Don't Miss the One Sentence That Kills a Deal (with Alex Atkins from Sturdy)

0:00Joseph

If you're in GTM and B2B, you probably want to be generating top of the funnel content to be driving pipeline, and that can be pretty tough. And then how do you keep track of the deals and everything as it's coming in? That can also be pretty tough. Welcome to Pipeline. I'm your host, Joseph Lewin, and I'm super excited to be joined by Alex Atkins, the VP of Growth at Sturdy AI, uh

0:26Alex

That's

0:26Joseph

who's

0:26Alex

correct.

0:26Joseph

gonna be walking us through your content strategy and what you're doing and then how you keep track of deals. So I'd love to start high

0:31Alex

Absolutely.

0:31Joseph

level with just how do you think about content and and how do you approach content to help drive top of the funnel interest?

0:38Alex

That's a good question. I mean, I've also done this wrong so many times in the past. I think it just takes time to kind of test these things out, figure out what's going to resonate with your, you know, top personas in your ICP. But I figured there's there's generally one solution, and it's the tough road to take. And I think it's more difficult these days because of all the generative content out there, all the noise on things, you know, LinkedIn. I go on LinkedIn these days and I'm seeing like probably 10 to 15 posts that are clearly generated within 30 seconds, probably not read over by a human, and it's just creating so much noise. And so people are getting more and more used to that noise, and it's getting more and more difficult to find content that I think really resonates, um, or that teaches you, or that educates you and entertains you. And that's something I keep coming back to.

1:18Alex

One of the big things I learned early in my career is I want to create really cool content, make sure it's educational and entertaining. So, you know, a little while back, just to kind of put this in into context and provide an example of what I might might mean by this, is that I created a report a little while ago called Churn Is Not a Customer Success Problem. Um, customer success, CX, being one of the top ICPs and personas here that, you know, at Sturdy.ai where I work. So I figured, okay, so that's a top persona, it's a top group. Let's do some digging into all the first-party data we have. So the title did most of the work, I think, but every CS leader read it to defend themselves, to scratch that itch, right? And every CRO, you know, um read it as well because, you know, it said out loud what they already kind of suspected, which is churn is a revenue problem that gets handled by the wrong team, um traditionally. But it's always stuck on that team, the team that actually doesn't have, you know, the tools to to fix.

2:11Alex

Those problems because it's traditionally a reactive process. So the data was the unlock. And we had analyzed tens of millions of customer conversations and account conversations at this point. Uh and these are again, just to be very clear, um probably I think it was like 47 million conversations inbound and outbound between uh customers and uh our customers and their customers, really kind of understanding what kind of conversations we're talking about, all business conversations through email, chat, Uh, you know, uh, support tickets, uh, Zoom call transcripts, anything and everything you could ever think of, Slack, you know, um, anything that you've ever communicated with your customers on, any platform gets basically ingested into something like what we built. And then it goes through all of that unstructured conversational data, which is a massive amount of data at any company that you can't glean any insights from it 'cause humans weren't built for it. Um. To be able to basically kind of come up with this understanding like, okay, so when it comes to churn, you know, what is causing churn based on this conversational data that we have that nobody else has.

3:11Alex

So I think that's a

3:12Joseph

Yep.

3:12Alex

big piece right there. First-party data. What is a cool story we can tell with first-party data? So we showed where the churn actually originates. And it's product gaps. It's overpromising in the sales cycle, in the marketing and sales cycle. It's broken onboarding. And CS, you know, was cleaning up after all these decisions that were already made months earlier by other departments that they had absolutely no control over. So it became the single highest performing asset we've ever produced. And we're talking um millions and millions of impressions, which I'll get back to impressions and then you know a little bit later than that necessarily what I like to to to basically you know uh understand success based on, but a massive amount of impressions, uh hundreds and hundreds of downloads between the two that we produced. It was a quarterly report, you know, many hundreds of MQL downloads, um outperformed every other distribution, you know, I I think that we've ever

4:00Joseph

Wow.

4:01Alex

made. It was free 'cause the distribution was primarily over LinkedIn, not necessarily through paid. Um, and then, you know, basically after all that was said, the volume of high-quality opportunities it generated with high intent, right? Because this is the right audience, you're scratching the itch. This is what they've been saying for all along. You're finally the first people to provide that first-party data on it, right? So they are so happy to see someone that knows that, that gets that, that provides the information. And then, oh yeah, that information is what they use to actually help these people do their jobs better, more proactively. Um And I think that was just a massive uh a massive opportunity for us to educate, entertain, and get the right people in the door and see us as thought leaders um and as trustworthy folks that they can come to to help them understand their customer intelligence as well.

4:46Alex

So just an example on how to go and it's tough. It's not the easy route.

4:50Joseph

Yeah.

4:51Alex

It's really difficult. But but guess what? If you do that, if you go that hard route and you don't go for what's easy, for what's quick, for you know, you you actually get the the return is so much. So much higher. So it's it's it's definitely the right

5:01Joseph

Yeah.

5:02Alex

move.

5:02Joseph

And I mean, I totally agree with you that people are leaning further and further away from creating that kind of content because

5:07Alex

Yeah.

5:08Joseph

it is

5:08Alex

Sir.

5:09Joseph

incredibly hard. Like I used to be a product marketing manager for an engineering software company and going in, I knew nothing about engineering. And so we had to go in and start learning about, um, instead of just making all the content about our software and what it does and how awesome it is, like there's a place for that. You you do need some content. Where people understand

5:27Alex

Further depth.

5:28Joseph

what

5:28Alex

Yep.

5:28Joseph

you do, but

5:29Alex

Yep.

5:29Joseph

for most of your content to be about what you do, most people don't care. they don't know that you're solving the problem that they have. And so then it took a ton of time being on customer calls or be and and then being on sales calls and starting to dig in. And then beyond that, just learning about engineering in general and the challenges that these engineers were facing that were uh next to what we were doing and you know second sources. And then I would end up spending 3 or 4 months working on usually one article that was super well-researched. Now it wouldn't be the same today, but it was an insane amount of time, but then it would

6:05Alex

Oh yeah.

6:05Joseph

rank well because it was on a topic that people cared about. And then that would drive people into, you know, the next section of the funnel. And,

6:13Alex

Right.

6:14Joseph

and then we'd end up being able to get them to the content that actually told them about what we did. And then

6:18Alex

Right.

6:18Joseph

they'd

6:18Alex

Yeah.

6:18Joseph

move forward because they understood the problem, right?

6:20Alex

Yeah, let's

6:20Joseph

So,

6:20Alex

think about that for a second. You're absolutely right

6:22Joseph

yeah.

6:22Alex

because the high intent, that's why they came in. They wanted to learn from somebody who's a subject matter expert that they could trust in, right? So they actually want to learn more about your company because they learned that you previously, that you're somebody you can trust in. There's someone that has the information. You're somebody that can provide that information, obviously put in the work to do so, right? So that's why they got interested in the company because also, dude, people follow people. Typically, right? Traditionally, they don't really follow companies necessarily. In some cases they do, but if they saw you talking about it and they saw that you had, you know, worked this up, maybe provide some video content on it- I published this thing, I put it out on LinkedIn, people came to me. They didn't really come to Sturdy, but they got interested in Sturdy after they learned from, you know, from me and what I provided and what they sent them.

7:00Alex

So I think you're absolutely right, that's how you get them down, you know, get them to the point where they want to learn about the company. You're not forcing it down, down their throat.

7:08Joseph

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think it's really interesting because you're hitting on something that I've thought about and worked on a lot, which is If you can find- and I'm gonna ask you a question about this in in a second-

7:17Alex

Sure.

7:18Joseph

if you can find pain that people have

7:21Alex

Yep.

7:21Joseph

in their job, that pain is what's going to ultimately motivate people. If they

7:26Alex

Yep.

7:26Joseph

if they're thinking of, hey, it would be nice to do this in the future, it would make my job, you know, more effective or multiply what I'm doing,

7:33Alex

Yeah.

7:34Joseph

you know, that's a hard sale. But if they're going, my job sucks because of XYZ reason, or, you you know, I love my job in every aspect, except for this one thing that I spend way too much of my time on, or, you know, it's the one place where I'm getting corrected from my managers, but I can't do anything about it. If you can uncover that pain and then what, what ends up happening a lot of times is that your, your prospect doesn't actually understand what's causing that pain. So they think it's coming from something

8:02Alex

Totally.

8:02Joseph

totally different. And then your job as somebody who's in GTM, whether you're in marketing or sales, I mean, it really applies in in both. You have to be able to now take that pain and reframe the problem to the thing that you solve. And

8:17Alex

Totally. Right.

8:17Joseph

then as soon as you do that, now they're really teed up to go, you understand my pain better

8:22Alex

Yep.

8:22Joseph

than I do. Now

8:23Alex

Yep.

8:24Joseph

you've helped me to understand where that pain is actually coming from. Now I want to understand how do I solve that? And then you can position your product to say, well, that's what we do.

8:32Alex

This is what we solve for. Exactly. So so so the the pain point that you're talking about is absolutely true. And I think one thing that you pointed out is sometimes we do the best job explaining to them what that pain point is. Maybe it's something that's been uncovered recently, but you're right, they're pointing in the wrong direction or they haven't even really totally realized it. They they they know it in the back of their heads, but they don't know how to like basically explaining to somebody else what it is that's really bugging them, what's creating that really difficult job for them. I think being able to provide, you know, hard, you know, really quantifiable data and and first-party data to show to them that that's actually what's happening. It's not just like my opinion. Hey, I heard this or hey, I saw this. It's like, no, we have 47 million conversations that pointed out that this is your pain and this is how you solve for it.

9:12Alex

And I think that also is just so much stronger, right? And then they're immediately like, yes, this is what I've been thinking. But thank you for saying that out loud because I've been thinking this for so long. And obviously with the data back, you know, source, I think just like, you know, 47 million conversations, it's a lot of conversations. There's a lot of data there. So it's it's it's

9:30Joseph

Yep. Well,

9:30Alex

just

9:30Joseph

that's what I was

9:30Alex

cool.

9:30Joseph

gonna ask you about. So I'll ask you, I mean, basically I was gonna say,

9:34Alex

Yeah.

9:34Joseph

well, how do you go about finding that pain point? And so

9:38Alex

Sure.

9:38Joseph

obviously you guys, you've got a ton of data and you still

9:40Alex

Yeah.

9:40Joseph

have to mine that to find the right pain

9:42Alex

Oh,

9:42Joseph

point.

9:42Alex

dude.

9:43Joseph

So like, how did you go about figuring out

9:46Alex

Absolutely.

9:46Joseph

what pain

9:46Alex

Sure,

9:46Joseph

point to focus

9:47Alex

sure.

9:47Joseph

on?

9:48Alex

Yeah, so I came through analytics like originally was sort of my background, um, and a master's in in marketing analytics specifically from Bentley. And it was like, that was always my first instinct is let the data tell you the story. The amount of people that go in with this sort of preconceived notion or goal or motivation to prove is really, really, really, it's really difficult, right? And it's it's hard as human. You want to go in to prove yourself to be right about something. But I went in with the expectation that CS was in fact responsible for the vast majority of negative sentiment and or churn. And to be clear, the way we do this is actually pretty straightforward. Uh we can do it within Sturdy these days by just querying or prompting Sturdy because Sturdy has trained throughout the last 5 or 6 years out of all these millions of business conversations, specific, I don't wanna say keywords 'cause it's not keyword specific, it's phrase.

10:36Alex

It's based on um the sentences and and the phrases that are being picked up by Sturdy. So it's not just a keyword, sad, mad, bad. It's like, Hey, so I saw that you were a little bit late to the call today, and that was a bit frustrating for me and my team. What you're gonna get out of that is, you know, response lag, you were late, frustration, negative sentiment, um, you know, probably a sense of urgency. So these are the things that Sturdy's picking up on. We're talking about dozens and dozens of signals, right? So we can see, okay, well, product confusion. I was confused by the product today. I didn't know where this call to action was, or I didn't know where the specific, you know, tool was. I couldn't find it. That's set in an email. Maybe one email says that, or maybe a call transcript picks up. Yeah, dude, we were

11:15Joseph

Hmm. Yep.

11:17Alex

We were a little confused about this um the sheet. We weren't sure where to look, where the you know the averages come out, you know, how you go about calculating those averages, whatever it

11:25Joseph

Or

11:25Alex

might

11:25Joseph

yeah,

11:25Alex

be.

11:26Joseph

another one, just to kind of add on to what you're saying is

11:28Alex

Please.

11:28Joseph

you've got your sales team that promised something that actually can't be delivered on. So then they you know you have a call where they go, Wait a minute, we were told that you guys could do XYZ, and then the delivery team is like, well-

11:42Alex

I have to go back and look this up. Do you have- just a quick throw this in your court because that happens all the time- do you have a pulse on how many uh how much churn is related based on our data, how much churn is related to marketing and sales over promises? Out of 100%, what do you think that is? It's higher than you think, but it's not insane. let's say there's 6 different groupings that we created: sales and marketing over promises, It's a it's it's what do you think it was that that led to churn ultimately?

12:11Joseph

I mean, I've been in the shoes both of like driving and on the delivery side. So I would

12:15Alex

Sure.

12:15Joseph

say

12:15Alex

Sure,

12:15Joseph

it's

12:15Alex

sure,

12:15Joseph

pretty high,

12:16Alex

sure.

12:16Joseph

probably like

12:17Alex

It

12:18Joseph

30% or something. 30.

12:19Alex

was wasn't 30%. That's that's that's I mean it's a good guess. It was 17%. So I'm pretty sure I'll have to double check this. So that means 17% of customers churned because of those exact promises that were not real. They were completely fake, brought on by sales. Purely to get that number hit, right? And what does that do? That then reflects poorly on the CS or CX team because they can't retain those customers. That's not on them at all. That conversation happened long before they came into the mix. So that's one big one. You nailed that one. That happens- the amount of times

12:49Joseph

Yep. Wait, I

12:49Alex

I've

12:49Joseph

I want

12:50Alex

seen

12:50Joseph

to say

12:50Alex

that

12:50Joseph

one

12:50Alex

happen

12:50Joseph

more thing on

12:50Alex

is-

12:50Joseph

that, because I

12:51Alex

go for

12:51Joseph

I

12:51Alex

it.

12:51Joseph

would say that

12:51Alex

Please,

12:52Joseph

churn

12:52Alex

please.

12:52Joseph

number just having been in both seats, I would say that churn number is only as low as it is because you have a good CX team who's able to recover after the fact and go, hey, you know,

13:03Alex

Sure.

13:05Joseph

let's talk this through and figure out exactly

13:06Alex

Sure.

13:06Joseph

what you're looking for. And then they get really creative on finding a solution, but then

13:11Alex

Yeah.

13:11Joseph

it makes you way less profitable because now your CX team has to spend tons of time to figure out how to custom do something that If

13:18Alex

Yep. Maybe

13:18Joseph

the sales

13:18Alex

not

13:18Joseph

team

13:18Alex

just

13:19Joseph

would

13:19Alex

CX,

13:19Joseph

have- yeah.

13:20Alex

maybe the engineering team who has to now go double down on something that, you know, was in the pipeline that hadn't been actually created or worked on

13:27Joseph

Yeah.

13:27Alex

yet that actually now needs to

13:27Joseph

That's

13:27Alex

be

13:28Joseph

huge.

13:28Alex

prioritized.

13:28Joseph

Sorry,

13:28Alex

You're absolutely

13:29Joseph

I keep interrupting

13:29Alex

right.

13:29Joseph

you. I'll let you finish your thought.

13:30Alex

No, no, it's good, man. this is good conversation. No, but you're absolutely right. So that happens all the time. And then you have this, you know, situation with like product. We I was mentioning this earlier. Product was the highest contributor to customer churn. And it was about 25% of all churn was contributing to product. I think CS and CX was around 27% as well. But I mean, just to be clear, that means almost 75% of all churn is completely out of the realm of of control of CS and CX, right? 'Cause it's sales overpromising, it's billing issues, it's product confusion. So if we look at product confusion, I mean like or or just product issues together, I mean bugs, you know, elements of the product that just don't work the way they're supposed to, right? And so there's all these things that got picked up that then led to customers churning. I mean, yes, you had some CF CS as well. Response lag, they didn't get back to me in time.

14:18Alex

I've been waiting on my response for XYZ. That leads to then frustration, negative sentiment and ultimately churn, right? So those things exist too. But I think it's just so interesting to see. I mean, this data interested me. That's why I was so excited about it. I did not have an expectation that nearly 73, 3 out of 4 churn, you know, uh companies that churn, churn completely, you know, for for some reason completely aside from CX and CS. it's because of overpromising from the sales team and the marketing teams, from all these other, it's from billing. It's from all these things that are completely out of CS control. It created an amazing story. And I think that story, ultimately, with that data, is what made it such a big, you know, um, sort of viral piece. And created the interest, created the excitement, created this source of truth and trust, and then said, okay, but how did they know this? How did they figure this out?

15:07Alex

Fun fact, it's the product that we actually built that you can come check out yourself if you want to learn a little bit more about how it works. So it actually worked. It was teed up very well. And am not in any way saying I did that all like on purpose. I got lucky, you know, things

15:20Joseph

Yeah,

15:20Alex

worked

15:20Joseph

that's

15:20Alex

out well and

15:21Joseph

part

15:21Alex

I got

15:21Joseph

of

15:21Alex

very

15:21Joseph

it, right,

15:22Alex

lucky.

15:22Joseph

man? It's like

15:22Alex

That is part of it. have to be totally truthful. The data actually worked out to be a really good story because if it wasn't, I wouldn't run with it, right? And then the way it was teed up to actually leverage the product to figure out the data points that we're trying to show and prove that worked out the way they worked out, that's also so lucky to be able to kind of tee folks up for that. So I tried a lot of content before I found one that worked. And I think that's also was sort of a learning here is like I experimented with multiple pieces of content and storylines before I found something that really clicked and scratched a niche with a specific audience.

15:53Joseph

Yeah, and this is going back a ways, but I remember when I was first getting into marketing, I did a bunch of courses from Digital Marketer and

16:00Alex

I know

16:00Joseph

uh

16:00Alex

Digital

16:01Joseph

you know,

16:01Alex

Marketer, sure. Yeah,

16:02Joseph

yeah,

16:02Alex

yeah,

16:02Joseph

Ryan Deiss,

16:02Alex

very familiar.

16:03Joseph

his

16:03Alex

Yeah,

16:03Joseph

team.

16:04Alex

of course.

16:04Joseph

So they were saying of everything that they've ever run, 1 out of 10 of their campaigns would actually truly be

16:11Alex

Sure.

16:11Joseph

like out of the park. And then most of them would be like, break even or maybe just slightly positive. And then

16:17Alex

Sure.

16:17Joseph

a good portion, I don't remember the percentage, but a good portion were complete failures. And

16:21Alex

What?

16:22Joseph

they're- they had tons of data going into all of it. They had,

16:25Alex

Sure.

16:26Joseph

I mean, they were a huge marketing team. They know all about, you know, they were teaching people how to do this stuff. And for them, 1 out of 10 would actually be a home run, which means, you know, that's a 10% ultra success rate. That sounds horrible. Um, but at the

16:40Alex

Yep.

16:40Joseph

same

16:40Alex

yeah, for a team that's teaching digital marketing, like, that's like- those are some of the best we have. Um, like, I mean, that's that's as good as it gets, right? So I would just say this to folks, and that happens all the time: if you are working on a really kick-ass piece of content and you have some cool educational, entertaining content that's potentially first party, you think it's gonna really hit home and it doesn't land, that's fine. Maybe just iterate, evolve, figure out a different angle with the same data points. 'Cause that's what I had to do to find something finally that worked incredibly well, but it didn't work the first time. It definitely didn't work. I think my first iteration, like my first piece that eventually evolved into this was called like AI in Business or something completely lame like that. Like, how do you use AI in business? Dude, it was awful. And I literally I had to force it down, just like try to push it. People were just not resonating.

17:31Alex

So we had to take it back to the drawing board. That's totally okay. That's fine. Didn't mean we had to change everything. We just had to figure out how to leverage the data from a different angle, look at it from a different angle, and then how to ensure that we put it in the report, include it in the report in a way that would resonate with folks. Um, the ICP, the right people, not just people, right? I think that's another Pretty critical piece there too. So.

17:52Joseph

I love it. Um, okay, so let's switch gears, um, because you had talked about That's how you've been generating pipeline is,

17:59Alex

Sure.

17:59Joseph

you know, that first-party content. And then, uh, I mean, you guys have a leg up on having all of that data. Um,

18:05Alex

Sure.

18:06Joseph

though there

18:06Alex

Yeah.

18:06Joseph

are other ways to to do that. I mean, I used to just interview

18:09Alex

Yeah.

18:09Joseph

customers and then I would manually go back through back in the day, or now you have

18:13Alex

Dude,

18:13Joseph

all kinds

18:13Alex

totally.

18:13Joseph

of AI tools that make it

18:14Alex

Totally.

18:14Joseph

so much easier. And you're looking for those like across your your ideal customers. What are the words that they use to describe what you're doing and worked well? What are they using to describe what didn't work well? And then it sounds

18:24Alex

Yeah.

18:24Joseph

like your tool basically

18:26Alex

Yeah.

18:26Joseph

can automate a lot of that process and make that a lot easier.

18:28Alex

Yeah.

18:29Joseph

Um, but then now

18:29Alex

Yeah.

18:29Joseph

you've got people in your pipeline. Um, getting

18:32Alex

Mhm.

18:32Joseph

people into the pipeline is one thing, but then what do you do to help serve clients through the pipeline to actually get them across the finish

18:40Alex

It's so

18:40Joseph

line?

18:40Alex

difficult. It's so difficult. I think the one thing that everybody like who's listening to this will resonate is that like no pipeline, no two pipelines are the same. It's so funny to be like, well, this is what I do in my pipeline. And it's like, you know, 90 days average, this is what we're looking for ACV. Like this is how we we take these folks from one

18:55Joseph

Mhm.

18:55Alex

step to the next step in the opportunity. And you know, we went from 8 to 9, 9 to 10, and then to close one. It's just it's so hard to map those things out. So I've always kind of come back to like, instead of these sort of static stages and these these calls we have week over week with our AEs to kind of see where things are, get that pulse. You know, how how are we doing with XYZ? Oh, they're great. Like definitely gonna close, probably like 90% close. You know, probably in the next quarter. I'll get them before next month, right? Like these are the conversations we have all the time. But I I I tend to not listen to uh opinions. And that's just, I think, something that, I mean, everybody has an opinion. I like to go back to the data, right? The objective data. And so I I I'm using AI for this as well. Um but what I do is like truthfully, I use AI to listen to every account conversation at once, inbound and outbound.

19:43Alex

So we're talking about like pre-sale and post-sale. So sales call transcripts, email threads, like I was mentioning before, you know, while the deal is live, support tickets like, Renewal call, uh, renewals, emails, CM notes, CSM notes, and AE notes, all these things. So this is for pre-sale and post-sale. No human can read all of that, as I mentioned before. So it's like, I need to know what deals are slipping for real before the red updates in the stage.

20:08Joseph

Yeah.

20:08Alex

And suddenly it's like, oh, we went from green to red really quickly. Why? The contextual element is so important. So I know like which accounts like just asked, you know, a question that sounds, you know,

20:18Joseph

Right.

20:19Alex

like an expansion potential or like a contraction or like they're slipping. I didn't know which customer said fine in a tone that means we're evaluating your competitors, right? I would not be able to pick up on that as a human being. So that's not a dashboard refresh, man. Like that's what we used to have. It's a signal that hits the right person at the right time in the conversation that happened in real time. And that's so, so, so important. So I talked about how that could apply to marketing and it applies to sales in the same way, right? So it's it's about understanding what conversations are happening right now with all the different folks in the pipeline. And if certain things are being raised or picked up by Sturdy, having those things forwarded to the right person at the right time or right automation to ensure the slipping doesn't occur, that we stay proactive about it. If there's a potential for expansion within that deal or more seats or more usage, great.

21:07Alex

If they're not saying that explicitly, now we know that they're thinking it, let's go in and get that deal expanded. So to be clear, humans weren't built to do this alone. This is something that AI does incredibly well. Because by ingesting

21:19Joseph

Yeah.

21:19Alex

every single account conversation and prospective customer conversation, we can understand exactly what they're thinking and maybe what they're inferring that we would've never otherwise seen. And we're not about opinions anymore. I don't have to sit in a meeting every week and go through who thinks what's going to close and when. We literally know that information already, and it's a real-time. You know, dash if we want it to be a dash, and we are getting real-time updates in Slack, in Teams, in email, wherever you want it, right? You know, let's just say for example, like, you know, um, a specific massive account, you know, at HubSpot is coming through the pipe. They've been sitting for a little while. They mentioned some language within one email that goes to the AE only that they've been thinking about other tools. Now they don't even have to mention other tools. You don't have to mention the competitors.

22:07Alex

But just the language suggests that they potentially are looking for other, you know, competitors to you and what you're providing. That AE may read that email. That AE may talk about that email and might bring that email to their boss or they might bring it sort of when it comes to projections on whether or not that that HubSpot account's going to close. They may not, right? But to to miss that critical piece of information, that one sentence in thousands and thousands of sentences that have gone back and forth forward an email and calls would be a deal killer. So don't miss that sentence. Never miss a critical risk ever when it comes to those deals in your pipeline. And that is how I'm ensuring that those things get across the finish line proactively.

22:49Joseph

So it sounds like your guys' tool uses sentiment analysis in from the calls, and then then you're also ingesting all the emails and communications back and forth as well. So then it's kind of pulling all of that together, tying it to a specific customer or a specific opportunity and then being able to- you could do whatever you want to do with that data

23:11Alex

Yeah, yeah,

23:11Joseph

at that

23:12Alex

absolutely.

23:12Joseph

point, put it into a dashboard

23:13Alex

Yeah.

23:13Joseph

or notify somebody specific or update

23:16Alex

Yeah,

23:16Joseph

the pipeline or whatever.

23:18Alex

you you mentioned something I just want to double-click on real quick is the the sentiment piece. I think sentiment analysis is baseline at this point, right? Like we should be able to pick up a conversation. Whether or not somebody's upset or happy or stoked and ready to provide a case study because they're the best customer and they love you so much. So that's that's a big piece. And a lot of people say, well, dude, it's cool. I got Gong. Gong provides some sentiment analysis. Um and and Gong is a great tool. I think Gong is a really cool revenue intelligence tool for this purpose. But one thing about like a lot of these tools, these point solutions, right, is they're coming in, they're focusing on one thing,

23:47Joseph

Yeah.

23:47Alex

calls. Nobody does emails. I think that's a huge thing. I think The biggest storage of unstructured conversational data is through email, and people don't even think about that. So email is huge, but it's not about these one or two or three. I mean, then you got Jira, you got all these like things, you know, you can use for like tickets. Nobody is able to take all of those sort of disparate siloed conversational data points and bring them into one place, match it with a record that you're able to then say Alex from this email is the same Alex from that call, same Alex from the Salesforce contact, right? Pull it into one place and then run everything on it. And that is, I think, incredibly powerful stuff. And to do it in a governed way too, so that everything is safe, right? I think that's the big question about AI these

24:31Joseph

Hmm. Right.

24:31Alex

days. But that but to be able to do that and to be able to then have your finger on the pulse, it's like literally like you are, you have this new vision that nobody else really has

24:42Joseph

Yeah, it's like

24:42Alex

and you

24:43Joseph

it's

24:43Alex

know

24:43Joseph

magic.

24:43Alex

it's grounded. It's magic and it's grounded in data all the time. And that's really what I come back to every time. I hate opinions. That's just something that I feel very strongly about because everybody has one. But if you have a data-backed source that says this is what's happening right now, we can get ahead of it. We can get ahead of churn by 2 months. We see this happening because a lot of times by churn, you know, it's already happened. They're already gone. They've made the decision. We see this deal slipping before it's even started slipping. Let's get in there. Let's make sure we create some sort of scenario in which we can get this thing across the finish line for whatever we have to do to get that across the finish line. That kind of intelligence, that level of intelligence is just starting to kind of arise, I think. Um, in certain industries and verticals, but it's it's like a cheat code. It's like, wow, we suddenly know exactly what's happening with every single account and we know how to get them across the finish line.

25:30Alex

So, you know, opinions are out the door, I think, on this one.

25:34Joseph

Yeah, I guess, you know, uh, opinions are like Buttholes, everybody has one and they

25:40Alex

Everybody

25:40Joseph

usually

25:40Alex

has

25:40Joseph

stink.

25:40Alex

one. I almost said it. I'm glad you did because it's your show. No, but it's

25:45Joseph

Yeah,

25:46Alex

true. Everybody everybody has one and a lot of times. And I'm not trying to say like people are trying to look out for their own skin, but like if somebody has a HubSpot closing 80%, you know, chance of closing, but then that sentence comes in through an email and they didn't catch it and suddenly now HubSpot's not closing anymore. What happened? I don't

26:04Joseph

or

26:04Alex

know.

26:04Joseph

there's pressure

26:04Alex

Or like-

26:04Joseph

from their leadership to be adding deals in that probably shouldn't really be there and they feel the pressure to do that because

26:10Alex

100%

26:10Joseph

You know, if they

26:11Alex

yes.

26:11Joseph

don't, they're gonna

26:11Alex

100%

26:11Joseph

get fired. So then they put stuff in that even

26:13Alex

yes.

26:13Joseph

they know isn't actually great, but they gotta have something. So this way,

26:17Alex

Yeah, yeah.

26:18Joseph

everybody can

26:18Alex

Have that

26:19Joseph

actually

26:19Alex

source of

26:19Joseph

be

26:19Alex

record,

26:19Joseph

honest about

26:20Alex

man.

26:20Joseph

it.

26:20Alex

100%. Have that honesty. Have that exact 360 view on exactly what's happening so anybody can be held accountable. That's really the truth. That's what we're looking to do, right? So I think honestly that's how we figure out our pipeline. Not just getting folks in the pipeline with cool, unique content that's educational and entertaining. Once you get them in there, which is a great high intent way to get them in the pipeline. Great. We got them there. Now let's measure exactly what's going on in every single conversation, the highest volume of data ever to be produced. And then get these insights proactively to figure out the best means of getting them across the finish line. I mean, it sounds easy because it's becoming easier every day, but I mean, that's exactly how you go do it, right? We're moving into this new era, um, and we should all be closing far more than we've closed in the past.

27:03Alex

We should be getting far more people into the pipeline than we've been getting in the past, but it's just harder work,

27:07Joseph

And probably

27:07Alex

right?

27:08Joseph

wasting less time with people who were never going to close in the first place, which is,

27:11Alex

Exactly.

27:12Joseph

I mean, that's

27:13Alex

Exactly. Think about

27:13Joseph

where

27:13Alex

that.

27:13Joseph

it's at.

27:14Alex

Think about how much time you're wasting on those, absolutely, that we're never gonna close ever. I think that's a really good point. I didn't think about that. Yeah, yeah, you're not wasting any time anymore. You're focusing on the ones that make the most sense, that you have the highest propensity or or or opportunity to close, and then you get that money across the finish line. I mean, it's it's the kind of intelligence I think most leaders want, um, but people

27:34Joseph

Love it.

27:34Alex

are still just kind of learning about. So hopefully it catches on soon.

27:39Joseph

All right. Well, I got the most important question for you, Alex.

27:42Alex

Sure, what's up?

27:44Joseph

So you've got a Beatles poster behind you. It looks like a synth.

27:48Alex

Yeah. I got

27:49Joseph

Who

27:49Alex

a couple of Beatles posters.

27:51Joseph

is, who's, who's, who's your favorite band or or music artist?

27:55Alex

Oh, dude, I don't know if you can tell. Also, fun fact. So this whole room is decked out in in vintage Beatles posters. These are all original

28:02Joseph

Okay,

28:02Alex

posters

28:02Joseph

I could only see

28:03Alex

from

28:03Joseph

the

28:03Alex

the

28:03Joseph

one.

28:03Alex

'60s. Yeah. So we got one. These are all from the '60s. This is the Beatles' last concert. So these are all from the '60s, original posters. Uh, my favorite band of all time. And my wife ensures that the only place they're hanging in the entire house is this one room. So they're all-

28:16Joseph

So they're

28:17Alex

I

28:17Joseph

all there.

28:18Alex

got one behind this monitor, I got one over here, I got two over here, I got another one actually over there in the corner. Yeah, another. And the synth is mine. I, I grew up early, early, like, you know, teenager, learning how to play the Beatles. I, I remember the first vinyl I ever put on was my parents' house, um, and it was a Beatles album. And from there on, I was hooked. And so I I I learned how to play all those songs and and now that's my creative outlet. So that's that's my little uh MIDI keyboard that I pull over to this station to hook up to play music here on the keyboard. Um but yeah, no, huge huge fan of music and that's that's

28:50Joseph

Love it, man.

28:51Alex

probably my biggest nerd nerd moment is is my Beatles nerding and and and how how unfortunately how much I know about the Beatles. So

28:59Joseph

I love

28:59Alex

Beatles

28:59Joseph

it.

28:59Alex

trivia

28:59Joseph

Yeah.

28:59Alex

next time we talk.

29:01Joseph

A bunch of my uh you know most of my friends growing up, their parents were listening to like '80s bands, AC/DC and you know

29:08Alex

Hey, I

29:08Joseph

'70s,

29:08Alex

love that too, man.

29:09Joseph

late '70s, '80s. Uh, but my dad definitely listened to Beatles and like jazz and stuff like

29:14Alex

For

29:14Joseph

that.

29:14Alex

sure.

29:14Joseph

So I grew up

29:15Alex

Let's

29:15Joseph

way more

29:15Alex

go.

29:15Joseph

listening to the Beatles and stuff growing

29:17Alex

Let's

29:18Joseph

up.

29:18Alex

go. I love that. I love that. No, it's it's true.

29:21Joseph

Uh, but.

29:21Alex

you can always find a good person, a good conversation over a Beatles, you know, any Beatles track or any Beatles album. That's usually how I've made most of my friends. So whether or

29:28Joseph

Awesome.

29:28Alex

not that's a good way to make friends, it seems to work. So yeah, man, no, I'm glad you picked up on it. That's great. Nobody's

29:35Joseph

Love

29:35Alex

ever

29:35Joseph

it.

29:35Alex

asked about the posters.

29:37Joseph

So Alex, how can people

29:38Alex

Sure.

29:38Joseph

find out more about you and uh

29:40Alex

Yeah,

29:40Joseph

and about Sturdy?

29:41Alex

no, it's just sturdy.ai. It's pretty, pretty straightforward URL, thankfully. Um, but yeah, I'm just Alex dash uh and dash Atkins um on LinkedIn. So yeah, um. We're we're working really hard to continue putting out fun, unique content that's hard to build but hopefully stands out. I mean, that's the one thing I would always recommend. It's so easy to generate and post content these days. Do everything you can to not do that. You know,

30:07Joseph

Yeah.

30:08Alex

video content like this is one of my favorites, by the way. Cool, snackable, um, educational stories. I really love how that is applied to what you're doing. So I think that kind of content's a really cool way to do it. But yeah, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn, find me, uh, you know, on uh sturdy.ai. So that's probably the best way

30:26Joseph

Love

30:26Alex

to

30:26Joseph

it.

30:26Alex

do it. Yeah.

30:27Joseph

Awesome.

30:27Alex

Thanks.

30:27Joseph

Well, with that, thanks everybody for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and we'll see you on the next episode.