Kyle James, VP Sales at Zentap | $0 to 7+ Figures in 2 Years | SSP Interview

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth and 10x businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders, dissect what's work for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast where we speak with sales, marketing and business leaders. I'm your host, Scott and today we are sitting down with Kyle James from Zentap. Now, Zentap is an early stage high growth startup. They were founded December 2017, so almost two years old under David Dool, who's a Forbes 30 under 30, Kyle was the first sales rep. He has built the sales organizations to over 30 individuals and the organization to 49 individuals total and two offices all in the Los Angeles area, Kyle is responsible for over the past two years, growing the sales organization, securing millions in revenue and achieving incredible success. I'm very excited because he's built this organization from the ground up, obviously with the other co-founders, but Kyle is primarily responsible for the sales and revenue operations at Zentap. I'm going to let Kyle introduce himself. Kyle, take it away. Give us a little bit of information about your background where you've come from and what Zentap is doing today. Sure. Yes. As far as my sales and marketing background, I've got about five years and sales about three years or so in marketing, currently I'm VP of sales at Zentap and we are a real estate marketing company, so we help real estate agents basically save time by converting their listing data and their personal branding into a variety of marketing assets that automatically post on Facebook, website and soon to be linked in here in a week or two. That's a good little short rundown on me. That's good. So you started, you're one of the co-founders at Zentap, correct? Yeah. I was one of the first members. We actually started out of David, who David Dual is our CEO and founder, really smart guy is a real estate investor and obviously started this company and when we were figuring out if this was going to be a viable business, we started out of his backhouse. It was me, my wife, another partner named Ben and his wife, who actually works here as well too, both of my wife and his wife are, actually, I'm sorry, not his wife, it's actually his girlfriend, but whatever, whatever, you're not going to get in trouble for that mistake. I know, right? Yeah. I'm so happy. I'm sure he'll be happy as well on that, but they've been together for a while and we're all close. But we started out of the backhouse and we just started the sales process there and things went well. We got a few deals in our first couple days and we're like, okay, this is, it was impressive enough to David to where he invested in an office. We got a small office in West LA, off Olympic and Bundy started out of there. It's about 2,500, 3,000 square feet. We filled it up. Did well in sales. Got it to a few hundred thousand dollars a month and then needed more space. So we moved a little bit more eastbound on Wilshire, Wilshire and Cloverdale and got a office here and it's about 6,500 square feet and we're running out of space now and just kind of looking to keep expanding and keep things growing in the right direction for 2020. Very cool, man. That's an awesome story. So it's, you built it from the ground up, but you were like, you know, zero day, like right from the start, you were, so tell me, how did you know this was a need that, like, what, like how did you find this target market fit for it's, is it, and let me just understand, is it a software or is it just like, are you like a digital agency? Good question. So I'll answer the latter question first. It's a software. So the software basically connects their MLS, which the multiple listing service where all, well, like 98% of the houses that are for sale on the market are listed within the regional MLS. As an MLS is owned by, you know, brokers that band together and, you know, agents and brokers paying fees in order to have this collective access to the data. So we connect an agent's MLS into our dashboard. And so the, all the data that's pertaining to a specific property being the images, the, the square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, the price point, all that gets automated into these different marketing assets. So with one listing, we can convert it into a listing video, a congratulatory video for the seller after its sold or for the buyer who purchased it, right? We can, you know, convert it into a single property website. We can make content that's specific to that property for Instagram. And so it does, the software does the heavy lifting in that respect. And then we incorporate the agent or brokers personal branding. So their headshot, their logo, their contact information into that asset to make it branded to the agent. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. That's a very cool software. And I think that I have actually a couple, I'm going to write down a whole bunch of notes. So if you see me not looking at you and not paying attention, I'm just trying to take down notes. I don't forget stuff later. I know where it is, man. First I want to, first I want to dive into, how did you, like, who coded this? Who built this out? Like, how did you know this was going to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Major shout out to Orio Coby. He's our CTO. You can find him on, on LinkedIn, Orio Coby, O-R-R, face white, a K-O-B-I without looking. I'm sure that's right though. Yeah. He's our CTO. He's a super smart guy. Built the software up from scratch. I mean, in the early days, when we had our first few clients, we were doing stuff manually by hand. It wasn't as, the software was not close to as robust as it is today. And I mean, we're still a young company, like we'll turn to in December. So the software is still at that point where it's getting better and better on a daily basis. And so I'm excited for what the future holds, but I'm very confident in the value that we can provide to agents and brokers, you know, as it stands right now as well too. Yeah, no, 100%. I can totally see the value because I think that one thing that you're doing right is you're tapping into an industry that obviously has a lot of professionals and want to market themselves, brand themselves, and you're giving them an easy scalable way to do it. And I don't think that you see a lot of industry-specific solutions like what you're providing. You'll see, again, you know, I ask you, are you a digital agency or whatever, you'll see real estate agents go to these companies and look for people to produce all these assets, but it's not something like I'm assuming this is almost going to turn into like a self-serve model eventually if it's a software product. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, what's interesting about it is that it will eventually become intuitive and effortless enough to where it will be extremely applicable as a self-serve model. And currently, what we found is that a good chunk of agents do use the software on a frequent basis, but a lot of it is so automated that, you know, some of them just want to delegate it purely to our in-house team in our current test division who will do some of those tasks that are related to this for the client. And we offer premier support for as little as like 199 a month with the software included as well too. That's cheap. So, yeah. It's hands off of the agents and, you know, when we're looking at, and this isn't to say that this is a case with all agents, but the average agent according to realtor.com is 54 years old, right? So not everybody has the opportunity or the time or, you know, even the desire to really use even a software, a lot of agents that we work with just want the end result without really having to be too involved. And so we're working more and more to try to minimize the role that agents have to fill in that, but also simultaneously make the product easy enough and defined enough and intuitive enough to, you know, service those agents for specific jobs that they need done and accomplish as well too. Yeah. No, that makes sense. How did you, like, who's the person who understood that, first of all, realtor agents needed a content marketing provider and then who's the person who knew which assets would be most valuable for them? Both the answer to both is David Dool. He's a really, really sharp guy, you know, it was Forbes 30 under 30 back in 2014. He's also a huge real estate investor in the area. So he has a lot of agents and brokers that are friends and family. And he basically would ask me, like, come on, like, why aren't you doing more on social media? And they're like, it's not that I don't want to. Since I don't have the time and I don't really understand it. Like, I'm busy selling properties and all that. And so if it's between selling a property or, you know, picking up a phone call and posting on social media, I'm going to choose the prior. And he saw that there was an opportunity there. And then, you know, that's where I came in was trying to help with more of the sale specific stuff and been as kind of more operations and also, like, chief revenue officer as well too. So he really helps out with a lot of the organizational aspect of it. But as far as the ideation and kind of seeing the opportunity within the marketplace, David has kind of an eye for that. And he's the most skilled in, I would say, advance as far as understanding, like, product market fit. Because you found, like, you're only two years old, but you've already scaled to hundreds of thousands in revenue. Yeah. And so you found product market fit pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, we did. I mean, within the first year, we didn't do any marketing at all. It was ironic. It was all 100% cold call. And we got to about 5 million in revenue in year one. So that's really great. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's significant. It was a solid. It was a solid. We had some help. Peter, that actually worked at another, it was previously a competitor that I think has shut down. He kind of consulted with us and kind of showed us the ropes as far as like helping agents be able to understand or helping us to be able to understand agents is what I should say. And kind of what their pain points are, what appeals to them. And then we just kind of started learning more as we went. And we kept it a month to month solution that made it easier for people to commit. And then incentivize them to do an annual. And it worked really well. And now we're starting to get more into that free trial model and starting to sophisticated more of our online, well, it's kind of our next goal. So you have like, you're going to like go into some sort of like premium model where you have like in app upsells or that kind of, yeah, so that's definitely where we're headed as well. And we're doing like a free trial model right now, where we let people test it out on a free trial and just like create the first piece of content and give them a strategy. And you know, most agents don't really want to mobilize that strategy. So if they want, they can hire us to do it, you know, for as little as 99 up to 199 per month and we'll manage it and do everything for them. And there's no long-term commitment, which I think is kind of the fear for most agents is getting trapped into something that they don't, you know, think is beneficial. And we definitely don't want to be a part of that. So it's something that, you know, we're happy to handle for them if they prefer that over the free trial in most due, it's usually just about making sure that we understand what really their goals are and what they're really ultimately trying to accomplish. Make sure that we give them realistic expectations of what it's going to take to accomplish those things and then, you know, see it through and we're not, by all means, definitely not perfect yet. But we work hard and we care about the clients and we always try to do right by them as well. Well, that's, you know, I think it's half a battle, too. And if you have that mindset going into it, you're going to be successful. Maybe not as quick as you guys were, but you'll still be successful eventually. Yeah. Yeah. And so you said you had some sales background, but you were basically charged with taking like a software product to market. How did you, how did, did you have experience with this before? Like, what's your, what's your professional background? How did it start there? It was just like, you learned on the job and you just, I, it was more the ladder. It was more the ladder. I used to do, I worked in student loan consolidations before, which is basically just introducing students into programs that, you know, helped them lower their student loan. And then they were publicly available through the government, but we just charged the fee to kind of help them with their processing and let them know that in the process. That's was my sales experience and I let a team there and always had, you know, the best team, I guess I could say out of the bunch. And this was my first software, you know, experience, like the SaaS, like experience at all. And as far as taking the product to market and like being able to create a successful sales team, I didn't do it alone. You know, I had a lot of help with, you know, the great people that I work with, the Peter Alexander, Al Cohen, you're a very humble leader. Like it's like, it's refreshing because you know, I think that's why you are so successful because it seems like everybody in the organization is really, is really aware of everyone else's contribution. Yeah. I mean, it definitely, it's been a team effort the whole way. And you know, it's been something that I think, you know, it didn't happen overnight. We still have our bumps and bruises, but I, the other parts of it is that while learning on the fly, I think one thing that I've always, like kind of my 10-skiller town, it's like work ethic, I would say, not the most smart, not the most intelligent, you know, person that's probably been in sales or in marketing, but I'll work hard for it. So I studied everything that I didn't know, knew the phone sales aspect of it really well, and to get kind of down and dirty when necessary to kind of lead by example, and now my next learning curve is kind of learning that process of duplication and replication and being able to help, you know, convert salespeople into leaders, which is, you know, something I'm definitely all the way there at, yeah, but we'll get there and it'll just be kind of a learning process on the way. Yeah. So you, and that's interesting that you mentioned that because cold calling and building in business that way is not always the way that people will build out a, a SaaS product, right, from the ground up. A lot of, you see like a lot of like developer focused SaaS products like the build and optimize an inbound funnel, and then they'll try and get people to sign up kind of like what you're doing now. So like that, that scalable, predictable revenue piece that everybody wants to go for. So you still killed it doing the cold calling outbound method, and it was just yourself, like your number one first employee, first sales employees, excuse me, and you were doing this all on your own. So tell me how, how do you approach, you have no idea, you just know that realtors buy it. Like what's your strategy to, is it even like, you know, are you purchasing lists? Are you going on LinkedIn? Good question. So no, we basically had a bot that could scrape publicly available websites and gather contact information and also name and all that basic information for agents, and we would just call them, you know, just call call them, and they're obviously agents and brokers are marketing using their cell phone, right. So they're, so we could reach directly to them and basically just try to call some value to them by just, you know, speaking to the obvious, like, hey, I'm looking at your Facebook business page. I see that, you know, the last time you posted was three weeks ago, you're posting links to articles that are redirecting people away from the Facebook basis page and help instead of helping them engage with your page, right. So what we would do for you is create a banner video, also videos to promote you, promote your listings, educate buyers and sellers about the trends that are going on in the market. And depending on what time period we're talking about, we'd either, now we would offer them a free trial. Previously, we would offer them something that was an easy and month to month solution with no cancellation fees, engaging anywhere from like, you know, 99 to 199. So let's talk about your sales team now. So you're, you're almost two years in. So how large is your sales organization? So right now, the sales organization is about 20 in this office and we have about 10 down the road in another office. So about 30 altogether. Okay. And then you were, you had a hand in hiring all those people and building out like the sales playbook for your organization. Yeah. So I definitely had a strong piece in that, didn't hire everybody. There's another team that is down the, the way that people run, who we initially, he was one of the people that came on board early and really helped us to get where we are now. So he hires and kind of does his own thing in his environment. It does a really good job at it. And then everybody in the office here, for the most part, I've played a role in hiring and kind of helping to groom the whole day all as well too. So when you're, when you're hiring into, you're like the first sales hire, you're building it your team. Who do you look for? Do you look for junior ambitious or are you looking for veteran, like what type of career ambitious? I would say more. I mean, the first, the first real, my wife was probably like the first real hands-on, like sales hire just because she's always killed in whatever we do. She is like, has the exact same, if not a stronger work ethic than me, and is always just like, doubled anybody she's ever worked with in production. So she was number one and very similar to me in the fact that she is relatively new to, as far as like, SaaS sales, right, and picked up on it very quickly. That was number one. And then now we're always looking for people in general that's great if they have experience, but we would rather take somebody that has a lot of mental fortitude, eagerness and willingness to learn. And that is, you know, a good fit for a startup, right? You know, sometimes when people come from more mature organizations, they expect things to be in a certain way and they kind of are used to that. Everything is defined for you in your role. It's not one in which you're kind of helping to co-create, right, at least from what I've seen. Yeah, I think that's accurate and that's fair to say. Yeah, so like we try to tell people when they come in, like, look, this is a progressive sales culture, you know, in the sense of that, there will be change, right? You know, we're a startup, we're two years in, we're doing well, we're headed in the right direction, but, you know, things are, everything is subject to change, right? We want to keep consistency, but your role could redefine. You may be asked to step into a bigger and better role if that's a good fit for you. We may slightly modify the pitch or, you know, the offer, and we're looking for people that are able to adapt without getting too mentally, you know, and that are also able to take a lot of rejection. It's, you know, that's, I think, the same in every sale, but a lot of times people are used to, I call them, like, inbound rejection problems. It's like, you got like 150 inbound leads again, some rejection. It's different when you're kind of charged with, you know, moving that force yourself and doing a lot of heavy outbound and really taking people from, I don't know, you or your company to, sure, I'll give you guys a shot. So, yeah. So I would say, yeah, we're looking for like kind of that, that scrappy individual that's willing to do that. Or, you know, if they did come from like a big organization that are doing really well, you know, before, and they have a lot of experience, and can help us grow this by adding that experience and adding their insight and thought to it. That's great. Obviously, that person would also, too, have to be kind of willing to help us, you know, navigate the waters and the current as well, too, and be flexible with it. Yeah, because you're still under 50 employees total, correct? We're actually, you were just, I believe we actually are, right? Like 49. Okay. So, you know, there's like a big, you start to see as your organization starts to get over. I think like, I've read this before and I've seen it in some past roles that I've had, or that 50 person is where you just, you hit a wall, and then it's very hard to, so you have to make sure, and I don't want to hijack, but in my opinion, you have to make sure that you have to really map out like the processes as opposed to where getting to that 50 person point, you can do it if you just have enough energy, whereas past, you know what I mean? No, I totally know. And it's ironic that you mentioned that because I think we're right, like literally at like 49, and recently I thought that we, and I still think this, that we got into a close enough place where it was worth kind of creating an RPV framework and finding all the resources processes and values that comprise our sales organization. And so it's, it's there, but it's still being molded, and you know, one of the cool things that I think about my job and its current state is that I have a lot of great people on the team, and it's like every single day, our AEs, even new hires that are still SDRs, our account managers are helping me to frame that RPV framework, they're coming up with new ways on a daily basis that we can make, you know, this an even stronger sales culture, make our process is stronger, and kind of defining this journey as we go along. Of course, I like, I put in my insight in that and put a lot of thought and, you know, an effort into kind of molding that as well too, but I've always tried to remain open to the ideas of everybody that we work with as well too, because a lot of times they're one of the ones in the trenches that are out there, you know, making the calls and stuff like that, so they got some really valuable insight that I like to try to adapt and put into play. I think that's smart. I think that's, but I think, you know, just to make, to make or keep yourself sane, I think it's important to incorporate their ideas, because you're at the point where you can leverage that agility, right? Because you have the ability to tap into, like you said, the front line, and you're only so many, you know, you're not so many steps away. So while you can get that, that feedback, to be honest, at any organization, should be trying to take that feedback, that real time, you know, that, that user feedback in the field, feedback, and then incorporating into their strategy, their playbook, their, their marketing messaging, whatever. But I think that the fact that you are aware of that and you're doing it, you're going to continue, hopefully you'll continue to do success, because that's, that's, I think, you know, if you, if you build out, for example, the conversations that your sales reps have with your customers, into your branding, and your messaging, and your marketing collateral, and you build that out into, like a playbook that, like, that comprises, like, most common objections and stuff like that, that just, you know, helps everybody succeed, right? So it's good that you have that culture of, like, of shared knowledge. Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely what we're trying to create. I read one book that was really influential, I guess, in my young leadership career here, is Ray Dalio's Principles. And I really like the idea of, an idea meritocracy with, like, believability-based, or weighted decision-making, right? And there's a lot of smart people that we have here. And so I'm trying my best to kind of incorporate that type of methodology in there. So that the, the best ideas do truly win. And like you said, to keep myself sane, because, I think, I, I like anybody, I could get in trouble if I start thinking that I'm the only one with some good ideas in here. Yeah. And then it's also all, you know, if you try and take care of everything, you're gonna, you run out of hours in a day too. So we can leverage everyone else's resources and insight to think it should make, it makes your job easier. Yeah. Good point. How do you, how did you build out, uh, from the ground up? How did you build out your sales team? Was it, um, like, like, a, like an inside outside ISR, a, like, what was it? Yeah. So it's inside, uh, inside sales, um, and basically, it depends on what time periods so I'll just stick to right now, so what we're doing now, um, now we're bringing on people starting them as an SDR, um, for a month. And then they will all, if they meet their KPIs, uh, will transform into an AE, um, and the AE's are charged as an acquisition based role, right? So they're charged with getting the month to month deal in the door, um, once the credit card is on file and they've agreed to pay and, you know, the basic data and information is there, they transfer the call over to an account manager. The account manager verifies all the information on the file will inform the client about the annual or semi-annual upsells that we have available at any given time and then continue to kind of keep an eye on their account and, uh, then our client's success division kind of takes the ball from there and, uh, really, you know, works with the clients to make sure that they're adopting the software, that everything's according to plan. And also it helps to identify clients that are starting to consider other services that we have in that we're offering at the time or just upgrading to an annual service. What I, and I keep sort of doubling down on these like from the ground up questions because it's very cool. And like, not everybody has the opportunity to speak to somebody who was, was part of a high growth startup success story, you know, from the very beginning. So, um, I'm going to keep asking these questions because I think it's very cool. I just say like, understand like your, your thought process is you, as you sort of built out this team, um, because you've, you've seen success. That's why I really, uh, so when you, when you've mapped out these KPIs, you know, you have KPIs developed for all these different departments. How have you mapped out the KPIs so that you see success across all your organization, um, and you've had the opportunity to do it from the ground up. So maybe you speak to sort of how you've developed those. Yeah. So I think a lot of it was seeing what was feasible and practical, um, you know, out of the gate, remember when we first started a backhouse, it was very experimental, right? And kind of learning, you know, what the KPIs could even be. Um, so what we saw was we kind of just did an average weighted up from like our strongest reps that we've had over time to our weakest reps, um, that, I don't want to say weakest, but maybe most untrained or lots of valve sales reps that could still cut, you know, cut it, right? Making money for the company in some way, but may have not been like the strongest people at the time. And then we, we made it somewhere right in the middle there, right? Um, so with seasonality, like, for instance, like this month, we adopted and kind of changed the KPIs just a little bit to adapt to the seasonality of it because, um, a lot of agents are, you know, kind of in that mindset of let's wait until January, of course, and, you know, obviously we have strategies to try to overcome that, get them to see the value of marketing when other agents are taking their foot off the gas and we have, but, you know, seasonality, seasonality, to some extent, right? Um, so we try to keep it flexible and make sure that it's something that's attainable, right? That is something that is, uh, realistic for them to hit, but also not something that's, you know, easy and, and that's not going to be challenging and that they're not going to have to, uh, you know, really show up every day and give their best effort to reach as well too. And, and outside of that, like you're speaking about, like holding them to, uh, to, uh, success metrics, um, can you speak a little bit about, uh, like the coaching and the strategy around coaching them and guiding them towards success? So like, let's, yeah, let's actually break it down. Sure. Um, I'm having a lot of fun with this because you're early stage again. So let's start off, um, so what does your onboarding look like for your reps? And then I want to go into after that. What is your, your ongoing coaching success, uh, success strategy, look like? Perfect. Yeah. So when we bring, I'm really, really big on getting people active and engaged in the role that they're going to have to perform as early as possible. And then after we have something tangible to talk about, meaning experience within the role and seeing where the struggles and hurdles that each person's going to have to overcome, then going back and training again in context. And I'll kind of get a little bit more granular on that. So when we come in, the first thing that we do is get a very high level overview of the RPV framework. So the basic resources like, hi, I'm Kyle of the VPSA, I'll be working with you as part of your training. Here's Joel. There's another great guy that we have that's going to be doing the training manager. Here's a Al Cohen, he's our, you know, VP of client success and kind of telling them how they can use the resources, human resources, um, that will be involved. So we start with the humans, right? And then we also, eventually, when we get context around the role, get into the technologies and play. Either the CRM system, any email templates that we're going to be using, sales assets, what have you, right? And, you know, scripting as well, we'll, we'll go in there as well. So as far as the process is, when they come in, since they're starting as an SDR, we focus exclusively on the process of outbound and booking that free trial demo, which is their sole role for like the first, it was two weeks. Now we're going to extend that to a month, so there's so role for a month. So we get into that process after, well, there's a few things before that terminology. So we cover like, you know, basic terminology industry knowledge, yeah, yeah, very high level, very super basic. And then again, we sophisticated that as their understanding of the role continues to evolve, right? So terminology key messaging points, we want to make sure that there's alignment from the very front end of our funnel all the way down through clients and like remarketing in that each client is hearing kind of the same message about what it is that we do in the product, you know, and how it's going to help us solve their business goals, right? So terminology key messaging points, then we start diving in on the script, right? So we do a read through on the script. We talk about the psychology of why the script is structured in the way that it is. I like that a lot, man. I like that. That's really good. How many times have you seen sales reps like they're just told to do something they have no idea why go say this, go sell this or, you know, position it a certain way and you're, you know, it's somebody in another department, another city, whatever who's crafted this messaging, they have no clue. So that's really cool that you do that. I think it's important. Yeah, it's, I think it's really big, especially for real estate agents that we step into their shoes of what, because they get a lot of calls, right? They get a lot of calls. So we have to be able to empathize with what they're thinking when they get that next call and what makes us different and how we're actually going to not just be different in the sense of trying to sell them, but be different in the sense of the value that we're going to provide them, right? And making sure that that's conveyed consistently in every time. Of course, it's not going to happen with new hires all the time within their first month, but we want to lease that expectation and talk about why the script is structured in the way that it is and what the client is thinking simultaneously, because if we've done enough of these calls, we should have a good understanding at each point, each check mark along that line of what the client is going to be thinking at this point. So we, we, we cover that. And then we have them do, you know, drive re-throughs and we do some role play. And then after we've gotten just to the point where, you know, about two hours into that role play process, I jump on the phone and I do a couple in front of the whole group as an icebreaker. So I'll put, I'll jump on the call, the whole training class will be sitting there listening. I'll do about 10 calls, you know, one out of every 10 should convert into a free trial. So some training classes, I'll get like two or three back to back. They'll, they'll get to see me sweat a little bit. I, you know, get like eight or nine hang up or something like that back to back and then I'll get one. Yeah, but you know what, you know, it doesn't, I, I would even argue that doesn't even matter if you get one because chose that you're doing it. Absolutely. And like how many leaders don't do it? Exactly. Exactly. And I actually, I actually prefer when they see a little bit of when there is like nine hang ups in a row and I get it on the 10th one because that's the reality of the role, right? And I tell them right after it's like, it doesn't matter how good you get at this. Nine out of 10 people, if you look at it over a huge data set, like, you know, tens of thousands of calls, nine out of 10 people are not going to be interested in what you have to offer. And that's okay. And I hear to convert people that are not interested and do not want to hear what we have to offer and don't want it or need it into doing our, what we have, you know, it's signing up for our product or even for free trial, right? We're here to make sure that that one person that is looking for some help on social media that does see the value of saving time and educating buyers and sellers without them doing much and to explain in a simple enough manner to that person how we can help their business. When they see that and they see that I'm not immune to rejection or getting hung up on, but that is not going to change my demeanor. It's not going to change my outlook. I'm not going to start, you know, sweating or getting to, you know, to nervous about it. No, you're getting me fired up. I hate cold calling, but now I'm excited to go, yeah, it's interesting, man, I even did some today. I jumped on the phone today just because there's a slim crew in the office and every once in a while, I just like to jump on it and do it just to show people that like, you know, it's, you know, it's part of the shop, you know, it's part of the environment. I want to make sure I'm not ever getting too preachy about what we need to do, but I've learned from to get to do that less often now just so I can focus on some of the more macro things that will help the organization succeed too. That's really strong. No, that's good. I'm going to circle back to cold calling after, but what I want to do because we're kind of in this sort of stream of thought. So you, that's your onboarding. That's great. So continue success. What's your, your coaching cadence look like to keep these people, you know, productive and, and exceeding and growing, obviously? Yeah. So, you know, we, once they get on the phones, which is day one, we're, you know, the whole week, first week, we're kind of continuing on that path of getting them on the phones as much as possible and then analyzing what they're struggling with and then trying to help them in an individualized way with that and then adding on product knowledge and, you know, in everything that comes in accordance with that, you know, objection handling things like that too. So after somebody gets the basics down, they're booking, you know, free trials like nobody's business, they're doing live transfers to our A's, they're explaining the product well when people throw them objections. From that point on, then we're coaching them and start to give them context around the demo, right? And way more hands-on as far as role play and training, and we even, we're now starting to kind of pair our SDRs with our A's so they can kind of have a mentor that's been here for a little bit longer and kind of get them, get them up to speed, so to say, a little bit faster, right? Since, you know, it used to be a lot quicker transition from SDR to A's, so now we're elongating that anyway, I digress. But after they get into the AE role and they're cooking on that and they're starting to get their first couple deals in, and that knowledge starts to crystallize and they're really starting to come into their own. Then from there on out, of course there's always, you know, company specific things that we need to train on such as, you know, objection handling and strategy and, you know, prospecting and all that good stuff. But I consider my job more to keep people present and aware of what they are really trying to accomplish on this earth. If we just have people that are showing up to meet a KPI or to meet a quota, it becomes very challenging because even our A's are still at this phase dealing with a lot of rejection and in those type of things, so they have to be here for a bigger purpose and in that purpose, it can be to grow this company into a billion-dollar company and rise through the ranks and become a leader themselves or move into the account management division and make even more money, or it could be to, you know, absolutely dominate at this role and then try to launch their own business. It doesn't matter to us, it just matters that they have some type of passion, that they have something that exceeds their current role that they are working and striving towards because from my experience, that's, you know, the number one thing that keeps me focused and motivated every day to give it my best regardless of how the situation, you know, is on any given day or time. So the ways that we go about doing that, I'm big on like we're reminding people to focus on action over results, like right here results down and consider them done. Like we're headed into December, write down how many deals that you're going to hit, you know, put it in a statement as if it's already happened, you know, read it in the morning or before you go to bed, right? And then from that point on out, if other than those windows before you go to bed, you know, when you're going to bed or when you're writing out your goals, then you've got to be obsessively focused on action and obsessively focused on how can I right now make the most meaningful impact towards my goal and then trusting that the results will come. No, that's awesome. And I appreciate that because I know it's hard to keep people engaged at a startup because, you know, you're not in the Bay area, but I'm sure there's just another one around the corner. So what's a differentiator? It's usually not the pay anymore. It's usually the value they get out of the leadership or the company supporting them and whatever their endeavors are. So like good on you for that and recognizing that because I think that'll keep a lot of really good people around. Yeah, we're hoping so and a lot of them are cutting it. What's really cool is a lot of the the team now is starting, this I can tell we're making a little bit of progress here because our team is coming up with great ideas every day that are strengthening our culture. And I consider my job to when those ideas come to the surface and it seems to have like other people are like, that's a really good idea and I think it's a good idea. And other leaders think that it's a good idea, then getting those things into action as quickly as possible. So, you know, through whatever channels I have to, you know, make that happen. If it's one that I can, you know, do myself and amazing, I'll get that done. If it's one that I need to speak with other leaders or, you know, David or Van about to make happen, then I consider my job to get that done. So it's good to not be the only one that comes up with the ideas and I just try to take that process in between and in our team's great at helping kind of mold the culture as we go to. That's good. Okay. I have a question for you because you mentioned a lot of role playing that you do when you're sort of training and onboarding reps. So role playing is obviously something that I think is a great tool. I think it's super effective if done properly, but everyone hates it. So how do you, how do you bridge that gap? How do you do it effectively? Like what's worked for you? Yeah. So one thing I think that's really cool that we do pretty often, but we can always do more of is doing it in a group setting, right? I think first thing in the morning is really the ideal since we've started doing and we got this idea from an SDR at outreach when they posted some LinkedIn video, but we got it, you know, a Buddha, a stuffed Buddha and we passed around and we kind of do in a scrum style meeting in the morning talking about what our day went yesterday, what our goals are today and what hurdles we have in the way and we pass it around, but occasionally what we'll do is append that with some role play. So I'll just throw out, you know, hey, John, I'm not interested, you know, it's the first call that you just made to me. You're trying to pitch me on a free trial, I'm not interested and then we'll see how he handles that, right? Or, you know, I'll go out, hey, hey, you know, Bill, I'm trying to use the names of this group. You know, you know, your product sounds great, but I'm not buying anything until February, give me a call back then, right? And just have, you go around the room and see how people are doing that. So I think it helps to be an icebreaker when they're doing that in front of all their peers right in that moment, then the phone, when you're on the phone, you're already kind of warmed up, right? Breaking the ice on the first couple calls when you have less of a chance of getting any feedback on that. So that's number one, but also two, something that I'm really, really focused on this month and last month as well is one-on-one meetings. I think that doing one-on-ones with our AES and SDRs for that matter is going to be critical just because different people have different struggles. Like for some people, it's more of a tonality-based thing. They've memorized all the information, but, and they can even deliver the script, right? But the way that they're engaging the prospect is maybe need some work, right? Or other people is maybe they're extremely talented on the phones, but they're lacking product knowledge, or with others, maybe they're saying everything and doing everything right, but they're failing to transition. Like they're making a statement of value and then waiting for the prospect to say, you know what? I love it. Let's do it instead of actually taking them to that next step. So we try to document what each person needs help with or ask them, you know, what they need help with, and then work on that and within the context of a sale, during a one-on-one, and also, you know, just that's a good time for this other check-ins that we do as well. And how do you actually, because you said sometimes you'll ask them for their feedback, and if you have a self-aware rep, then you'll be able to provide that, and obviously that's what you want to hire at the end of the day, but for everybody, you can be so self-aware. So how do you, do you use like Gong, or do you, like, what do you use? I want to. Yeah. Sounds like a good thing. Yeah. Here's to it. We are going to do Gong. It had a couple of reps reach out. I'm connected with a lot of them on LinkedIn, but I think eventually we are going to adopt that software. But we're, I listen in the call still, and I have a couple of Anthony Derosa, who's our sales operations guy, who's really, he's usually buried in a spreadsheet or putting together a report or helping us better understand the data, but he'll occasionally listen in, and Joel will listen in, and they all will listen in. But I'll still listen in myself as well, and I can usually hear within the context of a few calls what they're struggling with. So if it's an SDR, I can listen to, you know, three or four calls of how they're enjoying the call. If they're getting a successful result, if they're strengthening any appointment with questions to specify, or to identify, I should say, the value that the prospect really wants from the service, if it's an AE that's on a call and they've been on it for 25 minutes, I know that they're close to getting into the pitch if they already haven't got there, right? Yeah. So then I'll start tuning in, and I'll, you know, kind of hear where they're at with things, and then either give them immediate feedback after the call, you know, if it's a good time for that, or I'll document it down on paper if it's more suited for a one on one, and then kind of bring that up during the one on one, and a kind of get their feedback as to why they were using that approach, or, you know, if there was a strategy, maybe something that I missed in the conversation as to why they were going about it in that way. At least I'm on my A game, or I'll just tell them like, hey, you know, here's what I saw, what's your perspective on this, and then here's what I would suggest that may work a little bit better in the next time that you're in that situation. No, no, it's cool. And I'm going to ask you one more, I'm going to ask you, I'm, I hope you have more water, I apologize. You brought so many people. Oh, it's coffee. Okay, cool. Okay, cool. That's not helping at all then. No, I'm good. I have a lot of talk today. Nope. No, you brought some really cool points, and I really, you know, I've gone through, okay, so I've gone through onboarding, you know, coaching, role playing. The last thing that I'd like to, to speak to you about because you're an expert at it, and it's your own fault for bringing so many cool ideas to the table, so blame yourself that we're going into this, but cold calling, because that's something that I don't think a lot of people who are VP are actively involved in, obviously, it depends on the company. I don't want to generalize, but I would say that many people who are VP sales would rather not do it if they don't have it, but you know, you're doing it. You're doing it today. You did it. You do it for all your training. So what, what are some of the best practices for being effective at cold calling? Well, hey, I think mindset is number one, like if we, of course, there's a lot of industry specific or sale specific things that go into it, but your mindset has to be right. I think a lot of times we get to trapped in the result of things instead of the action of things. So for me, like I have to make sure that every once in a while, I'm going to do some type of yoga or meditation so that I can get out of my own way mentally and be able to elongate that period of focus and determination and kind of be able to, you know, dedicate the right amount of energy to every single call and be okay if they hang up on it. Right? That's number one, right? So I like to start off the call in a very familiar tone, like we've spoke before. It's not to be misleading, but I think it's the best way to get prospects engaged. So I'd be like, hey, Scott, hey, Scott, it's Kyle who's in tap. How are you? And then, you know, I think the right feeling that we're trying to do in that moment is, have I spoke to this person before? Yeah, because you stop and you question, you're like, oh, did I miss something? Did I miss a call like, yeah, they're like, yeah, like that, but without saying it, you know? And so that will usually buy a second or two. Yeah. During the second thing that I try to do is act of, this is what I mean by like being super engaged into every call because I think the tendency is to kind of sit back, go through the same repetitive script and wait for someone to give you the time of day versus like, I, what we're doing is trying to pull up something specific to that prospect that we can connect to in the first 10 to 15 seconds of the call to give them a very personalized experience. So my idea would be right after that. They're like, usually saying, so like, I'm sorry, it's Kyle with who? It's Kyle was in tap, you know, I just saw this beautiful listing that you have on one, two, three main street is that still on the market? That gets them engaged early and they're still trying to figure out they're going to buy a house. Yeah, they say, yes, perfect, look, I love to create a video for that listing, right? And then talk with you about a strategy, how we can drive that video out to buyers and investors within the area and to kind of help you get set up, we'll create the video for free and kind of do a free consultation with you during a two week free trial. If you like what we do, we have affordable month to month options. If not, you get to keep everything that we did. Does that sound fair? And if they say that's a strong, that's a strong pitch, I can feel it. Yeah. Right. And then from there, then I'm assuming, once they say, if they say, yes, it does sound fair, then we're going right into, look, I'd love to send you an email with everything, you know, so you can see it and writing, what's the best email? And then after we get the email, we'll ask, hey, are you in front of a computer? And if they answer, yes, then boom, there should be a live transfer to an A, if they answer, no, then, hey, when's there going to be a good time later on today, tomorrow, we have about 10 to 15 minutes in front of a computer, then we'll schedule that time. And then before the end of the call, or at the end of the call, excuse me, what we want to do is strengthen the appointment because it's very easy for someone who's not really interested to BS you for, you know, two minutes on, yeah, sure, yeah, you know, Kyle is in tap.com, sure, yeah, no, 10 tomorrow sounds great, all right, cool. So we want to ask them, you know, like, what's the number one goal that you're trying to achieve in 2020, or other than, you know, creating this video for your listing and talking with you about a strategy to get that in front of thousands of buyers and investors, what is something else that we could do to drive meaningful value for your business during that two week free trial? And we get that. And if they, you know, elaborate on what they're really looking for, we may speak a little bit to that or ask a spin-off question off of that to get a better idea of what we can do in between the time that the call ends and the time that they have that schedule call within AE. So ideally, in the most perfect sense, we're actually creating value prior to that call and sending it to them via email so that they can see something that's valuable before we even speak. So they're further incentivized to pick up the phone. Then when they pick up the phone, where ideally, you know, showcasing or creating that video on that call and then explaining to them the difference between the free trial and what we can do for them if they choose to take advantage of one of our paid services. Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for walking us through that. That's good because, like I said, I don't think a lot of people like no best practices for call calling. And I like your approach a lot. It's good. It's personal. And then that's most important. And it's tied to everything you said, I was going to talk about technology because you haven't mentioned any technology. Everything you're doing. So you're creating a personal touch point. You've done your little bit of research. It's so funny because there's all these technologies now that do that, like, you know, you have outreach. It does a whole bunch of research on the person before you actually engage with them. And then there's a whole, I'm sure there's some some site type of tactic and reinforce the value prop and like right before like the appointment, I think I was, what was I looking at? I think it was Vidyard that sent like a video to sort of reinforce like the morning of the appointment, like the value that you're bringing. There's all these different ways that you can do, but you're just doing it in a couple sentences. Like so simple. But there's all these like elaborate expensive technologies built that to support like something that comes so inherently and natively to you. So it's impressive. Like very good. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. And we might even end up using some of those technologies to make it a little bit easier. But it's it's fun though. I mean, honestly, it's kind of core to our sales culture because that's how we started, but we are looking and kind of looking to streamline tech in a technology and technology way to kind of help that process be less intensive as well or supplement it with some stuff too. So I think it's a kind of a mixture of both, but we've got a good system in that too. And you've got a really good system. I appreciate the fact that at least, you know, even if even if not everybody higher can can do it the same, I don't know, energy that you can because it's always hard to replicate right and they hire somebody and hope they bring the same to the table. But at least you've mapped it out and I just thought it was funny that as I'm listening to how you do your cold outreach, there's so many techs and technologies that do everything that you do just naturally and inherently. It's just interesting. Definitely. Definitely a good point. I never really thought about it like that, but it's definitely true though. I think that, yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that you know that and you're aware of how to do this without the use of any tech is why you've been so successful. And I don't know if it's just because if you're, you know, you've figured out what's worked best or whatnot, but I think the art of cold calling isn't what it used to be. No, it's not. It's kind of change and I don't even know. I mean, I'm still really young in my sales career and got it a lot to learn and I think being able to make things more efficient is one of them and learn and master other processes that will add on to that repertoire is kind of the mode that I'm in right now, but it means a lot coming from you. So thank you. No, no, I think that you've done it right because I think that myself included me become too dependent on technology and forget that all technology was built out of process that was just successful in the first place. But once you become too dependent on technology, then, then you lose those skill sets. So, you know, like you've, you've out of necessity just because of building the business from your, from the ground up, like you've been cold calling, you've been building out, like your pitch, you found out what's worked best. Well, if a, if a, if a sales rep, a young sales rep goes into an organization and they're using all these different tools and all these different technologies, if they ever, you know, they're not going to be able to have a skill set that they can take away and grow in their career. Now, imagine if they're in your position and they're doing a startup and they want to grow to sales team and they don't have the capital to invest in, you know, thousands, hundred thousand dollars of technology, then they won't know how to do it. The same effectiveness that you will. That's, that's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. It's a, it's something that I think there's a balance to as well too, which is I think this is one thing. If I had to save my goal for 2020, it's always to learn more, right? I definitely don't have it. It all figured out. And I think that the more that I learn, the more that I'll be able to spread that knowledge and identify, you know, good ways to leverage some of these technologies that you're speaking to and kind of create the best of both worlds, which I think is where we're headed with our sales organization. Yeah. It's to kind of add in some streamlined technology to integrate with the current processes that we have and leverage each accordingly to be able to, you know, find more of our ideal effects in real time and with a hell of a people 2020. So, yeah. No, that's cool. All right. I bug you enough about how your business works and all the processes and whatnot. Let's, let's slowly start to close this up because I want to go back into a couple like questions that I like to ask, just sort of like bring out like a little bit more about, you know, your mindset and your experience and your, I guess your journey. So first one I like to ask, I didn't ask this on the, on the, on the little PDF I sense, so I apologize, but you'll be cool and you can tell already. If you were, you know, say, like, say we're like friends in high school, like when you're like, you know, 14, 15 years old, like, are you the same person? Are you very different now? Like, what were you doing? Yeah. Almost like two different people, not in the sense of like, I like to say that I've had a good heart the whole way and maybe have the best intentions, but without is good of a skill set, but I struggled a lot, you know, through high school and young adulthood up through like 25, 26, 27, with not knowing the right way to be my best self. And I think, you know, part of it was, you know, maybe some mental health things that I had to get past and turning to, you know, alcohol and partying and stuff like that. I would replace the more effective means that I know how to deal with stuff now, which is meditation and yoga and really kind of making sure that I can stay one with the present moment instead of, you know, getting, you know, anxiety, thinking about the future or being depressed thinking about the past, like those skills that I just never really heard of growing up or maybe I didn't hear of them and I didn't give them the proper attention because it wasn't culturally as common as it is now. But I wasn't saying I was into sports, I liked music, I was really into hip hop and all that and I still, you know, I still love hip hop every once in a while, but these days I'm more focused on spending my time learning and, you know, I'm more likely to read a book and to go meditate and do yoga than ever, you know, like I don't go to bars or anything like that more. So I think it was just a natural process of growing up, but I almost like to think of, my old self is no longer existing and to some extent I try to live my life in a way to where the person that I was yesterday is still not existing. I think like the idea of daily rebirth is crucial because if we're constrained to, you know, self identifying ourselves in any one particular way, then we can limit our growth. So I think, you know, joe to spend has been a really good influence, not only met the guy before, but just watching his book of like detaching, I mean, watching videos and yeah, online course, but detaching from our idea of who we are and what we're supposed to do on a daily basis and remaining open to the possibilities and like the things that we believe that we're going to accomplish really take the time to envision that feel that like create those emotions and then act as if they're already true and that is things that I'm working on trying to master on a day to day basis so that I can continue to evolve and leave old, you know, outdated thought patterns and ways of dealing with the outside world behind and continue to evolve and be a better person as each day goes. Very good. And then I guess this would be a follow-up question. If you were going to tell your like your 20-year-old self or pick it when you were younger, one thing, it could be professional, it could be personal. What would that one thing be? Focus on your breath. I would say there's so much to do in this world and I think we're only going to get more swarmed with information and tasks and options and different things that anyone person could do, but if we get to the point where we forget that we're breathing and you're not conscious of our inhale and our exhale and centering ourselves in any one moment at a time, then everything can get lost. I lived my entire life thinking about the past or the future when I was 25 years old, even in a lot more before that as well. So I would sell myself, focus on my breath or go to a Kundalini Yoga studio. That changed my life. Read the power of now. Those are all the main things that changed my life. So I would say one of those three problems. Those are really important points and I think that you mentioned and you sort of alluded to just being present all the time in an environment that is constantly inundated with things that distract us. From work environment, thinking about milestones that we have to hit, revenue goals, whatever our next objective is to sitting at dinner with family, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, who doesn't matter and you're on your phone on Instagram or Facebook, Twitter. So I think that's, you know, I'm also, I'm a huge, I'm a huge, I also am not always in the present moment. So I'm a huge defender of not being present all the time. And, you know, yeah, for sure, I worry. But for what it's worth, you know, how do you do that? How do you mention, okay, so you have some centering activities, focus on focus on like the now like breathing like like the inhale, exhale, exhale, excuse me, exhale. And I think that's more of a that's like a that's a very like yoga type. Is there anything else that you do that sort of eliminates all the noise around you that allows you to be more effective? I think it can be, you know, I think in the most basic direct like way of correlation, Kundalini yoga, whenever I have like some type of blockage on like clarity of what my next direction or what I should be focusing on or how to get past something I'm struggling with, I would go to Kundalini yoga session. You know, hot yoga is a great, you know, that's very challenging like the 90 minute ones are really, really challenging. So you kind of force yourself to get over yourself mentally and force through adversity physically and mentally, which is great. But these days I try because time is more of the essence that I want to at this phase of my life dedicate as much as I can towards productivity in the workplace so that I can maximize income and later on use that income to affect the world. I try to to focus that energy, the same type of focus that I would focus in a yoga practice or something on the tasks that I'm doing at the time. So like while I'm talking to you right now, I try my best to only think about the question that you're asking me or pay attention to what you're saying or pay attention to what I'm saying and tune out the environment. All of our minds obviously are always going to jump to the past through the future. And one thing that I got from the power of now is that the second that we realized that we're thinking about the past or we're thinking about the future at that very moment we're present, right? So that is something that I'm like, okay, you know, it's not a judging thing on myself, but it is like when I realize that, let's double down the energy on what I'm doing now so that if I dedicate as much energy into any one given task or situation or event, then the reciprocal will become true as well too. It'll bounce back in in accordance. Very good. Awesome. And then last, I guess last question, any sort of mentors or resources that you go to to learn. So it could be, you mentioned actually a couple, but it could be a person, it could be places where you go to learn, it could be audibles, podcasts, books, like what's your go to? So I'm going to, I got a couple of answers on that. Okay, cool. My dad is, is, is, is great. He's a huge inspiration to me. My dad is always somebody I can get some real feedback from and knows me really well kind of has seen me through all stages of my life and believe me in me the whole way. So he's one. My wife Stephanie is incredible. She will keep it real with me all the time and we work, you know, she works just as hard. So I know that if she's, she sees me in all these different situations. So she knows when I'm on my A game and when I'm off it. So as far as people I know, those are a couple people. My mom and every, there's so many people that are great, but I mean those two people are really impactful to me at least in the sense of where I'm at right now in my family. There's my brother. I could go on for days on like people that I know my mom, dad, whatever. But as far as outside of the context that people that I know, Eckert Toley, which I believe is how he pronounces name, he changed my life through the power of now. I've read that book like 10 times. It's, I've never met the guy, but I can't thank him enough because that book really changed my entire existence. My dad sent me that book. So that, really was the best gift that I've ever had. In Joseph Finza, somebody that I think is just on another level is far as being able to manifest like what you want from the world, but giving you actual scientific ways to go about doing it. I think he's tremendously powerful. I'd love to meet that guy one day. But yeah, those are a few that I can name off the top. My there's so many different people. But I also, these days, I'm trying to learn something from everybody. Like anybody that I meet, whether it's a sales rep, yourself, anybody that I come in contact with, I try to remain open to the unique thing that I can get from that person that they are, you know, something that they can always, you know, educate me about. And it remains open as possible to new ideas and different perspectives on. That's why, you know, I do this, I do this podcast and I love it because every conversation, like sometimes I'll catch myself forgetting that I'm doing a podcast and I'll be listening to whatever the person's talking about. And I'll be like, oh shit, like that's like that's a really cool idea. Like that, like I'll be learning, you know, you learn, you learn, whenever you talk to anybody, you'll learn something. So like I've learned tons from you, like when I talk to anybody, you know, it could be, I've spoken to people that are junioring their career and their perspective on things is just totally like life changing just because they see it through different lens. And it's like, totally like wow, like, you know, and that's something that you can use every all that stuff you just build into your personal persona, your professional. And if you can do that and be aware that you know, you know, that like as long as you're always open to learning, I think that's 100% 100% and that's like I couldn't agree with you more. And I mean, it's really smart of you to do these podcasts for that because I can just imagine I've seen you've interviewed some really intelligent people. So I think you're intelligent yourself. So thanks for that. I don't have an MBA. So I got some things to learn from you brothers though. Yeah, well, it's not, you know, at the end of the day, I don't think it's, I think there's a lot of people that don't have the credentials on paper that are, you know, 10 times what I am right now and I can only aspire to be. So I really do believe that it's what you do and not just, of course, there's the old school of thought where you have to have the title and the credentials to get your foot in the door. But once your foot's in the door, it's really what you actually accomplished, right? So that's, I think that's generally speaking true. But I can, you've asked some really good questions and good insights. So thank you, man. No, no, my pleasure, my pleasure. Okay, so how do people reach out to you, connect with you? LinkedIn email, what do you, what do you prefer? You know, LinkedIn is like the only social media platform that I'm like really on ever myself. So Kyle James on LinkedIn, in then Kyle at zintap.com. If you have anything, you want to reach out potential collaborations or, you know, you see some opportunities that you want to collaborate with zintap on. Let me know. Happy to help. Cool, cool. And is there anything that I didn't bring up that you wanted to speak about? No, I mean, honestly, I'd say, you know, one question I have for you, man, what's some advice that you think that I can take with, that I can take, you know, with me today to go out and make myself a little bit better and help make our organization better. Well, if you were, you know, yeah, you know, with the questions that you've asked me, what's one thing that maybe I could put on my radar, take with me to run with? So, um, I think the, the, the number one thing that you can do, and I don't know all the inner workings of your organization, what you've done so far, is you're, you're an incredibly impressive individual in terms of, in terms of the skills that you bring to the table and the, and the product knowledge and like literally your, your, your like your excitement and your enthusiasm for the work you do, I think that the hardest thing to do would be to hire somebody that has that in them. So, I think that what you should do is you should, and I kind of alluded to this in the questions. We spoke about technologies that emulate what you do. I think that now that you know what works, I think that you build out a playbook that incorporates things that can subsidize your knowledge, and it's truly replicable and scalable, because everything you're doing is right, but really once you get past that, I don't know what your revenue numbers are right now, but I think that if you continue to grow at the rate that you're growing, you're eventually going to, if you don't future proof yourself, you're going to hit walls. So, when I, when I try and build out a playbook for an organization, it literally hits every single point from the very first conversation, the psychology behind the messaging, that like that whole process of the points that you hit with your client and the tonality that you do it with. So, everything is just now codified. So, I don't know if you have this all in writing, and it's something that somebody can literally go through and read through on like, you know, day one week one, whichever, but that's something that I would definitely suggest, and then obviously you want to use. And it can be like a 100-page document, that's cool, but you want it as like a reference book, because you're going to put all this energy and effort into hiring them day one, and you're going to have these reps there, and you're still young, so you're probably not seeing that yet. But the lessons they learn in the first month, they're not going to remember in, you know, after year one, year two, year five. So, you have to find a way to either map out an ongoing, like not onboarding, but just like a touch point of refresher of all the things that you spoke about, but you have to be mindful of your own time too. So, that's why when you can get your entire brain, like literally every single part of the business, right until closed one deal, and then customer success after the fact, who maintains the account, obviously, you want to reduce churn, and you want to mitigate that on the back end as well. But literally every single point, I can actually send you one that I've used before in the past, that is literally like it's when you first, you're like holy, like that's a lot, but I don't believe that it can ever be too much, because you never know, first of all, you never know how much you actually communicate with somebody absorbs. So, to give them a resource that they can, a PDF, they can open up in their computer, and they're not embarrassed to go back to and ask questions, because you've literally given them everything in something they can refer to anytime. If you combine that with the right hires, which means, you know, you already know that people that are very growth-oriented, aware of their own flaws, and they want to improve, you give them the tools they need to improve, and they will take it upon themselves to educate and continuously learn and grow, because I think that, I think that's really it, like you have to give them that ongoing support, and you just can't do it all the time. And you know, so, you know, some, whether or not it's like a learning portal, or it could just be like, like again, like a document, but you got to take all everything in your head and just like get it on paper. And then like I said, like fine technologies to obviously make it a little bit easier so that you could have some great sales reps that may not be so great at doing things without that support. And you know, you're not gonna, like personality is probably the hardest thing you're dealing with when it comes to cold calling. So I would find as much as you're good at it without all these tools, I think that if you want to scale the business into a billion dollar business, you should find tools that compensate for the shortcomings of more junior, less experienced, you know, less, less outgoing people, because you know, you have to make it as as simple as possible for people to sell, and you have like this backbone, so you know, you know what you're doing, but you have to also be aware that not everyone's you. Very few people are as good as you at this. Yeah, that's a great point, man, and I'm going to take that in Rome with it for sure, and that's something we definitely cannot get good enough at, you know. So that's one thing. I'm trying to think of anything else you mentioned while we're chatting, I don't mind at all. For the onboarding, I think you're pretty stellar. I would say, I would say a one month ramp is actually very short. Traditionally, I don't know what kind of KPIs are responsible for after one month, but I would say two months, they should still be getting comfortable in their position, and that could be industry specific. Maybe it's very easy to climateize, but I've never seen a ramp that's less than three months with maybe graduated targets, but first month usually reps will not have a target at like any target at all. It will be responsible for just like learning through osmosis, and this could be mapping out. You don't want, by the way, just to sort of put a context around that, you don't want your training and your onboarding to be unorganized. So even if it is a month, every second of that month is still, yeah, exactly, but I think that especially as you grow, having your SDRs sit with all the other individuals in your organization, or at least certain people from each department within your organization, it will create a little bit of a culture that will help them adapt to the culture a little bit quicker. It will help them become more comfortable with their peers. And I also am a big fan of getting sales reps to understand who they're responsible to and vice versa. So if one of the biggest issues you'll have as you scale is that everyone becomes an email and not a face anymore. So if you get people at this early stage to really understand who they're accountable to and you have you have finance, you have success, you have marketing, and you have them all literally physically know those people that they're going to be supporting. I think that that will make your business much stronger while you still can do that effectively. So that's what I would use your first month for. Really, really building out that culture and that integration piece and just, you know, because it's going to be a point where you unfortunately can't do that effectively or it's much harder to do it effectively. So I think that while you have the opportunity, don't rush them into sales if you can afford it and just focus on getting them to know as many people in the organization as possible. And also I think that also helps a little bit with retention. If they feel more part of the family, that's kind of like a very fluffy piece to it, but obviously retention is huge too. And you have a couple other things you spoke about that help that. So that's great, man. It's a one advice and I appreciate it, man. Thanks, man. I'll be on that to check in. Yeah, well, no, it's great. This has been a great chat. A lot of value. I would, I would love to do like another one in like, I don't know a year or something to see where you guys are going because you're like, you're killing it anytime. And I really appreciate it. It was blessed. Thank you so much, Kyle. It's all I got today. So ladies and gentlemen, Kyle, James, VP of sales at ZenTap, thanks again for listening to another sales versus marketing podcasts where we speak with sales marketing and business leaders. If you haven't already, please share this podcast with all your friends, family, colleagues, peers, subscribe to this podcast and you can obviously subscribe, stream and download this podcast wherever you can listen to podcasts. If you haven't already, please leave us a rating. Obviously any rating is okay as long as it's a five star rating and you can also watch this interview on YouTube. As always, I hope you all have a great week. Have a productive week and we'll speak again soon. Bye now. Welcome to Scott's thoughts where we break down some of the most important takeaways in the interview we just heard. So we just sat down with Kyle James VP of sales at ZenTap. Kyle had a ton of information and we definitely dived into some great topics and I hope there was a lot of lessons learned. I know I took a ton of notes here, but two things that I really wanted to to speak was his focus on authentic, genuine, cold calling. So I do believe that this is a little bit of a lost art. Kyle mapped out a process for cold calling that obviously was able to bridge a gap, introduce himself to somebody who's never heard of him or his company before and not only speak through and get their attention, but then book them for free trials of his software. So listen back to that purpose or that point that he made. Really, the takeaway with his process was to be genuine, be authentic and the intro, provide value and obviously you're going to be doing that by actually tying the conversation that you're having with the customer to items that are actually important to the person you're speaking to. So don't make it a generic pitch tied to something personal important. And then reinforce the value before you pass them off for an account executive in his case where they were, where they're booking demos. And the reason why you reinforce the value and sort of close a second time on the on the on the pitch because you don't want to you don't want to lose the customer's interest. You don't want them to write you off and it's very easy for them to BS. So it's really just being authentic, being genuine, provide value upfront and then he goes as far as to reinforce the value to make sure that they commit to the desired objective, which would be the free the free trial of his software. So that was a really that was a really important point because I think that there's a lot of software and technologies that do this for sales reps. But I think to hear it from somebody at his level who's done it for so long successfully as a as something that we should either teach over to our teams or if we're still cold calling ourselves, we can use this tactic to to be a little bit more effective. I think that's one really great takeaway. The second great takeaway that sort of reinforces his team's ability and his ability to do cold call successfully is his emphasis on role playing that role playing is something that I think people inherently are uncomfortable with. But he's made the effort of sort of breaking me ice with his team when they do role playing in the morning. So just doing a little a little huddle with his team incorporating some fun into the role playing so that the team doesn't feel doesn't feel awkward. They've already you know they've already started engaging and socializing with each other and they're all talking and communicating already. So when Kyle bridges that into a role play in a group setting, it seems less like work and it seems it seems less what's the word I'm looking for. Awkward and obtrusive and it seems more natural. So I think that role playing is effective if you can get the the sales rep who who you want to role play with to a point where they're comfortable being themselves being authentic because then they can they can truly practice all their skillsets and not feel not feel like it's so regimented and strict and formalized which isn't really the case when they would be on the phone anyways they should be comfortable on the phone. So you want to get them into the same frame of mind that they would be in on the phone when they're role playing when they're role playing in the workplace and obviously Kyle's you know Kyle strategy to do that is to just break the ice and make the environment fun. So the two those are two really great points that Kyle spoke about that I haven't really had anyone discuss on this podcast yet so that's why I really wanted to go into those there's a lot of other great points so you know listen again Kyle speaks about he speaks about a great onboarding process a great a great ongoing coaching process he speaks about retaining talents all great stuff but I don't want to you know rehash everything but I hope you all enjoyed Kyle was a great interview I really appreciate the came on this has been another Scott's thoughts as always like share subscribe leave a rating leave a comment and I hope you all have a good week have a productive week and we will speak again soon bye now. It's made to the sales versus marketing podcast brought to you by ROI Overload delivering strategy technology and insights to both sales and marketing leaders and teams globally