By Collin Cadmus, LLC
4.8
1515 ratings
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Jeron Paul.
Jeron studied economics and philosophy at Brigham Young University and then received his MBA at Harvard. After school he spent 3 years as a consultant before starting his first company Boardlink, which was acquired by Thomas Reuters. Jeron then spent 5 years in venture capital before starting his next two companies Scalar and Capshare, both with successful exits.
With all of that experience behind him, in 2018 Jeron founded Spiff which was acquired by Salesforce in February of this year for $419 million. In episode 9 I spoke to Spiff’s Chief Marketing Officer, Anna Fisher and I sat on their GTM advisory board for 3 years until the acquisition.
Jeron believes every person has an infinite potential to do good and his goal in life is to unlock as much of that potential in himself and others as possible. He believes in fighting group think, the Socratic method, and the power of humility. One of the things he’s most proud of is sharing larger than normal equity stakes with those who are bold enough to build businesses with him, and I can say after having been an advisor on the receiving end of the Salesforce acquisition equity, he practices what he preaches in that regard and that’ll be one of the topics we’ll dive into today.
It’s been 7 months since Spiff was acquired. Since then, Jeron has served as the SVP of Product at Salesforce, presumably continuing to oversee Spiff, but without further adieu, let’s dive in and learn more about what it took to build Spiff and sell it to Salesforce in just 5 and a half years.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:49 What is Spiff
00:07:39 GTM Advisory Board
00:16:01 Equity Philosophy
00:27:16 M&A
00:30:04 Growth Channels
00:37:40 Doing it again today
00:42:06 Who should use Spiff
--
QUESTIONS:
1. What is Spiff and why did you build it?
2. You decided early on to build a GTM advisory board; what were your main motivations and goals behind doing this and was it worth it in hindsight?
3. We often hear stories of founders finding creative ways to screw people out of their equity at the time of acquisitions and IPOs, but you did the opposite. Talk me through your philosophy on equity and the decisions you had to make during the acquisition as it pertains to employees and advisors liquidating their shares.
4. Was M&A always the plan? Or did the pandemic and financial crisis play a role in the decision to sell?
5. What were your main growth channels and can you share roughly the split of revenue that came from each, like inbound, outbound, channel partners, etc.?
6. If you were to start Spiff today would you do anything different?
7. Is Spiff still a product for non-Salesforce users or is it now specifically for Salesforce users?
--
LINKS:
Spiff: https://spiff.com
Jeron on X: https://twitter.com/jerondanielpaul
Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Chris Orlob.
Chris studied marketing at Utah Valley University and then went on to start his career at InsideSales.com, after which he started his own company Conversature, which eventually merged with Gong, at which point Chris became the Director of Product Marketing and eventually the Head of Sales where he helped grow the company from $200k ARR to over a $7B valuation in 5 years.
In 2022 Chris left Gong to start his current venture, where he serves as the Founder and CEO of Pclub.io, a sales training platform that aggregates courses from top practitioners into one platform.
The last time I spoke with Chris was back in 2019 and it feels like just about everything has changed since then with the advent of remote work, sales AI, and the divergence from the Growth-at-all-Cost model, so I’m excited to dive in and get his thoughts on all that’s changing.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:12 Outbound prospecting
00:11:37 Remote vs Office
00:16:42 Quota attainment
00:23:48 Average tenure
00:30:24 Growth-at-all-Cost
00:36:43 AI in sales
00:41:20 Pclub
--
QUESTIONS:
1. Outbound prospecting has become increasingly challenging as conversion rates for calls and emails continue to decline. What do you think outbound salespeople should be doing differently today?
2. What’s the best way to build a sales team in 2024; remote, hybrid, or in the office, and why?
3. Average quota attainment is under 40%. Why do you think it’s so low and what needs to change?
4. Average VP Sales tenure is below 18 months. Why do you think it’s so low and what needs to change?
5. What’s happening to the Growth-at-all-Cost model?
6. What role do you see AI playing in sales over the next 5-10 years?
7. What is Pclub?
--
LINKS:
Pclub: https://www.pclub.io
Chris on X: https://x.com/Chris_Orlob
Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Stefan Katanic.
Stefan is a lifelong entrepreneur. He co-founded Traden Group in 2013, Coinbio in 2017, and White Label Agency in 2019, but his most recent venture is where he truly found his stride. Today Stefan serves as the CEO of Veza Digital, a services business that helps B2B SaaS companies build and operate profitable marketing websites that build awareness, trust, and credibility at scale.
They’ve quickly become the go-to website agency for B2B SaaS, having built websites for companies like ChiliPiper, Adonis, Trumpet, and Shipwell to name a few.
I talk a lot about SaaS on this podcast but have yet to talk about the services aspect of B2B, which is not only a massive percentage of the total sales world, but in this case is one of the services SaaS companies rely on heavily for growth.
With SaaS pivoting to remote operations, companies are now relying more on outside agencies to manage aspects of their business, like Sales Operations, Finance, HR, and website development, maintenance, and SEO.
Stefan has been running founder-led sales for Veza Digital for the past 8 years and is now ready to shift his focus toward mergers and acquisitions and needs to prepare the company for bringing in an external sales leader, which I’ll be helping him with as a Consultant over the coming months.
In the meantime, my audience is mostly made up of salespeople, many of which hope to start their own companies someday. Since most salespeople don’t know how to write code, starting a services business is often the more realistic option, so, I’m excited to dive in and find out how you found your niche and what it takes to build a multi-million dollar B2B services agency.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:19 Starting Veza Digital
00:05:16 Your elevator pitch
00:09:05 Targeting B2B SaaS
00:16:04 Your sales experience
00:20:58 Your sales process
00:24:41 Founder-led sales transition
00:28:58 Hiring a sales team
00:35:09 Starting a services business
00:41:42 Mergers and acquisitions
00:42:37 Number one sales objection
00:47:56 Why choose Veza Digital
00:51:59 Advice for young entrepreneurs
--
QUESTIONS:
--
LINKS:
Veza Digital: https://www.vezadigital.com
Veza Digital on X: https://x.com/VezaDigital
Stefan on X: https://x.com/stefan_katanic
Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast.
Today I’m joined by Yuriy Zaremba. Yuriy is a corporate lawyer turned CEO and a 2x Y Combinator Alumni. He co-founded his first company AxDraft in 2017 which was acquired by Onit in 2020. He then co-founded AiSDR where he serves today as the CEO.
AiSDR creates and sends personalized sales emails at scale and automatically engages with prospects who respond. Tools like AiSDR spark a lot of conversation today because on one hand they have the potential to make outbound prospecting significantly more cost efficient, but on the other hand there’s concern about what that means for the future of sales jobs and the human seller.
In previous episodes we’ve discussed the future of AI in sales and have speculated our thoughts on what’s to come, but today we get to hear first-hand from the man who’s actually building and selling this solution, and I’m excited to get his perspective.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:24 AI taking human jobs
00:08:21 AI capabilities
00:19:47 Open and reply rates
00:28:11 Revenue and customers
00:31:19 Your sales process
00:37:39 Greatest obstacle today
00:39:00 AiSDR competitors
00:41:21 Y Combinator
00:45:00 Who should use AiSDR
00:46:53 The future of AiSDR
--
QUESTIONS:
1. People are concerned about the potential of AI taking away human jobs. What are your thoughts on this topic?
2. What is AI actually capable of today and 5-10 years out?
3. What are the average open and reply rates for AiSDR today?
4. Can you tell us how much revenue you’re at today or how many paying customers you have?
5. How do you sell it? Do people try it for free and it sells itself? Or do they have to pay to try?
6. What is the main focus at AiSDR today? Is there one thing that’s holding you back?
7. Who are the real competitors and how is AiSDR different?
8. How helpful is Y Combinator?
9. Who should use AiSDR today and who shouldn’t?
10. What does the future look like for AiSDR?
--
LINKS:
AiSDR: https://aisdr.com/
Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Howard Lerman.
Howard went to Duke University where he founded his first company with two of his classmates, JustATip.com, which they sold for $150,000 in 2001 while still in college. After school Howard founded Yext in 2006. By 2016 the company had $89 million in revenue and in 2017 it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2022 Howard stepped away as CEO of Yext in order to focus on his newest project, Roam, where he serves today as the Founder and CEO.
This is the first time I’m speaking with Howard, but I’ve known of him since my very first sales job in 2012 at SinglePlatform since we sold competitively against Yext. Our companies even competed in Dodgeball and Basketball tournaments in NYC, so the competition was fierce but all in good fun. I’m excited to finally get acquainted.
In this episode, we react to a series of Howard's LinkedIn posts.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:20 Best cultures are cults
00:10:30 Top salespeople
00:12:22 What you want VS Reality
00:16:19 Politics at work
00:22:38 Success and risk
00:30:07 Threat of OpenAI
00:31:20 Sales AI
00:38:12 Remote Work
00:41:15 Customer led growth
00:51:29 What is Roam?
--
QUESTIONS: (1-6 are from Howard’s Linkedin posts)
1. The best cultures are actually a cult, and that is the foundation upon which greatness begins.
2. I’d take a top seller at a medium company over a medium seller at a top company any day.
3. There will always be an annoying gap between what you want the world to be and how it actually is. Knowing when to stand your ground or when to be flexible is one of the most important growth skills you can learn.
4. The most successful people I know didn’t work the hardest. They took the most risk.
5. Founders, I would be very, very, careful about launching an AI startup right now. Unless you have something extremely special and you know exactly what you’re doing. The overwhelming odds are you will be buzz-sawed by OpenAI.
6. Too many companies make the mistake of forcing unnaturally fast growth right now at the expense of compound growth later on.
7. What is Roam?
--
LINKS:
Roam: https://ro.am/
Howard on X: https://x.com/howard
Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Jacco van der Kooij. Jacco is originally from the Netherlands. He started his career in 1994 at Philips Electronics as a Project Manager and then transitioned into sales. Since then he’s led sales for over 10 different companies, prior to starting his current company, Winning By Design, where they help B2B SaaS Companies design, build, and scale their sales efforts.
Jacco’s voice in sales is respected globally as an author, keynote speaker, and all across social media. I’ve been following his content for as long as I’ve been in sales (if you’re not, you should be too). I could easily talk to him for weeks without running out of topics or questions, but today we’re going to focus on one specific topic that Jacco believes to be the number one issue facing SaaS companies today; and that’s the declining efficiency of go-to-market performance.
In the last 3 episodes we talked a lot about this subject, so it’s close to my heart. To keep things simple I’ve divided the episode into 4 questions, and I’m excited to dive in.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:56 What’s Growth-at-all-Cost / GaaC?
00:05:06 What’s broken with GaaC?
00:21:57 What needs to change?
00:41:32 Will GaaC return?
--
QUESTIONS:
What is the growth-at-all-cost (or GaaC) model?
What (if anything) is broken with the GaaC model and why is now the time for change?
What needs to change?
Will there be a return of GaaC when money is cheap again?
--
LINKS:
Winning By Design: https://winningbydesign.com/
Revenue Architecture Hardcover: https://a.co/d/2gUFzXx
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Kevin Dorsey. Kevin went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and started his sales career where he quickly rose from entry-level selling to high-ranking leadership roles at SnackNation, ServiceTitan, PatientPop, and Bench Accounting.
He’s built sales teams from 0 to 150 reps and scaled revenue north of $100M ARR. Kevin believes in focusing on the person in salesperson and he shares his sales wisdom across social media, speaking engagements, podcasts, and most recently through the creation of his new online course the Sales Leadership Accelerator.
Kevin serves as an advisor to top startups around the world, he’s the host of the Live Better Sell Better Podcast, and he’s become a prominent voice in the B2B sales community. It’s been a while since we last collaborated, so I’m excited to catch up and dive into 5 very important topics.
--
TOPICS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:31 Average quota attainment
00:17:58 Average tenure of VP Sales
00:31:30 Growth at all cost / VC model
00:45:32 The impact of AI in sales
01:04:28 Sales Leadership Accelerator
--
QUESTIONS:
--
LINKS:
Sales Leadership Accelerator: https://www.salesleadershipaccelerator.com/
Live Better Sell Better Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-candid-conversation-with-collin-cadmus/id1518419694?i=1000528139008
Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system
Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching
Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching
Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast
Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog
--
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
It's safe to say the average salesperson in 2023 is significantly better than the average salesperson of 10 years ago, yet the average quota attainment continues to decline.
This is the result of an inflationary economic system that drove competitive recruitment efforts toward the promise of higher OTEs, which inevitably led to higher quotas, which eventually far outpaced any salesperson's ability to keep up.
This means the "valuation narrative game" ultimately resulted in over-stressing talented salespeople to the point of exhaustion and an illusion of failure which was often actually stellar performance. In this episode I dive into how the quota system became what it is today (broken) and what needs to be done to fix it.
There's work to do on both sides; salespeople knowing how to vet employers and employers knowing how to incentivize salespeople for optimized results. Strategy is best left for folks managing the front-lines, not the folks balancing the spreadsheets.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Welcome back to the pod! In this first episode I take a short break from my usual personality of bubbly positivity to begin this new season on a serious note and set the pace for what's to come.
The world has changed, the economy has changed, Silicon Valley has changed, and B2B SaaS has changed forever. Decades of mistakes have led to where we're at but valuable lessons are here to be learned.
I'm voicing these sentiments because they need to be said, need not to be forgotten, and need to be the foundation upon which we learn and rebuild the B2B SaaS industry into something bigger, better, and more honorable than ever before.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Antoinette is a survivor, author, and speaker. On August 19, 2013, Antoinette was working as a bookkeeper at an elementary school in Atlanta, severely depressed because her husband of 33 years had recently left. She, now, as a single mom, was faced with the daunting challenges of raising a son with multiple disabilities and a daughter in law school.
Never did she think that she would become a hero saving roughly 1,000 lives, a best-selling author, an international celebrity, an expert on community safety, the Founder and CEO of a non-profit, Kids on the Move for Success, or a guest of Michelle Obama at the State of the Union Address.
The next day her life changed forever. Antoinette, an accidental hostage negotiator, used her experiences with challenging life issues to successfully convince an armed gunman to give her his AK-47. This is the only school shooter situation in the US that ended without death or injury to students, faculty, parents or the shooter himself. Experienced hostage negotiators, law enforcement, and community leaders have praised her intuitive, yet textbook, hostage negotiation skills that she used on August 20, 2013 to save roughly 1,000 lives.
When I came across Antoinette’s story and saw that she speaks about it, I knew this would be the perfect way to conclude the first season of this podcast. Negotiation spans much farther into our lives than just sales, and there’s no better example of that than what Antoinette experienced that day.
Antoinette’s story is so incredible, in 2018 it got the recognition it deserved when Seven-time Grammy Award winner, Toni Braxton, starred as Antoinette, in the movie “Faith Under Fire” for Lifetime TV. This is her story.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.
Available on: YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.
471 Listeners
4,030 Listeners
2,556 Listeners
4,251 Listeners
7,249 Listeners
376 Listeners
668 Listeners
587 Listeners