A strong close rate revealed a sales pipeline problem

Transcript

From the transcript Grit publishes with the episode.

1. 29:18

   spite of ourselves comment. So the way this whole thing happened, I think there is a real story to tell here. So we were at this board meeting at the beginning of the year, and Mamoon, in his sort of simple way, asked a question, uh, which was like, you guys like you're in some when a customer is looking at you, like when you show up, like, how often do you win? How often do you close? And we said we tend to always close and once like so you just not enough deals. It's a very simple comment. And the one that really hurts when you hear it and think about it. Right. And so it really hurt me that you're like you just not enough fights. You're just not showing up. Mhm. Uh, so I called Mamoon back the same day. I was like, okay, I have a problem. Help me fix it. And Mamoon was gracious enough to get Liam to help us solve this problem. We'd been looking and recruiting for a head of

2. 30:24

   sales for some time, but these things take time, and I don't think we fully internalized how well our product was being pulled by the market. Until I can. Liam just showed up as an outsider on week one and looked at things objectively, and it was him telling us about how unusual it is, what we were seeing on the inside, because we had no calibration points. He did. That actually gave us more confidence in what we were doing and more direction in what we were doing. So it was really helpful in so many ways to get to work with him. Uh, and yeah, I think we. It's amazing to. To get to work with Liam and I'm like forever grateful. Like keep telling. It was like a hard conversation to call Mamoon and ask about this. And I knew it when you texted me and said, hey, can we go for a walk tomorrow? As I was out of the country and I

3. 31:30

   said, I land at 3 p.m. on Friday, how about 4 p.m.? And we met at 4 p.m. for a walk. And I, I sort of knew what was coming. Yeah. It is. Listen, like it was on the top three for the week. Right. So so then you do not waive time. You're like, yeah, you land at 315. We can leave at four. Yeah. Like, why would you. I did take a shower and then I met you after a 12 hour flight. But yeah. I generally also think like when you want something from someone, then being jet lagged is usually in your favor. That's right. Crafty. Crafty. And tell me. Tell you. How was the conversation? No, like I was it was it was great. So one I'm glad you knew what it was because the Mamoon came. Mamoon's first reaction was amazing. He's like number one. We're all about founders. And so if it's right for you and parallel, it's right for me. Second, don't do

4. 32:24

   it. And I kind of needed to hear both of those things. Uh, because if you had not said the second thing, then I'd be like, wait, why is he not trying to save Liam? And so then he went and went to bat to save Liam and negotiated compromises. And it was clear that from that conversation that I had made the right bet, both on trying to hire Liam, but more importantly in working with Mamoon. So I felt validated on two of my big decisions that I had made over the last few months in that one walk. And then you also got Graham. Which happened right after. Yeah. So