Product Development Collaboration | Tim Condon | MSP #280

See? I'm Mario Martinez Jr., CEO and founder of Vengreso. And we are the creators of FlyMSG.io, the free personal writing assistant and text expander application. On each episode of this podcast. You will hear from sales leaders, practitioners, and influencers to help you grow your sales numbers at scale. So get your pen and paper or iPad and keyboard and start taking notes. As you're now listening to the moderate selling podcast.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast. And today I bring you a brand new topic that I've never spoken about on the show here in 280 plus episodes. We're going to be talking about how sales can help drive business outcomes by working with products, products, marketing, and product development. And I can't be more excited to have my friend Mister Tim Condon. He is the CRO at clutch.

Hey Tim, welcome to the show, my man. Hey, thanks. Wow. I bet, 280 episodes. That's, it's pretty cool that this is the first time. That probably doesn't happen very often, No, no, that doesn't happen very often. Where we are talking about something for the first time. You're right. And it's actually a really great topic. And we were talking about in the gate in the pregame show. I was like, this is actually something that we've never spoken about, about really?

How can sales teams work with product development to drive better business outcomes, better a product, so that it can actually increase revenue? And I'm really excited about that, man. Yeah. No. Me too. Me too is a great topic. So do me a favor so everybody gets to know you. Obviously I said you're the CRO at clutch. Talk a little bit about, yourself, your background and who clutch is. Yep, yep. Cool. So, All right.

So, yeah, I joined clutch, about two years ago, as CRO, previous previous to that, I had, I've been in the same role at a company called Host App. Home startup. It got acquired by a big company called CoStar. I spent, like, maybe 12 years at home. Snap. I started as the first business side person, and just and grew into the CRO role. I mean, it was a it was a fun.

I mean, well, we'll spend a different podcast talking about that one, but but it was a it was a fun growth path from essentially we like we had nobody I was the CRM administrator to, you know, running a team, both sales and marketing and getting acquired. Prior to that, I spent 12 years at the Washington Post, company doing a bunch of different sales and marketing roles.

Really, really great, you know, sort of, proving ground where I could sort of learn a lot of different parts of the business and, and frankly, probably why the topic today is, is one of those is one of my, one of these I love to talk about, clutch is, it's a, B2B, services marketplace. So if you're looking for marketing agency and IT service provider, you know, outsource company, we're a rating and review, marketplace that, with, over 350,000 companies on it.

And so we're across, 157 countries, you know, lots and lots of content for people looking for, for those types of, service companies. Man. That's phenomenal. Great. So, you know, I actually was surprised at the plethora of resources that were available from Klutch. And it's an interesting story and some of the we've talked about some of these things that you guys have been able to do there and how you are now really building a corporate infrastructure to be able to drive sales.

So, very excited about this. And you also obviously have some, opportunity here to talk about what you've done with product as well. And we're going to spend some time on that. But before we get into that, I got a very special question for you and bro. I'm looking for something juicy. So give me something here. I ask all my guests this question. They don't know that I'm gonna ask this question. And that is, tell us something nobody knows about you.

Even if they're looking at any or all of your social profiles. Oh, that's a tough one.

I don't know if it's going to be as juicy as you want, but, I am a hard core Stephen King that, like, I, you know, I, I not only have read The Stand, which is what it's like 12, 1300 pages, I actually then later, you know, later on life literally listen to the 44 hour audio book of this, and, I just I can't get it up. I, I, I've read everything. It is multiple times. It it I just, I love the horror. I love the detail. It's, it's just a, it's a weird little passion of mine.

So if Mr. Stephen King is listening in to, this show, you're. I don't even know if the guy's still alive. Is he alive? Do we know yet? You're still alive yet? He's writing books to write in books? Yeah, he's still writing books. Well, there you go. So if you're listening in, send my send my boy Tim a, signed autograph book. I mean, the guy is a dedicated, loyal fan of yours. Would you? If he's listening? I am the, I am the constant reader, as he likes to say. Love it, I love it.

Well, let's get into some meat and potatoes here. Right. We talked about one of the biggest challenges that sales organizations have is that what they're selling is not what the buyers are asking for. Or the buyers want X, and they've got Y, and it's really frustrating for sales organizations to be trying to sell X. When the buyers keep asking for Y and you go back into the organization, they're like, yeah, well, we're not gonna be able to design that, develop that. That's not of interest.

We don't think that that's important. You know, you're like, well, come on, it's going to drive revenue. I can bring this deal to the table if so, you've spent a lot of time in your career working with different product management teams within an organization, that can help, create sales success. So talk a little bit about the different kinds of product leaders that you've worked with and that you had brought an interesting perspective to this that I never really thought about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, first of all, you know, I've worked I've worked in, both, marketplace type businesses and then more, you know, more software type, products as well. Right. And they're they're two very different. Right. So marketplace businesses, because you've got sort of two people, you've got the buyer and the seller and you're in the middle, right? You do tend to get some of those, product leaders that are sort of like, you know, revenue's the enemy, right?

We are just out for the whatever side of the marketplace, the buyer side. Right. And you've got to figure out how to sell to the, the sell side. And I, I'm trying to create a pure marketplace. Right. And so you get some of those and, you know, the Washington Post, you know, a media organization that always takes that to the extreme right, because it's sort of like our quarter is our content, and you can't be influenced one way or the other. And so you get that sort of like, don't even talk to me

type of product leader. Right. And then I've had the fortune of working with a product leader that is like revenue is everything, right? And, you know, like literally, you know, having a product leader that, and if he's listening to us, he'll laugh. There were times where I was like, dude, we need to like, you know, that's the you're pushing too hard, right? Like, like we actually need to think about the other side. The buyer on this one. Right?

Like, and then and then, and then I'm really fortunate that the product leader now is, is, is a great balance between the two. Right. She and I have a good relationship where we both are thinking about both the buy side and the sell side, because ultimately you need you need both to, to to work, to have an effective marketplace. But. Yeah. No, those are sort of the three types that I've, I've encountered. And maybe there's me, there's others, but that sort of seems to run the, run the spectrum.

All right. So you've got the revenue is the enemy, right?

That's what you said. Revenue is all that matters. And then I think I'm kind of interpreting the balance between the two. Right. And let's face it, I have sat in many, many product discussions with product leaders. And you're talking about, hey, this doesn't work. This is not what they're looking for. This is not what, we want this. We hear this, we hear that, and you see some of the product leaders and they're like, well, that's not what our data shows. That's not what we're going to build.

That's too hard. And you're just like, I feel like sometimes you're just banging your head against the wall and you're like, dude, do you not hear what the customers are saying? And one of the things I find so interesting is the ones that are like, you know, hey, you know, like, revenue is the enemy. This is not going to make a difference if you ask them. When was the last time you sat on a sales call? When was the last time you went out and took a meeting? How often are you doing that?

What I find is, as those product leaders who are performing well are sitting with the customer and understanding the customer's pain, and they're hearing the customer's questions and they're designing and developing product, that corresponds to that. So you are obviously a bad success stories working with product, your product counterparts and obviously probably have shared some of the frustrations that I'm just describing as well.

So can you, talk about some of your success stories and working with your, the product counterparts and, and, and how you've alleviated some of these frustrations?

Yeah, yeah. So, so I have a great, a great story. So, I'll try to keep it, somewhat concise, but, you know, back when we, back when I joined home. Snap. The core. So the product was a it was a Zillow type product, but the but the core of the product was, there is a side of the tool that was for real estate agents, and we had hundreds of thousands of real estate agents on our platform. And so the idea was get get them on the platform and then sell them something. Right.

And so that something and this was back in 2015, that something was take their new listings and turn it into a Facebook ad and let them, you know, click a click and put a credit card in an and we bought it for them. Right. That really product that that that makes sense to do today. Right. Because you know, the the platforms are so much further along. But back then by Facebook ad was really, really complicated. And so we, we idea was we're going to

make it super simple. Well, the first version of that, product was this really slick landing page. It was all really personalized to the agent and the house. Right. So they actually see what the ad would look like. You know, with that particular house and their face on the ad and, you know, they did a click, a click and credit card and boot, it was done. But done meant all the data just dropped into our CRM. Right?

And, and my team had to actually literally go into Facebook Ads marketplace and like, build the ad ourselves. And, and, you know, we knew like that was you. We're start a brand like 20 people like that's you sort of had to just start somewhere, right? And, and so, so we did that and, I had one person on my team, and her job was literally just create Facebook ads all day, and, at about once a month, she would come to me and she'd be like, I'm in over my head.

And so we would she and I would sit down and we'd sit down with the product team and we'd say, okay, what are the steps in the process that if we automated, would allow you to sort of like expand your, your scope. Right. So, like, what are the what are the things that, you know, like if we fix it once, it actually like opens up how many ads you can do. Right. So like I think for example, like one of the big ones was upload all the pictures to Facebook. Right?

If we could automate that process, suddenly that that took out a huge swath of work and she could do like ten times as many ads, right? We did that side by side with the product team or literally 12 months and automate the whole process. And it was this amazing, you know, step by step, we would sit down once a month, we'd go through her process and we'd look at it together and we'd say, okay, oh, we could see something here, we can fix that, right?

And sometimes it was temporary fix, but but most of this was in service of like trying to get end to end automation. And it actually in retrospect you were like, wow, that sounds horrible. But it we actually made a much better product because we had to do it manually at first. Right? And because we got to make some mistakes or see like, oh wow, when you do it, this way, it doesn't work as well for the end client.

So, you know, here's how you have to build it, and end up being an amazingly awesome process. I mean, you know, if Cara's listening to this, she wouldn't probably say it was amazing. Awesome. But but it was one of those processes where you're literally side by side with the product team, figuring out how to build it, in a way that will not only automate the process, but automate in the way that's best for the client.

So absolutely phenomenal experience working with the product team that was like, really motivated to, to understand just how to make it, how to make it work for, for us and for the client. So I'm going to break down what I think I heard you say. And one of the most important elements there was, number one, you sat down and it was a 12 month long process. Number two, it was a step by step. You guys would look at what are you doing? What's the workflow.

And then can we apply technology to this particular workflow to increase the productivity, the benefits, the outcome, etc.. But then what you did was, is, is you start at tying productivity to outcome. If we did this, could this happened? And looking at it from those three things that I just mentioned, is really honestly, when we think about a new product,

case in point, we have FlyMSG right now, and some of our customers have been asking for us to implement variable technology. It's the thought, I'll describe this to you. Variable technology is kind of like first thing token in an email marketing system, right? Hey first name. And so they want to be able to create their Fly Messages and put in a token that says hey, first name. And then somewhere in the paragraph it says first name again.

So wherever the deployed at, even though we're not integrated into a CRM, wherever they deploy that little pop up that comes up that says, what's the person's first name? I write Tim and then as soon as Fly Master sees Tim, it puts Tim in and all the different places that the first name is in. Great idea. Right. It's that that that's that's great. But then we also have at the same time customer saying, I really need help with looking at how to connect with a target buyer.

And I don't know how to look at this profile. You've taught me how to do it in our in the training program, but I need help and is taking too long. So I look at these two areas right here and I say, all right, variables is going to take me a month to build, what I call FlyConnect.

It's going to take me two weeks to build. FlyConnect is an area that really is automating a seller's process and reducing the amount of time they have to read, as opposed to a tab, a template. You may have to, first name at the beginning and first name at the end, or first name of the beginning, first name in the middle where I can just double click.

Tim. DoubleClick. Tim. It takes me three four seconds, but a profile reading a profile that takes me like ten minutes, what am I going to pull out there? What do I actually write to personalize this connection request? So which one has the biggest bang for my buck? So that's the way we're looking at this. And by the way what we chose was FlyConnect. Let's build that first.

So and in case anybody was wondering but you goes back to the what you just talked about was really looking at taking the time to sit down. We'll look at the process that the buyer in this case or the user was going through, figure out how you can apply technology. And then looking at the business outcome of that. Did I, did I kind of summarize that correctly? That's exactly right.

I mean, it was it was probably the best, product you know, revenue experience I've ever had because it was not just it was not just what, like what you said the first part, just how do we apply technology to a process? It was like, how do we also learn from the manual process to make sure that the when we when we apply technology, it creates the better outcome, based on what we've learned. Right. And so that's, that's sort of like that's pretty unique.

I've, I've not had many experiences like that where it's sort of like it did it, it sort of touched on all three. And, and that was mostly because just ended up being such an extended process, which, you know, that is probably a little bit atypical. Well, I think this is an important element. It was we think about how does sales influence product development. Many times, sellers are say, oh, my customer wants this. Yeah. You're you're so Tim,

my customers say that they need this. But the question that a sales leader should be asking, instead of saying, hey, let's go talk to product and build that, or a sales manager, the question I think we should be asking is, is, what's the business outcome that will happen if we build this? Do you have a live deal on the table? Fine. Go sell that deal. Tell them we'll build it for that extra $150,000 a year, right?

No, exactly. Yeah. And and, you know, the really good product leaders, I mean, I'll tell you that the product data home that you would always he would he was the you know, revenues king right. He would always hold he would say, okay, we're going to do this in beta. But you guys are still going to have to sell it, right? Right. He's like, there's no freebies. You got it. All of this is proving that we can sell it. Right. And, and it's a good exercise to go through, right.

To, to, you know, as you're building something, even if you're saying, hey, this is not quite ready yet. A lot of times it's tempting to say, hey, I with that, let's let's bring you on as a beta customer won't cost you anything. Right. But if you do that, you don't exactly understand the value, right? Because they're getting it for free, right? So and they probably are going to be a little less engaged.

And so he used to hold he had a mantra which, which, you know, I love, which is if we're even in beta, we're going to sell it. If we need to understand what is the value and if they're paying for it, they're going to be more engaged and we're going to learn a lot more.

So using keeping on that same line of thought about really understanding the business outcome and the impact, a business process, the outcome, I think there's something important that needs to be said here, and that's the importance of sellers and sales leaders understanding product workflows, meaning what is a buyer going to do? Example. And then I want to ask your question. We just launched on Monday of this week our Enterprise Administration portal.

It was literally pushed into production at 5 a.m. in the morning on Monday, August 5th, we had a meeting with one of our enterprise customers scheduled for noon that day. And as we're going through it, we're saying, okay, click here, do this, do that. And then I would ask a question and I said, does this is this the process that you would expect to go through? And she would say yes or no? And one of them, she said yes. And then I said, okay, I just want to ask you one more question.

And that is presume this. And then she said, I didn't think about that use case then this workflow is not the right workflow. You need to do that. And that was my cue to say, see product I told you but, but, but but my product manager was on there. By the way, if you're listening in. I love you, Sandy.

But that having been said, he was he was listening in, and I was like, I wanted to ask because as a as an enterprise leader who's worked with enterprise apps and managed all these things for my for my sales teams, I felt like that doesn't make sense to me, the way that was built. And so they heard it right straight from the customer. So I guess for you, what have been some of the keys to the keys to success working with your product

counterparts? Yeah, yeah. So, I think the first thing is I learned this lesson, and it hit home is, you know, as, as revenue leaders, we're just so conditioned to think like, the dollars are what matters, right? But what I found is with a product team, their currency is often does buy stuff get used or right, whether it's internal or external. If you are, if you are going and asking for stuff and then it doesn't get used like that'll kill you, right? So, so the currency for a product

team is very often like, if I build it, I want to make sure it's get it getting used. Right. And I, you know, I remember, I had this one, one, one, one instance where our product leader, you know, sort of built this, like, sales tool. And, you know, the problem was, I hadn't asked for it. I didn't actually think it's going to work. Right. And. And then he got mad at me because he was like, if we're going to build something, you need to use it.

I was like, well, that's fine, but like, then build the stuff that I asked for. But like, but that was when the light bulb went off. I was like, oh, the currency here is they want to know it's getting used, right. And if you don't respect that, if you sort of just like ask for the world and then sort of like throw it in the garbage if, you know, or just sort of ignore it like that.

That is actually where I found a lot of sales leaders go wrong, is they just ask yourself and don't really think about the fact that, like, yeah, you know, I might not use it. Right. So that's the big one, I think. I think the second one is, you get a lot of respect if you really try to understand what's happening behind the scenes, like how does the product work. Right? So I'll give a good example. So we, you know, on kludge, we, we have lots of different, directories.

And a lot of them are geographic in nature. So if you're looking for New York City mobile app developers, right, that's a that's a separate directory. And we've got lots and lots of pages. I'd say. And so, what I realized was, we had a lot of, we had a lot of, small traffic pages, that were geographically based that we weren't getting a lot of, you know, clients to buy into because they just was too small. Right. And so what I want to do is figure out how do I bundle together

into a sellable product. And, I'd been working closely with the product team. And so one of the things I understood was, geographic radiuses were how the back end worked for glitch. Right? So it wasn't zip codes, it wasn't state lines. It was I it was like literally like radius. Right. And so there is a debate. It's like, do we create like a northeast, you know, mobile app development or do we create you know, a radius around New York City.

And so I, I was surprised that I hadn't been I said, hey, you know, let's build this as a radius. And, and the funny thing was our CEO at the time was like, well, I think it makes more sense to do it this way. And, you know, she and I were sort of like, well, look, I mean, look, we could do it that way. But it didn't take six months. If we do it this way, we'll get it done a month. And from a sales standpoint, I didn't feel like it made it was going to make a big difference.

And I, you know, I it was funny because usually it's a, it's sort of like the CEOs in between, sort of like the two fighting factions. Right? This was this was the opposite. And so, you know, it just is. You're getting a lot of credibility if you if you strive to understand how it works under the covers and then try to build your request to accommodate, you know, when possible, like, sometimes it's not possible. Sometimes, like, hey, you guys built this this way, it's not going to work.

But to the extent that you can say, hey, I understand how it works, and I understand that this way we can get better. And the differences between this way, in that way are big enough to make a difference. Like, you could stand a lot of credibility, right? Because they they understand that you're listening, to to to what they've done and what's going to be easier for that. And then I always commit to a number when I'm asking to build, you know, a product that we're going to sell. I just buy.

Like, even though usage is a big currency, like being able to say, I think this is worth x, right? And trying to get as close as possible and then and then going out and hitting it is even better. You just you gain a lot of credibility, right? You'll, you'll, you'll get you'll you'll get the, the, you know, the the, next time you'll get the sort of the credibility to say, say, you know, this one is a little bit of a risk, but let's try it right there. They're way more willing to do it.

If you had a couple successes. Before. So those are, those are a couple the a couple of the tips that I found, working with the product team. Now on the reverse, I guess I would ask you the opposite question, which is, how can I guess product leaders themselves be set up for success with their sales leaders? Because I think this happens a lot, where sometimes the product team is really building something or what seems to be a vacuum. You're like where you spent how many months developing this?

Why what what who who asked for this? Right? Who thought of this? So talk a little bit about that. The reverse. How can you know? Others set themselves up for success with the sales leaders. I love, inviting my product, teammates one to, physical clients. Right. Nothing beats sitting in front of a client.

And so if you're a product leader, and or you're your revenue leader, they extend that invitation, right? You know, that that, you know, good product leaders will do that in certain ways. But like, there's always a value to to doing that with your, with your revenue, teammate. And and then, you know, I, I like to let them see under the covers of how a sales organization works. Right. And understand sort of our processes and, and, and understand what we're not working well. Right.

There's, there's a certain amount of vulnerability that if you if you open up a product leader, you know, actually can get them excited. Right? And, you know, as a product leader, like, you got to be willing to sort of like, look, I don't think product the most like, leaders, like, never aspire to be, you know, in sales. Right. That's usually not sort of a thing. And so it's you probably not the most exciting thing for them to understand exactly those sales organization works.

But the reverse is true. You get a lot of credibility if you're willing to sit and understand how the process works. And so I try to I try to make it so that, you know, I understand how their process works and they understand how our process works. And then then we're mostly talking the same language at that point. Makes sense.

Makes sense. Well, one of the things that I find is when we're, like, in demos, and you watching the customers face the idea behind the demonstration is to not show the things that, you know, are the ugly zits, right? You don't want to show those things, but inevitably, there is always product complexity. That is there in any one individual product.

And you look at it, you're like, maybe it could be better if we did it this way, better if we did it this way. We we want to talk about at the, some examples that you may have about how reducing product complexity can drive additional revenue, for, for the organization. So can you spend some time talking about that? Yeah, yeah. So, we have a great, you know, a great example here at clutch. And actually, it's it's going to touch on a couple of things.

So, you know, the, the, we have we had this, we had this one product, and it sort of got thrown together at, I don't know, about a year before I started, it got thrown together as a way to sort of hit numbers at the end of the. You're right. I mean, yeah, everybody was really sort of like, oh, man, we're we're so close. But man, we need something. And, you know, if you get it with ease. And so like, you know, the ribbon team with the product team and sort of slapped them together really quickly.

But the idea that like, oh yeah, we'll fix it later. Right. Well, the sort of later had never come out right. And to this product, was it was, it was a, it was a very complicated product. It was it was, it was, really hard to buy the, the income bin. It was a limited inventory product. The incumbent advertiser had a, a right of first refusal.

The, it was bid pricing, but there was just no guidance for the reps or the clients as to sort of what their bids should be or could be or, you know, what capture was. And it was almost all run out of Google Ads. I mean, it was it was crazy, right? It was, it was, it was very. And so you just had a lot of reps who were sort of like, didn't like to sell it because if you sell it and then the incumbent says, no, not at all. You know, I bet first refusal, I'll up my bed, right.

Like then you go back to the client who you just sold and say, sorry you didn't get it right. That's never a good situation for reps. And despite all that, it was about 8% of our revenue, so it does not, it was not a tiny part of our business. Right. And so it took me probably 6 to 8 months in the job to even understand how the product work. Right.

Like that is sort of like coming into the job and sort of like figuring out, looking at personnel, this, that and the, the, the core product, which is 90% of our revenue. Like I finally I'm like, I got run to like this. Can someone explain how this thing works? Right.

Like, let's still understand six, nine months that and and and so it's, you know, I learned about it and I was like, you know, and so listen to, you know, and then I heard from clients and what was apparent was the decline for getting a great deal. Right? They, they, you know, they loved it. Now, if I do sort of like, the best kept secret on clutch, because because the people who figured it out.

Right, they had a moat because nobody else could figure out how to get it had so, and so, so I sat down with my team and said, I try to understand, like, okay, like what parts of this are really hard to, to change and then what parts are like, going to be easy, right. And then and so we did we, we, we we, we, we streamlined the entire product. We said one, no right of first refusal to we gave very clear.

We set pricing like, yeah, our, our model is a bit of an auction model, but but we sort of said like, okay, there are there are certain levels. You're going to have to abide by these levels, right. The, the rep could have confidence going in and saying to a client, hey, if you buy in here, you're in, right? There's no there's sort of no way there's nobody else to say. Nobody else is stopping you from getting it. It was amazing. So, our reps got more confidence.

All the product clients actually, like, understood how the how the product work. Right? So. And we did a whole bunch of training. Right. Got that. Got the get base or jazzed up about the product. It jumped to about 20% of our revenue in about three months. I mean, it was just astounding how much of a difference it made, because there was all this value here, but it wasn't being tapped because it was so complicated to get in.

And so, you know, being able to sit and work with both the product team and, you know, our clients are reps to understand how do we just make this a much simpler offering? And, you know, and, and frankly, some of the complexity was originally designed to sort of maximize the but because it was so complicated, you, you actually you actually reduced the pricing because you just couldn't create an effective auction because you just did have a participants.

So anyway, you know what I found is really understanding at a level of detail how things work and then saying, okay, now how to step back and make it super simple for the end users. In this case, both the reps and and the clients, can really, really unlock value in your business. So I'll tell you an early story and we I'll use FlyMSG because I don't mind.

I think it's great to be able to share the wins and the successes, but at the same time, you got to be truthful and, you know, shared some of the challenges.

So when we first built FlyMSG, we only built it because we were having our sales training program. And that's what we're doing deep, long two year long programs. And we saw that, you know, reps needed to be able to take their prospecting messages and use them across everywhere online. And so we were actually training reps how to use the software in the training. So we put it out on, you know, the public internet on Chrome. And people were downloading it because we SEO optimized it.

So the big can be found. And we were just seeing trim tremendous amount of churn after someone else was on the platform for just a few minutes. I'm just like for every ten customers we we got through the Chrome Store, we lost nine. And it was just like, oh God. Like what? What's the problem? Like, I don't understand, like it's a frickin text expander in its original phase, it was just a text expander. Like a how. Well, what's the how is this so hard? It's not that complicated.

And it was interesting because early on for us, what we failed to recognize was that something like onboarding, into a platform and a read me, walk me, process how critical it would be to the, success of keeping a customer on the platform and or at least teaching them how to use the platform. Right.

So what was interesting is, you know, as a non-technical founder of a company, working with the technology team, I started looking at all these different applications, some of them competitors, some of them not competitors. But looking at the workflow, what do they do? What do they do? What do they do? What do they do? What do they do? And as I started going through this, I started noticing a consistent trend, one everybody had onboarding. Two, some of them had the Walk Me features.

And some of the onboarding were, you know, super long and some of the onboarding where you clicked on something and then an image popped up, and then you had to watch a video which was like, you know, a 32nd to a two minute long video. And I started looking at all these different things and saying, oh my God, like, this is horrible. That's horrible. This is horrible. That's great. And I started thinking about why I think I like this. So we built a version of onboarding. It was definitely better.

Don't get me wrong. It it it it helped, but it was too long. And so then we started doing more research and then we started looking at, you know, how long should it be? And, you know, we heard everything from just two minutes to you know, you can have an onboarding as, as long as ten minutes. And so we were like, well, you know, cheese, we have all these different components. How long should it take?

Well we ended up settling that the the onboarding process takes about five minutes to be able to be up and running at in. Theoretically, that's not too big of a big task. On the flip side, we ended up realizing also as well that we were guessing a lot. And so that's when we and our first round of micro investors that we got, which is our crowdfunding campaign, we got them on the platform and then they had the same question, how do I use it? I don't know.

So then we started getting them into a room and saying, well, what would you want to see and what would you like to see and what would it? And then we started learning from the customers. So at the end of the day, all that to be said is whether you think it's the right thing to build sales or you think product, it's the right thing to build. Doesn't matter unless one the customer says is the right thing, and two, if it actually drives revenue.

And that's really the goal right there is to focus in on on driving product lines that will increase revenue, production or fit to the bottom line. In this case, the example I gave earlier, FlyConnect versus variables, both of them are high demand requests. Both of them are right. But one of them hits two levers, which is request and productivity, where one of them only hits one lever. Right? Request doesn't really necessarily

increase productivity. So anyways, all of that to be said that there's some of the things we talked about here is really great in terms of, you know, listening to your customers and learning at what's going to drive additional revenue. I think it's been a fabulous discussion. Any any closing thoughts or comments you wanna mention?

Yeah, I actually I do I, I thought a lot about this and you know, sort of like put it in terms that, you know, revenue leaders will understand and be able to apply, you know, when you're working with your product leader, if you think about it, no differently than selling a client right now.

If if my current product leader man is listening like their dog sales is not bad, right? Remember, when we do when we sell people, we're trying to understand that right and understand their needs. Right. And so, you know, just build rapport. Right. When we when I joined here, I the first thing I did was like we went out to lunch and we just, you know, we just talked about like her goals and how long she had been at clutch. And then, you know, build that into discovery. Right.

What what what how does your product leader see the product 2 to 5 years from now? Right. A good product is always thinking about that. But a good product, there's also always frustrated because they're not there yet. Right. So understand what is their pain like. What are what are they trying to accomplish and what's holding them back. And what have they tried. Right.

Like all these do all the sales tactics and questions that use a normal sales process and then look for those short term wins, right? Those like foot in the door wins, right? That gain you that credibility. And then and then find that common ground because ultimately, you know, you're all in this for the same goal, right? You want to be able to be company, right? You want to build a big, successful company.

And you're just taking, you know, you're just taking two different views and lenses and how to get there. But if you sort of think about this is just one big giant sales call, right. Like and and build that sales relationship. And, and you know, and do it with, you know, in the right ways, right where you try to help and build something together. That's how you be successful with, with a, with a product leader. Right.

You get them to see you're both rowing in the same direction, not against each other. Amen to that. Well, hey, man, this has been a great conversation really centered around, growing both product development as well as looking at what the sales team needs and how to bridge those two worlds together. So, question for you. If someone wants to connect with you or they want to reach out to you, they want to, you know, talk with you, what's the best way?

Is it email, LinkedIn, Twitter or aka X? Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. So yeah I'm, I'm an ex at at TP Condon. Certainly LinkedIn. Right. Easy way to easy way to connect with me. Those are, those are probably the two platforms, I use the most I'm big on Instagram. You know, but I don't really post much, much business stuff there, so, but LinkedIn, I post a lot and, and ex I'll post that periodically. So those are probably the best.

So if you're looking at my boy Tim, make sure you look for his last name as Condon c o n d o. And and make sure please, please, please make sure when you reach out to Tim and you are connecting with on LinkedIn, don't just hit the connect button and go hit the personalized connection request button and say, Tim, I heard you on the modern Selling podcast. Great job! Or even if you say bad job, at least tell him where you heard him from. But that having been said, this has been a great show.

Tim, I got one last question for you. And that is your all time favorite movie. What is it? That's a pretty easy one. So, the 300, right? The, the movie about the, you know, the Greeks and the Persians. And you know what I, I mean, it's just a it's a great movie, right? But. Well, I just love that. Whole strategy. About, like, what? You read this sort of like, pressure situation so that 300 men can compete against that. You know, it's just like the whole strategy behind

it is just so cool. Right? And, and just sort of how they did that. So anyway. Yeah, definitely my favorite. 300 it is I'm

not sure if we've had that one, although I have I believe that was or the Russell Crowe. No, that was I don't know, the, it wasn't sort of a big name actor in that one. That wasn't. Well, maybe I'm thinking of the wrong movie, was it? That's not the one with 300 men, right?

It is. What it is. It is. But I don't think I was Russell. I don't think Russell Crowe is in that one. Well, now you got to make me the Sparta. Sparta. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm too. I'm thinking of the right movie. I'm. I'm thinking of that. Okay, well, who was in it? Now I get now I got to figure out who was in the movie. I forget the the female characters. No one.

Forget her name? No. But no, I there were the lead male actor. Was not like a big was not like a big name. Why why did I think it was Russell Crowe? No, you're right, it's not Russell Crowe. I see his face, but I know his face is just like, I might have to look that it up and see who it is. Well, anyways, that have been said, you heard it on the show here.

Go look at 300 for all of you, interested in the movie right there about Tim loves. And for the rest of you. Hey, don't turn that down quite yet. I've got this very important message for you right now.

Thanks for listening to the Modern Selling podcast. Please do me a huge favor and give the Modern Selling podcast a five star rating and review on iTunes. Oh, and don't forget if you'd like to say 20 hours or more in a month and increase your productivity, go right now and download FlyMSG. That's FlyMSG.io for free. It's your free text expander and personal writing assistant.

Hey, thanks for listening in. And until the next episode, good selling.