OutFoxed Ep. 4 - Mattias Liivak
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[00:00:00] James: This is Outfoxed, the podcast brought to you by Hunter.io. Get ready for no playbooks, no posturing, and no ego. This is for the builders, not the theorists. I'm your co-host, James Milsom, joined by Hunter CEO and Outfoxed co-host Matt Tharp, and this is Mattias Liivak. Welcome to the show, Mattias.
[00:00:20] Mattias: Hey, great to be here.
[00:00:21] Mattias: Thanks for inviting me.
[00:00:22] James: We are super thrilled to have you join us today to discuss your company ProcessPlot, the journey you've taken from PR consultant to VP of growth enablement and beyond, and the reality of what it takes to grow something that you're passionate about. But before we get into all of that, can you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your journey?
[00:00:41] Mattias: So I'm 38 years old. For the last 12, 13 years I've been in the IT industry in PR and marketing roles. Mostly in B2B, enterprise targeting organizations. Prior [00:01:00] to that, I worked for five years as a PR consultant. That got, really tiring in the end, so that's why I switched to IT. I think I'm a rare exception in terms of my career path, in the sense that I was for 10 years in the same organization called Fortumo.
[00:01:19] Mattias: So we did mobile, payments. Eventually we got, acquired, I stayed on at the company that acquired us for a couple of more years and then, took a career break, joined a circular technologies company called Foxway, where I'm still working part-time and in parallel, building ProcessPlot with my two, co-founders.
[00:01:46] Mattias: So I've never actually been in this, real sales or business development role. It's something that I now have had to pick up as one of the co-founders. Yeah, when I'm not building ProcessPlot, [00:02:00] and I have a 6-year-old daughter, so obviously that takes away a bit of my time. I have a 11-year-old Italian greyhound,
[00:02:11] Mattias: that takes a bit, of time. But, when I do have free time, then I do, Brazilian jiujitsu, and board games, pop quizzes, video games. So I'm kind of a, I guess a nerd at heart who tries to appear tough. So keeping this, balance between, nerdy hobbies and violence through wrestling.
[00:02:41] Mattias: It's a great way to make sure people throw the game to you in a board game, right? If they're knowing that, if they know that you're studying Brazilian jiujitsu and they don't wanna have to deal with that. What's your favorite board game?
[00:02:53] Mattias: I think Puerto Rico simply because it's one that I've played the most.
[00:02:59] Mattias: It's [00:03:00] like, simple and repeatable. So yeah, I think that has been around for, in our kind of group of friends for more than 10 years. And, we had, also like a five year campaign of this, Gloomhaven, which is this gigantic 20 kilogram box of 10,000 pieces that takes as much time to set up the game than to play it.
[00:03:28] Mattias: But it was really, really fun as well. So we completed this campaign, I think about a year or, yeah, about a year ago. Took us quite a while to get there, but it was fun.
[00:03:40] Matt: If you've never played James, Gloomhaven is an awesome game. You almost need to have though a room in your house where you can set it up and leave it, because if you have to set it up and take it down every time, like you'll never play, like that's, am I wrong, Mattias?
[00:03:54] Matt: Is that?
[00:03:55] Mattias: No, that's correct. That was the main blocker that you need, like, [00:04:00] six to eight hour time slot to commit to if you want to set it up every time. So it's, better to have a dedicated room for it.
[00:04:09] James: How do you find time to do Brazilian jiujitsu?
[00:04:11] Mattias: Not much. A couple of times per week and since I'm also 38 and I think that's kind of the upper limit of my, what my body can take because, yeah, I've been doing it for two and a half years now.
[00:04:24] Mattias: Fortunately the gym is quite close, so it's a couple of hours in the evening. But I've learned that it's kind of, it's good to kind of have this stress release there and just shut the brain off from everything else going on in the life. But, I really shouldn't push too far with it. So I tend to notice that if you go too frequently, the injuries start piling up.
[00:04:49] Mattias: So it's definitely not something that, if you do it at 20 versus if you do it at 40, it's kind of a different sport than how you, have to approach it.
[00:04:58] Matt: Do both your knees still [00:05:00] work?
[00:05:00] Mattias: Fortunately, yes, I've had one MCL injury, but it seems that even fortunately without surgery, it's kind of gone away.
[00:05:09] Mattias: So it's, I'm kind of viewing it in a positive way where something small is constantly breaking, then I go to a physiotherapist, they show me some exercises to do, and that gets added to the stack of, like, previous exercises that I already have to do to just keep the body running. But yeah, when I talk with my parents or somebody else as well, then I usually just ask them that, do you know any like 70, 80-year-old who doesn't have back problems, that doesn't have like, hip issues that it's eventually gonna get around to you anyway?
[00:05:44] Mattias: So I might as well already learn how to deal with those issues now, because they're gonna be there anyway at some point. So it doesn't really in the long term, matter that much.
[00:05:57] Matt: A very realist point of view on [00:06:00] injuries later in life. I guess that's a good thing to tell yourself to not keep you from doing Brazilian jiujitsu or something else.
[00:06:07] Matt: That's good.
[00:06:08] James: So you obviously got a lot going on Mattias. What's one thing that's been going on this week that's just a reality of what happens when you're trying to grow something like ProcessPlot?
[00:06:20] Mattias: Yeah. I think for me, at the kind of end of the, my role in, in my last organization, I kind of quite heavily burned out. and I learned from that if I want to do something sustainably in the future, I need to pace myself. And, there needs to be a balance between the career and everything else that's going on in the life.
[00:06:43] Mattias: I know this kind of sounds like this hippish, like this Eight Years in Tibet or whatever that movie was but I think it really is important to keep a balance. And, for that I try to like on a quarterly basis, [00:07:00] look at what I'm doing in life. What are the different routines I have, or habits, good habits, bad habits, how does my schedule look like, and do a self-assessment of am I in general feeling happy in life if I'm not feeling happy, which are the areas that are suffering and what can I add or remove from my, routine to make it better?
[00:07:27] Mattias: Just to have a little bit of this structure in the background where it would kind of put me mentally in a place where I'm able to focus on the things that I actually want to get done. So it's not, I'm definitely not like this. Get up at 4:00 AM go running, then do yoga, then listen to the podcast.
[00:07:45] Mattias: And by 8:00 AM you are like already done with half of the day when other people are waking up. I'm actually super lazy, but I've discovered that for me, this planning actually helps to be more lazy that I [00:08:00] really try to focus on the things that, as much as possible, give me energy rather than detract energy and to kind of figure out how to get rid or avoid the things that are kind of the energy drain.
[00:08:15] Mattias: So yeah, just in the beginning of this week I have a longer internal, monologue and planning session to figure my life out, which I try to do on a recurring basis.
[00:08:28] Matt: Nice. Is there anything that you've implemented that gives you energy that surprised you? Like you were, shocked that was the thing that ultimately gave you energy as opposed to take it away?
[00:08:39] Mattias: I think kind of physical activities, always these where, you are exhausted at the end of the day. Then you feel that, am I really going to now go into the gym or, yeah, to go and wrestle. And it's this continuous discovery again, that there's almost never a case where [00:09:00] you feel, bad after a workout.
[00:09:04] Mattias: So it's not necessarily that it's like too surprising, but it always seems like, or not always, but especially if you're tired, it seems like this extra effort. But then I try to constantly remind myself that, yeah, there's almost never a case where I come out of the gym and, I think that, oh, this was like a very bad decision.
[00:09:24] Mattias: It's rather always that I feel better, more energized than just in general, like happy. But yeah, on the other hand, like stuff, I've tried to like meditate as well, and that's something that I, funny enough, cut out because eventually started feeling like a chore. So, rather than taking stress away, like trying to think about, oh, I need to now meditate and do some kind of breathing exercises.
[00:09:51] Mattias: I still do them from time to time, but having them on this kind of, fixed routine, creates this pressure that now I have [00:10:00] to like do it. So, I think in general also during these planning sessions, I always try to think from the perspective that nobody's like expecting anything from me.
[00:10:10] Mattias: Most of the things that I kind of create this complexity in my life are, because of myself, and it's up to me to remove that complexity. It's not like I get a medal from someone or praise from someone else if I do or don't do something. So it's kind of this, balancing game.
[00:10:30] James: Is this the, when you went through these periods where you reflect every quarter.
[00:10:36] James: And I remember hearing something just this morning, from Quentin Tarantino where he did something like this in his late twenties, only did it once. And he listed out all the things that he was struggling with, then came up with solutions and then didn't go to sleep, which isn't surprising.
[00:10:51] James: And he went ahead and like just implemented whatever actions he thought were necessary. But before we get into our first segment around ICP [00:11:00] lessons, Could you just, did the idea of ProcessPlot come out of these sort of quarterly
[00:11:07] James: reviews? And then what is ProcessPlot for our listeners?
[00:11:11] Mattias: For us, I think the idea came about quite, randomly, and it wasn't as part of these quarterly planning sessions. So how we actually started off was that, me and one of my, co-founders during the beginning of last spring, we were thinking that we're not, too ecstatic about our current careers and we want to do something different.
[00:11:33] Mattias: So the initial idea was that, we have a lot of experience in change management, project management, getting, like new product, GTM done. So maybe we do some, consulting gigs, try to get, that going, but then we realized that the kind of services that we would be offering is something that, could also be packaged [00:12:00] and productized
[00:12:02] Mattias: if we had a technical co-founder. Which we didn't at that point, but we ideated on what we could be building. And then, yeah, we were looking for a technical co-founder as well. And as always, kind of a random chance in life, we talked about the idea with one of our good friends, and he said that, Hey, I'm also looking for something new, so I'm on board.
[00:12:27] Mattias: So he's, yeah. So we are three, co-founders. I'm like the business person. Then, we have like a product person and, one technical person. We've known each other for about, 20 years now since university. And we all have roughly 10 years of experience in the IT sector. So we figured that maybe it's gonna ruin the relationship, but, let's try to build something together.
[00:12:58] Mattias: And where the idea of [00:13:00] ProcessPlot, came from is that, we're solving a personal issue, which is that we've all worked in roles in quickly growing organizations where there's constant change going on. And you as like the person who is either a product owner or building some kind of cross team, processes or trying to implement a new policy.
[00:13:22] Mattias: It's always so painful to be the one who is owning and managing it because it assumes that you are just constantly going to people, checking up on them, making sure that they're doing what they need to be doing. And it's like, the only way to do it is to basically either get on calls with people, write them emails, bombard them in Slack and we wanted to kind of come up with a way that would make this change management and change communication a little bit less painful.
[00:13:54] Mattias: So that's where we ended up with the tool that we're building right now, basically it's a [00:14:00] chatbot inside of, Slack and Microsoft Teams that allows, whether it's HR people or ops people to set up, communication campaigns, essentially, targeted to the internal teams in an organization to basically disseminate the change communication, get the feedback from how the change is progressing inside the organization, and then also run, like, knowledge, checks for any, new skills that people need to acquire as part of the change that's being, established.
[00:14:36] Mattias: So, for example, if it's an organization that has taken the decision that we need to, yeah, map out processes, so the communication would be about. Why we are doing process mapping, why processes are important, but also on the other layer, what actually is a process? What does processed ownership mean? How do you gather feedback?
[00:14:57] Mattias: How do you optimize [00:15:00] processes to build this automated and structured way to keep the change going for a long period in an organization versus just an all hands meeting or like a workshop that's one off and then people forget about it. And I obviously need to practice my elevator pitch because this explanation was super long.
[00:15:22] Mattias: But again, I'm not a salesperson, at least yet. So, practice, practice, practice.
[00:15:29] Matt: Well, this is interesting because I think a lot of founders, especially not a first time founder, but I think a lot of first time founders, they, especially if they're solving a problem they've experienced, they make the mistake of thinking they're building for themselves.
[00:15:45] Matt: And when you think about your ideal buyer, is that how you guys started off, is you thought, hey, we'll build this for ourselves and then go find people like us? Or did you start off with a different approach to figuring out, [00:16:00] like who, the buyer of this, solution is?
[00:16:03] Matt: Can you talk a little bit about that experience?
[00:16:05] Mattias: Yeah, we actually, so we've been building the startup now for a year and we did a pivot about three or four, months ago because we did that exact same mistake that is written in every article and everybody gives it as advice, but we still managed to do it the wrong way.
[00:16:24] Mattias: Where we started out by building a process mapping and process management, platform because that was the topic that we had most struggled with in our own roles as product people and kind of me with the VP of growth enablement. And what we did was we built the solution out
[00:16:48] Mattias: and then we went and showed it to people and said that, Hey, you are like us. Look what we built. This should be like a super good thing adopt in your organization? Yep. [00:17:00] And I did manage to do like 20 demo calls, mostly with friendly contacts. And even I, myself, felt, after those calls that people were not, like I was not leaving the call being excited and they were not leaving the call being excited because of a number of issues.
[00:17:18] Mattias: So I think, we kind of over-engineered a bit, tried to build too many things at once, and what we didn't consider was also this simplicity of adoption of, we were basically asking organizations to fundamentally change how they approach, a specific kind of topic in their organization and get like everybody accustomed to a new way of work.
[00:17:42] Mattias: Yeah. So we entirely scrapped the, old solution, and decided that, okay, whatever we're building next, we're gonna build it in the way where we get somebody interested first. We get them committed first and only then we are going to put time into [00:18:00] building it out. And to also be completely transparent with the customers that we're talking to right now.
[00:18:06] Mattias: We don't have anything built. we're going to be building it together with you and we do have the capability to deliver. But, just so you know, like this is talking with the open approach because I think especially if you like get started, that something that's super critical is to have people who are on the other side of the table where you tell them that what we have is total crap.
[00:18:32] Mattias: It's not functioning yet. It's like there's errors in 20 different places and they tell you that, yeah, but we're okay with it because we see that there's value in this and we want to, really use it. Regardless of whether it's crappy or not, because it does solve an actual problem for them.
[00:18:55] James: How many times have you heard something like this, Matt, in your career? Because I've heard it [00:19:00] many times, and I think there's something here around, there's like a, you have to live an experience, sometimes to learn the value of doing something not the right way.
[00:19:11] Matt: I feel like if you've started a company, you've probably had this story.
[00:19:16] Matt: I think like especially the first time, even though it's written a million times out there, it's so hard not to build for yourself.
[00:19:26] James: You've gone through obviously a validation and, sorry, a pivot and a validation process.
[00:19:32] James: What was your original ideal buyer? I think I've got a sense of it from your initial overview ProcessPlot. What was the initial ideal buyer and then has that changed to where you are today with the pivot?
[00:19:45] Mattias: It's, changed, drastically. So, we did start out by positioning the ICP as, somebody who would be similar to us.
[00:19:55] Mattias: So we were looking at, like I personally was doing, [00:20:00] kind of enterprise customer onboarding in, B2B organizations. So we're looking at, customer success people, account managers, or the heads of account managers, heads of customer success, heads of business development, in B2B organizations because we took this focus on, let's build a platform where cross-team processes can be mapped.
[00:20:26] Mattias: And one of the most problematic cross-team processes in, B2B organization targeting enterprises is the enterprise customer onboarding, process. So that didn't work out. And when we took the pivot, we didn't have any media like new ICP in mind. We knew that it's not going to be the same person.
[00:20:49] Mattias: But, since we were building a tool that would be used universally across the organization, then we initially thought that maybe it's like CEOs, COOs, who would [00:21:00] be the right target audience. But, through those validation interviews and kind of discussing internally, we ended up landing on the, HR team, because we thought of it from the perspective of, okay, change communication, like the changes are coming from the management.
[00:21:18] Mattias: You eventually want them to reach all of the employees in the organization. The main bottleneck, is generally the team leads and middle managers, but we can't go and sell directly to just a random, team lead or middle manager because they're, it wouldn't be logical for them to own this kind of tool.
[00:21:40] Mattias: So who is the person who's actually supporting the, middle manager team lead in their skillset and day-to-day work with people? It's the, it's the HR function. So like retrospectively it looked super, super obvious, but when we started out then our experience was [00:22:00] from a completely different part of the organization.
[00:22:02] Mattias: We've never had any kind of HR role or have only led like small teams. So it didn't come like logically that, okay — yeah — we're building this, therefore the, ICP is like, CAHR, or CPO in the organization.
[00:22:22] Matt: Sometimes when you have a product that is far reaching in an organization, you're selling it to the C-level or the executive knowing that somebody else is actually gonna be using it or doing the implementation.
[00:22:35] Matt: Is that similar for you? Because I think a lot of times, like, I worry that there's certain departments, at least in the US I often see HR departments not get enough credit, they don't get enough power, decision-making authority for things to solve problems like this, but they're sort of on the hook to figure it out.
[00:22:50] Matt: Did you guys have that where you have like, there's like a strategic buyer and then there's like a direct buyer? Or is it pretty straightforward that it's HR people and they're empowered to solve this [00:23:00] problem with technology?
[00:23:02] Mattias: I think for us it was in that sense, kind of straightforward because one of the, it's kind of a chicken and egg situation that right now if we're talking about change management, change communication, the HR team doesn't have good data to, like, good real time data to back up asking for resources or, suggesting, like some kind of, change in direction.
[00:23:27] Mattias: Generally it's like an annual or biannual engagement survey or feedback survey. And then the results show that, there's lack of confidence in management. Cross team communication is bad. It's not clear what the vision is, but, that comes out once or twice per year. And then you do some initiatives and then in six months you either get the better result or you don't get the better result.
[00:23:53] Mattias: So we're looking at it from the perspective of we help to actually get the daily work that [00:24:00] they need to do, done in a better way, but also, through that they get data, which they can then, take back to the management level, the C-level, and show that the numbers here show that we have problems here, there in the third place.
[00:24:19] Mattias: So I think at the end of the day, if it's like C-level, then you need to have some kind of hard data and it needs to be like converted into a monetary value to actually show that. It's something that needs to be dealt with because change management is a soft topic. It's like, well, yeah, people are unhappy.
[00:24:39] Mattias: So what, we don't have a high turnover. Who cares if they're, unhappy? But it cascades down to how engaged people are, which in turn cascades down into how productive they are. so it eventually does start showing up alsoin the performance of the company. But we're helping the HR team [00:25:00] put together the business case for that.
[00:25:02] Mattias: This is something that is actually valuable to deal with because in a lot of organizations as well, it's, and, C-level view is that, you know, it's not something that's maybe important to deal with. It's not critical and we anyway communicate so much that why would we like, need some kind of additional tool to communicate even more.
[00:25:25] Mattias: But, I think, from our validation and discovery interviews as well, what came out, we talked with 13, CEOs about like the exchange management projects in their organization. And I think 10 out of 13 highlighted that communication is the primary issue. And it's not that things are over communicated, it's almost always that there's too little communication.
[00:25:51] Mattias: So that's when things start, falling apart.
[00:25:55] Matt: It's interesting. I think one of the things I learned early [00:26:00] in my career, I was managing a team and one of the things that somebody told me, I was like, yeah, how do they not understand? Like, I communicated it, right? And we had a meeting, we talked about it.
[00:26:13] Matt: Everybody should be on the same page. And somebody told me, they gave me the advice that like, until your team is like finishing your sentence and rolling their eyes, they're just like, oh, he is talking about this again. Like, you probably haven't communicated enough. And like, that level of an extreme, like for me, like that seems insane.
[00:26:34] Matt: If I'm getting to the point where I'm like quoting you back to you and rolling my eyes, we've gone way too far. But when you're talking about like, disseminating enough information so that your entire organization can like, absorb it, react to it, own it, it does, you need, like, communication is probably the biggest issue with this.
[00:26:53] Matt: And I think usually the C-levels are, [00:27:00] they're so far out in advance of where the team is. And they've talked about it ad nauseum amongst themselves that by the time they tell the team, they're like, well, we told the team, like that's it. That, was like all we had to do, right? We, had 150 meetings between us and then we had one with the team, and that should be enough.
[00:27:15] Matt: Right? And it feels right because you've talked about it 150 times, but they haven't. They haven't heard it 150 times. It's obviously not 150, but.
[00:27:24] Mattias: Yeah, I think there's, like an official term for it, or like a logical fallacy, which is the knowledge gap fallacy. Where what you know and what you think other people know is more similar than it actually is.
[00:27:38] Mattias: And that's where the disconnect, comes from.
[00:27:43] Matt: James does this with me all the time. He thinks I know all the British sayings and he just assumes I do. And so he just like starts ripping off British sayings left and right, and I have no idea what he's saying. It's exactly an example of this.
[00:27:55] James: One day, the penny will drop on Jiggery-pokery and all these other British [00:28:00] sayings.
[00:28:01] Speaker 4: Today's episode is brought to you by Hunter.io, the B2B lead generation platform made for every professional, whether it's prospecting, fundraising, recruiting, link building, or just trying to connect
[00:28:14] Speaker 4: with the right people, Hunter makes it easy.
[00:28:18] James: Mattias, I think this is great because it gets us closer to the real story because as you've detailed, these sort of journeys are never really straightforward and there's plenty of good, there's plenty of bad and there's lots of lessons in our next segment called Keeping it 100,
[00:28:35] James: it's really about diving into what it's taken you to go from zero to your current customer count. How are you going about getting your first customers?
[00:28:45] Mattias: I think it was about two years ago where I wasn't yet building a startup, but in general, looking more into educating myself about sales and business development, where I read a book called, From Impossible to Inevitable.[00:29:00]
[00:29:00] Mattias: The main thing that stuck out to me from, that book was, that as fast as possible go from intros and referrals to doing cold outreach. And the reasoning for that was that if you're in an early stage company, people you know are generally nice to you, they give you the attention, they give you your time.
[00:29:24] Mattias: They're willing to listen to what you have to say, but it's misleading because if you want to actually scale something out, you need to get the person who has zero interest in talking to you, who knows absolutely nothing about your amazing, personal background or, your amazing product. And they actually take that 10 seconds to reply to your email or that 15, 20 minutes to say that, okay, this sounds interesting.
[00:29:54] Mattias: Let's get on a call. So we are a little [00:30:00] bit also tapping into our own personal network, to get some warm calls, warm calls and referrals as well. But vast majority of my time goes into prospecting organizations that I hear about the first time and reaching out to people who I have no previous contact with because I think that also helps to sharpen the axe, so to speak, because if I really, like, written five times, 10 times to a person and they're not responding, then I need to change something.
[00:30:40] Mattias: Whereas if I keep getting stuck in this, friends, previous coworkers, and that loop, then I may be getting kind of false signals on what's actually working because it's not working due to the product or the idea it's working because, these are people that trust me and they're [00:31:00] willing to give me their time.
[00:31:03] Matt: I'm a huge fan of cold outreach as a way of validating a product, right? If you can send a hundred emails in a week and slowly refine your message to a point where. The response rate starts to improve. You start to actually get people leaning in. Like, there's really, I think there's no better litmus test.
[00:31:24] Matt: It's, yeah, it's a great way to get that feedback. You can tell, like, if you're sending even a hundred emails and no one responds, you're telling me one in a hundred people didn't have the pain enough to want to like double click and find out more? I think it's an overlooked tool for validating ideas.
[00:31:44] Matt: Like, I don't know that there are very many product managers running around doing cold outreach, but honestly, that's probably the tool they should be reaching for first, after customer interviews. I think that would be like the number two thing on the playbook.
[00:31:58] Mattias: Yeah, for me, this reminds [00:32:00] that there's, I think from Jim Collins, this book Good to Great, which says that if companies want to innovate, then the main issue is that they get stuck in their existing customers existing processes, existing culture.
[00:32:12] Mattias: And, if you only rely on this existing network of people, you are going to be getting the same feedback. Like, the people are looking at you from the wrong angle. So if you're like, I don't know, Microsoft or Amazon going out to talk to, the people that you've always worked with, they're going to give you the feedback that they perceive they need to give you as, that specific organization, so.
[00:32:45] Matt: I don't think people fully understand how little anybody wants to tell them their baby is ugly. And when you're like, I think [00:33:00] there's just enough general respect for entrepreneurs who are starting something that when one of them is sitting across from you in a demo on Zoom or whatever, and they're pitching their thing.
[00:33:12] Matt: It's so easy for an entrepreneur to be like, oh my God. The feedback was great. They seemed, they were nodding, they were like really engaged with it. And then I don't know why they didn't have any interest. I don't know why they didn't buy. Everything they said was positive. And it's like, look, nobody wants to look you in the face and be like, sorry man.
[00:33:30] Matt: That is an ugly baby. That is. You should stop taking pictures of that baby. It is going to scare people. Nobody wants to tell you that. Like, have you figured out tricks to trying to validate the feedback that you're getting to make sure it's not just people telling you what you want to hear?
[00:33:48] Mattias: I think this is where the main focus on cold outreach is actually doing that validation on my, part because if [00:34:00] I, like, if you put yourself, or if I put myself into those shoes, then if it's a completely unknown person who is writing to me and they're willing to, and I am willing to have a call with them, then I may be a nice person, but I'm not spending 30 minutes of my day just to be nice to some complete, stranger who is, trying to sell me something.
[00:34:22] Mattias: So in that sense, focusing on cold outreach is the validation part. The second part, of course, is a book I recently read, is The Mom Test, I don't know if you know about it, but it's also like a customer discovery and validation book, which basically tells you that, especially if you're talking to people who you already know, then they're going to be like your mom and they're going to give you you're a nice boy and I love you.
[00:34:52] Mattias: That kind of, feedback. So the way you ask the questions, and it's kind of described in the book as well, is to ask the questions [00:35:00] in a way where you're not leading. And if somebody, especially if somebody says something positive or good, you, like try to be as critical as possible towards that.
[00:35:13] Mattias: So if they say something nice, then you say that, but why do you think that's nice. So, kind of to push more on, yeah, the positive feedback that you get to try and kind of dismantle it. And to, but that kind of, gets you through to the, are they just saying it to be nice or are they actually saying it to, because they really like, believe what your idea is?
[00:35:43] Mattias: I think a simple example I can give is that, if I'm having a call and somebody says that, what you're building is really interesting, it's maybe not right for us right now, but maybe if you come back in three months, then we'd be happy to take another look. So [00:36:00] like the fallacy is to take away that, oh, they actually really liked it.
[00:36:05] Mattias: Then if we just, add these two features and go back in three months, then they're absolutely gonna buy it. But the flip that, should happen in the brain is that. Okay, but why are you not buying it, right now? And realistically, like, tell me, honestly, you have nothing to lose. If I come back in two months or three months with these two features, would you actually consider paying, I don't know, a thousand dollars per month for it?
[00:36:31] Mattias: And if not, then, why? So to not get tricked into this false sense of wellbeing, because people don't want to hurt your feelings.
[00:36:42] Matt: It's interesting. I'll push back on that a little bit because I think you can't, this is, I've said this before to people, I don't know if anybody agrees with me on this, so I'll just keep saying it, until somebody tells me I'm wrong or agrees with me.
[00:36:56] Matt: But, I don't think it's, I think it's harder than [00:37:00] people realize to get the timing right. You're gonna cold email a hundred people and it might be relevant to 20% of them. But it might not be the right timing. And I think it's hard to know that you've nailed the timing when you're having the conversation.
[00:37:13] Matt: Like they raised their hand, they were like, this is interesting. It's a problem that at least resonated enough for me to reply. But there's two components to that. One is feedback and validation. Are you headed in the right direction? And their response is at least the beginning of that conversation.
[00:37:28] Matt: But the timing piece, like only some of that 20% are trying to solve for that problem right now. And so the right, like there's gotta be a good way to manage that conversation so that you get the best feedback that you can, but also know how legitimate is that as a sales opportunity. But like, if it was ever interesting enough for them to reply, it's probably somewhere on their horizon.
[00:37:53] Matt: And so, I don't know, companies are really bad at telling you. When to come back. Right? It's always [00:38:00] next quarter, but sometimes that's four quarters. Sometimes you just need four cracks at it before they're finally like, yeah, okay, now we're actually solving that problem. Like, I dealt with that last year.
[00:38:10] Matt: It was like something I was ready to kick off in Q4. And then realistically, I don't think it even happened until Q2 this year. Not because it wasn't important, not because it wasn't serious, but just like the timing wasn't even right from our perspective. So, and that had nothing to do with external. Do you do anything to try to separate making sure you're getting good value outta the conversation, even if the timing isn't right?
[00:38:32] Mattias: Yeah, I think for me it's, the tricky bit is to validate that part of what they're saying. That if you build two more features then we're going to buy. And to actually understand if they really are not on the market right now, but they may be in the future, or they're just being nice to not like close off the discussion because they don't want to be the one who is impolite.
[00:38:55] Mattias: So I think the right way to do it, is that you need [00:39:00] to consider that conversation still, like a little bit of a lost deal. So let's say that if you have like a pocket of, I don't know, 100, 200, whatever amount of deals you need to move it into a place where they said, no, we can go back in,
[00:39:14] Mattias: like, we need to go back in three months and six months and nine months and 12 months and try them again for the purposes of, how well we are performing right now. I would rather move them into the bucket of, that deal is, lost for now. Because otherwise you end up in a situation where you have this pipeline of dreams and hopes, and everybody is going to be a customer and they're going to be a customer in three, six or nine months, but you're not closing anything right now. And I think the takeaway, so I used to, do a lot of content marketing in my old organization.
[00:39:58] Mattias: And how I [00:40:00] approached coming up with content ideas was that, account managers talk to customers every day. I go out and talk to the account managers to figure out what are the questions that several different customers are asking us, and then based off of that to create the content. So I think with this, sales process, it's a bit similar, that having feedback from one person who isn't even paying for the product isn't valuable.
[00:40:30] Mattias: But if you're hearing it from several different sources, several different, people are kind of objecting in the same way or giving you any kind of feedback, then it's something that is worth exploring. And that's before we did the pivot, it was also one example of what came up was that, yes, in theory it's a great tool that you're building, but this means that they need to go and educate a hundred people on how to like do their work in a different way.
[00:40:58] Mattias: And if it's one person telling [00:41:00] that, then you can ignore it, then keep pushing your vision. But if you get that feedback from like half of the demo calls, then
[00:41:06] Mattias: obviously that's something that you need to incorporate.
[00:41:11] James: This is really, I've been listening attentively to how you've been talking about all of this, Mathias,
[00:41:17] James: do you consider yourself a salesperson?
[00:41:22] Mattias: For me it's tricky that, I would say no, because
[00:41:26] Mattias: fundamentally my strength isn't something that I think, salespeople need to have as an inherent part of their nature, which is being a good conversationalist and being, like, open and being extroverted. And, maybe I'm like talking more or less normally right now, but whenever I'm in an actual sales call, I completely freeze up and my face goes blank.
[00:41:53] Mattias: And I'm this, classical Estonian. So I would say [00:42:00] that, I'm more interested in, like building up systems and processes and repeatable structures. And that part of sales is something that does interest me. So from day one, when I started doing the sales outreach, HubSpot, how do I set up the, like, the pipeline?
[00:42:21] Mattias: What are the different stages? How often do I need to follow up? So I'm okay on the systems part, but when it comes to actually talking with people, then that's something that I'm really not, great at I think, but it's kind of — if I can sell it, then nobody else will be able to sell it.
[00:42:39] Mattias: And if me as a crappy salesperson can sell it, then a good salesperson can sell it as well. And I think there's also this differentiation between, like, if you're in an early stage startup, what you're more doing is business development, which in my mind is like, going to a new market and figuring out [00:43:00] what's the repeatable and scalable way to succeed in the market.
[00:43:04] Mattias: And pure sales, at least in my mind, is when you already have that system figured out. You are doing tweaks to it, but it's more about like, doing the same thing over and, over again. Obviously, yeah, you take feedback in as well, but it's already something where, you know, there's 10,000 companies who are already using this.
[00:43:28] Mattias: You are not using it yet, but it's okay. We'll get you sorted out and figure out what the objections are and where to find budget and so on. I love it so much. So, yeah.
[00:43:39] Matt: Most entrepreneurs will say this, right? Like they'll, yeah, no, I'm not a salesperson, but like, somebody got me with this the other day.
[00:43:46] Matt: This was, it was about six months ago. And, somebody asked me this question. I have a variety of hobbies. I like hobbies. I don't do them full-time. So I don't consider myself to be like one of like, like I'd take pictures, not a [00:44:00] photographer. So somebody was like, why aren't you, why don't you call yourself a photographer?
[00:44:03] Matt: You take pictures. I was like, because I don't do it full time. And they're like, is that the definition? Like, if you like, what is the definition of a photographer? I'm like, somebody who takes pictures. They're like, okay, then you're a photographer, right? Like, well, okay, by that definition, like you're doing sales.
[00:44:19] Matt: You're selling that makes you a salesperson, whether you identify, I love the identity crisis of this. Like we all suffer from this at some place in our lives where we're like, yeah, we do a thing, we do it regularly. But no, we're not that thing. But yet, actually, really, kind of we are like,
[00:44:35] Mattias: I think it's also to do well with, like, if you go to somebody who is outside of sales and you tell them you're a salesperson, like you're guaranteed to get negative connotations.
[00:44:49] Mattias: Nobody's going to be like, oh, that's amazing that you know what you're doing is saving, the world. It's wonderful. So, but that negative [00:45:00] connotation comes from, I think it's surprising that even in this day and age, there's so much knowledge and information available about how you should be selling and like how to do it in a good way.
[00:45:14] Mattias: But then you get still so many, you know this why cold outreach is considered negative. you just get the spam. And I always like take a look at it and think that, come on, it would take like a couple of hours to figure out a better pitch than to write me that we are a software development agency.
[00:45:32] Mattias: Do you want to buy, like, development services? So that's, yeah, I think it's to do also for like, it's cooler to be a founder or product person or even like, let's say account manager, whoever, than it is to be a salesperson because the connotations that come along with it are almost always like negative.
[00:45:57] Mattias: So I think that's why people want to [00:46:00] distance from it.
[00:46:02] Matt: It's such a strange phenomenon. Every business needs effective selling, and yet nobody seems to want to like I, this is actually one thing I've really appreciated. There's been a shift in tech in the Boston area. We've had a number of really successful tech companies.
[00:46:19] Matt: HubSpot, LogMeIn, Klaviyo. One of the things that's true about all of them is they figure out a really solid sales motion and they do it and they do it well. And so culturally around here, the stigma, like it's actually competitive. Like people are like, oh yeah, you do sales for so and so, like it's actually like warmly regarded here.
[00:46:41] Matt: And it's a nice paradigm shift because it's something you don't see everywhere. But I do see culturally that there is a bit of a shift to understanding the value of it and like an appreciation for it. But it is funny. You talk to a lot of people that are like, oh yeah, no, I'm not a salesperson.
[00:46:56] Matt: They don't want to be seen as a salesperson. [00:47:00] But I do think there's such a critical importance to that, that we're, that stigma is weird. It's almost a, yeah. It's like I get it in some places culturally, I think it's interesting because like when you want to reach a company and you wanna buy a product, it's really irritating if there's not, if that's not easy to do or if there's not support for that, that's selling.
[00:47:22] Matt: And so like even as a buyer, you should want that, you should desire that. But the idea of being sold to is like, somehow bad for us. Like, we're convinced we don't wanna be sold to, we just want you to help us buy. It's a interesting phenomenon.
[00:47:36] Mattias: I think if you look at it on a higher and abstract level than in reality, having like a sales skillset, regardless of whatever role you are in, is super useful.
[00:47:47] Mattias: Because if you're, whether you're a product manager or whatever other role you are in, at the end of the day, you have people you need to work together with. And, the better you are able to [00:48:00] convince them to come on board. And along with your ideas, the more efficiently you are going to be performing in your role.
[00:48:08] Mattias: And whether it's, whether you're selling the product or selling an idea to your, teammate, a lot of kind of the tactics and logic, what you can use behind it, is, exactly, it's exactly the same, so.
[00:48:25] James: We all get cold emails, but I'm really interested to know what you consider to be a good cold email.
[00:48:33] Mattias: I would say that, this goes back to what we discussed, earlier, a little bit about the timing. So for me, the timing is the most critical part because when I think of what products I have both myself in terms of like, from B2B, in a B2B context, I don't remember those emails themselves, but what I do remember is that [00:49:00] they came at exactly the right time when I needed, and was actually out on the market looking for it.
[00:49:10] Mattias: But I would say that regardless of the timing angle, then in my view, the cold email, it needs to talk about my problem as the buyer rather than talking about the product. So, what is the problem that the person who's contacting me, what do they think my problem is, and, are they also able to help me in a way where even if I don't buy their product, they still give me some useful information that I can use to do my work better?
[00:49:48] Mattias: Because that also goes together with the timing part. That if you're just a sleazy spammer who's just sending over and over that, hey, do you want to buy our product, then I'm never going to buy. If you've [00:50:00] helped me in a way, in the past, or at least given me some kind of new idea to think about, and I'm not looking for something right now, but you contact me again in three months, I will be more likely to buy from you.
[00:50:13] Mattias: So at least that's how I try to approach, when, I'm drafting up our own outreach, campaigns as well. Is that, even if the person never replies to me, doesn't get back, is there something other than just talking about our product, that knowing the problem space that we're operating in, I could, like, provide them some kind of new insight, value, a different angle to think from.
[00:50:40] Matt: Any of us that are decision makers or any problem solving capacity,
[00:50:44] Matt: it's our actually technically our job, right? And so we have to be on the lookout. Frankly, there aren't that many great ways to discover products. There's, you have to find out about it somewhere and then you probably go Google it and then do some research. So [00:51:00] like, yeah, even if the timing is wrong, I find I still will read all the messages that come through and the ones that are relevant, even if I know, like the problem is right, the timing is six months off, but I'm still getting a decent impression and I might even.
[00:51:17] Matt: I might even share that email or I might bookmark, like, save it for later or put a reminder on it. Like, I think there's a lot of value if you do the cold outreach right and you're trying to make sure you're establishing the right value. Even if the timing is off, it's still a good, valuable touchpoint
[00:51:32] Matt: and it sounds like, yeah, it sounds like you agree with that. So what I'm getting from you Mattias though, is that really the secret to all of this is your tech stack, right? Like this is like, that's really the secret to cold outreach after all. if we've all read the web, it's all about your tech stack.
[00:51:50] Matt: what's your tech stack?
[00:51:52] Mattias: I think it's a loaded question you're asking me, but our tech stack is very simple. We have a [00:52:00] HubSpot for like the deal and pipeline, or we, I say we, but it's me, so.
[00:52:07] Matt: You and the sales team
[00:52:08] Matt: are,
[00:52:08] Matt: Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:09] Matt: using HubSpot, right?
[00:52:11] Mattias: So HubSpot for the deal management, and task management.
[00:52:17] Mattias: We use Hunter.io for the email discovery, validation and cold outreach campaigns, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and that's, pretty much it, because, we are bootstrapped so we don't have the resources to invest in some super fancy, expensive, solutions. And I think for us right now, this, simple solution works as well because, like, finding the product market fit and figuring out what exactly to build and what exactly is the problem or the hook that [00:53:00] resonates and gets people to talk with us. It's not a tech, like a tech issue or something that a new or better tool will allow us to solve. That will come from the actual discussions with the, people, not from a tool.
[00:53:17] Mattias: What I do use is this goes kind of together with how to figure out who our ICP is, when is the right time for an organization to be buying from us, or us selling to them. Then, I've tried to come up with a bunch of intense signals that would be as cheap as possible to access because again, we don't have a lot of resources.
[00:53:40] Mattias: So, we are looking at it from the perspective of organizations who are likely going through multiple parallel complex changes at once, are the ones who are, well firstly, we're targeting like organizations from 50 to 500 people. So, when we look into that kind of [00:54:00] subsegment of companies, who is hiring HR people, who is hiring change transformation people who is maybe hiring ops people.
[00:54:10] Mattias: So a really easy way to actually do it is, and this is on LinkedIn for free, is you just subscribe to the job alerts. So you're like looking for a job in those organizations, but then you get the daily digest of this company is hiring for, let's say, like a human resources business partner.
[00:54:32] Mattias: So for us, I then go and look that, it's okay, it's a company that's in size, right for us, it's in the right, sector, seems to be like a good profile. And the fact that they're hiring, let's say HR people, is an indication that they have some kind of, not like negative challenges, but HR is something that they are ramping up, which means there's changes going on, which means that maybe our [00:55:00] tool will be of interest to them.
[00:55:03] Mattias: Yeah, so all kinds of like, well, it's kind of, easier if, you are selling to other startups as well is many different startup leaderboards that get published by various sites as well as specifically for our product. Glassdoor is a pretty good, source of insight because you go and look at the employee reviews,
[00:55:24] Mattias: and that's actually one of the few places where you can get, like an internal understanding of what's going on in the organization as well. Obviously it may be that it's disgruntled employees who are always, louder, but still it's something that in theory at least should resonate in our case with the HR person, if there's like 10 reviews that management doesn't communicate enough, then it's a pretty catchy hook to say that, hey, I looked at the Glassdoor page and, seems to be a lot of people who are not happy with [00:56:00] internal communication.
[00:56:01] Mattias: So, maybe you're interested in, hearing us out and maybe we can help you get it to a little bit better level.
[00:56:11] Matt: Do you email right away? Do you, like, do you say, oh, they're hiring HR, let's reach out now, or do you say they're hiring HR. Let's schedule the campaign for like 30 days after they post the job.
[00:56:22] Matt: Like how do you structure your response to the signal?
[00:56:25] Mattias: For me it goes like immediately into our list. So I start the outreach immediately and I try to also in parallel, reach out on LinkedIn as well to like, get two channels in parallel because maybe people don't, the email goes to spam, but I managed to get through to them on LinkedIn, or they are a person who never goes on LinkedIn.
[00:56:53] Mattias: So then maybe I'm able to catch them through, email. Because I think at that point, then [00:57:00] also this kind of, the job ad part is something where then the topic is freshly on the table. They've just taken the decision maybe in the last couple of weeks that, okay, this is like we need to put focus here.
[00:57:14] Mattias: Let's get that person, to draft up the job ad. Let's get it going and then it's a little bit kind of their signaling that they have the challenge and you are there to like immediately, address that challenge. At least that's how I've been looking at it.
[00:57:35] Matt: Nice. Sometimes when people use intent signals, the timing is different. They're like, yeah, I don't wanna send it while they're hiring. Because then the person who's going to buy it, is maybe not in place yet. Sounds like for you it's worked that you can kick those interactions off right away.
[00:57:52] Matt: Sometimes it's very different, right? Sometimes the right answer is to put a buffer of time in there, or wait till the job is no longer [00:58:00] present, you know like, seeing when the job goes away is sometimes the signal as opposed to, the job getting posted. It's interesting. I like that. I tell you, we know the guys at Hunter, really, well. They're sponsors, obviously.
[00:58:14] Matt: We'll have to give them that feedback about using multiple channels and see if maybe the product roadmap should reflect that.
[00:58:21] James: So, Mattias, before we wrap up today's episode, this has been great.
[00:58:26] James: If you could give one piece of advice to a, reluctant co-founder who may be trying to sell what he's been building, what would that advice be?
[00:58:37] Mattias: Based on what I've learned from the past year, like you need to love your product, but then you need to put your product away and, put your idea away and, put on your researcher goggles and go and ask people questions in a way where they give you honest feedback, and [00:59:00] try to get that feedback from people who don't know you at all, because that's the place where you learn the most.
[00:59:08] Mattias: It's extremely painful because it sucks. You write a hundred emails, it's silence, you write another 100 emails. It's silence and it doesn't work until it does work. It's just blunt, persistency, but in a way where you need to be adaptable as well to keep going, going, going, but if it's not working, then to adjust your approach.
[00:59:35] Mattias: I think regardless of, and especially now with AI and how many, like different ways there are to reach out to people, then it doesn't actually make the work easier because, now people like the volume of communication that they get is only increasing. So I think the situation is still the same, that there's [01:00:00] no secret sauce or one weird trick that will help you close much more deals.
[01:00:06] Mattias: It's still like a numbers game and just putting in the hours of, doing it over and over and over again, but in a smart way. So, constantly learning and taking every interaction, every no, every piece of feedback is something that, not just that I archive it, but how can I use that to make our process better.
[01:00:30] Mattias: And yeah, I'm like an introvert. My favorite time is when I'm home alone, completely isolated in total silence. And, that's just like, cost of doing business. Or if you want to actually build something, then you need to put yourself through the pain of talking to other people. I think especially if it's like technical person who is founding an organization, because then there's this joke I remember about, do you [01:01:00] know, who is an extroverted, developer?
[01:01:04] Mattias: It's the developer who looks at the other person's shoes instead of their own. So, yeah, that's my recommendation to just,
[01:01:14] Mattias: I like that.
[01:01:14] Mattias: like suffer the pain and, in the name of a good cause, if you really believe in the idea. Lovely.
[01:01:24] James: Great. And how, for our listeners, how can they
[01:01:29] James: learn more about ProcessPlot and yourself,
[01:01:31] James: Mattias?
[01:01:32] Mattias: Processplot.com and I connect with everyone who reaches out on LinkedIn. So, if kind of this change management, change communication topic is of interest to any listeners, then I will also try to go through the pain of talking to new people. So please do reach out then.
[01:01:55] Mattias: No, it's kind of a joke as well, but do, reach out and, yeah, get in touch.
[01:01:59] Matt: [01:02:00] Great, thank you.
[01:02:00] Matt: Well, I've enjoyed the conversation Mattias. It's fun to hear what you're going through, your journey, your perspective on it and honestly that you're dealing with so many of the same challenges that we all face when we're doing a business, whether that's in the early stages or even later stages.
[01:02:21] Matt: Like you still need to figure out how to turn customer feedback into something useful and you still have to battle with the identity crisis of realizing that you're selling all the time, and yet you're not a salesperson. So, you have to somehow be good at a thing you're not doing supposedly.
[01:02:39] Matt: So yeah, I think hearing your stories about that has been really great. So thank you for sharing.
[01:02:44] Mattias: Thanks a lot for having me on, it's, yeah, always good to understand or realize that there's other people out there who are going through the same struggle if you're sitting alone behind your laptop. So it's a good reminder for me as well too on this.
[01:02:58] Mattias: So yeah, thanks for having [01:03:00] me on.
[01:03:01] James: So everyone that has been Mattias Liivak, this has been Outfoxed and we're out of time. Thank you, Mattias.
[01:03:08] Speaker 5: Once again, thank you to Mattias for joining today's episode of Outfoxed. If you like what you heard, please like, subscribe next even more of the Outfoxed community by visiting www.outfoxed.hunter.io.
[01:03:22] Speaker 5: He was Mattias Liivak, that was Matt Tharp, I am James Milsom, and we're out of time.