Becoming A Marketing Bull From Day 1 (With Kris Rudeegraap)

‍

Sri: Hello everyone. Welcome to The Factors Podcast.Here we interview leaders, founders and senior marketers and B2B SaaS companiesabout all things revenue and marketing. Today we have a very, very, very special guest Kris, CEO & founder at Sendoso, one of the leading direct marketing automation platforms. He's both a friend and advisor to us, and he'sone of the top leaders in B2B and SaaS, which we always, which we at factors follow. And we are very excited to have him here. Welcome Kris. Thanks a lot for coming. Thank you.

Kris: Excited to be on the show today.

Sri: Sure. Kris I mean in our side we don't need an introduction to you from b2b, but if we can briefly take a couple of minutes to tell us about your story and how the idea of Sendoso came about.

Kris: Yeah, for sure. So, I started Sendoso about sixand a half years ago, and prior to that I spent about a decade in softwaresales. And so I really saw first-hand the evolution of outbound prospecting.You know, I, this was way back in the day when you know, tout app first cameout and Yes ware was one of the first sales engagement platforms. And it was also when SalesLoft at that time was a prospecting tool that helped you getemail addresses out of LinkedIn. This was before they pivoted into the, into what we all know today with, with SalesLoft and Outreach and everyone else inthe sales engagement category. But so I saw those. You know, development's first-hand and I, you know, way back in the day, I felt like you could send a hundredemails and get 90 replies. It was like, you know, everyone replied email, butit got really saturated and noisy. And especially in B2B tech sales, it's really important that you're multi-threaded and that you're using multiplechannels in order to get in front of your prospects and customers. And so Istarted to see more and more digital noise come through from emails and ads.And I said, Hey, how else can I stand out? How else can I get more creativewith my outreach and, and, and try to break into new accounts? And so I startedwriting handwritten notes and sending those out to prospects.  Be on a call and hear a dog bark, and I'd send over a dog toy or I'd, you know, go grab swag out of the, the marketingcloset and, and ship it over to a, a prospect. And it all worked really, reallywell. It was just manual and time consuming and hard to track. You know, my VPwas always like, why are you expecting Amazon?

I'm like, it's because I bought this dog toy gift for thisprospect. And then they replied and I got the meeting and closed the deal. He'slike, I guess if it works, it works. And so I really just dreamed up of asolution that. Automated and made that whole process simpler and easier. Andthat was really the you know, the concept of Sendoso, that we all use today.

Sri: I mean, when I think about it now, this justscreams at you saying that, okay, this is so obvious, people have to use itbecause emails are like, less than one person. Replies, goes always. Mm-hmm.But how was it in the early days? I mean, your co-founder and you sellingearly, was it immediate product market fit or did it take some time? When didthe tech happen? What was the journey at that point in time?

Kris: So, you know, I think we I think we were lucky inthat we were selling to ourselves in a sense. Mean like my co-founder was alsoin sales. And so we knew what we wanted and we knew how we wanted to use theproduct. So we were like our own users and we were solving the problem forourselves. So that was helpful in terms of like, We felt we had product marketfit for ourselves. So then it was like, okay, now how else do we go out thereand find others? And I think the concept of what we're doing has been done, youknow, years and decades before. It was just so manual and automated that we aremanual and siloed that because we were able to create a software platform, amarketplace, a logistics network, it was kind of an aha moment for ourprospects where they said, Hey, I. Do this manually. I want to do this more.This is amazing. So we, it, it was less like we invented a brand new category.We just built a better mouse trap on an existing category where technologymakes it a gazillion times better. And I kind of think about it synonymousmaybe to the, the Uber to taxi scenario where people were using taxis astransportation. Everyone was using it. But then once you layer on an app likeUber, it's just a million times better. And then, and they were stealing allthose taxi dollars away.

Sri: That's very interesting. And kind of like yetanother Uber analogies. I've seen a lot on b2c, but Uber analogy in b2b, thisis the first time I'm hearing of it. That's amazing. And like right from seedfunding to Series A to this thing. How did you start with your go-to market?Cause you and your co-founder both were salespeople, so you would've startedwith sales, but how did the non-linear aspect happen in terms of marketing? Whowas your first marketing hire? How did you think about marketing in early daysand how has it evolved in centers over the last couple of years?

Kris: Yeah, so in the early days, I think marketing wasextremely important, both from a brand awareness perspective and, and then alsofrom a demand gen perspective. And I think those are the two areas that wefocused on first. So we our first marketer, she was amazing. She was kind of a.You know, she, she did everything. So she was helping create sales enablementcontent. She was doing field marketing events and we'd show up at conferencesand we'd invite our, you know, our whole company at the time, which maybe therewas eight of us. And we'd all show up to a conference and be like, wow, Sendosois huge. And we're like, this is their whole company. If they only knew, but wewere, you know, kind of fake it till you make it kind of mentality where you wantto show up big at these conferences. And then we did, you know, a lot of yourtraditional. Demand gen, content marketing and, and, and really went down thatpath really strong too. And so I think we early on invested in marketing, Ithink ahead of other, I think Mar our marketer was maybe our sixth hire. And sowe pretty quickly decided we want to make sure that we won drive enough leadsfor sales. We also quickly hired SDRs as an extension of marketing. So from dayone, we had like an SD r or we had our, our first sales hired. Then we hiredsome SDRs shortly thereafter because we had a, a bunch of marketing leadscoming in too. So, you know, within our first, you know, 10 employees, therewas an SDR in that group. So we were, were quickly will willing to build thisoutbound engine that consisted of. Marketing demand gen and, and then the SDRorganization.  

Sri: And what was the scale of investment in terms ofwhat percentage of your revenue you invested back into marketing, and how didyou actually scale that up over the period of time?

Kris: Yeah, so, you know, we I think we are maybespending. It's hard for me to remember back in the day in terms of the exactamounts, but I think we are, our goal was like, let's overspend in marketing inthe beginning. And we had a revenue model that was driving revenue to a pointwhere we were actually profitable or break even in the early days? In the earlyyears we went out and raised money just so that we could scale faster, but wehad a very strong business model. I think when we went to raise our Series A,we had over 5 million in ARR already. Even our seed round we had more than amillion in ARR so we were pretty quick to drive revenue Day zero, which camefrom. You know, myself and my co-founder's ability just to go out there andsell, sell, sell. Then hire salespeople that could sell, sell, sell, hiremarketers that could drive pipeline and leads and sell, sell, sell. And so wewere selling day zero. And, and that was part of our d n A in the early years.

Sri: One thing, which is kind of surprising and also howit worked. Both you and your co-founder were salespeople. No product. Yes, notech, no marketing, but salespeople. Yes. How did you make it work in the earlydays as to salespeople getting together and then building the product, then thetech, and then the marketing muscle around that? Yeah, so, you know, I thinkAs, as part of that background.

Kris: I mean, like I said, it's very much helped for ourgo-to-market strategy. We were both selling day zero. Mm-hmm. For me, I took onthe challenge of how am I going to really manage the rest of the business? Andso I you know, took on how to develop products, how to manage engineeringteams, how to manage marketing, and all the other aspects of the business. We quicklyhired a COO pretty early, and that was helpful to take on a lot of theoperations, the hr, the legal, the finance side of things. So, so that wassomething that you know, was, was far outta my wheelhouse, but I hadfamiliarity working at other start-ups in terms of like how, how to developproducts. And you know, I was very early at other start-ups that were, youknow, I was a. Third employee at another start-up that scaled. I was the like12th employee at another start-up that scaled. So I saw how it, how a start-upworked from the inside out and just used that as kind of the building blocksfor what I wanted to build.

Sri: Awesome. And I mean, we saw in the feed stage andyou had the series at 5 million. What was the growth from. I mean, how did youhandle growth from five to 10 and then further into the SoftBank funding level?What were the things which worked for you? What are the growth hacks, both froma sales and marketing front and even customer success trend, which reallyworked for you?

Kris: Yeah, so, you know, I think some of the thingswere. You know, the more traditional things. I think one of the things we didwas just, we invested very, very heavily in an SDR organization early on. Andthat was something that I think some people kind of tiptoe into. Mm-hmm. But wewere like, let's go all in on the SD R organization, which also meant that wehad to go all in on our rev ops and how we find named accounts. So we reallygave the SDRs, all their named accounts, all the contacts, and they focusedmost of their time just on cold calling Sen dosing and sequencing, replying toemails. And so that was important. So we had a big emphasis on data and ourkind of Salesforce efforts. We had a big emphasis on our SDR efforts. And thenwe were doing a ton of marketing thought leadership in the early days. We hadan amazing early content marketer that was creating a lot of awareness forSendoso, so out there. Mm-hmm. We also, Like you know caught a lot of greattrends and movements in marketing. We were very early on in account-basedmarketing a B M and that was something that was really relevant to us and, andso we were really rode that wave really well. And we really did a lot withintegrations. We had a lot of partnerships through all of the different SaaS, ManTechand Sales Tech companies. So we always co-sold with them or co-marketed . Thatwas a huge early win for us as we got a put our name next to the, the HubSpotsand Marketos and Salesforce and Outreach and Salesloft of the early days and,you know, ride off their coattails. We got really good at. You know, building aculture of winning and I think building a team that we could you know, repeatour sales efforts on. And so it was just how quick, how can we just hire moresmart salespeople, build a sales engine, and just continue to scale that?

Sri: Awesome. That's kind of something like almost everystartup founder would like to walk that path down the line and just saying, butin early days and also in the mid stages, of course, it's like super highgrowth and there is kind of exponential. There’s a lot of investor interest,everything, but metrics sometimes gets forgotten, but, I mean people who buildbig companies look at metrics as well. They look at what are the kind ofmetrics, both revenue metrics, marketing metrics, customer success metrics, whichmatter as a CEO, as you progress through the role, what were the kind ofmetrics you were really keeping a watch list at different stages and both froma revenue and marketing lens, if you can share that, that would be great.

Kris: Yeah. You know, I'll share a couple of that. I'dsay I watched closely and some I wish I watched closer, so, You know, I thinkARR was just like my North star. I was constantly like, great, we closedanother deal. How much ARR, how much ARR? How much ARR? And so I was overlyobsessed with ARR. I think you know, that metric is very glorified in SiliconValley and SaaS tech companies is like ARR is the best thing in the world. Andso I think I overly indexed on ARR. You know, I think the area that I'd lookingback on, I as I would say NRR is even a, a metric that I think is equally ormore important as it shows really the health of the customer retention side ofthe business and expansion side of the business. And so, you know, we, we overglorified, I think the new business AEs and. Were less highlighting and focusedon the account management expansion deals and the land and expand process.We've now solved that and we've now, you know, are, are focused on that. But inthe, in the early years, the first 1, 2, 3, even four years, it was so muchmore of a focus on ARR than anything else. I think that was a big one. We'd youknow, I think another focus area was you know, that we looked at was reallyspend on our platform. That is a unique thing for us because it's like aleading indicator. Of usage and adoption. I think other companies will findwhat their, like magic usage and adoption metric is And you know, there's someformulaic ways that we could figure out like how much spend then, you know,assimilates to the likelihood to renew or expand. And so I think it's reallyimportant for each company to figure out what is their usage and adoptionmetric and really hone in on that and really make sure that you know that anddouble down on that. And I think that's an important one.

Sri: And with regard to marketing metrics, did you havea tab on CAC? Did you have a tab on ROI with marketing investment andattribution on marketing investment? Was that something that you looked at, atwhich stage you started looking at it? And when did it become more and moreimportant for you?

Kris: Yeah, so I think marketing obsessed over thatreally well. They were looking at a little less on the we weren't obsessingover LTV to CAC in the early days just because we had a fast growing businesswith tons of capital and tons of growth. I think now as we a little bit morefocused on a path to profitability that is even more important and somethingthat probably is, should be equally important to all companies at all stages.Given the current climates and environment. I think we looked at attribution asmu best we could. You know, I think it's one of those things, unless you areable to buy a tool like factors, it, it becomes harder to, to look at overtime. And so we would've very much benefited from factors in the early years. Ithink the benefit of that is where you, you know, there was a bit of time wherewe had, where we were kind of having some grey area in terms of our reportingfor attribution. And so it was like, where do we invest in? And it was a bitof. Hope, hope and wish strategy than like a data-driven strategy. And so thatwas something that I think as a, as an early start-up or, or any size company,if you can showcase what attribution from what channel, from what source, you'regoing to be able to invest more in those sources and more in those channels.And that's incredibly important, especially, especially in today's kind of morebudget type economy that we're in. We did look at like pipeline you know,velocity and pipeline coverage and those type of, kind of more sales andmarketing alignment metrics. That was really important for us too.

Sri: Awesome. And I mean, this is a lot about a lot todigest for almost every other SaaS founder and B2B marketer, both from theearly stages, SDR investment, ABM investment, content and building for growthand the team structure. But now we'll go into what Sendoso does. Gifting.  Gifting is, I mean for me it's obvious, but alot of people, we do see a lot of LinkedIn posts. We do see a couple of peoplesaying that, okay, why would anyone buy a gift for to get a door opener? If theperson is really interested, he's going to come us. But you have seen it rightfrom the start to end. How does gifting work and how does it generate revenue?What are the kind of nuances of gifting is something that we want to learnabout this?

Kris: Totally. So I think of gifting in a coupledifferent ways. One, I think gifting as a as just another communication medianat the very high level, it's, hey, you're, you're trying to reach out, you'retrying to grab the attention, and you're trying to communicate to a prospect,to a customer, to a partner. And in some cases to an employee, but we'll leaveout the employee use case now and just talk about kind of more customerprospect driven gifting. And so you have a lot of different ways that you coulddo that. You can send an s m s, you can give 'em a cold call, you can shoot 'ema note on LinkedIn. You can email them and you can also send 'em a gift. And soall these different channels are just increasing your likelihood that they're goingto reply, that they're going to engage, that they're going to. Be moreinterested in learning about your product or service. And so I think of it asjust another tool in your tool belt. I think gifting is complimentary to theother channels that you're currently using. It can work better than otherchannels in a lot of cases because of the, just the intrinsic value of givingsomething to somebody. There's that reciprocity. There's also just theincentivization and the, the, the feeling of, Hey, I've gotta return this favour.So, built into gifting is just some psychological benefits that are, you know,when someone sends you an email, you're not like, oh, I've got to respond. Orwhen you see an ad and click on it, you're like, oh, I got to go buy theirproduct right now. Like, that's just psychologically not the way humans think.But there is some psychological understanding that when you send someone agift, that there is some sort of, of effort that you should return that favour.Especially if it's a thoughtful, personalized, customized, unique gift with aunique handwritten note or custom message next to it. So That being said, Ilike to think of it as just what else? What are, what is, you know, a goal thata, a business has and, and what is, in some case, I call 'em leaky buckets. Doyou need to go and solve more top of funnel leads into your pipeline? Do youneed to drive more attendees to a webinar? Do you need to drivee more showrates to SDR set? Ae meaning do you need to accelerate your deal pipeline? Doyou need to welcome a customer with a customer gift? Do you need to, you know,all these different areas you can add in gifting to that mix to driveconversion and almost act as a multiplier. I like to think of that, you know,you, you have a, a bigger chance you know to engage with a prospect and gettheir attention if you use gifting in your strategies.

Sri: That's I think very well-articulated as acommunication medium. And I think thinking back I was, one thing which I wasthinking was like in early days when, I mean I was talking about early twothousands when I email used to come, everyone used to get update because I'vegot an email, I have to reply, and then the novelty fell off because we had theemail automation and spam and everything coming up. But gifting is also, ifit's a thoughtful gift or even if it's a thoughtful written, well email, peoplehave that reciprocity to actually For sure, for sure. Yes. And they don't seeit as a bribe or any other form, but going a little more into details and howcompanies do it at what stage or I mean in terms of either a or growth stageand other, the thing do companies should adopt a gifting product. Like Sendosoand what you have seen from data from within Sendoso and at. What stage ofbuying process? Is it at top of the funnel or is it at the middle of thefunnel, or which touchpoint? Because we have the email sequencing and the ABMsequencing, like 17 step. 15 step. Mm-hmm. 20 step process. Which steps of theprocess does the gifting actually makes a lot of sense in terms of conversions?

Kris: Yeah. So I'm a big proponent that y gifting shouldbe there, day zero. If you're two founders in a garage trying to build aproduct and figure out product market fit, what, what is your goal? Your goalis to try to talk to customers and build some early traction to get feedback onyour product, to see if someone's willing to use your product or willing to payfor your product. So, What are you doing? You're doing customer interviews, youare doing, you know you're reaching out to friends, asking for referrals, andwhat, what, perfect way to say, Hey, thank you for that customer, interviewer.Hey, thank you for giving me your feedback and building those early customerchampions and ambassadors that hopefully will be customers for life for thenext decade. And so even when you're two founders trying to find product marketfit, there's a benefit to gifting. Now that being said, You know, the SendosoEnterprise product has a million more bells and whistles than would be neededfor a two-person start-up. But we do have a free Sendoso Express product thatyou can get in there, sign up and send something with, you know, no SASS feeand get going in one minute and send someone a gift. But we'll then also havethe product that the 10,000 person sales team needs with rules and permissionsand limitations and integrations and automations, and something that a, youknow, multi-billion dollar. You know, global conglomerate would need too. So Ithink there's a different software platform that can be leveraged depending onthe stage of your company. But the intrinsic value that gifting delivers can bedone at a two-person start-up to a, you know, 50,000 person start-up. So that'smy answer to that question. To the second part of like what step in thesequence. I think it's more of a s you know, a experimentation process than itis just like every, you know, step two, you have to do it. And the way, andwhat I say is more important is how do you think about the overall. Likebuyer's journey and how are you tying those steps together? If you justrandomly outta the blue stage seven, just sent someone a gift and didn'tmention that in stage eight, like, or step eight like that is, that might, youknow, fall short. So I think the best you know outbound prospecting reps,whether you're an SDR or an AE prospecting, you've integrated into your salesengagement tools like, you know, like the sales, like sales Loft or HubSpot orGroove or. Paul, or you know, any of these tools so that you've can build arepetition around what step. And then you also have the ability to track whatstep is converting better. You can do AB testing and then all that just goes toshow you that, hey, for. For our audience, for this product line, for this I cp, we're seeing the best step three versus step 12. And, and you know, and alot of companies having multiple steps, you'll try, you know, early in theprocess, later in the process, it's, you know, how again, do you do email andcode calls and gifting and social all, you know, interconnected to getsomeone's attention.

Sri: That's great. I mean, as a fundamental product Withattribution, but underlying is the customer buyer journey is what we stitchtogether. And since we also integrate with HubSpot and Salesforce and othersales engagement tools, which are there, we are also seeing the parts and whichpart, where the gifting happens, where the user what was the inflection pointaround it? How many users got gifted? And what did they do after, did the dealaccelerate or how it moved from S Q L to close one, et cetera. Something whichwe are also seeing. So that's pretty exciting for us. Maybe we'd have some moredata to share with you in a couple of weeks or months in time. That's somethingwhich we are looking forward to. One more thing which I want to ask. When youhad spoken about earlier, you measure one that's like, how is the volume ofSpence do people use on the Santoso platform? That's something and moredispense, which means there's a lot of engagement, they're seeing value. How docustomers look at ROI from Sendoso, from the, how do they measure that?

Kris: Yep. So there's you know, a handful of differentways companies look at Roi. One is the, they look, they finally get to look atthe ROI of direct mail as the channel. Previously, companies might be doingthis manually and they're not even able to see that, Hey, we spend. You know,$8,000 on this campaign and it influenced, you know, 2 million in pipeline. So,they're tracking the r o I of the channel and doing so through usually like aweighted average or a last touch or you know, their own attribution modelling.Furthermore, there's ROI of doing more, and so if they're trying to have anin-house team, pack boxes, send, send stuff out. You know, typically an AE oreven a demand gen marketer only has a certain number of hours in their day, andso they end up doing just the, the smallest amount when they can just click abutton or set up an automation and. Gifts and direct mail goes out, they coulddo a lot more. So there's the ROI and the opportunity cost of not doing enoughof direct mail. There's also the R ROI of the cost of goods sold. So because wehave these economies of scale, because we can go out and say, Hey, we'rebuying. Tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of product, we cango get discounts and pass those discounts along to our customers so they payless than market rate for products and, and postage, et cetera. And so there'sjust the ROI of the campaign itself.

Sri: Was there any incremental test done within send orsomething like pre send also to after Sendoso? How much was the, let's say dealcycle velocity increase or in terms of a ACV increase or any other number ofdeals increased? Any other for sure.

Kris: Yeah. I mean, we, we don't, we, we help ourcustomers track all that data. We help 'em set up custom dashboards. A lot oftimes, like I said, we're not the only touchpoint in their outbound cycle or their,their deal acceleration or their customer retention. Programs. And so our goalis to be another data point that they can then paint the picture of what's trueattribution, what's the true ROI points, what are the true conversion metrics,and they're able to do that in their own systems, their own dashboards.

Sri: Awesome. Now let's move away from metrics. Let's.Of, I mean, gifting is one of the most creative forms of communication on somelevel because you can get as creative as possible. It's not like an email isalways a standard template. It can't, I can put a meme in it, I can put ananimation in it, but it stands like that. I can create, write as much aspossible, but gifting can be as creative as possible. What were the mostcreative gifts you have seen your customers ask you to shout out?

Kris: Yeah, so you know, we have a really uniqueintegration with Amazon where you can go and search Amazon's 500 millionproducts and then it ships, it uses your sendoso account balance ships to ournearest warehouse. We then unbox it, Reebok out handwritten note and ship itout. All tracked through your C R m or your, your sales engagement tools. Andso because of that, we're able to. We're able to customize the gift toanything. You know, it's typically like my, my example of a dog barking in thebackground. And you send a dog toy, like that type of personal connection andmessage or, you know, someone's alma mater or, or they mentioned they're goingon a ski trip or, you know it's very much personalized to that person and Ithink that can be very memorable.

Sri: Any memorable gifts you have sent out or you havereceived? Yeah, I mean, one of the ones from way back in the day, we, we wereat a conference and somebody was on crutches and had a some broken ribs from anfrom a snowboarding accident. And we had shipped them a, a rack of ribs in themail back to the house. And so that was, and with a funny handwritten notetalking about it. And we thought that that worked really well. Got the meeting,got the deal and was pretty creative.

Sri: So one last thing of course, it's like while wesee, I mean, B2B software is more software. We see a dashboard, we see a kindof a gifting platform and a c v and a dashboard, tracking the gifts and thething, what is the people ops behind it? Because there is a lot more physicallogistical ops, which goes right. What is the kind of complexity about numberof people involved in getting one gift or a gifting platform run running? What,what happens?

Kris: Yeah, so, so we have. Hundreds and hundreds ofemployees in different warehouses or what we call our S F c, our settingfulfillment centers around the globe that are working night and day to, youknow, receive products, pack boxes kit products include handwritten notes. Thewhole process. It's, it's amazing to see. Our largest warehouse in Phoenix is.Hundreds of thousands of square feet. Just a massive facility that houses ourcustomers swag and gifts and, and our processes. And you know, we do a majorkiting projects and everything else, so there's a. So much that goes on behindthe scenes from the sourcing, the procurement, the supply chain, the she thepacking of boxes, the QA to make sure everything's perfect. The, you know, thelogistics, the customs clearance, everything behind the scenes that you don'tthink about. You just click a button and it magically appears in yourprospect's desk. But you know, we do a lot behind the scenes to make it happen.

Sri: It's amazing. I mean, in software we raise a Jiraticket if anything goes wrong. But here, yeah, something goes wrong. It's a lotmore in operations and returns and other aspects about it. That's prettyexciting. And lot to learn across gifting and operation behind gifting. Onelast question around the gifting. Now send also does give globally. How doeshow do you handle regional or cultural variances? How do GIS get perceived inEurope versus apace, Japan, Southeast Asia, south Asia, et cetera, or in NorthAmerica itself? Any comments on that or any learnings from that over a periodof time?

Kris: Yeah. So, you know, I think you definitely want tohave cultural sensitivity and locational sensitivity when you're thinking aboutgifting because you want to make sure you're sending the right type of gift tothe right person. And so whether that's you know, an understanding localcultures, we have suggested recommendations based on locations. So, we help inthat process too, if but it's definitely important to think about regions. Whatyou should send and, you know sensitivities to different cultures.

Sri: Got it. And this is the last serious questionbefore we wind down into the non-serious questions. It's a difficult market nowwith, and it might be a, it's been a difficult market for the last couple ofquarters, would be maybe for another couple of quarters. What are the B2Bmarketing trends and ABM trends, which you are seeing in the next couple of quarters,and that's something which they would want to learn about from you.

Kris: Yeah, I'd say the, the few that I'm seeing, one isjust the f, the major focus on your customers more than ever. How are you doingfull funnel marketing and really marketing to your customers more than ever,than just thinking about it as more of a demand gen approach. I think that'sthe biggest one too. I think there's just a. A big trend towards how do youprioritize which accounts to go after. I think there's a bigger focus now thatyou don't have infinite people and infinite dollars. How do you prioritizewhere you spend your money and who you spend your money on? So I think that'simportant. And then I think the, there's still the overall trend of this, youknow, it's harder than ever to get people's attention and, and how do you breakthrough that noise in a creative way.

Sri: And one more thing with regard to the market and also howyou are expanding around in the market. Any advice for start-up founders andalso series a c b companies, like how do they, given your linkage on you, thisis maybe the second cycle that you would've seen. So any experiences from yourpast into what early stage founders can do in terms of handling this market?

Kris: No. I think a couple of things. One is, you know,I think make sure you're not, you're still in investing in, in marketing andsales and customer success. Like even in downturns now, still a time to getrevenue. Use this time where there's maybe to, to go back and figure out whereWhat processes need to be built so you can get ready to scale again faster. Somake sure all of your systems, all of your processes are ready to, to get backto scaling mode once the economy starts roaring again. And you know, I thinkthis is this is a marathon, not a sprint. So make sure you're, you're in it forthe long haul.

Sri: Thanks a lot for that. That's been pretty helpful.So now, Anything about B2B marketing founders, SaaS gifting, that's done. Thelast set of questions is something which we want to learn more personallyabout. Thanks. Questions, which you can share. And other same name. Can youname one favourite leader?

Kris: Yeah. I know he, it's a controversial one, but Ilove Elon Musk. I think he, it's fascinating what he's building with SpaceX andeverything else. It just feels like he's thinking, you know, 50 years ahead ofthe future. So I, I admire even some of the Twitter stuff, I, I don't, I maybedisagree with in his that, that situation, but he's probably got something heis thinking about 20 years ahead that no one knows about. So, I admire hisforward thinking leadership style.

Sri: That's great. One other question which we wanted toask us, like, I mean, generally the question ask us always like what advice yougive to the youngsters who are just coming out of college, but given the timeswhich we are and, and generally the world is also more into the middle aged,which is that what, and you have been a sales guy yourself and B2B SaaSsalesperson a content as well.

What advice you would give to 15, 20 year experienced salesleaders, a and others? What would you tell them to do or upscale on so thatthey can, one, navigate this current turmoil or also going forward.

Kris: I think my advice is just to, you know, continueto work hard, be agile. Like, you know, maybe what worked two years ago, whatworked four years ago isn't going to work tomorrow. And just be meet the momentand, you know, be ready to, you know think creatively and, you know, maybechange your approach more often than not.

Sri: Got it. And the last question and before we wind upthe podcast any favourite book and films?

Kris: Actually so funny enough, I don't watch a lot ofmovies. I watch more like YouTube and, and I listen to podcasts a lot more thanI read books. So I'd say maybe I'll share a few of my favourite podcasts. So Ilove the acquired podcast. Mm-hmm. I love the All In podcast. I love t the TBoy podcast. Cartoon Avatar podcast. Those are some of my, and then my firstmillion, so big podcast person. So, those are I think four or five of my favourites.

Sri: Awesome. That's great. I think this has beenwonderful. Chris, thanks a lot for sharing your insights on marketing, gifting,start-up on the stories and metrics and also. With regard to your, the podcastswhich you listen to as them. So if we have to get into your mind, I think it'sone way is to go through the podcast.

So thanks a lot for this and day. Thank you. You got it. Seeyou later. Bye-Bye. Bye.

‍