go from two and a half to 10 in the next two years?
2
SPEAKER_01
We did that, and then we recalibrated and decided to raise, and we ve raised a lot more money since, over $100 million, and the business will finish at over $100 million of ARR this year.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s been a great growth story, but a great case study in iterative and incremental value creation because raising $150 million was never the day one objective when we partnered.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was how do we
2
SPEAKER_01
kind of iteratively and incrementally build value.
2
SPEAKER_01
But through that experience and many others, I think the biggest trend I see that has been emerging in my mind over the last really five plus years is a shift from what I would describe historically as kind of
2
SPEAKER_01
an emphasis on sales led to a shift on an emphasis to to buyer centricity in terms of a lot of different things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so what I mean by that is I think sales tech is is a really interesting space.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s it s seen incredible growth, you know, similar to
2
SPEAKER_01
marketing tech, you know, the marketing tech kind of 10 or 15 years ago, and it would like really kind of shot up quickly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we ve seen like massive growth in new startups, tons of funding, new segments emerging new competencies.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in my mind, kind of Gen One of the sales tech boom, has been all about making your sales team more effective and more efficient at their sales motion, i.e.
2
SPEAKER_01
doing, you know, things that are that are descriptive and deep
3
SPEAKER_00
data capture and activity tracking, all these things to make your sellers more efficient at their kind of outbound motion.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that s great.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that stuff is really important.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s really elegant solutions that do that very well, like your solution, by the way, your fly message solution.
3
SPEAKER_00
The negative byproduct, I think, of that is that we all feel it on our LinkedIn channels, etc.
3
SPEAKER_00
The batch and blast, impersonalized inundation that we all feel at email and LinkedIn, it s gotten so offensive that it s almost like the early days of pop-up ads.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so by virtue of all of that, I think that coupled with the trend that we see that a lot of buyers, and I think we also see this in our own daily consumer life, are doing a lot of research independently on their own before they gather a lot of data, before they ever talk to a seller at the organization they are potentially going to buy a product from.
3
SPEAKER_00
So by virtue of all of that, I think that the role of the sales team and the role of technology enablement has shifted in my mind and is shifting from how do we supercharge and drive efficiency and effectiveness in our sales motion to how do we actually cater to what the buyer needs and wants and serve up in an unobtrusive way the best possible information at the right time in the journey to enable that buyer
3
SPEAKER_00
in a very buyer-centric way to make the best possible decision for them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I think that s a big, big trend and shift that we re seeing in sales tech.
3
SPEAKER_01
I also would mention as well, and I d love to get your opinion on this as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Today and yesterday, I was talking to two heads of sales.
3
SPEAKER_01
And one of the interesting things that they mentioned was their real focus is on increasing productivity for the individual sales reps.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we ve got all this tech, but has it actually helped the sales rep to be able to increase their productivity so they re spending more time on the selling motion as opposed to the administrative or the, I gotta go here for that and here for this and do that for this, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So.
3
SPEAKER_01
In that regard, one of the things that I was talking about was with FlyMessage, of course, our focus is on increasing the productivity, but making them smarter.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you know, one of the things that we found was the biggest time suck, the biggest time suck on a seller right now is the
3
SPEAKER_01
inability to be able to write well, and they spend the most amount of time on writing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what we try to do on the enablement side is we try to templatize a lot of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as a result, what ends up happening is the sales organization wants to hit the easy button.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so as a result of having the template, they then don t personalize.
3
SPEAKER_01
So case in point here this morning, you ll appreciate this.
3
SPEAKER_01
I received a connection request from an individual and it was for fractional CFO services.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so they re targeting me because I m a small business.
3
SPEAKER_01
They know I don t have a CFO.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, got it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So because of what you just said,
3
SPEAKER_01
about being kind of like the spray and pray motion and putting out content.
3
SPEAKER_01
In my LinkedIn profile, you may notice that it says Mario in the first name field, Mario period.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the reason why I ve added the period in and why we ve been doing this to all the executives that we work with is because you know that someone has scraped LinkedIn and they automate you, they put you into a sequence.
3
SPEAKER_01
When you receive a message that says, hey, Mario, period, comma.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you know instantly,
3
SPEAKER_01
What a lot of executives are doing is putting emojis in front of their names, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
The unicorns, the rainbow, the this, the that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I decided to go the inconspicuous route, which is the period.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s very hard to tell.
3
SPEAKER_01
and hard to see if you are not looking at it.
3
SPEAKER_01
In which case most sales organizations are like, let s automate the crap out of the data.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s scrape what we need to scrape.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s bring it into our outreach or sales loft or Apollo or marketing automation system.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then we start spraying and praying.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then we run these same campaigns using, you know, great tools that are out there that run LinkedIn, you know, mail campaigns as an example for targeting executives like myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so what you easily are able to decipher is who s the person that s taking the time to automate, or at a minimum, at least they ve cleaned up their data, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
At least they cleaned up their data.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so that s one of the struggles that we re seeing to your point is that we re adding in a lot of technology, but with that technology, we re not making them smarter or solving the biggest problems that they need help with, which is being able to write.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we re not training the sellers about the whole entire loop and understanding the system and the process.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let me explain, and I d love to get your opinion on this.
3
SPEAKER_01
For example, now that we ve moved away from a pure training company to a SaaS company with training as a service, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the things that most sales organizations don t know, and for all of you leaders listening in, here s a little something.
3
SPEAKER_01
You connect with a buyer on LinkedIn.
3
SPEAKER_01
Boom.
3
SPEAKER_01
In most cases, most sellers either leave it alone, the connection, and they start emailing the individual.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what most people do.
3
SPEAKER_01
In some cases, some reps go immediately for the kill and they want to ask for the appointment right there on the LinkedIn message.
3
SPEAKER_01
Both of them are wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because the reality of what we re trying to do is we want to welcome that individual to the network by bringing them value.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I might connect with you, Matt.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s just pretend you re a VP of sales.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I might say, hey, Matt, thanks so much for connecting with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate that.
3
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I don t know if you listen to the podcast, but here s a seven year long running podcast.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally for sales leaders.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s called the Modern Selling Podcast.
3
SPEAKER_01
And here s a great episode with, and I might pick out, you know, the CCL of HP that I had on the show, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So it gives some credibility, some credence right there.
3
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I m curious, some of the challenges that we work with leaders on are...
3
SPEAKER_01
getting more meetings, booking more appointments.
3
SPEAKER_01
Are you struggling with some of those challenges?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s all I m doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna ask a question to solicit engagement, and I m gonna bring something of value.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, now what am I looking for?
3
SPEAKER_01
What I m hoping to solicit is that that person responds back to me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Here s the secret right here.
3
SPEAKER_01
The moment that that person responds, whether it s I m sending it on Navigator or whether I m sending on LinkedIn, LinkedIn says, ah, new connection.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a message chain going on back and forth.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what I m going to do now for the next three weeks is I m going to take Mario s content and put it in front of Matt, whether it s a comment or a post.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m going to do the same for Matt.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m going to take Matt s content and put it in front of Mario, trying to foster and build a connection and relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what does that mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, if you re prospecting on LinkedIn, then you better be commenting, which 90% of most reps are not commenting, and you better be posting, which almost nearly 100% of most reps are not posting content on LinkedIn.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because what s going to happen is while Matt s sitting on the toilet going through his newsfeed and scrolling down his newsfeed, looking at his newsfeed,
3
SPEAKER_01
If I was commenting and if I was posting, then Matt s gonna see my content and if it s something of value to that buyer persona, hopefully get it to click, which is the gift that keeps on giving.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so if you understood that, and this is where I m challenged by, if you understood that, then you would understand the importance of training your people of how to properly comment, how to properly post content.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think most sales organizations are just throw more email,
3
SPEAKER_01
throw more email, put it into a sequence, make the sequence longer, and throw more cold calls.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they re not understanding the intricacies of this entire workflow, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Totally agree.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well said.
3
SPEAKER_00
There was a lot of interesting comments there.
3
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, and I do think it all comes back to buyer-centricity, which is, you noted, the first outreach thing is not what I kind of
3
SPEAKER_00
think of it visualized in my mind is like the used car salesman of like, what do I have to do to get you in this car today?
3
SPEAKER_00
But rather, here s a piece of content that you buyer who is in my ICP and is not, you know, a incredibly random prospect that I know nothing about, you might find this interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re starting with value.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then, you know, I think it makes all the sense in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
I totally agree with the broad concept too of,
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, reminding ourselves that especially with the sales and marketing and broader go to market technology stacks becoming so convoluted.
4
SPEAKER_00
and overwhelming that it s just it s it s paralyzing where pick any stat you want the average enterprise uses like 40 tools for sales and CRM it s unmanageable oftentimes they re not talking to to each other in a cohesive way and we re kind of forgetting what the end goal is which is to drive a business outcome
4
SPEAKER_00
and that technology is an enabler, not the end all be all, and an enabler of enabling your sellers to spend more time doing what they do best, which is selling, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I think there needs to be some mindset shift as to what is the role of technology.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think the best technology is that which kind of seamlessly extends into the existing workflow of your rep.
4
SPEAKER_00
versus being another application or another system of record that you have to kind of log in and actually ends up being an inhibitor to you doing your job better.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, appreciate that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, you talked about earlier a thought map overview.
4
SPEAKER_01
Explain that.
4
SPEAKER_01
What is it and how does it work?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and so look, this is kind of taking a page out of your book, to be honest.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we think of ourselves as a sales team, too, as investors.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we are selling a product.
4
SPEAKER_00
That product is our value add as a partner and our confidence in helping you achieve a great outcome.
4
SPEAKER_00
And a key element of our product value proposition is our focus and specialization, i.e., if you are a sales technology entrepreneur, there s a lot of, and you re a well-performing company, you re getting cold emails, like 10, 15 a week from investors that don t know a lot about your business.
4
SPEAKER_00
And ostensibly, hopefully, you want a partner who s going to be collaborative, who s going to be aligned, who s going to be transparent, and who s really going to know your category and be able to help you there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I think a lot of investors across stages say that they re thematic.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the reality is that s usually bullshit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Pardon my French.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the reality is that most investors are looking for a financial profile and then reactively slotting you into a theme and saying, oh, yeah, we cover that theme.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the reality is the financial profile is what
4
SPEAKER_00
what they re looking at.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so saying you are a thematic investor sometimes falls on dead F ears because they ve heard it before and it s not always true.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we spend a lot of time, we kind of segment our team into kind of power eyes and myself and three colleagues are the sales tech focused theme team.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we ve been focused on the category for the better part of a decade.
4
SPEAKER_00
We spent a lot of time doing primary research, thinking about trends and market dynamics and segments.
4
SPEAKER_00
and producing content to show that we re actually thinking about the things, the dynamics that matter to you as an entrepreneur, and that ostensibly we re actually focused on your subsegment and category.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this Thought Map series was the amalgamation of just a lot of thinking and research that we ve been doing to try to show folks that we re thinking about this stuff and kind of highlight a couple areas.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we did a five-part series.
4
SPEAKER_00
We released it with the folks at Pavilion on their blog.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we looked at each one of the five installments, observed and examined one overarching trend, and then three sub-themes or sub-segments therein, and about 15 to 20 companies in each of those three sub-segments.
4
SPEAKER_00
We thought it was an interesting way to force ourselves to put on paper and articulate some of these really powerful sales tech trends and themes that we think people are thinking about to let entrepreneurs know what we re looking at.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then again, articulate in a much more nuanced way than the taxonomy of like a G2 or a Captera, for example, what a subsegment is.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like sales enablement has 10,000 companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
We tried to get much more granular
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, one of the five parts, for example, was on value proposition articulation.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we looked at three subsegments, including buyer-led, product-led enablement, which is kind of a really interesting new category of interactive demo environments and just kind of dovetailing a product-led sales motion to, you know, a heavy kind of PLG motion, as well as buyer-centric content.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so much more, again, nuanced, much more narrow themes, uh, that we just talk about, um, to get folks to, to, to see how we re thinking about the stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, um, the message is, is lead with content, uh, or lead to your solution with valuable content.
4
SPEAKER_01
Don t lead with your solution.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Totally, totally, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And look, we use it because if you re an entrepreneur and you probably experienced this yourself, you re getting bombarded with templatized outreach from associates that don t know anything about your business and don t take the time to write a personalized email.
4
SPEAKER_00
And instead you get an email from me and it s really bespoke.
4
SPEAKER_00
I write these emails myself.
4
SPEAKER_00
I spend a lot of time on them.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, hey, I ve actually written a little content piece about your category and featured your business on the logo page.
4
SPEAKER_00
Would you like to talk?
4
SPEAKER_00
That s the first step.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s a really strategic level of rapport.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not a poll, poll, poll exercise that I know you ve been on the other end of where you get on the phone with a junior investor and they say, tell me about your company and your market.
4
SPEAKER_00
I try to come and say, let me tell you about your business and my perspective on it and my experience in your market.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now that would be a very interesting investor conversation, as opposed to tell me about your business and you re like, did you look me up before you got on this call?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you even know who I am?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s just disrespectful.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it s really disrespectful entrepreneurs who don t have enough time to do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s a very disjointed relationship building process a lot too, where you re talking to a junior individual, no disrespect to them.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you kind of like pass that first test and get,
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, throw it up to a VP and then a partner eventually.
4
SPEAKER_00
We have, again, partners reaching out to companies and doing the first call and every call thereafter, because we re going to be the ones working closely with you on your board and just think it s the right way to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, interesting.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, good conversation here.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re running out of time, but I wanted to just touch on the role of AI and automation in sales tech.
4
SPEAKER_01
What are you guys seeing and talking about with your portfolio companies?
4
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, AI is obviously one of the biggest buzzwords in technology and has been for a while.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ll tell you that we gravitate, and me personally, I gravitate a lot towards very pragmatic applications of AI that are outcomes-based, that are not just slideware.
4
SPEAKER_00
Every company has an AI story.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think, again, very pragmatic, focused, outcomes-based applications of AI are really interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the biggest impact that I believe AI, generative AI, large language models, but in particular, just any kind of AI-enabled platform in sales tech,
4
SPEAKER_00
has, will have and has had on sales teams is we re seeing the emergence of, and you alluded to this a little bit, but the emergence of kind of full lifecycle reps.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think historically, you know, you had kind of an SDR and you had a sales rep and, you know, you had a,
4
SPEAKER_00
kind of a hierarchical team pursuing with very specialized functions.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the best applications of AI and technologies that can not only ingest a lot of information like a best-in-class SDR would do, but then surface that information in a very digestible way to enable you with information and content in a timely way to have a great conversation.
4
SPEAKER_00
over time, I think makes the role of, certainly in the near term, augments the role of the SDR and enables the rise of these full lifecycle sellers, which are folks doing everything from prospecting and lead generation through engagement and closing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you can very clearly see a path to a world where a lot of that is automated.
4
SPEAKER_00
including the creation of collateral and content to serve a specific prospect and engage at the right time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I think there s a lot of really interesting applications that are very pragmatic for AI and we re seeing them in a lot of, we talk about a lot of those in that thought map series.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think it s a really, really exciting time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And again, the key thing for us
5
SPEAKER_01
is to remember that technology is an enabler.
5
SPEAKER_01
And at the end of the day, if it enables you to have a better conversation in a more personalized, engaging way and drive a better outcome and spend more time on selling and the human interaction, the human dynamic they re in, I think it s all goodness.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s an exciting time for sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think one of the keys here to take away for me as sales leaders are listening in at sales reps is in my mind, first off, you can t survive without AI.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think that s really important.
5
SPEAKER_00
But AI should not be thought of as replacing the seller or replacing a selling function or replacing even the seller s brain.
5
SPEAKER_00
AI is all about augmenting the seller.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a great example is one of the products that we also discovered was within fly message was we realized that sellers were having a problem with creating content.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so as a direct result, marketing was not solving that problem.
5
SPEAKER_00
And sales leaders would say to marketing and then marketing would say, well, let s put together an employee advocacy program.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then you can start sharing from our employee advocacy program.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s great for marketing, but bad for sellers.
5
SPEAKER_00
Why?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because it s using the LinkedIn sharing API and LinkedIn is going to throttle that visibility down.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so sellers would use it for 90 days.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then all of a sudden they would say, this doesn t work.
5
SPEAKER_00
I haven t got a single lead out of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we created within FlyMessage a product called FlyPost AI, which allows you to be able to write a social media post based on any topic.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it would write it right there on LinkedIn so that you could turn around and publish it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Hallelujah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, great.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so yesterday we were doing a live onboarding for one of our large enterprise customers, and we were going through the mechanics or the anatomy of a good post.
5
SPEAKER_00
After we went through the anatomy of how to write a good post, train them on how to do that, then we said, all right, we re going to make this easy for you.
5
SPEAKER_00
Go to LinkedIn, click start a post.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now you ll see fly posts come alive, click thought leadership, put a topic in.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I had 35 people in the room, Matt, and all of a sudden the brains went like this.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they were like, oh my God.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would never write anything because of how long it would take.
5
SPEAKER_00
Average time, 32 minutes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now in less than nine minutes, I could have a post scheduled out one or two in an entire week.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so that s about augmenting the seller because what is the seller going to go out there and write
5
SPEAKER_00
and go research content?
5
SPEAKER_00
No, not at all.
5
SPEAKER_00
What the seller needs to be able to do is get that information out there and utilize AI to help augment their brain, add in color.
5
SPEAKER_00
And as I started having everybody review this post,
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s like, man, it s like 85% right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like I can add in a story here, I can add a call to action and boom.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s now based upon what AI can do is it can help us really increase the speed of how we engage.
5
SPEAKER_00
But augmentation, I think that s what we need to focus on in the market.
5
SPEAKER_01
Totally agree.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s a, that s an amazing example and such a powerful solution.
5
SPEAKER_01
Um, you know, I think it s just on so many, so many different levels, but I totally agree with you.
5
SPEAKER_01
Technology is an enabler.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s supplemental.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s, it s about augmenting your, your existing workflows and, and making you, you know, better, faster and make better and more data informed decisions.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I totally agree with you.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a super powerful tool.
5
SPEAKER_00
Man, it s been great talking to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ve run out of time, but if someone wants to get a hold of the great Matt Melaleuca, how do they do it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it through LinkedIn, email, Twitter?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, you re too kind, the great Mario.
5
SPEAKER_01
But again, first, I really appreciate you having me on.
5
SPEAKER_01
You guys are just such thought leaders, and it s a real pleasure.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love listening to your podcast and reading your content, and so really appreciate it.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a pleasure and a privilege, and I m humbled to be here.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can email me at matt at peakspancapital.com.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like spanning mountain peaks.
5
SPEAKER_01
I won t spell it all out.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s probably the best way to contact me.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re on LinkedIn.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you re looking for Matt, M-A-T-T, last name spelt M-E-L-Y.
5
SPEAKER_00
M-U-K-A.
5
SPEAKER_00
Y-M-U-K-A.
5
SPEAKER_00
So M-E-L-Y-M-U-K-A.
5
SPEAKER_00
Did I get it right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You did.
5
SPEAKER_00
You did.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you re one of very few.
5
SPEAKER_01
My poor daughter, we joke that she s not going to be able to spell her entire name until she s about 18 years old.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s a tough one.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a tough one.
5
SPEAKER_00
So make sure when you reach out to Matt, tell him you heard him on the Modern Selling Podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
Please do not send a connection request that is a blind connection request.
5
SPEAKER_00
Click the connect button, add a note.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is not very hard, people, and say, Matt, I heard you on the Modern Selling Podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
Matt, I got one last question for you, and that is your all-time favorite movie, what is it?
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s a good one.
5
SPEAKER_01
I would probably say
5
SPEAKER_01
The Shawshank Redemption is my all-time favorite.
5
SPEAKER_01
I will say that although I live in New York, I m from the great city of Boston initially, and I do have a very soft spot for all of the Boston kind of thriller movies, like The Departed.
5
SPEAKER_01
and the town and movies like that, if I m gonna drop my R s a little bit on this podcast, but probably Shawshank is number one for me.
5
SPEAKER_00
There you go, Shawshank Redemption, again, 260 plus episodes.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think that is the all time most favorite movie out of all of our guests.
5
SPEAKER_00
So for all of you listening in right now, hey, don t turn that down quite yet.
5
SPEAKER_00
Listen to this very important message right now.
5
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to the Modern Selling Podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
Please do me a huge favor and give the Modern Selling Podcast a 5-star rating and review on iTunes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and don t forget, if you d like to save 20 hours or more in a month and increase your productivity, go right now and download Fly Message, that s flymsg.io for free.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s your free text expander and personal writing assistant.
5
SPEAKER_00
Hey, thanks for listening in.
5
SPEAKER_00
And until the next episode, good selling.