Tim Cakir
SUMMARY:
What do you alter when you begin working with your clientele to make sure that they are being more collegiate and collaborative?
He concentrate on developing useful dashboards that track pertinent indicators to promote client collaboration and alignment. By coordinating measurements and ensuring that there is a common understanding of objectives, I also seek to strengthen the bond between the marketing and sales teams.
How do growth loops work?
Growth loops are tactics used to establish a cycle of user recruitment, retention, and referral. They entail finding ways to motivate existing users to refer new users, which will foster growth and create a sense of community.
What significance does alignment hold for the entire revenue operation, product development, and customer-related ancillary services?
A company's success depends on the coordination of revenue operations, product development, and ancillary services. It guarantees that all departments are working towards the same objectives and that the demands of the consumer are given top priority. Inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and a fragmented client experience can all result from misalignment.
What are the four guidelines for handling wicked, extremely complex problems?
1) Your initial attempt at solving a complex problem will probably fail; therefore, iterate and learn from your mistakes. 2) As you advance, the rules and the situation will change; adjust as necessary. 3) Recognise that different stakeholders will have different viewpoints and objectives. 4) Keep in mind that there are only flawed results because there are no flawless answers.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00]
Marcus Cauchi: Hello, and welcome back once again to the Inquisitor Podcast with me Marcus Cauchi. Today I have as my guest, Tim Cakir. He is a growth consultant helping tech startups to achieve sustainable growth. He routinely gets frustrated with the lack of alignment internally within an organization, the blind spots that they do nothing or very little to address, and the fact that they spend a lot of their time measuring stuff that is meaningless.
Vanity metrics. Today we're gonna explore how to overcome those obstacles, and what you need to do instead is gonna be a very practical conversation, and at the end of it, you will leave with insights that you can apply immediately in your business. Tim, welcome.
Tim Cakir: Hi, Marcus. It's a pleasure to be here.
60 seconds on your history
Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. Okay, so let's start out with 60 seconds on your history please.
Tim Cakir: Well, I started in sales in really, really, really like bad sales, I'm gonna call it. I [00:01:00] was selling carpet door to door in the US. I was young, I needed some money. Uh, so I sold a hundred dollars carpet for $11,000. I'm not proud of it now, and that's why I found marketing to be a bit more interesting for me.
Then my career continued in marketing and then I start combining my knowledge of sales, marketing, and a bit of a product to call myself a growth consultant, and that's been kind of what I do for the last 10 years, something like that.
How do founders get in their own way?
Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. Okay, so let's start with a million dollar question. How do founders get in their own way?
Tim Cakir: How do they get in their own way? Okay. Well, their own way, the thing is that they always want their own way. And that's, I think, the, the biggest problem. It shouldn't be just the founder's way. It should be, uh, more of a collective intelligence. This is why you hire people. So founders, they always try to say, okay, I know this and this is how we're gonna do it.
And, and I think that at some point they realize, or I hope they realize sometimes they don't realize that, uh, the way that they thought things should be is not the way [00:02:00] the customers or the users want, want it to be. So they have to listen a little bit more to the users. And I think that's, they're missing out on that.
When you start working with your clients, what do you change to ensure that they are being more collegiate, more collaborative?
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So when you start working with your clients, what do you change to ensure that they are being more collegiate, more collaborative?
Tim Cakir: Well, the first thing that, uh, I change or that I optimize or that I check, I mean, it's not even changed cause they usually don't have it, it's to make sure that they have some dashboards that make sense. And not just any kind of metrics because they're like, oh, any SaaS companies or any tech companies should, should be tracking this.
That's great but you can't look at all the metrics at a given time. You have to, uh, check one to three metrics or three to five metrics a certain, uh, given time, like a quarter or a month. Uh, so I always try to find, first centralize them in information that matters. Right? And then what I change, usually it's the relationship between marketing and sales, cuz there's always a big problem in that relationship between them.
What do I mean by that? It's, they always, they always define metrics in different ways and I think that [00:03:00] that's the problem. Like a salesperson saying what an SQL is and a marketing person saying what an MQL is. I think that defining things and describing things and documenting things and making sure that everybody a agrees is what would matter between these, uh, teams.
And I think that's super important for our founder to define.
Can you be more clear about what you mean by information that matters?
Marcus Cauchi: Can you be more clear about what you mean by information that matters?
Tim Cakir: Yes, of course. I mean, it's okay. Uh, but, you know, we can be talking about a funnel with some people now. It's a very trend of talking about growth loops. Uh, what does these mean in your company, right?
So, so what is a SQL? What is an MQL? What is a PQL a product qualified lead? How do you define it? When do we say, all right, this marketing qualified lead now can pass to the sales guys. Right? So defining these, not just in words, but writing them down and having a document, having a dashboard for 'em, I think it's the info that really matters, right?
Because then you're starting to row in the same direction and your teams will get along better because they'll have the same [00:04:00] metrics, the same understanding of where to get, how to get there.
What are growth loops?
Marcus Cauchi: You mentioned growth loops. I'm pretty sure most of the people listening won't know what you mean. What, what, what are growth loops?
Tim Cakir: Yeah. Well, growth loops, it's, so if you look at the funnel, uh, right funnels, they can have what we call, you know, it's a leaky bucket or things like that. So basically you're bringing one user from activation acquisition, you're trying to, uh, you know, get their, their money. So revenue, right? You're trying to retain them and then you're trying to make them, uh, refer you, right?
So when we talk about loops is when I acquire one person, how can this one person also acquire another person? So, how can I create loops in different stages of the funnel so that it keeps turning around? So one user invites another user. That's what I mean by growth loops.
Marcus Cauchi: So that, that would be something like me on the podcast asking someone, uh, asking the audience to tag one person.
Tim Cakir: Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But you can start thinking about that in different stages of the funnel, not just, not just on the acquisition, but you can start thinking that on the, [00:05:00] on the retention. How can a user help you retain another customer? By giving a testimonial, by giving, uh, a user story, a customer story, right.
So there are many, many places in the funnel that we can start thinking about loops and how to create these loops so that when we bring one person, we know they're gonna bring more person, and then we know they're gonna retain each other, they're gonna help each other, they're gonna create a community.
And that's where we look at, uh, growth loops.
The importance of having alignment across the entire revenue operation, product development, and ancillary services that relate to the customer
Marcus Cauchi: Very interesting. Okay. So, you, you mentioned in the green room before we started, you mentioned that one of the big reasons why owners get in their own way is that they allow misalignment across the different departments. Talk to me about the importance of having alignment across the entire revenue operation, product development, and ancillary services that relate to the customer.
Tim Cakir: I, I, I think that lately what I've seen a lot, it's between, obviously, as you said, between revenue people who are chasing the revenue and people who are building the product, [00:06:00] right? So the revenue people will say, okay, we need to build this right now. And the product will, people will say, no, we ha in our product roadmap that's not now. That's in a, in a year.
Okay. So you have to check if the revenue people are talking just from the user's perspective, right? Because they're gonna make the money or is it something that really is needed? Uh, is there a bug or or the product people won't understand that cuz they'll be like, okay, product people want to build cool stuff, right?
They wanna always build cool features, cool things, and a lot of founders that are techy, they would love to build more cool stuff. But when you start talking about revenue and you're talking about your users, what do they really need? What's their problem right now? What is the solution that you're bringing to the table today?
And not in six months, nine months, or a year down the line? Because now there's so many options of platforms, of services. We can go to a competitor very quickly, right? We're not married to you. So I think it's very, very important to understand that alignment, especially between, as you said, revenue, peoples are marketing, sales, and obviously, uh, [00:07:00] all the product and tech and and development.
I think that that misalignment is something that I see a lot lately as well. I think before we had that, but it wasn't so common to be building super cool products and keep building them. Cuz as you know, developers are very hard to get. So when you have some developers, you know, you, you wanna make them love their work.
So you want them to keep building cool stuff.
Marcus Cauchi: What I'm extracting from this is that there is no substitute from listening, speaking to your customers, speaking to your frontline staff. That's where your product will will evolve. That's how you get close alignment with your customer and that's how you get everybody around the same purpose.
Would that be fair?
Tim Cakir: That is fair. I mean, you know, some people do user research. And I think the user research that is done is very minimal, right? The big companies, the good ones, the ones that are doing great, I think they are obsessed with the user's problem, and it's not about the solution. They're really [00:08:00] obsessed with the problem.
If you, if you do get obsessed with the problem, you will find better and better and better solutions all the time. But don't be obsessed with the first solution that you've ever taught about.
Marcus Cauchi: There are four rules when dealing with wicked, super complex problems. One, the first thing you try will fail. Your job- learn, capture the data, apply a rinse and repeat.
Second is that the rules change as you go. The third is that your stakeholders will differ. And the fourth is there are no perfect solutions, only imperfect outcomes. Now, those four laws are really powerful when you have them front and center.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: When you realize that you will fail, that the landscape will change, the players will change, the rules will change, um, and whatever you try, it's never gonna be a hundred percent.
Mm-hmm. And there's always room for improvement. And that allows you to create the kind of [00:09:00] culture where people are not afraid, uh, to fail. Where they are happy to take risks. They're not punished for making mistakes.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. But failing, failing is a very interesting conversation because, you know, uh, I think it was one of the first conversa, uh, first conference that I was in Spain when I moved here five years ago.
I said, I said to the audience, and I didn't know the culture, right? So it's a bit of a different culture. I said fail, fail quickly. And then at the end, we were having some beers, you know, those free beers in the conferences. And you know, that's why I go to conference or I speaks and somebody came to me, said, Tim, you just moved here,
as you mentioned. Here, we don't like to fail in Spain. I was like, okay, all right. That's, maybe I didn't make myself clear, right? Fail, but understand why you're failing. Make sure you're tracking why you're failing, right? You have to have a success indicator. And if you're not hitting that success indicator, that's when you're failing, right?
And understand exactly what is the failure, what is the point that you're failed? Because you don't wanna repeat that failing. Failing for the sake of failing is [00:10:00] not why we're doing this.
Marcus Cauchi: No, failure is your best teacher along with your customers. And the the challenge is that if you don't understand that and you punish failure, then people will stop taking risks and you'll stop innovating.
Tim Cakir: I would like to give a, uh, example in one company there was the failure of the month's poster, and actually the person who failed the biggest in that month would get a bottle of champagne and they was celebrated at the end of the month. And I love that. I absolutely love that. You know, that gave you reasons to fail and reasons to try new things, right?
And everybody was trying new cool, cool ideas, cool features, cool ways of selling, marketing will try new messaging, new ads, new campaigns. And those failures got better and better and better and bigger and bigger every time. And it was just, it was just incredible. I wish that every company could do that. Failure of the month.
Marcus Cauchi: Absolutely. And I, I can't stress enough how important that is, but I, I think it's coupled with this other issue that many people don't know what they can't see. They are [00:11:00] mired in blind spots and because they've tended to recruit in their own image, only weaker, those blind spots get reinforced. They don't get removed.
And so there's a really strong argument. To very early on start recruiting people who are not like us. One, one of the lessons that I've learned along the way is that diverse teams of people focused on the same problem tend to come up with massively more creative solutions than people who live in your echo chamber or, uh, who are very similar.
You know, it's all very well hiring people of different ages and races and demographics, but if all of them read politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford, you don't have a homo, uh, you don't have a diverse group, you got homogenous group. And it's really important to involve people outside of the revenue operation as [00:12:00] well, in my experience. You definitely need to involve customers, especially customers who are pissed off.
Tim Cakir: Yep.
Marcus Cauchi: If you wanna speed up your product development cycle by 600%, speak to unhappy customers. You need to speak to the people who are at the sharp end. Sales, operations, customer success, and hear what they are hearing.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: In an unfiltered format. Then you have to look at the input that other people can uh, bring, such as product development, finance, marketing, and part of the problem is that most organizations operate in these silos. So what do you do to break down those silos within an organization quickly so that they can start to collaborate?
Tim Cakir: I'd like to answer that. But first I'd, I'd love to agree with you first of all, and, and I think that we all get tunnel vision automatically, right? Even if we don't [00:13:00] want to, that, that will happen. And as you said, if we hire the same people, that means that we're looking at the problem from the same angle and we actually want people to look from different angles, and this is why culture, diversity, age, as you said, these are very important things to be able to look from different angles.
I think to not fall into that, definitely recruitment is important, but after you've recruited, it's really making decisions together, right? So collective intelligence, as I call it, is very important. And I think that we are not doing that enough, right? We've seen this even in politics, obviously, between countries with, with the pandemic as well.
We haven't collectively got together and, and figure out the problem, right? Instead, everybody tried to tackle it on their own way. And this happens in companies, a director of a department will try to tackle that problem from their own way. As you said. If it's a marketing, they'll tackle their problem.
Why don't you ask that problem to the product team, to the engineering team, to the sales team, and to the customer service team. What they will say, will ver impress you, right? And, and when you put these different people looking from different departments, different teams, different [00:14:00] backgrounds, whatever, right?
You put them collectively and everybody starts, you know, understanding the challenge there, that there is in front. The ideas that come to the table, I think are super innovative. And I think that's, that's where we're missing innovation because we wanna look at it from the angle that we're, we're, we're in.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay, so we've dealt with dealing with misalignment, we've addressed speaking to and addressing the blind spots. Mm-hmm. Let's talk about measurement. Cause one of the things that baffles me absolutely fucking crazy is the amount of energy and effort that's put on producing reports. That report on stuff over which you have zero control.
What the fuck is going on there?
Tim Cakir: Marcus it was the other day I think that, um, one of the CMO that I'm, I'm, I'm coaching this or advising the CMO and not the CEO. Usually I'm [00:15:00] with the CEO, I come in to help the CEOs, but I was with the CMO and the CMO said, it takes us a whole day before that presentation to prepare a report that we all know, all these metrics, the department knows, but the CEO's asking for this.
I was like, Oh, okay. Can that not be automated? They're like, yeah, absolutely. It could be automated. Then I spoke to the CEO this year. I said, I'd love to see these metrics. I'm like, okay. You love to see it. The CMO and the marketing team doesn't love to see it. They know it day in, day out. Why do they have to prepare a whole day, a report, a presentation to you to show these metrics?
How, how many people
Marcus Cauchi: in the department are involved in preparing that report?
Tim Cakir: I think there's about six or seven people in that marketing department.
Marcus Cauchi: They've lost six to seven man-days.
Tim Cakir: Exactly. Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: The producer report to satisfy the ego of the CEO.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. That, how,
Marcus Cauchi: How does he use that data?
Tim Cakir: I love that you said the ego.
It's absolutely the ego. And you could just automate that, put it on Slack or, or whatever tool you're using. So that this,
How does he use that data once he's got it?
Marcus Cauchi: How, how does he use that data once he's got it?
Tim Cakir: Well, he, well basically he, he [00:16:00] understand what marketing is doing. It's a bit of a micromanagement in my opinion, all right. And then he, he, he thinks that he's gonna find new ways of doing things that the marketing department is doing and he's able to forecast problems.
So I do agree with certain things that, uh, that the CEO mentioned, right? Uh, of forecasting some of the problems cause he knows the company cry inside out. Um, but I think that we forget on the human time, as you mentioned, we forget about letting people do things that it's not relevant to them at the moment.
Right? Relevant to them, it's one of the metrics that they're working on.
Marcus Cauchi: Well, that's 84 mandates he loses every year. If we look at the marketing department and the revenue they're meant to, or the value they're meant to add
Tim Cakir: Yep.
Marcus Cauchi: Per day.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
How much would one person in the marketing department be expected to add?
Marcus Cauchi: How much would one person in the marketing department be expected to add?
Tim Cakir: How much on value you mean? Or, I think it's, they're they're, they're tracking on leads, let's say. Right? So let's say that you're in a real estate portal. You're expected to be able to, as [00:17:00] a marketing team, bring 1,000 leads a day in this thing. Right?
Marcus Cauchi: Right. Well, that's costing him 74,000 leads.
Tim Cakir: Wow. Yeah. That's, that's great.
I didn't even look at it like that way, Marcus. So I, I'm definitely getting back to him over those numbers.
Marcus Cauchi: Well, I mean, 7 x 12 is 70, 84.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Uh, sorry. It's 84,000 leads.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: My mistake, my math isn't very good. It just strikes me that the metrics that executives are asking for are principally lagging or vanity metrics.
Yep. And once they're in, there's nothing that you can do about it. I, I'm only really interested in the leading indicators. Yes. I want to know the, the, the lagging indicators.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Um, but I can't do anything with that. All that tells me is how far I've come.
Tim Cakir: I think what happened is this, you remember we had this data-driven ar, uh, era.
Everybody wanted to be data-driven and they didn't realize that data-driven didn't mean to be data [00:18:00] informed, as you said. Right? So, so leading indicators are important, but we should have a north star, which should have a metric that actually we care about. And this metric can change at different timeframes.
This can change every quarter. It's okay that you change this, a north metric, a yearly, quarterly. It is okay.
Marcus Cauchi: That's interesting. Okay. Because. I want to know stuff that I can do something about as a manager or a leader.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: I don't want to know what has happened. I want to know what is going to happen.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: And are we in the right trajectory?
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Are we moving at the right velocity? If either of those come back as a no, I want to know why, what's causing it and how to fix it.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
As an advisor to these early stage tech scale ups, what are the metrics that they, absolutely across the board, they absolutely have to track?
Marcus Cauchi: So, as an advisor to these early stage tech scale ups, what are the metrics that they, absolutely, across the board, they absolutely have to [00:19:00] track?
Tim Cakir: I think definitely is the happiness of the customers, NPS, customer reviews, that that should be your gold, right? Because if you make a mistake with one customer, that's it, right? You're gonna lose other customers. Cuz now we're so vocal as a customer, as a user, we have so many options. So we will talk about it.
We will go on trust pilot or wherever, and we will talk about this, and that's where you're gonna start losing. So be obsessed with the happiness of the customer first. I think that should be your, not even your north star, that should be, that should be almost your religion, right? That should be that, okay, are my cu customers use this, whatever you wanna call them, and I don't even like the word uses, right?
That they should be happy, right? If you, if you get obsessed about that anyways, then your, your true nor uh, true north star or north star metrics can change, as we mentioned at, at a given timeframe, right? You could say, okay, MRR is important a certain time, right? Because you might wanna go for investment, you wanna live right?
You wanna be able to pay your employees, you wanna be able to keep innovating. You need the money. So if you're gonna go for investment, investors are not gonna look sadly just at the [00:20:00] customer happiness. They're gonna look at MRR or ARR, right? Monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue, right?
Especially in subscription businesses. Cuz I work a lot with subscription businesses, right? Some, some, like as we mentioned, real estate portals. They don't even have to look at monthly recurring revenue, right? They have to look at leads created, right? Because they're passing the leads onto real estate agents, right?
So revenue for them is not, it's not their first thing to look at, but more the leads they create for these agencies, for these, uh, for these agents are what's important for them. So I think that it changes really from, from the industry and even changes, uh, the product, the service that you're giving. But one common factor is always to track the happiness of, of your user, your customer, the person who comes to your website or to your platform.
Marcus Cauchi: I agree with you in principle.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Customer success formula
Marcus Cauchi: I've, I, I read a really interesting study that Salesforce, and in fact they launched it on the podcast last December, [00:21:00] and they've come up with a new definition of customer success, which is a formula.
Tim Cakir: Okay.
Marcus Cauchi: Which is customer success equals customer outcomes over customer experience plus employee experience and the outcomes are more heavily weighted toward the experiences and the employee experiences.
The critical factor there.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: If you got pissed off employees, the experience of the customer will definitely suffer.
Tim Cakir: Hundred percent. Hundred
Marcus Cauchi: And and engagement of employees. There was a study of the S and P 500 done between 2010 and 2016, and they found highly engaged employees generate 430% higher profit per employee.
130% revenue per employee, 40% lowest staff turnover, 20% higher daily productivity and compound year on year share price growth of [00:22:00] 316% higher than the rest of the S and P 500.
Tim Cakir: Well, at the end of the day, your employee are the ones who are actually gonna make the customers happy. So if they're sad that day, and if they're having a bad day because of their work, because the culture's bad in the company, right?
Obviously that's gonna, that's gonna go on the customers and customers are gonna be unhappy because of that employee's experience as well. So I think you're absolutely right, and I think that there is a lot of tech companies right now working on HR, employee experience and all that. But I think what you said about Salesforce is new, uh, way of defining that.
I think that's super exciting. Uh, I'm gonna research that a bit more.
Marcus Cauchi: I'll, I'll send you the study.
Tim Cakir: Please, because, uh, I have actually a very good buddy of mine, uh, actually he's my neighbor. Uh, he'll be very happy that I mentioned him as well. Actually, he's working for a very cool company, and I can even mention it.
It's called Miros. And what they do is basically you can search into, to QA, right? So you can, you can look at all the tickets of your customer agents, right? And their, their, their, their service, their platform is for a [00:23:00] thousand plus, uh, agents, sometimes for one of the, like the biggest companies, uh, that we're talking about.
And what they're doing is basically with AI and machine learning to be able to tag certain tickets, certain things, and understand what is the sentiment of, of the users, right? And being able to understand which employees are given the best answers, the bit best results. Why is it the wording? Is it, is it the speed?
Is it what they do? And trying to repeat that across oth the other agents. It's an amazing technology and I think that there is some other companies doing, uh, similar stuff, and I think that this is gonna keep growing on how can we understand what is our, uh, support doing that is good? What are they doing that is bad?
And, you know, to fix the bad and to amplify the good. I think, I think this is something is gonna grow and growing.
Marcus Cauchi: I think there are a couple of things that we really need to look at. We know that there are happy customers who leave vendors all the time because vendors have forgotten that customers do not buy [00:24:00] their product or service ever.
They never have and they never will. Or they pay for they rent outcomes. And unless the emphasis is on focusing on the customer's outcome first, then chances are you will suffer from churn. And the metric that, uh, Salesforce recommends is replacing NPS with TTV, time to value.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Marcus Cauchi: So how quickly does the customer achieve their intended outcome?
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: How quickly do they get their money back? When does it become net zero cost? How quickly can you eliminate the thing that they wanted to eliminate or get them to the place where they wanted to? Because I, I have bought all sorts of stuff, but I've never, I, I realize now, you know, if I'm hiring, I don't care about making a hire.
[00:25:00] I don't want recruitment. What I want is someone who will succeed in the role and stay. Yeah. Yeah. So I now work with a couple of recruitment partners and we've changed the model. So we pay them a monthly retainer to help us build our bench, cuz that's my long-term candidate pipeline.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: And I only want to hire A players.
Because I don't wanna hire a C minus.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Um, because I'm just gonna have a management problem down the road. I want someone who will succeed and I want them to stay because I know that for the roles that I'm hiring, on average, it will take them three years to hit their full stride. So the way we have, uh, structured the fees as we pay them a monthly retainer to build a bench, and we pay them over market rate on the entire package, not just the basic salary, but we pay that over [00:26:00] 24 months in monthly installments, cuz now the recruiter has an incentive to stay in contact and to let us know if the candidate or the new hire isn't happy.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. I love that. Cuz right now yeah, agencies are really working in a, in a very weird way, which is 15, 20% after six months if the, if the employee stays there right. On their yearly salary. And it's like, okay. And what happens after that six months? A lot of people are changing companies. I think what you said was, well,
21% new hires leave within 42 days
Marcus Cauchi: 42% of new hires leave, uh, sorry, 21% new hires leave within 42 days.
Tim Cakir: Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: I, I, I don't want people turning, uh, churning. I want,
Tim Cakir: You're onboarding your time. There's so much time that your efforts are gonna give, uh, to these people as well.
Marcus Cauchi: Well, the 42 days is the best part of two calendar months.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. If I lose one six of my sales selling time, that's expensive on a [00:27:00] 1.2 million target, that means I've lost, uh, what is it, 200,000.
It's a hidden cost. It doesn't appear on my balance fee, but that's fucking expensive every time.
Tim Cakir: It is. And this is why I really do wanna amplify here. What you said, I think is renting the outcome. Right. And I really like that. It's, I think, I think it's super important to think about it like that and, and not buying the product, not buying the service.
Cuz we do have a lot of options. And I think as employees as well, they have a lot of options, right? There is so many companies out there, there is so many jobs out there actually. Um, you know, especially in the tech world, in, in the services world that we're talking about, that they are digital and this is why they want the user.
Uh, so the, the customer and the other, the, the, the employee, they can, they can leave, they can go whenever they want. But how do you keep them right? Is it, is it, how do you keep them? I think it's super important and that's believing in something as well.
Marcus Cauchi: Gartner, uh, released a study about a month ago saying over 40% of the US workforce intends to change their job in the [00:28:00] next 12 months. Think about that. That's the collapse of the US economy.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. But that's gonna come anyways at some point. But
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. But I mean, just think about it, over 40% of all the employees in your country looking to change their role.
Tim Cakir: That's bad.
Marcus Cauchi: That's a terrifying,
Tim Cakir: That's really bad. That is really bad. And, and, and they change. And then, and as you said, you know, the onboarding and being able to be at your peak, understanding the product, understanding the customers and so on, that takes time. It's not the day that you arrive or, you know, we do onboardings three months and we expect everybody to be up and running in three months.
Yes, they're up and running, but they're not gonna give their best yet. Right? And their best is really understanding in and out the product, the solution, understanding the problem as well of the users, what they're looking for as sprint.
Marcus Cauchi: I, I, I wanted to build on that. Einstein said something, uh, else very profound.
Which is, so I spend [00:29:00] 95% of my time on the problem.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: 25% on the solution. You touched on that earlier. And what flabbergast me is how much time people spend on solutioning without really understanding the problem and the implications, the people, the cast of characters, the, uh, timing, the emphasis.
These are complex problems and they warrant more than just simply trying to do a cookie cutter solution, um, or coming up with a fix quickly. I think part of the problem is that so many executives in business have this, you know, rush gene. They're, they're always looking for the quick, easy fix. I, I don't think there is.
I mean, I, I, I always brand myself as being intelligently lazy. You will be hard pushed to find someone who will do less for a living than me, but the work that I do, I do intensely. So that when I'm in front of a customer, I've [00:30:00] gotta do next to no work.
Tim Cakir: Right. Cause you love what you're doing as well I bet you.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. That, I mean, that definitely helps, but I, I want to have done all the prep work.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Before I turn up and I want to have done my research, I want my questions ready. I want to know where I'm likely to find a rich vein to tap. I want to understand what the competitive landscape for me looks like for them, all that kind of stuff.
I can't do that if I'm trying to speak to 10,000 people on my database.
Tim Cakir: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Cuz you bring custom solutions as well. You don't bring generic solutions. And that's exactly why I don't work more, more than three to five customs at a given time.
Marcus Cauchi: Right. But this is the mistake people make.
Everything you sell is bespoke.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, it should be. And everybody goes generic. I've tried this. Yeah. Everybo, everybody goes, I've tried this before. It works, so let me sell you this. No. Everything has to be custom made for that, for that problem, for that solution. Right? And and just going back to what you said about the problem, [00:31:00] 95% Einstein was thinking about the problem.
And it's not just about think thinking the problem, but we have to be so obsessed that we have to also think about the frequency of the problem. Right?
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. How many times the users have
Marcus Cauchi: Relevance.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, relevance, frequency. And, and we don't, we don't think about this. We don't think about it sadly. I think that's, we, we have to start thinking about, you know, we have to put ourself in the shoes of the user for sure.
And we are, we are consumers ourselves. Even if we're doing anything B2B, at the end of the day, we are consumers. In our outside work and we can see these problems happening to ourselves. And we really have to understand these problems before we try to bring anything to the table. And I think that people build solutions and they're like, here's the solution.
It's like, no, no, no. Please, test even that, test that solution, test that mvp. You know? And you know, we were very obsessed about MVPs, but I think that, I think we've still,
Marcus Cauchi: If for anyone who doesn't know, that's minimum viable product.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. And, and we still haven't even understood [00:32:00] how to do that cuz we're like, okay, uh, you know, we, we, we've done the minimum viable product.
We've tested it for three months, that's it. Let's, we've built the solution, let's go. And then they stop testing it. Right? And they, they just, they just build on top of it. And then what happens is that three years later your company closes, or, or, or bankrupt.
Marcus Cauchi: My friend Jerry Lamberg was the first investor in Apple and in Microsoft, uh, he was one of the original founders of Intel.
Or he claimed. And Jerry went into venture capital quite early in his career. He said, he described entrepreneurs as people who produce elegant solutions to problems that don't exist. And I think really important, your baby, let's be honest, is fucking ugly. It came out looking like a squashed rat. It whales, it shits, it vomits constantly.
That's what your baby is. Do not think of it as the most beautiful thing on the planet. You need to find a way to make it fit for purpose. Your [00:33:00] customer is the only determinant of that. You may have a great idea. Uh, did did you know 40% of service desk tickets occur because engineers built the product?
Tim Cakir: Makes sense.
Marcus Cauchi: They didn't speak to a user.
Tim Cakir: Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: Now this is why I think that there, there is something grotesquely wrong. Whilst it's important that we meet our team, I mean, what's more important is to have outsiders come in and work with us.
Tim Cakir: Yep.
Marcus Cauchi: I don't think for, for sales, the sales meetings should never, ever, ever be a pipeline review meeting.
That is the kiss of death. You've got 10 salespeople listening to 9 other people lie about what's in their fictional forecast. Utterly fucking pointless. Yeah. Every sales meeting should be a learning opportunity. You should be bringing in externals people who are directly or indirectly [00:34:00] affected. You should bring customers in and they should tell you the unvarnished, unfiltered truth.
Other parts of your business need to know how the work that you are doing in marketing or sales is affecting everybody else. Operations, for example, is almost never involved in sales meetings. Customer success is brought in after they've made the sale. You've got leadership who almost never speak to customers.
Why?
Tim Cakir: It's absolutely ridiculous, and this is why I think that now slowly these department things are, I think they're slowly changing, right? We don't do departments, but we do what I call them myself, squads or some called the tribes or whatever.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.
Tim Cakir: Right? It's little squad where you have the cross skill team, right?
You have to have somebody from marketing, somebody from sales, somebody from product, somebody from customers.
Marcus Cauchi: You're actually seeing that in the real world.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. It's happening very little because I push it as well with my clients, and suddenly some of my clients, they say, okay, yeah, they can act like that 25% of their time.
I'm like, all [00:35:00] right, okay. That's, that's, that's better than, that's better than nothing. Right? So right now I'm actually building a growth squad for, uh, for one of my clients. And I've done this a a few times, and the clients that has done that, they've, they've grown, right? So I think the growth squad, as I call it, the cross skill team, uh, the collective intelligence, being in the same room is key, is key.
And, and I, I do urge everybody to start thinking about that, you know? And please do not give sales a quarter and say, all right, this is your quarter, and just work on your own sales. No. Right? And don't just give commissions to your, to your, to your sales, and not to your marketing team. Everybody, I think we should be accountable for the same things, or should be.
Marcus Cauchi: I, I'm with you a hundred percent. I, I interviewed a really fascinating guy called Alfie Cone. He wrote a book called Punished by Rewards, strong, strong recommend, and he is written another one on competition. We, we hold up to, you know, as a almost a, you know, a golden idol, the idea of competition, but [00:36:00] competition actually diminishes discretionary effort for the majority of people.
It might work for one person who's always at the top of the leaderboard.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Everyone else thinks it's just not fucking worth it. Tim's gonna win the bass speakers again.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. And you've got to really, really think about how do we compensate everybody? Alfie Cohen, um, has a really strong case.
He's done a meta study of all the research that was available to him on rewards recognition, compensation. Okay. And as a result of that, that research suggests that rewards systems diminish discretionary effort. It turns interesting work from play into work.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, for me, I think it's suddenly going away from being collective, right?
Because what we [00:37:00] say about collective intelligence, and I, and I, and I keep repeating that it's actually a team getting together to, to solve things and to do things. But when you say a leaderboard, as you mentioned, right? There is a leader and then there is the rest. And that's where the problem starts happening.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.
Tim Cakir: You're not a team anymore. You are not a team anymore. You're an individual
Marcus Cauchi: Absolutely.
Tim Cakir: Who has to go get that money because you want the money. We all need money. Yes. Let's accept that. Right? But together we are stronger and we forget this all the time. Cuz we, I mean, I think the whole, the whole, the whole system is built on, on selfishness and individual individualism.
So I
Marcus Cauchi: Absolutely
Tim Cakir: That needs to change. Right? And I don't expect everybody to change it. Uh, but to the companies who actually do change it and build a culture and a growth mindset and not a static mindset in their companies, I think they are the companies who are ahead and they're doing great things.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. Well let, let's just move on a little bit.
What should people not waste their time tracking?
Marcus Cauchi: What, what should people not waste their time tracking?
Tim Cakir: I think, [00:38:00] which, which sales brings how much money directly. Right. Instead, which team work together on bringing that customer and making it happy and they stay, as you said, so that it's like rented, rented outcome.
I think we need to track that instead of, oh, you brought this month, uh, 1,500, uh, MRR, right? Great. Okay. Here is your extra bonus. I think that that is terrible. I absolutely find that terrible. That creates, that, that bad competition, first of all. So I think we should not track that. Uh, we shouldn't track the vanity metrics as we mentioned.
You know, uh, who cares how many, how many users I had on my site if I haven't solved their problem. Right? You'll have still some CMOs, some marketing, um, heads of marketing that will track that. If you're tracking that, that means that that's a leading indicator for another metric, please, you know, make sure that you have something else in mind.
Um, so these are some of the things that in the beginning that comes to my head, but again, I think it's very, very, very [00:39:00] specific to what you do and not just to the industry even.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. And in terms of the information that genuinely matters,
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: For an early stage startup scale up business, what, what, what do they really need to be capturing insight and information on?
Tim Cakir: Well, what they have to be capturing, uh, I think it's, first of all, the problem, right? The frequency of the problem, how the problem happened, how that problem was solved. When was it solved, how was it solved and what was the outcome? And I think you, you said, was it TTV time to value? I think, I think that that's an incredible one, right?
Uh, I never thought about it like that. Uh, I think that TTV is super important, maybe not NPS, but is, you know, you do 14 day trials or whatever, which I think is, is terrible. What if I didn't have the time? You're putting pressure on me and so on. I think trials are terrible. I think that you should have a premium model or you should do great demos, right?
Forget about trials. But if you do that, that trial, you know, when did you solve that [00:40:00] problem? Did, did you have to go one week trying to integrate things and really solving a little bit of the problem? Or the first day, did I solve my problem with your solution, with your service, with your product? I think that's what we need to track.
I don't know exactly how, uh, you would put that in metrics. Certain companies put it in different ways, but you know, sometimes you, you need, um, you know, you need the, the hot jars like it's a recording of the sessions. You know, you, you need behavior analytics. You need to understand how people behave on your, on your platform, on your product.
And you will see that different, different users or different, uh, customers will fix their problem in different ways with your one solution. Right? And, and tracking that it's still very difficult. Uh, Marcus, I'm not saying this is easy at all, so it's not that suddenly, um, everybody will be able to track that, but there are so many, uh, tools out there, uh, that, you know, you just have to, you, you have to go a little bit with your guts, and you have to understand. Because if you start understanding [00:41:00] your product, your problem, your solution, so on, your gut feeling is gonna be sometimes even stronger than what the data says. Right? And this is why, as mentioned before, I prefer my approach that I'm doing lately.
It's to be data informed, right? I still put a bit of emotion on decision making, right? At the end of the day, we're all humans and, uh, our customers are humans, right? If we, if we think about them just as numbers, I think this is what's happened to the world. We're becoming robotic.
Marcus Cauchi: Well, what that does is it creates, um, a condition where people don't feel valued.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Exactly.
Marcus Cauchi: And they just feel like a cog in the machine.
Tim Cakir: It's just your money that I value, it's, I want your money, Marcus. That's it. I don't care about you. I don't care about your,
Marcus Cauchi: This is where, again, I'm not entirely sure I agree with a hundred percent that individual compensation needs to be eradicated, [00:42:00] but the way I'm looking at it, the moment, cause I'm building six sales teams at the moment, and the way I'm looking at the compensation is, we pay a tiny amount for the new logo with, which is the entire antithesis.
Tim Cakir: You mean a new logo as a customer that came in, right?
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. Yeah. So never worked with them before. Completely greenfield, win that logo that you get paid a little bit for
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: You get paid a lot for when consumption goes above 80% of the users. Okay. When adoption goes above 80 or 90% of the users, you get paid a shitload when the customer reports back and gives a testimonial.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: To the effect that we achieved our desired outcome.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: You get paid a lot for cross sells and upsells and you get paid a huge amount for the third renewal. Because I, I'm not interested in a short term customer.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: I don't wanna [00:43:00] have to go out and start my business afresh every month. Um, when I teach my people to prospect, they're prospecting for a customer who will be a customer in 5, 10, 15 years time.
I would rather they didn't take the business, even if they could make the sale, if it's just gonna be a one off. I'd rather they spent that time going out and finding a 15 year customer for life.
Tim Cakir: I completely agree, but again, it's very sales specific, right? And, and I think as, as the person that you mentioned, I think again, when we do that, I think we're very thinking about individualism again and individual compensation.
So, I'm trying things right now, which I'm trying to, to, to, to build a framework.
Marcus Cauchi: Let, let, let me just qualify that.
Tim Cakir: Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: When the customer achieves their outcome, everyone on the team,
Tim Cakir: Ah, okay.
Marcus Cauchi: Marketing, customer success, sales, operations gets paid a shit load of cash.
Tim Cakir: This is why it should be little squads, right?
There should be a little squad of a sales guy, a marketing guy, and so on, and they should have their own niche they're targeting, [00:44:00] uh, with their squad or, or something like that. Cuz then that makes sense, right? And you could, you could bring that marketing can help bring that customer sales can close it.
Customer support can make sure that that's going really well and together they'd be able to share that compensation that I agree with.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.
Tim Cakir: What I agree with. Right? But I'm testing so like even newer things as. Okay, that's your day-to-day work, Marcus. Right? You have to go get customers, you have to bring new logos, you have to close deals, but how can you innovate more?
How can you bring the company to the next stage? Right? What are the ideas that you bring to the table, right? What is your creativity? How do you think about things, right? So I'm trying something that I call the GCO. It's, uh, still early days. Um, you know, it's goals, challenges and opportunities. It's a little bit, I think it's, uh, I wanna, I, I don't wanna say this, but I'm gonna say it, it should be like OKRs, V2, right?
Why? Cause OKRs is really specific on objectives and key results. But I wanna also get obsessed about, you know, the blockers, the challenges. What are those [00:45:00] challenges to get to those goals and results. And then I wanna see the creativity of my team. I wanna see the creativity of my sales guys, of my customer support, of my marketing.
What are the opportunities that they're bringing to the table? What are the ideas that they're bringing to the table? How do they do ideation? You know, how do they together find new ways of doing better?
Marcus Cauchi: I agree. I think we waste so much energy by putting people into silos. And what's really interesting is in Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith talked about creating that pin factory, but near the end he says he thinks it's a really bad idea.
So one person hammers out the wire, another one sharpens it, another one straightens it, another one, uh, bangs out the head of the pin, another one glues the pin together, another one polishes it. Well, the last 200 to 300 years has dehumanized work and the sales operation, particularly the last 40 years, has become the [00:46:00] pin factory.
Yep. And as a result, I don't, because I, I, I have a theory. That the trend will be to move away from that specialization and we will see a big growth in 360 selling.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: So they will be responsible for the wholesale throughout and managing the relationship going on forward.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Now, you can't do that with what passes for great.
In modern selling. What passes for great is a lone wolf, individual contributor, highly competitive, highly money-motivated, and high, uh, high will to win.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Have you ever been sold to by someone who is really motivated purely by money?
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. Now, have you ever been sold to by someone who is really motivated purely by money?
Tim Cakir: Mm, not really. I think, I think I, I get sold a lot. I'm a quite easy sell actually, but if the person really understands me and connects with me and I will see that they really care about my problem, and then I even buy it [00:47:00] if, if even for a certain amount of time just to test that thing, you know?
But as I said,
Marcus Cauchi: You're answering a different question from what I asked. Um, uh, the question I asked is, when you are facing a seller who is selfishly self orientated
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Motivated by how much money they can take out your pocket, how disinclined are you to, uh, to buy from?
Tim Cakir: Well, I don't. I actually don't.
Marcus Cauchi: Exactly.
Tim Cakir: Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: Now there are plenty of people in sales who are very successful doing that, but their model is one where they throw the problem over the fence to the CS people or operations, and they don't care if it churns.
Tim Cakir: It's the hot potato, that's what I call it, right? The hot potato. Here. I close this client, but here the hot potato customer support you deal with it.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah, you deal with it there. There's six months worth of stuff that I lied about that isn't on the, isn't available at the moment. And it may or may not ever happen and I exaggerated this, but [00:48:00] it's your problem. Fuck off.
Tim Cakir: I had a team of 17 salespeople and they were all sitting in two desks, like two massive desks.
And the customer support was at the end of, uh, the room, right. Or, um, in our office, in a, in a physical office. And I realized this, and I called it the, the, you know, we called it the hot potato. Is that right? As you said, they're lying, they're bullshitting. They're like, okay. You know, uh, yeah, yeah, we we're gonna have that feature, or we have it.
Don't worry. That's coming soon. You know, just whatever to close the deal because they wanna be on that leader board and because they get more money and so on, on their commission
Marcus Cauchi: And they wanna keep their job
Tim Cakir: E exactly. Right? And, and then the customer supports. I've had customer support agents even cry, to be honest with you.
You know, they're like, why, why do I have this account? We've lied to this account. Right? So what we've done really, Marcus, is to put them together, put them to sit together, one sales, one customer support, started to sit together, close the same clients, and keep the same clients. That has completely changed, that, that changed then I remember that really, really well. And I think that [00:49:00] better sales happen. Better sales happen.
Marcus Cauchi: We, we, we've made, uh, I, I made a conscious decision within my companies that unless CS signs off on a deal, sales can't sell it. That's perfect. And it is created a certain amount of friction and pushback, but I do not wanna sell something we cannot deliver.
It's just crazy.
Tim Cakir: But that customer support agent also has to speak to the client to see what they were promised, not just in the contract.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. They're, they're in the first or second meeting.
Tim Cakir: Exactly. Then, then it makes sense. Then it makes sense. I like that. I think, I think this is definitely a problem.
You know, it's sales directors and then you know, they think about just sales as well. You know, let's not think about just sales, let's think about the company. Let's think about that problem. Let's think together.
Marcus Cauchi: Well, let's think about the customer. Don't start with the customer. If the customer isn't at the heart of every single decision that you make, then chances are you're fucking up.
Cuz the customer doesn't care about your target, your quota, your mortgage, you making payroll. They care [00:50:00] about all of their problems and you are at best an interruption to their day. Once you've become their partner.
Tim Cakir: Yeah partner
Marcus Cauchi: And that there in lies a huge difference. Cuz you have suspects, prospects, customers, clients, and partners.
If you don't make yourself your customers' partner, then I think you're missing a really important part of the equation. You know, everyone talks about becoming a trusted advisor, all that kinda stuff. I say bollocks to that.
Making Channel Sales Work
Marcus Cauchi: When I wrote Making Channel Sales Work, we defined a partner, uh, partners as people who help each other get better.
That's the kind of symbiotic relationship vendors need with their customers. We help them get better in their business and in turn they teach us how to produce better products to help them get better still. And that's what I'm looking for from my salespeople, but that's what I'm looking for from my channel and [00:51:00] strategic Alliance partners.
Mm-hmm. I don't want another customer. I want partners.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. I lo I love partners much better. But isn't it, isn't it why? I think now the line between marketing, sales and so on is, is is really blurring and this why
Marcus Cauchi: It's always been blurred. It's just that there, there was this ludicrous false distinction.
Anything that touches the customer is marketing. We are the point in sales where our marketing touches the customer in person.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: That's it. As far as the customer's concerned, sales, marketing, operations, finance, IT. They're all your company. They don't care.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, they don't care.
Marcus Cauchi: They want, they want shit to work,
Tim Cakir: Isn't it why though, I think that this new growth, growth roles are coming, everything growth, right? You have product-led growth, sales-led growth, you have whatever-led growth.
Marcus Cauchi: He's growth officer.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. Everything is becoming growth, right? I was actually a chief growth officer at some point. You know, it was, it was just trendy and I wanted that on my CV, you [00:52:00] know?
But I think that this is why the idea of departments, I think this was created, you know, in the industrial industrial age, we say we're in the internet age, that industrial age is gone. I don't agree because we still work the same way that we work in the industrial age, as you mentioned,
Marcus Cauchi: Nothing's changed.
Tim Cakir: Exactly.
Marcus Cauchi: But the reality is that what's changed is the technology.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, that's it. And then we call it internet age. But no, we're still working the same way. We need to change Marcus. We need to change how we work, right? We need,
Marcus Cauchi: Well, human beings haven't changed one iota.
Tim Cakir: Mm.
Marcus Cauchi: And this is where the problem is because management hasn't really shifted.
Its thinking in terms of the context in which customers operate in which we operate. I look at the, uh, the incredible explosion of truly stunning, amazingly clever AI.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: And [00:53:00] that was never available to us before. We, we are now in a position with some of my partners. We can actually tell what a business to consumer, consumer will buy in nine months time.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: Where you stand on their, uh, their ladder of perception. So you might be the number six brand in their perception. And in nine months time, I know you are going to buy a car.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: And using the AI, I can help you to identify what your buying preferences are, what your journey will be, what the things are that will, uh, sh uh, gently nudge you to move from number five to number 4, 3, 2, 1, which offers I should present you with what language I should use, what imagery and videos I should use, and what sequence, what the choreography looks like with another piece of AI.
It's literally point and sheet. If you ask it the right [00:54:00] question, you point it towards a population. It can tell you with this, it's very, very clever, really simple concept. Do you know those 3D wireframe drawings?
Tim Cakir: Yep.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So if we imagine each population has a shape. Yep. Okay. So let's pretend Tim's customer has the shape of a spiky donut.
Tim Cakir: Okay.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. What I do, and I don't need to know any context, literally all I need is your linked the LinkedIn URL of your records in your C R m and the rest. I can then go out and find from public domain sources and pull back a list of people who look like a spiky donut. I've fit that. Yeah. I've fit that.
Right. And now I can give you those people and you can target those individuals. So out of a list of 10,267 are worth contacting.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: And if it takes me 50 touches. It's [00:55:00] worth doing 50 touches with them.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: At the moment, as an sdr, I go through my list of 10,000 from top to bottom. Now I go through them 3, 4, 5 times.
And then I say, Tim's not responding. I'm gonna drop him.
Tim Cakir: Yep.
Marcus Cauchi: But if Tim is someone who's got a score of 92%, it's worth me contacting you 50 times until eventually you crack.
Tim Cakir: Yeah. But also contact with value. Don't contact just because you wanna close me. Right? That's that.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. But it, it means that I can now focus my attention on doing the research
Tim Cakir: On the right person,
Marcus Cauchi: On the preparation, on delivering value.
Tim Cakir: But this is what's happening as well, Marcus, uh, on in marketing, right? We had these personas, and before personas were very demographics. Uh, then it became psychographics, right? And now we can actually understand these people even better with, as you said, with machine learnings and and so on. And, and really we can understand even if the demographics are the same, demographics are the same.
That doesn't mean the psychographics are the same at all. [00:56:00] Right? And if I psychographics are different, possibly I'm not gonna buy that product. I'm not gonna buy that service.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.
Tim Cakir: So we have to really dig into the person and understand how they behave, what are, what are they looking for, what's their personality and so on.
Marcus Cauchi: Perfect. Okay, look Tim, we've come to time now.
If you could go back in time and you could whisper in the ear of the idiot, Tim who was immortal, invulnerable, knew everything. What one bit of advice would you give him?
Marcus Cauchi: Tell me this, I mean, it's been really fascinating, so thank you. If you could go back in time and you could whisper in the ear of the idiot, Tim.
Tim Cakir: Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: Who was immortal, invulnerable, knew everything. What one bit of advice would you give him?
Tim Cakir: I just said this I think yesterday cuz I teach, I'm a professors at, uh, masters as well here in Barcelona and I told my students, I said, I wish that somebody told me this when I was your age.
And it was tracked the past order, the present designed the future. Right? It's because when I was that age, I never tracked any, all my past. I didn't write anything down. I didn't order what I had around, I didn't organize myself and I didn't design my future. I didn't, I just went for it. And, [00:57:00] and if I had done that, I think I would've been in a different place.
I'm not complaining. I'm very happy where I am, but I think that I could have been the next level. I could have been Tim, Tim 2.0, right? And, and not this version of Tim. And so I do recommend to everybody to really have a system, you know, have a system where you can track what you've done, what was the outcome, what you learn from it, what you learn.
We're learning every day. Oh, our brain is not made to store information. Our brain is made, uh, to make decisions. The cognitive power is not Dropbox. It's not a storage. It is a storage cloud. Don't, don't, don't put it inside your brain. Put it somewhere and start thinking about the next thing.
Marcus Cauchi: Excellent.
What are the books that, or podcast videos that you would recommend people really pay attention to if they wanna build a sustainable scale up in tech that has longevity that will survive?
Marcus Cauchi: Okay, so tell me this, what, what are the books that, or podcast videos that you would recommend people really pay attention to if they wanna build a sustainable scale up in tech that has longevity that will survive?
Tim Cakir: I think, I think if it's for founders, I think it's to at themselves [00:58:00] first and not just read business books, but read more things like Atomic Habits by James Clear, right?
Read things more like Essentialism by Greg McCune.
Marcus Cauchi: Brilliant books, both of them. Yeah.
Tim Cakir: So I think that it's looking at ourselves, being happy with ourselves, first of all, us being that culture that we wanna bring to the company. Cuz we always say, okay, we want to create this culture, but we are not that culture yet ourselves.
We have to lead by example. So I think anything around that. I also like the podcast of Scott Galloway cuz I,
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah, yeah. It's brilliant.
Tim Cakir: Yeah, I think I love the guy. I think he's crazy. And I love how, how, how he puts everything bluntly. I think that's awesome. And uh, I think also online, if you want to follow a blog or anything, I think First Round Review, first round.
I love what they write about this very specific, it's very, Uh, process driven, framework driven. And be obsessed with frameworks at first, and then adapt them to yourselves, you know, um, optimize them. Make sure that you [00:59:00] find a way of doing that framework in your company in your own way. Then I think you have the best information you can get.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm gonna add to that. Almost every business tries to go direct, and I'm gonna give you an apocryphal story. So one of your neighbors, a guy called Simon Severino, has eight employees, and last year he attracted five and a half thousand new customers, and he did so through strategic alliances and any tech startup or scale up should start with a channel model in mind or a strategic alliances model in mind. That would be my recommendation.
Tim Cakir: Mm-hmm.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm in the throes of writing a book on exactly the subject. In October, I plan to launch a mastermind group around strategic alliances. Uh, I look at someone like Tom Matson. He does well over a hundred million a year, all three strategic alliances, and I think it's him and an [01:00:00] uh, VA.
Tim Cakir: Exactly. I mean, that's what I was gonna say. You said eight people or you say, you know, it's incredible that you can do those numbers with just being that small team because of your alliances. Absolutely. I agree. I'd love to read the book when it's finished. Marcus.
Marcus Cauchi: Absolutely will do.
How can people get hold of you?
Marcus Cauchi: So how can people get hold of you?
Tim Cakir: My website, Tim Cakir, or Tim Cakir, as you mentioned, you said the right way, but I know that a lot of people says Cakir. So T I M C A K I R.com. Uh, I haven't used that today. You can subscribe to where uh, usually on Mondays I try to give you all the tips, tricks, what I've learned, uh, and obviously the same name, first name, last name on LinkedIn are the best ways to contact me and to find out what I'm doing, um, professionally and sometime I even share some personal thoughts.
Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. Tim Cakir. Thank you.
Tim Cakir: Thanks so much, Marcus. It was a pleasure.
Marcus Cauchi: So this is Marcus Cauchi signing off once again from the Inquisitor to podcast. If you found this useful and insightful, then please like, comment, share, and subscribe. And do someone a favor, tag them. Actually tag another [01:01:00] human being who would benefit from this conversation and invite them to, uh, participate.
Please get involved in the conversation as well. If you've got questions for Tim or for me, then pile 'em over. You know, we are very happy to engage and, uh, both of us are obsessed with helping people. Now, nothing gives me a greater thrill than hearing that my clients or listeners to the podcast have found it useful and they've been able to apply it for profit or, uh, personal advancement.
So do please get in touch, leave comments if you disagree with what we said. Tell us where our assholes. Perfectly happy with that. So in the meantime, stay safe and happy selling.
Bye-bye.