Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast. In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights and hearing from other industry leaders to get their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in modern business.
Welcome to the Growth Workshop podcast. This is so exciting. I absolutely can't wait for today's episode and we've got a guest that's come back for a second time, so it must have been great the first time. Welcome Guy Rubin. How are you?
Very good. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I enjoyed the first session so much. I decided to come back.
Fantastic. And then interestingly, we've got our Managing Director, Alan Morton here for the first time.
I've finally been let in. Apparently this is where the magic happens. I hadn't actually received an invite before, so I'm very grateful.
This could be your last, Alan.
yeah I'm hoping I get invited back, like Guy.
Fantastic. And we've got the wonderful Dannii Mathers. He's co-hosting today's workshop podcast. So welcome Dannii.
Thank you.
We're gonna do a bit of an introduction and then we're gonna flood into an amazing conversation.
We're gonna talk a little bit about how Guy who is the Founder of Ebsta and now Revenue Intelligence Director of Fullcast, how he's using an amazing insights report called The 'Revenue Insights as a Service' report and we're gonna talk about how Fullcast and SBR can really dovetail and work hand in glove in terms of taking those insights and turning them to actionable insights to actually change and support organizations moving forward in the sales space.
So we are gonna go through a number of things through the chapters that sit within the report, and then we're gonna have a great discussion between Dannii, Alan, and Guy all about how do we actually help organizations change and implement that for the future. So just before we jump in though, we're just gonna ask you Guy just to give a little bit of background, really pithy summary on who Fullcast are and a little bit about the RIaaS report that we're gonna talk about today.
And then Alan, we're gonna come to you just to do a little bit of shaping around SBR Consulting and the partnership. Over to you Guy.
Very good. Thank you Jonny. My name's Guy Rubin. I was the CEO and founder of Ebsta. Ebsta was sold a Fullcast in August last year. Fullcast are building a revenue platform for revenue leaders. That includes everything from territory planning and commissions through to revenue intelligence and and marketing automation as well. That's a little bit about Fullcast.
One of the, one of the really interesting things being part of a bigger business is that we get access to incredible insights from all the products in the revenue stack. And what we've developed is a light touch report that allows customers to dip toes by connecting all their disparate data sources to our platform. And we deliver back a report that that gives them effectively an audit their whole go to market motion.
And they get the first report goes back a year, and then every quarter I get to sit with the leadership team and walk them through all of their latest insights, highlighting what they're doing well, what needs attention that will help 'em to drive growth.
And just bring that to life 'cause the audience always can create pictures in their own minds. So in the last three months you don't need to name companies, but just an example where you're sharing this report give us a scenario and environment.
Yeah. Our target customers are turning over somewhere between 30 and 300 million ARR. Most of our customers are PE backed and everybody that we talk to at the moment is having a, is having challenges around go to market. Okay. We saw in the data most people will know we also produce benchmark reports every year. We're seeing on average three quarters of sellers misquote last year. Okay. And just 14% of sellers are now responsible for 80% of new logo revenue.
So the, our go to market motions are broken. And this kind of brute force approach to using AI just to flood the top of funnel isn't necessarily leading to better outcomes. We're seeing win rates drop and average deal values go down. And time to close elongated. So AI is a phenomenal set of tools, but we need to be using it to be, to work smarter, not just flooding top of funnel with irrelevant leads.
Brilliant. And I think what you are jumping perfectly into is what is the shape of the go-to-market engine moving forward? And that's really interesting. If we think back to the partnership. We've known you for many years, a friend, a partner and it's great to spend some time with you. I'm gonna go to Alan to, to share a little bit about, SBR Consulting, what are we doing in 2026, but also how does the partnership work with Fullcast and the RIaaS report that guy just spoke about.
I'm answering the last question first. I think the key thing that Guy and the team Fullcast do an amazing job of, he's mentioned the benchmarks, is removing some of that subjectivity. And let's go past opinion and actually look at the data.
And actually that ability to actually compare and contrast how an individual organization's performing versus a benchmark which is as rich as the team at Fullcast produces is incredible and gives us a great basis to then actually think about if the gaps are clear, how do you close those gaps? And then actually, if the interventions are in place, are we seeing the impact and the outcomes that you would expect in terms of the data going through? Guy and I have known each other for a long time.
In fact, actually I think the first podcast we did together was the Ebsta podcast a number of years ago. So it's always a pleasure being here and, it ties in really with what we focus on at SBR, which is, execution excellence. Fundamentally, we're a growth consultancy, transformation, enablement, and effectiveness. And really throughout that. It's the ability to actually think about outcomes.
And how our clients can deliver better outcomes from the commercial teams, but most importantly, how they can get that clarity in a really data-driven way. And definitely looking forward to sharing some of the thoughts that we have as you think about capability and how we can really measure that as well as some of the aspects that might appear in terms of pipeline health coverage, velocity, all those other incredible insights that the Fullcast team are...
it's like you two are like the perfect trailer for this episode. It is you tease us, you tell us, and then all of a sudden we're gonna unpack it all later and then watch the movie. I'm gonna move us all to a pithy summary response on this first question then what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna go through the RIaaS report and the chapters. And then we're gonna connect what's the insights that Fullcast can glean from working with organizations in that report?
And then Alan and Dannii are gonna talk about how do you close those gaps? So it's a really exciting next 30 minutes or so. So the question really, we're in 2026, the world is changing, right? There's so much noise going on about AI at the moment. There's other topics that we also need to be aware of, right? It's not just AI, but what is the state of the go to market engine at the moment in 2026? Dannii Mathers over to you.
So I would say, and we were talking about this just early on, I think right now there are so many shiny new tools being thrown around everywhere, and it's creating almost a little bit of anxiety of, okay, what do we need to use first? We need to be showing that our go-to market teams are utilizing AI. And I don't think there's much thought behind the strategy of how this should be executed in a meaningful way.
And what I'm seeing is we talk about data is it's really shining a torch on how critical now those data pieces are. Because quite often people will just be looking at the, the lagging indicators, okay, these are the data numbers we wanna get to. And almost ignoring all these important data sets that make that up. The how, the whats. And now I think AI's really shining a light on what's actually broken.
Because if you don't know all the how's and the what's and all those important data pieces before you get to the lagging indicators, AI's just not gonna work. So I think now people are going in this kind of full circle as, let's flood. Let's flood with these new AI tools without really thinking well how are we gonna extract meaningful data in the first place? Do we have data that we can use to tell a bigger story?
So it's, I feel like there's a lot of going around in circles of people thinking this is the right thing to do, and then immediately pulling back with this isn't working for us and it's not working because data's broken.
So a build or an opinion from either of you? What? What's your perspective? Who wants to go first?
I'll let the guest... Definitely got an opinion, but fascinated to you Guy as always.
Yeah, go to market is broken. That's the reality of the situation. And the challenge we have is that the data that we're relying on to make decisions isn't consistent enough. And so while it's a boring topic to focus on, we have to start by connecting data at the source. We need to stop relying on humans to be responsible for logging things, for us to be able to report on it.
The good news is that we have access to things like mailboxes and calendars and call recordings and CRM and so on, and when we bring that data so that data from source together, something magical happens. You start to see patterns that are much more consistent than what you can see in a serum on it own. And when you start to unlock these patterns, we can see that there is a growing delta between what our top performers are doing and what the rest of our sales teams are doing in their day job.
And in an AI world that's flooding top of funnel with mostly irrelevant leads, we live in a world where unless you are a an experienced seller that knows what they're looking for, it's very easy to spin wheels working on things that are never gonna generate any revenue. And so really as sales leaders, what we need to do is be a lot more descriptive with our sellers and help them to win more.
And we can do that by starting by fixing that data and then turning that data into insights that they can digest. Easy to understand insights because ultimately, while they've all got an opinion you'd be surprised that lots of salespeople do have opinions.
Not surprised.
Yeah. In reality, once you show them a route to winning more, they'll wanna follow it. So it's our role as leaders to, to open that door and to give them certainty that the data that their insights are being built on is accurate. And then get everyone aligned to how they can win as a unit.
Brilliant. Oh and Alan just Yeah, your opinion.
Yeah. I think that aspect of, cracking the code. Lots of us have talked about that for years. Just actually what is it that the top performers who are consistently, the top performers are doing? Because by definition they have to be doing something different from those that are struggling. And the ability to surface that and actually get past maybe the instinct. Because obviously we often see the challenge of those top performers is they don't know themselves what it is that they're doing.
So actually pulling the right persona in at the right time in the process Guy, that's something that we've talked about for years and I love the insights that you're able to bring in terms of actually, if this persona isn't involved in the process by this point, your win rate will drop by X percent. Those are some of the most valuable insights I see consistently coming out of the work that Fullcast do.
That really gives a pathway to conversion for others who are maybe haven't quite learned those lessons and internalize them in the way that's often your top performers have. And as soon as we can make that visible, you get incredible growth from the people who have the potential to step up, but maybe are just lacking some of the insight that's been hard fought for and hard won over often months and years by some of the most experienced people who are performing.
But if we can bottle that up and bottle that lightning, it's incredible what that can do to the overall effectiveness of a sales organization.
I'm... this feels like a broken record. It's great. Your insights are fantastic, but how many years have you been in sales and business as a whole Guy?
Oh 25 years,
Alan?
25 years. Yeah. Yeah
that's fine. About the Same yeah. 25, Dannii. 20 odd years. Let me just do my math quickly. Yeah. 70 years of amazing experience here. So the challenge over the next period of time when we discuss this. It's that's a common, GTMs broken. It's a common theme that we've heard not just this year, last year, et cetera. So there are ways in which we can actually solve for that. And at the end of this conversation, it'll be amazing to actually put some of these tools together as we go through that.
So if we think about the revenue insights as a service report that's built by Fullcast with all of the amazing technology. Guy just top to bottom, what are the chapters that sit within that document?
Okay, so once we've connected to all your disparate data sources at the end of each quarter, we will deliver back a report. And the report has five chapters. The first chapter is a holistic overview. It's basically a summary of what's gone on in go to market, and it compares the last, usually the last four quarters. And then as we move on we pick up more as we go. Once we've covered the overview, we then dive into win loss analysis.
So looking at all the deals that closed, won and lost over the last 12 months, and what are the signals that led to growth or led to those deals closing won and what are the danger signs on the deals that closed lost. Once we understand what those patterns are, we move on to chapter three, where we look at the live pipeline.
So we're looking at the deals that currently in flight and referring back to those signals we saw earlier around the win-loss analysis to see which of the deals that were in flight could have a higher win rate if we did things slightly differently. Okay. Once we understood that we jump into seller coaching.
So building leaderboard to the sellers, understanding things like which part of the qualification process are they strong at, and which areas do they need more attention for, or how well or badly are they doing at dealing with objections, and were they better this quarter than they were last quarter? And you can get all of those insights by reanalyzing, all those historical call recordings.
Once we've done the seller coaching and highlighting where there's change that needs some attention, then we look at the process itself and really just trying to identify where in the sales cycle or the whole customer journey where are the pinch points, where's this friction? Where are we slowing down? And that all of that delivers a set of recommendations and next steps. We are not the change agents. That's where SBR come in.
And they built an engine and a really, a muscle on to, to take these insights and use them to drive change within the business.
Perfect, and what a great way to set up the next part of the conversation. One of the things that guys referenced to me, we were at a dinner with a mutual partner a couple of months ago, and Guy was talking about how when you are talking to Private Equity, Investment Managers and Operating Partners and you deliver the RIaaS report. And here you are, CEO. Here you are, CRO. Here you are, Investment Director. Ooh, this looks lovely.
Yeah, I'll sit there have a nice coffee over looking at those insights. And then you come back three months later and then what you do is you basically go here's the insights report, and you go. Nothing's moved, so you haven't done anything about it. So let's unpack chapter one. So we're gonna think about what is sales velocity? What is the information and the insights that you glean from the systems that you connect to?
Yeah. And then we're gonna go to Alan and Dannii to think about how do we close that with some great use cases?
in chapter one, it's a holistic view. Okay? So are we getting more or less efficient as a sales function? Okay. And the same for success. Are we getting more or less efficient at the way we do our cross-sell and outsell? And so we're looking at the sales velocity data point, it distills all of the activity that we're doing down to a dollars per day number. And what we can do, and what's great about that is you can compare different go-to-market motions.
You might have an enterprise play and an SMB play. Normally the enterprise players the more efficient one, but not always. So really understanding what's working and what is helping us becoming more efficient. And where are the areas of concern? A lot of the data, we do hundreds of these reports now for customers every year. And what we're seeing is that for some organizations for most organizations where they're doing well.
The sales efficiency is continuing to increase, but all the data points behind that data that, that sales efficiency aren't all even. Okay? So for example, we're seeing a lot more volume top of funnel at the moment. And what that's disguising is win rates, dropping, sales cycles increasing and average deal value is going down. And so we have to dive into the data in a bit more detail to really understand it. Not everything is always rosy.
And so looking at the sales velocity components to make sure that, that actually we are not just using brute force here, but actually we're getting more efficient in the way that we operate as well.
Perfect. That's the great topic to start off with. So sales velocity, so change agents. Dannii, Alan. Alan, for you what would you see SBR doing to support improving some of those individual metrics with clients? Any stories you can share too?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one specific story stands out about an organization that we're working with at the moment. And like many, they're representative of the fact that aspirationally they're looking to move up market and they're also looking to move from selling point products fundamentally to solutions. Yeah, it was ever, thus, and many of us have led organizations where that's the aspiration and that should be reflected in larger deal sizes.
As people actually are really thinking about how they can really craft and deliver an outcome as opposed to worst case, responding to a requirement, which is very much feature function, technology led as opposed to business outcome led. And where that leads us is back to the classic situation that we've seen over the years.
And I remember this being represented brilliantly by Forrester years ago in an article I still reference 'cause I think it's still relevant, the death of a B2B salesperson and we're consultants. We, we love a two by two. They create a great two by two complexity of the biodynamic increasing and then complexity of the proposition set increasing.
What that requires is for people to have a consultative approach, one which is based on insight one, which is based on not just problem solving, but problem setting and helping people to recognize potential challenges and opportunities that sit beyond where many sellers live, which is in that show me demo led too quick into demo, without really understanding what they're leading back to, where they can actually position capabilities as solutions for business problems.
So where does that leave us as change agents? It's often helping commercial teams to be more commercial, to really have empathy with the buyers that they need to engage with, with insight. Being brave to elevate the conversations that they're having away from the technical to the commercial.
Multi-threading clearly comes into that in terms of understanding how to network and access around accounts, and where we see people doing that we'll typically see, and we would expect to to see an increase definitely in deal size, but absolutely in terms of things like conversion rate as well. So those would be a, sort of a classic situation.
And as I say, I have a particular client in mind at the moment that's executing this pivot, and they're in that situation where they realize that some of their team inherently do these things.
The question I'm hearing from the CRO is who within the team that isn't doing these things has the capability because those are the people to the capability or the potential to develop those characteristics And those are then the people that they're very keen to make sure are being focused on, to help them actually lift and execute against the overall ambition that they've got as an organization.
Brilliant. There's a number of metrics in sales velocity, I think you've crunched through a few there. I dunno how many has he left? you, Dannii?
I think you've greedily took them all there,
I dunno if I hit velocity, you know, what a volume value.
What's your perspective as a change agent? Someone that's been in the industry for a long while.
Yeah. It just goes back to even if you look at the core principles of enablement and looking at what's behind all the data. So I think typically it, it's having the right focus in the right areas. So even if we look at, say, top of funnel, if a lot of customers that we speak to there, there's just a lack of measurement across all different levels.
So they might know what numbers they want to get to say on a monthly basis, but it's that, again, going back to the how, how do we do that and what are we measuring or benchmarking to begin with? So then there's a lack of understanding of where that improvement is coming from. So I think just going back to those core principles and when we look at sales velocity is how are we actually measuring that data to understand where we're really gonna see that movement.
And yeah, I think it's just people are becoming lazy to a degree as well because of all the tools that are now accessible to us. I think it's that let's quickly go at it and hope that it sticks without still looking at those real core measurables. So I think just bring everything back to the data and then what sits behind that data.