Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: We have tried to move the software industry into this DIY model. The whole SaaS industry is a DIY model. Ho and I were talking about the opportunity to do a DIFM (Do It For Me). Years ago, I coined another phrase to describe those – SaaS-enabled BPO.

There is technology, but the technology is being used by the services agency that is applying that technology to achieve significant results, but people are not using the software. They’re using the functionality of this vendor. It sounds like you are doing DIFM kind of model.

Jonathan Spier: When I signed on, that’s the model. Now, we’re doing both. At the end of the day, you want to solve the problem for a customer. That’s where you unlock a lot of value. Never mind the definitions put on it.

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit more about use case. By the way, there’s another company that used to be called InsideSales that’s now called Xant. They’re working on the same problem.

Jonathan Spier: We know a bunch of these. We know enough to know that we’re unique. In companies, there’s a process that companies follow whether it’s explicit or not. They identify a target market. They identify an ideal customer profile. They turn the teams loose.

By the way, one of the things that attracted me to Rev is the customer list – Zendesk, Adobe, Splunk, Salesforce. It’s a heck of a customer list. There’s a place where the process falls down where a company says, “Here’s our target market.”

568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The whole industry has become really good at deal-making by just using Zoom. This is very much in favor of international entrepreneurs. You can now do deals globally just by using online tools.

Abinash Saikia: We thought that we would probably need to meet at some point. We were able to build good relationships. I had built a very good bond with the corp dev head. I joined his team at Quantum. We bonded well and that helped us be more credible.

Sramana Mitra: What about price negotiations?

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you move back to B2B tech?

Jonathan Spier: 2020. In fact, it was the very beginning of 2020. Right around that time, COVID hit. I spent most of that year being a stay-at-home dad and a homeschool teacher which, it turns out, I’m not good at.

Sramana Mitra: How old are your kids?

Jonathan Spier: Just one. He’s 13. It was good fun. At the end of that year, I was ready to go back to B2B. That’s how I met my first company.

568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 4)

Abinash Saikia: I had learned a lot of stuff. There are three things you could do. LinkedIn is one. Second is, if you have a connection, that is even better. What also works are cold emails. It has worked in my case. If you have the right message to the right person in the company, you get noticed. The hit rate is not very high. At the same time, if you have the right message, email also works.

Sramana Mitra: LinkedIn is a very good tool to research who are the right people you need to get connected to. The warmer the introduction you can get, the better. Cold email and cold LinkedIn work, but if you can work your network, that is always a desirable way. The point that you are making is that cold contact also works. If you have something relevant, people are willing to talk to you. There is a bit of a playbook.

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you get millions of bookings prior to having a product?

Jonathan Spier: A big portion of that was because of spending time upfront to identify a vision that the right people care about and then connecting with those right people.

Sramana Mitra: Where did that vision come from?

Jonathan Spier: My co-founder was our original visionary. It was the team overall. We had a great team. It was a joint vision between us and customers.

568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about the acquisition itself. At what point did you start speaking with the acquirer? I introduced you to a whole bunch of people as well. We were working on getting you in front of people. Discuss when did you start this process and how you put one foot after the other.

Abinash Saikia: At our peak, we were close to a million dollars in revenue. Towards the end of the year, the pandemic hit and we were not able to close the deals, but we were in that range. When the pandemic hit, it was a very uncertain time. We knew that we had some backup in terms of funding but not a whole lot. We know that we’re going through a phase where sales would drop significantly.

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How far did you take that company?

Jonathan Spier: We grew it for about seven and a half years. We had raised a little over $20 million, and we had an offer to sell into the nine figures from a major enterprise software company. One of the board members didn’t want to sell. They kept it private. The good news is it’s a good company. It’s still considered the leader in the enterprise analytics category.

Sramana Mitra: What is the name of the company?