The Importance of Communities in Today’s Sales Environment with Jared Robin

[00:00:00] Brad Seaman: So curious here how’d you build such an open educational community from the ground up. Was there a recipe or did you, do you feel like you’re just out there putting it together? You just mix it and mixing it all up.

[00:00:14] Jared Robin: So I, in the beginning we’re trying to come up with the recipe now, right? Like in the beginning of this, it wasn’t as much.

I think we’ll lead somebody to serve a community in general is a thirst for knowledge. If you have all the knowledge, you’re probably gonna think about getting an audience to sell that knowledge, right? Like if, if you have the mindset that like you want to search and, and be open to that you’re more likely to find like-minded people and ask them questions.

And that’s what we did. Like we, we went in, we were equally. Inferior and a lot of ways. And and, and we ask questions and, and, and realize that a lot of people have a lot of questions. What’s interesting about sales as a profession. There’s some like bread and butter tactics and stuff you could do. And you can learn from in Playbox, but sales today is different than it was a year ago.

Right? Sales a year ago was different than it was before COVID even a year it’s changing. So frequent. Especially at the top of the funnel, especially in the SDR function with the not being a function. Now it is a function. Now it’s split up with inbound and outbound. Now people are getting more creative.

Now you have companies like Sen DOSO raising a hundred million dollars. Congratulations. It does an awesome company. Alice as well. All this, like in terms of creative outreach and tools that weren’t there before. So in regards to how to build an open and educational community, it’s just acknowledging that the times are changing asking questions yourself and.

You know, facilitating others’ questions and, and, and just helping people.

[00:01:57] Brad Seaman: What do you think some of the trends are that are happening? Like expand a little bit on that. Where do you see the future of sales development?

[00:02:07] Jared Robin: So if we’re talking trends, community or trends in revenue, so trends, so trends and revenue I mean, Oh, I’ll give the elephant in the room.

Product led growth. Okay. So, so yeah, the SDR function is expanding. Yeah. There’s not enough labor for all the roles in the company is growing. Like if you ran a company, you used to find 40 SDRs and you have the money to spend in two months. It’s a hard task, man. Really hard to ask today, it’s going to cost you a pretty penny to hire recruiters to do, and it’s a tall task for them.

So I think, I think that function is big. The rep ops function and the importance. I, I sound like a broken record. I’m saying this is going through the roof and importance and you see that on LinkedIn. There’s I believe the status in the last 18 months, the amount of rev ops people with right off titles doubled on LinkedIn, which is just pretty telling.

And I think that goes hand in hand. With product led growth to an extent, I think, I think it goes hand-in-hand with efficiencies and efficiencies are just one of many things with product line growth. It’s the idea that can we remove, can, can we scale revenue without scaling sellers? Right. I think that’s at the core of it.

I think, I think that’s a massive, massive. And what’s going on. Can we scale revenue without scaling sellers? And it’s funny, here’s an anecdote like I’m going into industries that aren’t traditionally SAS. And I went into a Facebook group the other day. I talk about communities and other platforms, 50,000 sales professionals, and, and majority of them were in the car sales profession.

And I said, I said, can you raise your hand and tell me who here could sell me? And everyone was talking such trash and they said, no, you know, nobody here could sell you a Tesla. It’s more of an order for Tesla’s one of the more expensive cars. Like it’s probably above average and they have no salespeople.

Okay. And they’re way behind the demand. They have way more demand than a supply, right? Like the way behind the supply, I should say. And that’s the perfect example. And that’s an another industry. I think to combat the shortage of people, we’ll have more efficient people. Hence the rev ops function, that’s looking at the data and how to optimize and how to hockey stick instead of step.

Right? Cause you step you say, okay, you have a million dollar goal. You’re going to hit 80% of quota. 800,000. Great. No, we need another person. No, you kind of just go straight up. You, you can’t scale those people. Those are stair skills, right?

[00:04:56] Brad Seaman: Yeah, no, that’s super fast. So the whole car situation is fascinating, cause I really want a Ford Bronco and I should I’ll put an order order in when they, when they, can’t not that crappy escape look and Bronco, but the, the super, the bigger one with the, you know, looks competing with the Jeep.

Cause they got one apple,

[00:05:14] Jared Robin: th th there’s a mass. So there’s another element right now in cars in particular that there’s like way more demand than supply in general. So like you could make the argument that maybe. Maybe Tesla doesn’t hold true, but I believe they were even before COVID

[00:05:31] Brad Seaman: right. And I wasn’t, I wasn’t like getting ready to poke a hole under

[00:05:37] Jared Robin: what I

[00:05:37] Brad Seaman: was going to do like that, but I was getting ready to say, Hey, for really, they spent a long time popping up this Brocko bro.

Yeah, I think they pulled it off where it looks good. Cause it was, you know, they’re holding back the reveal. Didn’t know what it was going to look like. There’s a lot of different ways it could have gone. I think they, they got through it looked good. So they released it. COVID hits. There’s a backup. I want one really bad.

I didn’t put my order in when I should have. I went to the dealership yesterday. Cause I got a couple you can’t buy them. There’s a two year wait, so now some of that’s the micro, you know, some of that’s because of the microchips and that could change. But they, you know, they two years, that’s a long time.

So I’m sitting here thinking to myself, like, am I better off to try to pick one up when somebody gets, somebody tries to flip it or do I put my order in? But they did the, they did the same thing. Tesla did. I mean, I go in the guy’s like, Hey, if you want one, you go fill out an order form inside and we’ll tell you how long it’s going to be and we’ll submit it.

And when we did it,

[00:06:37] Jared Robin: Yeah. How many people listen to this love being sold cars by a salesperson. Nobody does, you know, you, you do all the research before for the majority and you just have some key pointed questions based on things that you’re uncertain enough that you want clarification or reiteration.

You don’t want to be sold anything. I don’t, I don’t like, like if it’s between, if I’m picking up. Perfect example. I was picking out an email tool and I’m like active campaign HubSpot convert kit. I did 99% of the research before, and I had to, and I just want to validation on the call like, Hey, is this, this, this is cool.

Let’s get go. Right? Like,

[00:07:23] Brad Seaman: Yeah, you definitely have your, well, I think the roles changed. So like let’s use car, let’s use car salesman as an, as an example, you know, when I, when I’ve gone to buy cars over the last five years, particularly you know, I typically have known more about the cars that I’m interested in.

Then I think the salespeople have in the questions that I had answers for. So like for example I had had a period where I just leased cars and I hadn’t bought a used car in a long time. It’s probably five, five years ago. So I buy a used car. And the questions I had were like, okay, what’s how, how many miles should I be concerned about before?

You know, it gets going to go like, can I get 300,000 miles out of this? And you know, tell me, tell me about how long is the towel gonna last, you know, and the guys can’t answer those kinds of questions, right? Like he wasn’t able to answer. Anything and he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

But to me, this, this, the questions that he thought I was going to ask, which he was going to look on his phone, right? Like how many miles and the questions that I was interested in were totally different. And he was not prepared to answer the new set of questions. Because, and I think when we say sales has changed, I think what’s changing is the questions right now.

All of a sudden there’s a new set of questions. That our new set of interests in a salesperson has to be able to move with those questions because ultimately you’re either answering or supporting somebody questions. Right. Okay.

[00:08:50] Jared Robin: Yeah. And, and, you know, even starting at the, at the outreach, like, let’s talk about cold.

Like who are you looking for? You’re looking for high CP. Sure. That that’s nothing new. Okay. ICP, ideal customer profile, but now you’re layering on tools seeing like which people in your ICP are interested. Right. Like Googling your stuff, coming to your site. All of that. Okay. That it’s something a little newer here, right?

Like which one of your ICP is like, I call it like refined ICP, like, like who is ready to buy today? Is it the person on the street looking at the Bronco through the window? Or is it the person you, don’t sure you can hand the flyer to that person because they, there is a different level of intent. If they’re looking in the window to give them a flyer, to give them an advertisement.

Right. And if they open that door and you see that they open that door and you have tools, technologies to see it, you know, it’s, it’s a lot more obvious of an example when you’re in person. Hopefully, hopefully you have a person at the front door that sees that person coming, because if they don’t, you’re not going to say hi, so you say hi, and you say, okay, it looks like you’re in the market because you’re in here.

Right? Like you’re on my. You’re on my site. It looks like you’re in the market or, or are you just in to kill time? Because there’s only like a couple logical reasons why someone’s going to go on alice.com, right? Like you’re either in the market for that tool or you think it’s cool and you want to learn something or, you know, there’s a varying level.

So, so now, now, you know, the processes. You’re only reaching out to people that want to be talked to that, that have shown interest. And that’s cool. That’s a great experience. Now, if they accidentally came to your site, you got to qualify them out fast. Cause like, oh, she is, I got an email saying you opened up my email.

What’s up. I’m like, whoa, I did it to see what the hell it was.

[00:10:46] Brad Seaman: Was that the email you opened up my email what’s. No, no, it was

[00:10:51] Jared Robin: something I saw that you opened my email. I’m like, wow, your sequences offer me just opening without even clicking

[00:11:00] Brad Seaman: anything. That’s a, that’s crazy. Well, it, plus it’s never, it’s never accurate.

So here’s what I like about what you’re doing with rev genius. So I think I read one time that only, like there’s a really small percentage of people who are alert and you’re capturing those. And you’re also evangelizing to get more people who are interested in, in true learning. And I think that’s really needed in in the, in the sales space.

I’m super pumped that you guys exist. I know those could have been significant and in our journey and we had an early, earlier on One of the questions I have for you. I want to make sure I ask before we get off the phone. So tell me, tell me about the hat humans. So if,

[00:11:43] Jared Robin: so this had Brian Smith, who’s an awesome entrepreneur out of Philadelphia.

He used to have an office in Brooklyn and I hope he’s listening. He’s a great human but his company is called. And humans is the name of his community. And I remember how we got introduced in the beginning was I saw like a few people have this on their LinkedIn. Human community. That’s something interesting and something cool.

Like it sounds cool. I went there. It was great. Leon is a technology that helps optimize performance of the humans in the workplace. Like understand who’s going to burn out. Who’s not based on a plethora of integrations and surveys, like with the tools that you already use. Right? Like, like also like getting a pulse.

And yeah, he came to visit me and gave me the hat and the. He’s a really genuine person. And plus I like wearing black hats.

[00:12:38] Brad Seaman: You wear a black everyday.

[00:12:41] Jared Robin: I have nine of the same shirts. My, my partner calls me Steve jobs now not said, but I wear, I wear black jeans or black pants, black sneakers. And that’s where my fashion days wearing all black you know, the.

I don’t need to go into detail, but there, there there’s a depth to it, even though it looks so simple sometimes, especially if you’re I liked it.

[00:13:06] Brad Seaman: I liked it. I liked the black, well, Hey Jerry, this was awesome, man. You

[00:13:11] Jared Robin: no, that that’s, that’s awesome. And I’m grateful and I’m humbled. So rev con is our first annual conference, you know, Comic-Con well, we have.

Rev geniuses, rev con, we’re going to have sales, marketing robots, customer success tracks on October 14th. This October 14th is, you know, a big day for us because we’re using it as the day to launch a new category, a new product, the beginning of a new product, a new evolution of rev genius, where we could give everybody more, more value, more learnings, more connection, and more improvements.

And we’re happy to bring it. So rev genius.com forward slash rev con or a DCOM free site. Coming to support the group and learn a finger tune virtual

[00:14:00] Brad Seaman: or in-person. This is a virtual conference, a hundred percent,

[00:14:02] Jared Robin: a hundred percent virtual you’ll shout out gold cast, which is a phenomenal platform that we’re on my speech that I’m doing to, to commence it.

I got a lot of inspiration from Steve jobs in particular when he announced the iPad. So my favorite session and final plug is. Is the one I’m involved in my favorite session, GS session I’m amped about because this whole day has so much, meaning for me is with Christopher Lockheed, where we’re going to have a fireside chat.

He wrote the book, play bigger about category design. I read the book twice geek out about him and we’re having a one-to-one chat there and it’s a day I’m launching a category course.

[00:14:47] Brad Seaman: Awesome. That’s cool. That’s good.