Episode No:45

Elevating Sales Management from Sameplan to Outreach ft.

Carlo Candela

Co-Founder, Sameplan

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Ep#45: Elevating Sales Management from
Sameplan to Outreach ft. Carlo Candela (Co-Founder, Sameplan)
Ep#45: Elevating Sales Management from Sameplan to Outreach ft. Carlo Candela (Co-Founder, Sameplan)
  • Ep#45: Elevating Sales Management from Sameplan to Outreach ft. Carlo Candela (Co-Founder, Sameplan)

Episode Summary

We’re excited to have on the show today Carlo Candela, Co-Founder of Sameplan and Senior Product Manager at Outreach. Carlo shares his insights on the challenges of building a startup, including the importance of staying close to your customers and maintaining a clear understanding of the problem you’re solving. He also discusses the evolving landscape of sales tech, and how Outreach is positioning itself to be the go-to tool for sales reps looking to close pipeline and provide a better experience for buyers. Carlo shares his experiences and lessons learned from his time at Sameplan and Outreach, and offers valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and product managers. Join us as we dive into the world of sales tech!
Key Takeaways Time
Finding the Right Partners for Your Startup Journey4:22 4:22
How Customer Conversations Can Shape Your Startup’s Success 5:47
Attracting Investors: The Importance of Traction and Track Record 7:50
Reimagining Sales Processes for the Digital Age 10:37
Making Every Interaction Count: Strategies for Maximizing Sales with Limited Resources 22:03
The Importance of Problem Clarity in Product Development and GTM Strategy 26:47

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Transcript

Carlo Candela 0:02 Continuously being hard on yourself, do I actually have clarity on the problem we’re solving as the company evolves is key to the rest of that when it comes to the go to market motion. Taylor Kenerson 0:13 Welcome to the hyperengage podcast. We are so happy to have you along our journey. Here we uncover bits of knowledge from some of the greatest minds in tech. We unearth the hows, whys, and whats that drive the tech of today. Welcome to the movement. Adil Saleh 0:33 Hey, greetings, everybody. This is Adil from hyperengage podcast, I have my co host Taylor Kenerson from New Jersey and a very special guest, Carlo. He’s a co-founder and CEO of Sameplan acquired by Outreach most recently, and now he’s a senior product manager at Outreach. Thank you very much Carlo for taking the time. Carlo Candela 0:51 Thanks for having me super excited to be here. Adil Saleh 0:54 Love that love that I was just looking at your journey, by the way, you started off with with an enterprise, you know, sales and then you’re working at a company named Heap, we’re very familiar with it. And they are doing it at scale. So sure did in the enterprise segment, and then you moved more towards a product management, without fee- founding- co founding a platform named samp-, Sameplan. And you had a journey with Y Combinator, there’s a lot to discuss to Carlo starting up with your journey like what made you thought okay sales, more of a customer facing front runners and then moving towards founding your own platform for sales teams. And you know, you know, all of these noise that we had back for the past 13-15 years. There’s a lot of platforms for the sales teams. So in terms of market positioning, and so in terms of mind frame, how did you build yourself to be able to qualify on such platform? Carlo Candela 1:55 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I kind of stumbled across it. So when I first moved to San Francisco, I tried to actually start a company in the camping industry, it was like Airbnb for camping. My family owns campgrounds in the Northeast, and I said, You know what people have claimed that the guest bedroom and the couch, no one’s claimed the backyard. Let’s give it a go. So that was my first swing of being an entrepreneur. And I learned a lot of lessons, but in short, crashed and burned. And so I realized pretty quickly that it would benefit me to join a startup who’s a bit further along, to understand what it takes to kind of go from, you know, seed stage, no product market fit to a large customer base. So I was very lucky to meet the founders at Heap. And, you know, if you don’t have a technical background, oftentimes, starting as a sales development rep, or, you know, entry level customer success is the way in. And so that was my way into SaaS, I started as an SDR hitting the phones X, you know, 50 dials a day smile and dial. And then went on an amazing four year journey at Heap, with an incredible sales team, where I just learned a ton about what it means to you know, manage a sales process, engage with customers, and I just experienced the problem that we ended up solving it same plant firsthand, which was, you know, we had these really meaningful deals that, you know, the CEO was asking us about that, you know, we could change the trajectory of the company. And I felt I was managing them over phone, and email, and an occasional spreadsheet to help the customer understand, you know, what’s going on next. And, you know, do we have the right people involved, and we were capturing all this amazing information, but we would just put it in Salesforce, and the customer wasn’t really involved in that. So myself and my co founder, Brent saw this opportunity to just create a more collaborative and transparent experience for sellers and buyers, and, you know, make the sales experience more efficient. And so that’s what Sameplan ultimately, we set out to do. But we were really just trying to solve my problem at first, and then it kind of we got some momentum. Adil Saleh 4:07 Cool, cool. Great. So looking at a platform such as sameplan, I’m sure you had a background back in the sales more often. So how did you form a team, initial team, like the founding team? And what big of a challenge that was? Carlo Candela 4:22 It was a huge challenge. I mean, I was I was lucky that when I came to San Francisco, I, you know, there was a kid from home, who was also going out there who was brilliant, and I said, you know, what, wouldn’t be a bad idea to become buddies with him. And we turned to him, we ended up being close friends. And he was also ultimately my co founder and had a very complementary skill set to me, which was, you know, software development. So I know that not everyone has that luxury of, you know, having an idea and living with it software engineer, but, you know, I was pretty proactive about it and just trying to surround myself with people that had different skills. And then we really, you know, just started leveraging at first contract workers on the design side, and for additional engineering resources to really get the thing off the ground. But we started lean, I mean, this thing was like a glorified checklist to start that we put in front of customers, and it slowly became a product. So you should see some of our first iterations. It’s yeah, it’s pretty embarrassing. But, you know, getting things to market quickly. And getting that feedback we found was was useful for us. Taylor Kenerson 5:25 Well, let’s do a little bit, walk us through a little bit like what, what that looks like when you’re trying to, you know, you have your idea, then you start to form like some people around it. And then like, what happens, even before the first prototype, and then what happens when you go to market and you’re starting to think about all these components to get the traction that you need to scale and grow? Carlo Candela 5:47 Yeah, I think the thing we did well, that I was proud of us was, we talked to a lot of our future customer, right, we talked to probably 60-70 sales reps before we really started, you know, writing code. And I think it was because, you know, my co founder had a great job and had opportunities in front of him. We were doing, I was doing well at Heap. And so we really wanted to understand like, is this real? Or are we just, you know, kind of, you know, poking around right now. And so, unlike my first go, I felt like we had a really good grasp on the problem we were trying to solve and who it was best, you know, who was positioned for. And so everything was rooted in that customer feedback. And that really helped us prioritize like, okay, you know, if we just had a, you know, a checklist of the things that the customer needs to own, we assign them ownership, have some basic notifications, and it feels snappy and lightweight, this thing could be useful, you know, pretty quickly, it doesn’t have to have all of the integrations that these other sales tools that I was using had at first, right. So that really allowed us to prioritize, you know, effectively, and it just all came down to talking to customers. Adil Saleh 6:56 Love that. Love that. So you went on, and you joined Y Combinator to I’m sure they have a very strategic community, you know, they have, you know, a lot of Y Combinator startups that we spoke to including June and others, they said that we got around 10 or 15, first 10-15 customers from their community. So how was that experience for you? Carlo Candela 7:20 We got, we got into YC, the third time that we applied. So- Taylor Kenerson 7:26 Woah unpack that, what made you go back the third time? Carlo Candela 7:33 We’re in a dogfight for for like a year and a half before we got the- Taylor Kenerson 7:37 With the same idea- with the same idea? Carlo Candela 7:40 Yeah Taylor Kenerson 7:40 Holy shit, well unpack that. So like walk us through like the application process, like the complete denial? And then did it shift along those three different- applying? Carlo Candela 7:50 Yeah, absolutely. So you know, when we first really felt great about the idea, we talked to sales reps were like, alright, we know what what we want to build. And we think the story’s pretty clean, we applied, but we had no product. We were both still working full time at our respective companies. And, you know, and if you don’t, what I’ve learned, and I’ll continue on that sort of what I’ve learned, though, is, you know, you either have a track record, or you have traction to catch the attention of people like YC, or or venture capitalists are absolutely key. That’s right. You know, yc is probably a bit more forgiving than the rest of venture capital as far as taking shots on more earlier stage, folks, but that we had no traction, we had no track record, we didn’t give them a reason to make a bet on us. Right. And so we, you know, we learned from that. And then when the spring came around, we had a prototype, we had it in some people’s hands, we felt like we you know, we were much further along, and we’re like, you know what, this is it, we’re ready to go. And we didn’t get in that time either. And it was pretty devastating. And then we tried to start raising money from like, traditional pre seed venture capitalists. And I think we talked to, you know, maybe like 80, before we got into yc. And it wasn’t until we finally got into YC was when it was like, You know what, this thing we kind of have it cruising right now, like we have customers, we really are competent. What we are, I mean, we you know, it was almost like as soon as we felt like there was a path where we may not need them is when we got it, you know, and we’re so glad that we did because it totally changed the game for us. From like, the credibility it gave us in the market and to VCs, but also just the education like it’s a fast track and just, you know, outlining where the where the landmines are, and really pushing you to reset your standards of like what growth needs to look like at that level. So it was a huge blessing. We felt very lucky to get in. Adil Saleh 9:53 Great, amazing. So, taking forward from there. You know, you On the into the community, you had like lookalike audiences, and you have some potential investors to VCs to the main, lead your round going forward. So what was your first go to market framework that you built for same time at that point? And now you’re thinking of, you know, having paying customers and you know, you’re thinking of enhancing enhancing the product, working with the product team, yourself working hands on with the tech team as well. So what was that journey look like? And how challenging was that? And what did you track? Like, what did you place the strategies and tactics to maybe overcome that? Carlo Candela 10:37 Strategies is a general term for how we were, you know, making decisions, but you know, it was during the heart of COVID. Right, COVID had had taken off. And, you know, people were changing the way they looked at their go to market motions. And we realize like, okay, you’ve got everyone going into remote work, right now, we’re building this essentially like digital sales experience, right? We might have some tailwinds here. And so we kind of change our messaging to like, hey, you know, remote sales has arrived for the digital sales has arrived, like, what’s your plan? Sameplan, you know, and so we’ve kind of geared everything towards writing this, it’s, it’s never been more important to have clear communication and collaboration from a digital standpoint with your buyer, because you can’t take him to the baseball game and grab a beer with them right now, you can’t have that customer dinner, right? And those are those moments where you start to garner trust, and you hash things out. And oftentimes those things can be a bandaid. For inefficient sales processes, right? Well, you don’t have that luxury and a timeline COVID. And so I think a lot of people were looking for better ways to engage with their customer during that time. And we wrote that a bit. And that was kind of we’d lead with that messaging. And it was it was resonating. But from our approach, as far as getting to them was very much me selling within my network. Fortunately, I had a lot of friends that were sales reps, and who also were smiling and dialing next to me on the you know, in the early days. And so we just we use that to kind of get off the ground, as well as the YC network selling to our YC batch mates. The one thing we did was I came from very much a, like, traditional enterprise sales cycle, right? Where, you know, send out outbound emails, get them on the phone, run pilots, how many seats do you want, let’s do this thing. And I think we, if we would have done it again, earlier on, we would have offered some free version, you know, launched on Product Hunt, gone with the more product led growth mechanism to start, and then complemented that with closing larger deals in a traditional sales way. So we ended up doing that later. But we probably would have done that sooner. If we did it again. Taylor Kenerson 12:54 What’s making you say that, like, what’s the whys behind you- were- you wishing you maybe would have went product lead growth? Maybe you would have saw quicker growth and scalability in that sense. Carlo Candela 13:05 Yeah, I just think like I was a bottleneck at times, like you have to allow, people are curious right now, especially the folks that are willing to be early adopters of technology, and you have to give them a chance to stumble across, you know, what you’re working on and try to solve their own problems without making the commitment of setting up a demo. I’m a big believer that like plg will not replace the salesperson. But I think it’s very important part of building great pipeline, and allowing yourself to have an opportunity for organic growth. So that not everything has to go through, you know, a cellar, but it acts as a really great way to to build pipeline, start to build community, and then you convert those fans into larger enterprise deals from that channel, right. So we just didn’t have that channel spun up. And so everything had to go through me, which probably stalled our growth. Taylor Kenerson 13:53 I’m so glad you mentioned that. So you’re seeing it now more than ever, that when you empower people, whether that’s your team or your customers, or I want to get into like your partnerships, your network, and like how you empower these people with the proper messaging and how you then begin to see, in a sense, like a network effect at whatever level or scale, you begin to see that when you put the right information with the right people, and that you have actually something of value, then you’ll see traction and growth. So can you dive a little bit into how you then went from, you know, using your network and yc to outreach and like how that whole strategy to pour into like the partnerships and how you were able to leverage some of your network to actually help you then grow and gain that traction? Carlo Candela 14:43 Yeah, um, well, to comment on like, the first half of what you said, I think it’s so true when you think about so you need a champion to close big deals, right. And, you know, most champions, the characteristics of a great champion is someone who’s, you know, pretty curious. And, you know, does their homework and is you know, exploring best in class tools in a market before they go facilitate to their work because they’re tying their name to it, right? Like, that’s the exact person that, you know, you probably need to allow them to explore a bit on their own right. But then ultimately, you know, they can benefit from having a salesperson to partner with them, when it comes time to actually, you know, get buy in from the rest of the organization. And that’s what we’ve seen with like our products, specifically, is just, only buyers are only spending about 17 to 18% of time with the seller, when they’re going through a sales process, even when it’s like a traditional enterprise sales process, they do so much back channeling just online or through, you know, their network, and then and you have to allow them to do that. And that’s, that’s a tremendous, it’s, like, buyers are more enlightened than ever, and then there’s a role for the salesperson to come in and help them you know, really understand, okay, you know, you’re we’re down to two or three solutions, what are really your problems, here’s why we think we might be a good fit or might not be and be a partner to them as they navigate the rest of the sales cycle. So I think that’s where we we play really nicely as like being that space where they can do that. I’m, I’m sorry, Taylor, I went down my rabbit hole there. What was your initial question on that one? Taylor Kenerson 16:23 Perfect, no worries, how to- how did the partnerships and your network How did that all play out? And how did you empower your network with the whatever they needed in order to carry this message along to help you close deals and stuff like that? Carlo Candela 16:36 Yeah. Great call. So we, we went to like the highest performing reps that I knew at companies that were, you know, companies that other people wanted to emulate. So we we had people at Okta and Stripe, and Databricks, and Heap and we just went found high performing reps that were gracious enough to give us a chance and people who we had talked to right during that discovery process of in the ideation phase, right? That’s the benefit to have, when you bring 70 reps in to talk to them. Adil Saleh 17:09 Yes I was going to say that, yes, useful for like segregating people pre launch. Carlo Candela 17:16 That’s your first customer list. That’s your lead list right there. So we went right back to him and said, Okay, what is your like? What are you doing today spend time really understanding their process, and tried to I was, you know, helping them build out templates and just like, build out templates, build out some, you know, decks or collateral that were, you know, personalized to their organization. And then we set up Slack channels, and it was like, Okay, I’m here to be your partner, like, let’s see how many people on your sales or we can get involved in this. And so I think, at Okta, we ended up getting like 30 or 40 reps just organically before we had anything signed. And that became really powerful for us when it came to, like, you know, getting adoption from other companies or, you know, going through the fundraising process. So we weren’t very much like kind of bottoms up of empowering reps. And I think that was just because, you know, I didn’t have as many relationships at the executive level, but it served, like, what we found is that, yes, managers want to move the needle as far as revenue or conversion rate. But they really do want to just equip their reps with things that their reps are excited about when it comes to making their lives easier. And so going through the rap and having a rep be your champion, was awesome for us. And then we just had kind of messaging a bit once we got to the to the VPs. Adil Saleh 18:35 Yeah, so this, this happens. And this can definitely unlock for any SaaS platform that as a co founder with a sales background. And this becomes a lot more easier when you have connections with these people on ground using those softwares and they can convince they can they can be your powerhouse, you know, of, you know, they vouch for you, and then they take it to their C suite. Okay, great. So, you know, what was by the way you collaborated with Outreach? I know it’s, it is there. Do you both are serving the same customers customer base, same segment? Maybe they’re touching the enterprise segment, and midmarket too? So now what did we what was the biggest interest for outreach, acquiring a platform such as Sameplan, there were loads in the industry as well. So what was the key component? And their biggest interest? Carlo Candela 19:24 Yeah, well, we Outreach was always a company I admired from afar for a long time, Manny the CEO, I just always thought he was a powerhouse. And I would kind of take things from his LinkedIn posts, even when I was just a seller and he and I always thought, like, Hey, there’s this. There’s all these really successful sales tech companies taking off outreach as someone who has changed the way that prospecting works right when it comes to building pipeline, but they hadn’t yet kind of got into the closing motion. And I was like, Okay, we’re not competitive with them. They could be you know, in three, four years. He’s been very complimentary partner for us, whatever that may be right. And then we ended up getting through a VC getting introduced to Manny, and he was just amazing with us. And the conversation started as, hey, we want to use your product, like, you know, I want to get 50 licenses tested out, we think it’d be really useful for our team. And so that happened. And we were like, Alright, all hands on deck, let’s go, let’s make this really successful. And we just approached it, like, you know, a really big sales deal, right. And they continue to reach out and start to develop a relationship with us. And so I didn’t let my mind wander that, you know, like, because we’re, we’re in the trenches, I didn’t want to give myself that potential out around the corner. And so we really just say focus on making that them successful as a customer. And then ultimately, they said, you know, what, there’s a lot of synergies here we are next evolution of outreach is not just creating pipeline, but closing pipeline, and, and doing all these things to help closing reps better manage their day to day. And so we felt it was, you know, we had seen something in the market, we had, we’re having some success, but we were pretty green as founders. And so this was an opportunity for us to join a company that we really admired, that we knew we could learn a ton from, because I want to take another swing at something bigger here in the future. So it just all worked out where it lined up that, you know, we were, they were a great fit for us to join their group. Taylor Kenerson 21:28 You talk a little bit about like making outreach, a huge, you know, client and putting your not your focus, but putting the team’s you know, focus in that that priority and how much that can that can do like that. And growing that kind of a client can mean to the company. So what what, like some factors went into making them a successful client, what did you have to do like in order to really emphasize that account, and, you know, still keep on track with others, while not losing that quality across every everything that you’ve been doing? Carlo Candela 22:02 Yeah, it was hard. And to be super frank, again, our team was very small, we didn’t have a ton of clients, but even when it’s just, you know, one person really on the go to market side myself, it did become a struggle. I think just trying to, again, like, not a cop out answer, but find a few people who are going to be big influence influencers for us there and just really empower them, like you can’t do it all yourself, you need internal partners. And so just if you can equip those internal partners create the right communication channels, and just be very responsive. Like, you know, people are really smart, and they know what they’re doing. And they know their work better than you. And so you just got to give them the ammunition to go. And so that was our strategy. And it worked well, for us. We had some reps there that were big influencers internally, and like, you know, you could tell it’s like, Okay, we got it, we onboard this rep. And then the next day, like, you know, our usage and average spiked like 12 people, I’m like, that person’s a savage, they definitely just took that to the meeting and really killed it for us, you know. So that was really our focus. And you do have to do some prioritization, though, on accounts, like, you know, we had smaller people, especially like our YC customers that we sold to, and a lot of them, we gave it away, you know, to YC, just to get feedback to so you try to be responsive, but you do have to prioritize, and, you know, outreach at that time was was a top priority for us, along with often some of these other larger logos. Adil Saleh 23:37 Yeah, that’s the way to go when you’ve got to keep things simple at a time. And you need to make sure you have the right people at the right places. For bigger accounts, you have relevant skill set people with the right skill set, and then did take those accounts take care of those. I find it pretty interesting that you took a role of senior product manager going, you know, after Outreach acquired for Success Plans, you know, you could have taken a role for senior leadership, like head of sales or something like that. But considering your background, but you took care of your product. Why is that? Carlo Candela 24:09 Yeah, I think I don’t think they would have given me the head of sales job. I appreciate that though. I think like my, I was going in there to be the I had the product knowledge, right. Like, you know, you can’t fake talking to customers for three years, right? It takes a long time to make that knowledge transfer and as a PM yeah, you’re working with engineering and design daily, but you’re engaging with customers, you’re building out product marketing material, you’re helping set the sales team up for success with the right messaging, the right product demo flows. So you kind of play in both lanes as far as, you know, help empowering go to market but also being really close to the customer and deciding what’s next. And so I don’t really know that That was going to be the right fit for me here. I love being on the product team. It’s really cool not only like working, evolving our product to make it truly integrated to the rest of the outreach platform, but getting to work on these other products that outreach to has been a huge growing experience for me. So if you’re still very much though, like a salesperson, right, I’m on sales calls all the time, I’m building out messaging with our sales team all the time. So not much has changed. I’m just kind of leading our little group within outreach, and doing a lot of both. Adil Saleh 25:35 Cool stuff. Cool. So I mean, thinking of your journey, as from you started as a sales rep from here, and you ended up sending a platform of a very big platform in the market, when it comes to outreach, cold outreach, outreach is also competing a lot of big names in the industry as well. And this entire journey, you become kind of an inspiration for our people listening specially startups, you know, series A B startups. So what is that one thing that you would advise having somebody, you know, the biggest challenge I would tell you is, people are good at building software’s crafting ideas, that’s the easiest bit, they will suffer to get technical founders, if they’re not beyond technical skills themselves, they can get collaborate, you know, have teams, when they find challenges is when the go ma- go to market takes place, like they need to make sure they not just get product experiences, like user experience would also get those customers to pay paying customers. So what is that advice around those, you know, avenues you can give, because you’ve done it all by yourself, like taking on from your journey from sales background. Carlo Candela 26:47 Yeah, definitely, definitely had a ton of help along the way, but I will challenge you a bit on it. I do think that, like the root of everything, which I’ve actually learned even more since being an outreach, I’ve got amazing people around me that, and above me in the product, or that I’ve learned a ton from, and looking back, I think the most important thing is having a really, really deep understanding of the problem you’re solving. And it’s it sounds easier, you know, it sounds like, you know, common sense. But oftentimes I’ll talk to, you know, younger founders who are on their first go, and they’re very quick to start solutioning and started, you know, thinking about the next feature that’s going to solve the problems and things of that nature. And the problem they’re solving starts to get murky, right and who they’re solving it for. But if you have a ton of clarity on that, well, that drives everything that drives your decision making on product, it does, you know, it drives your the customer personas that you’re going after first, you know whether it’s you’re going to be top down or bottoms up based on the value that you’re providing within that problem. And all your decks come together, your ads coming together, everything comes together, if you have a really clear understanding of the problem you’re solving, and you stay close to the customer who you’re solving for. So I’ve actually, you know, that’s been one of my biggest takeaways from this outreach experience is that and I think just continuously being hard on yourself, do I actually have clarity on the problem we’re solving as the company evolves, is, is key to the rest of that when it comes to the go to market motion. And again, we were we were early on Adil. So like, I don’t want to pretend I’m an expert here at you know, what it takes to go you know, get 3 million ARR from nothing, like we didn’t get that far, right. But we got we got a lot of early three, traction, and we had some key, you know, wins that opened up some really unique opportunities for us. So I’m still very much in the learning phase of, you know, of these different go to market motions. But for us, I really do think being just super customer obsessed healed everything. Adil Saleh 28:52 Great. In a b2b space SaaS, it matters a lot, you know, when you have a deep understanding about the problem, you’re solving who you’re solving it for, only then you can get to the right ears, you’ve knocked the right doors, that otherwise you’ll just be scraping your head and a lot of teams that I’ve seen product teams, they, they’re not so closer to their problems, and they knock on the wrong doors, and that takes their entire product to a wrong direction. And then they have to, you know, reinvent and maybe that takes them, you know, six, seven months a year back. So it takes a lot. I love that that you mentioned around this understanding of the problem. So how did you not what is the next step for you? Sitting at a senior product manager? What is the success plan look like for success plan? Carlo Candela 29:39 Yeah, so we have a massive opportunity in front of us. There’s this insane consolidation happening in sales tech where there’s all of these points, solutions Outreach being one of them. Sameplan being a much smaller point solution. And there’s a few players that are you know, making a rush to kind of bring these workflows and these datasets together. One of the thing I really admire about Manny is, he always seems like just ahead of the game a bit, you know, he moves pretty fast and got outreach in a position where, you know, they’ve got their behemoth of their pipeline creation tools. And now there’s a second wave of really valuable tooling to help people close pipeline. So it’s no longer create, it’s creating clothes. And all of it is rooted in like just being much closer to your buyer, and being kind of the reps go to tool that helps them just get way more done. You know, I think it’s easy to fall into the trap. And, you know, we want to make sure that VP of sales have more visibility and sales enablement, teams and ops teams are feel great about trusting our solution, but we really want to be the place that reps are like, you know, I can get 10 times things more done. And I can provide a way better experience for my buyer, when I’m using Outreach. And so it’s cool to be a part of that, like, next chapter then. And we’re, you know, in a battle with a lot of other great companies in the space too. So very exciting. Adil Saleh 31:05 I love that. I look forward to, you know, looking to, you know, follow your journey along. And I wish you good luck for for the future. I’m sure that you have so many things planned, planned for this year. Carlo Candela 31:19 Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was fantastic. Yeah, we’ll have we’ll have to do it again, sometime. I really appreciate you. Adil Saleh 31:26 And I cannot tell you how how bad our audience wanted this conversation. A lot of these CS folks, they might need your help, like once they apply for the YC. Even we are in collaboration with some tech platforms, specifically for b2b CS teams, technical digital CS teams, more data analytic side more of the data access. So whenever we need your help, we’ll just ping you you could share your 30 minutes. Carlo Candela 31:51 Totally and vice versa too. So what’s cool about what we’re doing is like we talked about it being a sales tool, but buyers don’t care. Like when a buyer- the deal closes they don’t care, right. Their journey is just getting started. And so I’m really curious to start to get closer to CS folks understand how they work with buyers, because in the lifecycle of a customer goes for a long time. I think there’s a huge opportunity. Adil Saleh 32:11 Absolutely. Thank you. I really appreciate your time today, Carlo. Take good care and have a good rest of your day. Carlo Candela 32:18 Alright, folks. Adil Saleh 32:22 Thank you so very much for staying with us on the episode, please share your feedback at adil@hyperengage.io. We definitely need it. We will see you next time and another guest on the stage with some concrete tips on how to operate better as a Customer Success leader and how you can empower engagements with some building some meaningful relationships. We qualify people for the episode just to make sure we bring the value to the listeners. Do reach us out if you want to refer any CS leader. Until next time, goodbye and have a good rest of your day.

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