158: Tim Harsch On Timing & Relevance In Prospecting

What's poppin' everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, Jon Barrows. This episode is brought to you by our partners, SalesLoft, Gong, VanillaSoft, Vidyard, Proposify, and Owler. Today we have a special guest, the CEO and co-founder, Tim Harsh at Owler, is going to be joining Jon to talk about all the different insights that sales reps leverage to stand out in a sea of people all asking for your prospects' time. Owler has been a frontrunner in really simplifying the things that sales reps need to have at their disposal in order to make an impact at a new account they're trying to break into. What are you saying? Why are you saying it? And how does it relate to how you can help me?

That is the stuff of legend that Owler provides. So we hope you enjoy this episode with Tim. He's going to drop a lot of insights and Jon's going to ask some pretty probing questions. He's been a big fan of Owler for a long time. Let's tune in and make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jon Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully you had a good weekend and are not going batshit crazy yet. So we are actually going to be talking about some really interesting stuff that is near and dear to my heart today, which is breaking through the noise. And we're going to do it with one of my actual favorite tools from a solution standpoint. And with the CEO of that company, Tim Harsh over at Owler.

Tim, what's going on, my friend? How are you doing these days? Hey, Jon. Great to be here. It's a pleasure to chat with you today. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. So Tim, talk to me a little bit about, give me kind of the overview of where you got to and what you're doing today. And also, I'm always curious that CEO track, like how you ended up being that CEO. So give us a little background, some context, and then we'll get into it. Yeah, absolutely. So my background, as we were talking about a little bit before the show, is from Jigsaw back in the day, working with Jim Fowler over there. And that got me into the data world. And one of the things that Jim in particular realized after Jigsaw was there was still so much information around businesses that was very opaque and hard to get and really makes conversations easier with companies when you're going in and prospecting, nurturing, building those relationships.

And so that is what we've spent the last nine years working on now is putting that together to have a really powerful solution to let people stay up to date on the companies that really matter to them and know what's going on and have those better conversations. Nice. So yeah, that's all Owler. I mean, the dumb way to explain it is Google alerts on steroids, right? Just for everybody who doesn't know what Owler is, it's actually something when I first came across it, I fell in love with because I was using Google alerts, but it was so messy for me that it just filled up my inbox with a bunch of crap. And then Owler consolidated, not only gave me like the triggers and the information in my inbox, but also the research on the account, that stuff that I like, I don't even, by the way, I don't even go to websites anymore.

When I do research on accounts, I go straight to Owler. So, cause it has everything consolidated there for me. So I want to, we're going to talk about triggers and break it through the noise, but what, let me ask you about the CEO piece right here for a second. With, with Jigsaw to Owler, like, did you always have that drive to, to run your own show, to be your own business and that type of stuff? Like how did, how did your CEO journey, uh, did you identify that early or did you kind of fall into it? Like some people? Yeah, I, um, I always knew I wanted to run my own business. I ran a little website building company when I was in college and, and, um, kind of always had something going on the side.

I liked, you know, that process of going from an idea through to, you know, talking to people about what they really need and then actually creating something and hopefully delivering on that, that need and value. And so I actually worked on the products team at Jigsaw and that was my original role at Owler. And so, you know, ultimately, um, kind of worked my way up through the organization, but you know, it was always something that I knew I wanted to, you know, a challenge I wanted to take on and something I wanted to experience. Yeah. The reason I ask is because I think there's a lot of people right now kind of reassessing and reevaluating their priorities and, and, you know, and I think this is actually, you know, the silver lining to this mess that we're all in, uh, I think is, is that a lot of people can take a step back and kind of reassess what they want out of their careers, out of their life and all that other stuff.

And, and maybe, maybe scratch that itch of starting their own thing, of really going for that next big step, right? In their career. So I'm just, I was, I'm always curious, kind of how people get to where they are. So cool, man. So let, let's talk about, uh, get breaking through the noise because it's so noisy right now. Um, I saw some, uh, some data on HubSpot about the, the, the percentage of email increase versus response rates. Like it's like something ridiculous. Like the, in the, in the emails went through the roof and the responses raised through the floor calls, uh, connecting cell came up with some data that said like, it takes up to like 800 and something calls to get 10 connects. Forget about meetings, 10 connects, because now everybody's sitting at home without their, you know, and they don't have their phone auto, you know, forwarded to their cell phone number.

So how are you working with your organization, with other organizations right now to, to, to figure out a way to crack through that noise? And what are some of the things that you're seeing that's working right now? Yeah. So, you know, we, um, we've experienced this firsthand ourselves. Uh, there's just, you know, a massive amount of emails that everyone's receiving calls that everyone's receiving. And so, you know, what we've seen really work. And I mean, this is the core of our and the core of the product is being able to have, know something contextually about the business and the industry that you're going after and speak to that and not show up in those early outreach, you know, whether it's calls or emails, whatever format it is in, in a way that's just, Hey, let's hop on the phone.

You know, I saw that you went to this school or I saw that, you know, you like this sports team, you know, it's, Hey, I, I, I know that this is going on in the industry right now. I know this might even be going on with your company right now, you know, as a result of that, here's where, um, you know, I think we might be, uh, able to have a good conversation. And so it's that, that context and awareness and going in from a place of knowledge that, um, you know, we've seen really connect during this time. So are you making a high pot? Because I, you know, look, if we start with the baseline of most sales, which is blasting out template generic emails about how great we are and all our shit, right?

So let's, let's all agree that that sucks. And that, and that's marketing, you know what I mean? Like let marketing do that. Then we move up the notch a little bit to personas. Hey, you're a VP of sales in the SaaS industry. Uh, I kind of, you know, I can kind of make some guesses about what VPs of sales and SaaS care about, or let's actually back up a little bit. VPs of sales. Okay. They care about revenue. You know, that's kind of another, okay, you're a little bit better now. VPs of sales and SaaS. Okay. Now I can, then there's the triggers, right? Then there's the, Hey, okay. I saw that happens. And to me, there's, there's something about relevance and personalization that needs to be in play there.

But how do you make, how do you help reps make the connection to that trigger? Right? Because I think that what I see is that reps face, they find triggers, but their connection to it is so weak that it, that it almost is a negative, not even a neutral. It's a negative because you show your ignorance. It's just like when I used to prospect into accounts, you know, and I'm showing my age here, you know, before LinkedIn. And it was easy when you were on LinkedIn or before LinkedIn to go after a C-level executive and ask for a referral and say, Hey, here's what we do. Who on your team? Can I talk? You know, who is the best person on your team to have this conversation? Now that's, I think that's insulting because that shows me that you can't use LinkedIn and what are you an idiot?

Right? So you should know exactly who should be talking to. It's the same thing with these triggers though. It's like, okay, that, that above average sales reps going to be able to say, okay, I found this trigger. Okay, great. They opened up a new office. They, they launched a new product. They went through a merger and acquisition, but now how do I make it real that, that will resonate with that person when I reach out to them? So it's not just me connecting. Oh, I see you went through a merger and acquisition. We help people go through a merger and acquisition. Let's talk. Like, how do you do that? Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, it's something that actually is at the core of, you know, where, where we eventually want to get to is really delivering insight.

Cause that's what you're talking about is what is that insight that makes that connection. You know, a lot of, a lot of, you know, there's a lot of raw data out there of, okay, this person went to this school, they're in this industry, they're in this role. You know, you can put all of that data in front of someone, but to exactly your point, you need that insight of what do I go, you know, do with that and how do I connect it to actually, you know, build that rapport. Um, and so for, for us right now, you know, it's that combination of that trigger, but then going and doing a little bit of research, exactly. Like you said, going and looking at the profile on a business and saying, okay, you know, they've been growing significantly over the years, but they're in the travel industry.

And I know, you know, the back of my mind, the travel industry, Ooh, they're getting hit hard right now. Maybe now's not the right time to reach out and congratulate them on, you know, raising a round of funding. Maybe that was a really rough round of funding or, you know, Oh, actually they're in the video conferencing space. You know, let me put all of these pieces together. And so that's one of our goals with the product is to help people put these pieces of information together, go from the trigger to a little bit of research, ultimately to that insight. And we have a long ways to go before we make that just one quick step. But, um, you know, that's ultimately what we're, what we're trying to deliver on.

Well, cause I mean, I think you're trying to deliver on what that is, you know, it's business acumen. Right. And, you know, something I say all the time, which is if I, you know, if I could go back and tell my 22 year old self something, what would it be? My first one was AB split testing and test a bunch of stuff. But my, my other one was, you know, be way more proactive with your business acumen. Right. My business acumen was a by-product of my activity. I would just go, go, go, go, go. And I would do things and then I would learn along the way. Right. So I, you know, I'd sit in front of a CEO and I'd ask a stupid question to a CEO and the CEO would say, that's a stupid question. I wouldn't ask that question again.

You know what I mean? So, but now looking back on it, I wish I was much more proactive with my understanding of business and trends and those types of things. So, because I'll give you an example here, Morgan. Okay. When he came on board with me, there's two factors. One is business acumen. There's the other factor of giving a shit. And this is kind of where that extra layer of research comes into play with that trigger, which is, you know, when he came on board, we created some cadences. We did some cool stuff. I showed him how to research and what we're looking for and all that other stuff. And we came out of the gate pretty strong, but then he plateaued as far as his results were concerned.

And I, and he came to me one day and he said, John, you know, I'm, I'm a little concerned because with all the effort that I'm putting into this messaging, I just, I, I'm expecting better results here. So let's like, what's going on? And I said, Morgan, look, your results aren't going to change until some, until one thing happens. And he said, what's that? I said, until you start giving a shit. And he was like, what? Cause he thought like, I was like, look, I know you, I know you care about your job. I know you care about working here. I know you care about all this. But until you start genuinely giving a shit about the person on the other end of that phone, about the person on the other end of that email, your results aren't going to change.

So how do you teach, like, how do you expedite, I guess, Tim, um, business acumen and the give a shit factor? That's a tough one. Um, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, John, and how, you know, you helped Morgan there, you know, for, for kind of my thoughts on that, what I'd say is it's, it's, it's not getting distracted by all the noise out there. Um, and it's staying, staying focused on, you know, the real, the real pieces of information you can, you can inform yourself from, but then, you know, it's also realizing there's a person on the other end, right. You're reaching out to, so, you know, put yourself in their shoes and think about it from that direction. Um, you know, I'll give a lot of credit and a shout out to a member of our team, Jesse, um, who's amazing at this.

Um, you know, we, uh, we work really closely together and he, he is always thinking from, you know, everyone that he's reaching out to their side of it. And, you know, he'll go on, get a trigger and say, Oh, okay. You know, this company just, just raised a new round of funding, just had an M and a event. Let me go research them for, you know, 15 minutes, but then I'll actually take the time to, to conceptualize that and think about it in the broader world. I mean, what I'm really proud of our team for during all this is, you know, when COVID first happened and everyone was reeling, you know, we weren't sending a ton of mass emails as well. Let's take a step back. Let's think about this. Let's really, you know, take a moment to, you know, figure out how we contribute in all this and, and aren't just, just creating a bunch of distraction for people when everyone needs to process it.

I mean, these are still really tough times. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you. I mean, as a CEO, I haven't, you know, I haven't had as many ups and downs in such a short period of time in my entire life. You know, I mean, I, I mean, it used to be week by week. Oh, it was a tough week and a great week. Now it's fucking day by day, hour by hour, like, Oh, you know, great client. And then, Oh my God, their client just canceled. Oh my God, this one just went out of business. Oh, look at this. Oh shit. And it's just like, Ooh, like, so that emotional part. And I think that's why it's more important now than ever to recenter on, on the human factor of, of the empathy of the, the, the giving a shit factor, because right now, and I forget who said it, but you know, I think it was, um, Sean over at outreach idea.

He said, uh, you know, everything counts double right now. You do something bad. It's twice as bad. You do something good. It's twice as good. And so if you send that shitty email with no context and it's tone deaf, there's a strong possibility right now that person's going to catch that and react, but in a very negative way, as opposed to just deleting you like they would have before. Um, and he said, you know, how do you expedite, you know, I'm still trying to figure out how to expedite business value, you know, business acumen and those types of things. But I do think that we can put some structure in place to, to help kids get there. For instance, um, you know, when most people start in their organizations, they have, uh, you know, we give them the ICP and we give them the personas, right?

Okay. Here's your ICP. Here's your list. And here's your persona, Sally. She's in marketing. She likes to be creative, whatever. And unfortunately what happens is most kids come out of school who are taught to the test these days and you give them a script like that, they're going to memorize it and they're just going to regurgitate it with no real insights. And so that's why coming out of the gate, they get crushed on that second layer question, that third layer question, whatever it is, because they don't know how to respond to it, right? They're not dynamic enough to be able to deal with it. So like with ICPs, for instance, what I did was instead of giving Morgan our ICP, when he came on board, I gave him my top 10 customers.

And I said, I want you to figure out what the commonalities of these top 10 customers are. I want you to talk to their people, why they use us, what's the use case, who do they sell to all that stuff and come back to me and you tell me who our ICP is based on that. And so he started, you know, he would talk to those clients, he would understand, he would kind of demographically profile each one of them, look for the commonalities and say, oh, okay, this is, so now when he's reaching out to account where he's looking for new accounts to reach out to, he knows what he's looking for. You know what I mean? Like he can sift through and say, nope, that's not really fitting into our, so he's got stronger business acumen with our ICP.

Same thing with personas. I didn't just give him the persona list and say, go. I said, here's our three personas, VPs of sales, CROs, VPs of enablement. Go find out what these people care about. And so literally Google VPs of enablement, priorities, challenges, 2019, you know, that type of thing. Talk to VPs of enablement, do a post on LinkedIn. And this is what he did. He did a post on LinkedIn that said, hey, I just started at JB sales. I've never sold to VPs of enablement before. So, you know, if anybody's, if there's any VPs of enablement out there that'd be open to having a conversation, I'd really appreciate it. He had like 50 people chime in on that and be like, yeah, Morgan, I'm happy to.

So, and then he put together a one pager about what those people care about. And so now when he's talking to those people, he has much more context around those conversations. He understands what they do, right? That type of stuff. So I think we can expedite it, but I think it's something that does come over time. But the connection is, I think the reason I'm asking that question is because it's the connection to the trigger that matters. It's not the trigger, right? That's a timing thing. Like, okay, that thing happened. Okay, great. So who cares? Right? The lazy part, the lazy without triggers is John, you went to University of Maryland, right? And then you hard shift into this. It's like, that has zero relevance to me.

John, I just see you, uh, you know, launch a new product. Great. Okay. You know, so what? And then you hard shift into this. Well, we have software development that it's like, no, no. So, you know, so what do you, when you're talking about kind of expediting that whole process with our, like, you paint this, this vision of being able to do that and help with business acumen with the product side of the house? Like, what do you, what do you, what are you working on with that? Yeah. So, you know, where we are today is you'll get that trigger and get immediately notified when that happens. And it's okay. That's when you go look at this account because we have, we have customers that we work with who have, you know, a thousand accounts assigned to each of their ADs.

It's like, okay, you can't, you can't possibly go deal with that. So great. Here's, here's the five I'm dealing with today because they just had triggers. And then you can go and click on those and go research that company. And we put that in one place on one page. So it's okay. In five, 10 minutes, you know, all the recent history of that company, you can start to put that trigger in the context of, was this a massive shift? Was this just a continuation of a trend? Um, is this kind of pushback on what's going on in the broader market, you know, and then, you know, okay, you know, here's how I can interpret that. Um, and then exactly to your point, then you have to go do the, the work yourself to connect that to the person you're speaking to and say, okay, you know, John is CEO of, of this business, you know, what really matters to him and how can I frame this trigger in light of that to, you know, have a good conversation.

And that is the part that we're, we're not solved on yet, but you know, it's ultimately wherever we want to go of being able to frame all that. And at the end of the day, the reality is there's always going to be that human need of putting all those pieces together. No machine can do that for you. No AI can do that for you. You know, that is, you know, and you know, this is what I love about everything that you teach is, you know, that's where sales gets really good is it's not just this cadence that's hammering things out. It's truly having that relationship and, you know, having that, you know, moment of and reality of giving a shit. For you with what you do, what are your metrics on your team from a prospecting standpoint?

Because we go all and I'm, I'm asking just to kind of get a sense of quality over quantity. So like, what are you, what is your team metriced on? So you're outbound prospecting team. Yeah. So, you know, we're in a pretty unique position of we, uh, we get a massive amount of traffic because of our, our site and SEO. So our team, uh, you know, handles a ton of inbounds. Um, so, you know, we, we track that funnel all the way through, but there's a lot of noise in that too. So we do have metrics around that, but really the core metrics we look at from, you know, a prospecting standpoint are we've identified key accounts and how many of those are we able to actually have real conversations with and, you know, where those conversations will ultimately deliver value on both sides.

I mean, we're happy to get no's no, you know, we actually don't think this is a fit and that's learning for us of let's not go down that path anymore. So it's both at the top of that, you know, how many conversations can we initially have, but then more importantly, where do those conversations go? And even the nose are a positive to us. Yeah. Cool. So let's talk, you know, we use these triggers, we set up, we get alerted on stuff, we use this to reach out to people. How do you leverage triggers, uh, to nurture and like leads, if you will, but also to, um, you know, with existing accounts, let's talk, let's talk about like nurturing. So say, say Tim, I'm selling to you, we have a conversation and, um, you know, you're like, you know what, John, this sounds fantastic, man, but we're just got so many things going on right now.

Why don't you touch base in six months? So how are you using triggers to stay top of mind with that prospect and not just touch base and check in every couple of months? Yeah. So, you know, what we've, what we've set up is we have a plugin direct to Salesforce. So you can, you can automatically sync all your accounts. Um, and you can also manually go track any that you want, but you know, once you have that conversation, if someone's just in a nurturing mode, you're just staying up to date. You don't have to do anything, but when something happens within that, you know, six month window, you'll get notified. Maybe that's two months in. So what we would do is, is, you know, send that to you and you would decide, okay, this is a good time to just send John a note and say, congratulations.

Um, or, you know, Hey, I saw this happened. Um, you know, we're, we're supporting you. If you ever need anything, you know, let us know. Um, or, you know, even better it's, you know, Hey, we think we could accelerate. This, um, is now a good time to pick up the conversation. And so it's not always going to lead to a conversation at that point, but it's, you know, enabling you to stay top of mind, but also show that you're knowledgeable. I mean, you know, what, what I often come back to is just going in and, and being able to, you know, show people that you, you care. Um, and you know, you give a shit by way of staying informed on what's going on with them. So it's, uh, it's really a method to, you know, allow for those check-ins and again, show that you really care throughout that process.

And it's not just a metric to you. Yeah. And that's where, like, I use triggers in a different way with nurturing. I, there are certain triggers that I use to say, Hey, we need to talk now. Cause that, cause I saw that thing and that, and I based on what I, again, my hypothesis is when that thing happens, this type of thing happens and my solution fits there. Right. So let's have this conversation. So those are timely things like mergers and acquisitions, whatever it is, but then there's the nurture stuff. And the two that I love are awards and, um, and, um, funding actually. So I don't use funding anymore to reach out to people. Cause God help that person that's on that list. Once it hits crunch base, they must get 8 million emails from sales reps to be like, Hey, so I got a bunch of money, you know, let me show you how to spend it.

Um, but I do use funding to let you know I'm paying attention. So usually what I'll say is like, if I see that Owler just got funding, I'd be like, Hey Tim, and you and I had talked, you know, two, three, four or five months ago, all I'll send is I'll, I'll actually forward the Owler email that I get. And I'll just send it to you. Hey, Tim, uh, congrats on the recent round of funding, man. Hopefully things are going well for you personally and professionally. That's it. Just letting you know, I'm paying attention, but I'm paying to your point. I'm paying attention in a professional way. I'm not just touching base and checking in. You know what I mean? You're not on some generic sequence of mine.

Like I saw that. And all I wanted to do is say congratulations. And that oddly enough tends to get people to come, Hey, John, it was good to hear from you. You know, we should connect or whatever. Same thing with awards. Hey man, congrats on that BBJ, you know, the best place to work award or whatever it is. Hope things are going well. That's it. Right. And, and doing a little bit more of the push these days than the pull. Right. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you know, I'm a big Gary V fan, right? So he's got that book, jab, jab, jab, right hook. And you know, the whole idea of adding value, adding value, and then asking when it's appropriate, definitely sinks, right? Sinks in. So. Yeah, exactly.

Cool. Um, so what about with existing accounts? Same type, same type of scenario? Yeah. Same type of scenario. I mean, you know, to use that analogy, I mean, it's much more, um, you know, push, uh, it's just, Hey, we're, we're keeping in touch, but you know, what we, what we have our customer success team really focus on is really understanding what's going on with a business and their competitors so that, you know, Hey, if, if something drastic is changing in an industry, let's go get creative with them to make sure that, you know, we are working with them five years from now. And, you know, we're not putting undue pressure on payables or anything like that. If they're going through a rough time and, you know, vice versa, maybe now's a great time to expand because they're growing like wildfire and, um, they have even more needs.

So, you know, it's, it's both of what you said of, there are those immediate ones where it's okay. Let's, let's talk right now. This is really important, but often from a customer success perspective, what we see it used for is that congratulations. Hey, we're, we're paying attention. We love working with you. You know, we just wanted to send a quick note and say, congrats. Yep. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I think there's, to me, it's, it's personalization, like I said, and relevance I'd rather have. And if you ask me if I had to choose personalization or relevance, I would actually choose relevance all day long than personalization, because again, personalization, Hey, I see you went to Maryland. Like, I don't care, uh, relevance and timeliness.

That's why I like the, the, so Jeff Hoffman, uh, you know, my mentor, uh, we're getting on a podcast or I'm sorry, we're getting on a webinar tomorrow for everybody listening to this. It'll probably be last week. Sorry, but you can go find it. Um, but, uh, to, to, and he's the originator of the why you, why you now email, which was pretty much one of the original trigger based messaging, right? Go on like a formula that says, you know, about them, about you call to action form of an F start with, Hey, I was on your website and I saw this. Right. Um, and you know, it's been bastardized over the years because everybody's always looking for that quick fix. Everybody's looking for the template that they can send out to a million people, but it's almost like we got to get recentered again and, and focus on what's important and go back to quality way over quantity.

Um, because if not, I just don't see the value of a sales rep. I really don't. Um, I, I personally say this all that, that if I was a new VP of sales walking into any org, first thing I would do is I would say, let me see all your SDR BDR emails that are going out right now. And if they were all template bullshit cadences, I would, I'd be like, I'm about to save this company a whole bunch of money. I'm going to fire every single SDR and BDR in here. I'm going to go hire a marketing ops person, get them jacked the hell up and get this thing rolling right now. And I'll do a thousand times better than a rep ever could. So I think this, the critical factor of, is how do you expedite learning? How do you expedite knowledge?

And then how do you craft that message in a short and succinct way that'll get somebody's attention? Are there things for you that you find work better than others? Like say for Owler specifically, when you're going after those top five, top 10, or whatever it is, is there something specific that you see working as far as triggers are concerned or approaches are concerned? Yeah. So, you know, as you said, the funding, you know, just doesn't work. That's not interesting anymore. For getting in the door, it's, it's, you know, everyone uses it. Yeah. What, what is much more relevant and shows that knowledge are, are things closer to the company, you know, new office locations opening up? I mean, that is a great sign of growth, new, new product launches.

And, and those types of things, you know, as opposed to, as opposed to anything that, you know, everyone else has, but, you know, aside from that, really what, what works for us, and this is somewhat unique to Owler, but, you know, we have tens of thousands of users at, at particular companies around the world. And it's like, hey, here's specific information about your business and how all of your users are using our products. And so when you have a freemium model like Owler has, that can, that can get really interesting too, because you're already showing that social proof of, you know, here's, here's the value already being delivered. Here's how much more we can do together if we partner and, you know, are able to work together on an even deeper basis.

And so, you know, everyone will have to think creatively about how that might apply to their business, but especially in the freemium world, that's one that, you know, for us works incredibly well. Nice. Cool. So let's shift gears a little bit, just from a CEO standpoint, to give the audience a little bit of insights into decision-making and priorities and how they've changed. Because I think this gets to relevance, right? And, and also when we, and business acumen that we talked about before, which, you know, we give these kids battle cards and whatever, and hey, CEO and whatever. So, but, but the past six months has changed almost everything. So how have you as a CEO of Owler, what, what's changed for you, I guess, as far as how you make decisions, what your priorities are, that type of thing, just kind of give some insights.

Cause I always like to give the audience a little bit of like behind the scenes of, for instance, how to sell to a CEO. Right. But in order to sell to you, you have to understand how their decision processes changed, how they look at things. So let's kind of share some, some business acumen stuff from your perspective about how, how you've over the past six months, like when you really started you, I'm sure you guys sat down at the end of, you know, Q2, Q4 last year, mapped out your plan and everything was going well. And then fucking March came and punched it right in the gut. And you said, Holy shit, we have to, so what's changed for you over the past three or four months here? Yeah. Um, to your point so much, I mean, we, we just completely revamped our plan.

And, you know, I listened to your, your make it happen Mondays with Kyle Porter and very similarly, you know, we said, look, here's the worst case scenario. Here's kind of a middle case scenario. Here's the best case scenario. All of those were haircuts from our plan at the end of last year. Um, and you know, then based on that, what do we need to do in the business? And, you know, we've shifted from this mindset end of year of like, great things are cranking. Let's, let's go invest here, here and here to, whoa, let's, you know, tailor that back a little bit. We need to be doubling down where things really, we know they'll work and we need to take a cautious approach on more, you know, exploratory things that might work, but you know, my number one priority right now, you know, as CEO is security for the team and making sure everyone keeps their jobs.

Um, you know, and, and that no one, um, you know, is feeling undue pressure as a result of that. I mean, we have people at home, um, you know, with, with young kids, we have people who are, um, you know, married to, you know, frontline doctors and nurses and like they're dealing with way more than, you know, anyone else in the office. And so recognizing that, supporting that and planning to, you know, be more conservative on the spend side. And so, you know, anyone who sends me an email right now, like, Oh, I've got this great new product. I'm going to take two extra looks at it. Uh, like, do we really need it? You know, do we, do we really want to spend money there right now versus making sure that, you know, six months from now we don't have to do layoffs or anything like that?

Yeah. And it's funny you bring it up because I think a lot of executives, that's the shift, right? It went from revenue growth goals to, I want to retain my, I mean, that's exactly the shift that happened to me, right? We went from 4 million to 2.5 overnight and it was, but my 2.5 wasn't my goal. My, I mean, it was, but my main priority was retaining my employees. And so when I talked to reps about like, if you qualified me back in January and February, based on what my old priorities were going into this year and you're still selling to that, I'm ghosting the shit out of you. You know what I mean? Like I'm not, I'm not responding to your emails because that's just not a priority for me anymore.

Or it was like one of those, yeah, in a growth economy, that makes all the sense in the world for me to invest in. Cause yeah, I got some extra cash here. Let's throw, let's try that out. Right now it's like, do we need that? You know, I mean, I'm as sad as it sounds, I'm even looking at, and we're doing fine. But I'm even looking at like, like small expenditures, like the thousand dollar renewal of, you know, our box account coming up. It's like, do we really need that? You know, that thousand bucks could, how else could we use that? Right. I mean, we're using all these different tools and all this other stuff. So it's just always interesting to see kind of how individuals and organizations, but I think the human factor is, is the, is the most important one.

And again, it goes back to empathy, goes back to giving a shit both internally and externally. So, right. Cool, man. So what else, uh, um, cause we're running up on, on the, on the kind of half hour, 45 minute time threshold here. Anything else you want the audience to kind of take away from the conversation or that we should be thinking about? Um, you know, I think what you just said, I just want to highlight again, I was just having empathy in this moment, you know, with so much going on in the world. And, um, that's just more important now than ever. And so, you know, as you're sending those emails, as you're doing the outreach and making that connection, um, back to understanding the person on the other end is worth that extra 30 seconds of thought to make sure you're, you're not going to be burning bridges or being tone deaf.

Cause you know, as, as you said, you know, it's having twice the impact right now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think the, the, the, just again, recentering on what matters, right. And, and giving a shit factor and really, and, and not also the, the other piece of this is it cracks, it always cracks me up when, when prospects get, or sales reps get mad at prospects for not responding to them. You know what I mean? It's like a guilt thing of like, you know, I've reached out to you 10, like, what the hell? It's like, dude, it is not my job to respond to you. It is your job to be relevant so that I can respond to you if you, if it matters. Right. So, um, you know, lead with empathy across the board.

So cool, man. Well, look, um, how can people find out more to, I know we have, I, you know, I've actually talked to Chris, uh, where we're working on something where you get like 30 days of valor for free for, for even the pro version. And then it flips over. But I, and I think we'll probably put some codes in that when we, when we push this out there, but how can people find out more about our, like you reach out to you, that type of thing, give it, give us the content. So, uh, anyone can email me. It's just Tim, Tim, T I M and allo.com. Or, um, yeah, we do have that. We do have that page that I know the team's working on that I'm sure we can link to, which is an awesome way for anyone to try the product.

Yeah. Cause it's free. It's free. How many people can you track, uh, with the free version? So with the, with the base free version, I think it's, um, three right now. Okay. Yeah. And then the pro version gets you to track as many as you want on very specific fingers. Yeah. All right, cool. All right, brother. Well, look, I appreciate it. Hopefully everybody enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Um, look, as I always say with these podcasts, right? Uh, no matter how bad your day went, go out in there and make somebody happy today, because if you put some smile on somebody's face, you know, you had a good day or so. No, I think the world needs a little bit more of that these days. So, uh, Tim, thanks for coming on, man.

I really appreciate it. Thank you, John. All right, everybody. Have a great one. Cheers.