---
title: "BDRs Are Earned: Don't Build GE at $10M"
episode: 144
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Ari Greenberg"
guest_title: "Chief Revenue Officer, Ascend Analytics"
date_published: 2026-10-22
date_modified: 2026-11-09
duration: 00:52:25
word_count: 9691
topics: ["sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "sales-compensation", "outbound-sales", "pricing-packaging", "revenue-operations", "ai-in-gtm"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/ari-greenberg-ascend-analytics-bdrs-are-earned/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# BDRs Are Earned: Don't Build GE at $10M — Full Transcript

> Episode 144 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Ari Greenberg.
> Published October 22, 2026 · 00:52:25 · 9691 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/ari-greenberg-ascend-analytics-bdrs-are-earned/

## 00:00 — Intro: Ari Greenberg, CRO of Ascend Analytics

**[0:00]** Quotas are important, quotas are key, but at the end of the day when you're looking at performance, it's the mean.

**[0:06]** My guest today is Ari Greenberg, Chief Revenue Officer at Ascend Analytics, the decision software platform sitting underneath more than $50 billion in energy project financing.

**[0:18]** Don't engineer your company to BGE when you're at $10 million in revenue, because you're giving up the only advantage you have.

**[0:24]** I will argue you do not need a deal desk if you are $20 million or under an ARR, and I'm choosing that number roughly.

**[0:32]** Dude, we've been talking about this deal for months. Everybody knows everything about this deal.

**[0:37]** I think people severely underestimate the level of competition at play.

**[0:42]** Unfortunately, for the most part, it's a zero-sum game.

**[0:46]** The worst thing to be is the market leader. That is the best spot to be.

**[0:50]** Especially now in the world of AI where anybody can kind of build or replicate a feature really, really quickly.

**[0:56]** Some buyers are flat out using AI to ask how to negotiate because you're seeing the same place almost word-for-word being used by them.

## 01:08 — Don't engineer your company to be GE at $10M

**[1:08]** Ari, you said something during our prep call that really, really resonated with me.

**[1:14]** Don't engineer your company to BGE when you're at $10 million in revenue, because you're giving up the only advantage you have.

**[1:20]** What did it cost you to learn that?

**[1:24]** I kind of learned that from two different messages.

**[1:26]** First of all, thank you for having me, but I kind of learned that from two different angles.

**[1:29]** I've learned that from the time where we under-engineered and things kind of went sideways because we couldn't keep up with the number of things we had going on.

**[1:37]** I've also learned to the GE example where we over-engineered, where we put in enough bureaucratic steps or enough steps to get things done like trials, like contract negotiation, like permissioning for services on and off or empowering line people or not empowering line people.

**[1:56]** Smaller companies or startup companies, especially in that zero to about 10, besides technology, one of their key advantages is the advantages to be nimble.

**[2:05]** They can be quick. They can turn on a trial instantly. They can turn things off instantly. They can turn around contract negotiations instantly.

**[2:11]** Their ability to serve the client at light speed is much, much greater than a GE.

**[2:18]** While you want to have checks and balances, you want to be really careful about how much you put in there and start putting them in only at the necessary time where you can no longer not put them in.

**[2:28]** And the reason being is it's a disadvantage. Now, you have to do it, right? You look at GE, you cannot have every line person negotiating a contract at GE Willy Milley.

**[2:37]** It doesn't work. Too many people, it would be chaos.

**[2:40]** But if you're a 30-person startup, you can give a lot of leeway to those line people to do a lot more and act a lot faster with a client, which puts you at an advantage, let's say, over a GE if that is your competition.

**[2:52]** When you're in a company or companies that you worked with, are there any common things that people start to overprocess or overengineer that starts to slow them down?

**[3:05]** What are some of those common ones that people think they need to do but they can wait a little bit?

**[3:10]** No, that's a great question. So if you're looking at SaaS services, I would say one of the things that I've seen companies do too early on is take away power from customer success with their ability

**[3:21]** to either turn on and off services directly for a client or being able to start and stop a trial for a client where they feel they need to go through either erroneous paperwork

**[3:33]** or they need to go ahead and get this many approvals to go ahead and start a trial where at the end of the day, if you're that 30, 40-person company, enable them, everybody probably knows what's going on anyway because everybody's constantly talking.

## 03:47 — You don't need a deal desk under $20M ARR

**[3:47]** So the need for something like that seems probably a little premature. Another one, believe it or not, and this will be a little controversial for some people, is a deal desk.

**[3:57]** I will argue you do not need a deal desk if you are 20 million or under an ARR, and I'm choosing that number roughly, but again, everybody inside knows what's going on.

**[4:09]** Any sizable deal, any deal that's outside the norm is covered in pipeline reviews, is covered in disgust around the water cooler. Again, everybody knows the entire book of business.

**[4:19]** So that whole idea of like we got to have a formal deal desk and pull in the entire ELT to go over this deal, dude, we've been talking about this deal for months.

**[4:28]** Everybody knows everything about this deal. Now, conversely, if you're getting to $100 million in ARR or $150 million in ARR or even $50, $60, to be honest, yes, you're going to have to have a more formalized deal desk.

**[4:42]** There's too many deals going on. No, I don't know about the deal that Mary's working on. Let's say, as well, Sarah, I should probably know, but I don't know the deal that Mary's working on.

**[4:51]** Right? Or if the CTO may have any idea, but there's a technological concession that's going to have to happen for that deal to happen. There needs to be a deal desk.

**[4:59]** There needs to be a place to bring these deals and kind of rifle through them and get that done. But doing that at $10 million is a common mistake I see in companies where I think they're just slowing down their ability to react to the customer, which again is a distinct advantage for these smaller, newer companies.

**[5:17]** I think that makes a ton of sense. And when you do get to that, maybe $50 to $100 million range and it's time to put one in, I'm also assuming there's different levels of deal desk and different levels of bureaucracy and red tape.

**[5:30]** And I'll call it molasses. You want the team to run through in order to get a deal done.

**[5:35]** Are there versions of that? What is the light version look like when you're at that $50 million stage and then, hey, here's a little bit more process at that $500 million stage, or can it kind of stay the same and stay lean?

**[5:49]** Unfortunately, no. It can't stay as lean as it does. I would say the light version of the deal desk is you go ahead, you bring in either the salesperson or the line manager, and he or she just goes through all the deals and what needs to be done.

**[6:02]** And it can be even done over email and quick email approvals.

**[6:06]** Hey, we're doing this deal. It needs this technological concession. Miss CTO, can you go ahead and okay that or not?

**[6:13]** And if she has more questions, we answer. And if not, she just goes ahead and does it.

**[6:17]** I think as things get larger, you start having the reps filling out actual forms, right, and taking the time to document everything and use cases and why and what's been done.

**[6:30]** So it's a much more comprehensive check to make sure that we do have to give this concession in order to get this deal, that it's not just I'm being lazy, right?

**[6:42]** Salespeople have a tendency to be like water. They take the path of least resistance, right?

**[6:47]** As a company, we've got to obviously be that check and balance. You want them to be hungry. You want them to chase. You want them to hunt. You want them to win.

**[6:54]** Obviously, it's our job on the other side of the fence to make sure that we're protecting the company risk. Is it really a profitable deal?

**[7:01]** What is it? How does it affect margin, etc? So there's a lot going on. I think as it gets larger and as you have to go up more layers, let's say to get that approval.

**[7:10]** There needs to be more formal documentation to make sure that you have an understanding of what's going on before actions taken.

## 07:18 — Playing business too early: marketing spend and BDRs

**[7:18]** That makes sense. What about other areas of go to market, things that maybe people are playing business too early?

**[7:26]** I'm thinking of things like maybe enablement and training, potentially how you're running your forecast process or when you start layering in managers.

**[7:35]** What else sometimes is like, hey, this is not stage fit. This is too big company for where we're at.

**[7:41]** Yeah, I would definitely say there are a couple of things in there. One, believe it or not, is how you market.

**[7:50]** I think the world is beginning to change a little bit on that. So yes, you sometimes want to make yourself look bigger.

**[7:56]** Yes, sometimes you want to have that bigger booth at the show and portray yourself as a $50 million company when you're a $20 million company.

**[8:02]** There's some merit to that, but I see people spending gazillions of dollars on digital marketing when in reality it's word of mouth in the goodness of the widget that's really getting you the business.

**[8:13]** So being able to do that analysis and seeing how much to put into marketing I think becomes a very, very, very important tool.

**[8:19]** I've seen overinvestment make life's good. Let's just triple down and market and maybe that's not the answer.

**[8:24]** Maybe it's triple down and hire three more salespeople. Maybe it's triple down and get more of a BDR organization, which is something else you definitely want to look at as well.

**[8:31]** So that's something that I've seen organizations do too early, get everybody a BDR out of the gate, which is ridiculous.

**[8:38]** So if you're a startup company, I'm sorry salespeople, you're going to have to pick up the phone, smile and dial and hunt.

**[8:43]** Okay, and as things get bigger, there will be a BDR pool that will be given out, and then I happen to come from the camp where BDRs are earned.

**[8:53]** So if you're a salesperson and you're able to consistently book ex-meetings a month, then I will give you a BDR.

**[9:00]** Don't tell me you've got to get the BDR in order to book the meeting. Show me you can walk the walk, and then I'll give somebody to amplify you.

**[9:06]** So I think those kind of merit-based things of when to get the BDR is one thing, but also that BDR organization, I'm not really sure you want from that zero to one stage.

**[9:15]** I think that's more of like a two and a half to three and a half is probably when you want to put something like that in.

**[9:20]** The marketing as well, you've got to be careful about when to do that because that is the quickest run of money, and it's always the hardest one to justify the cost.

**[9:31]** Marketing is always, as someone who comes from a technical background and tries to look at things through a black and white lens, marketing is always been the part for me that I have to accept is gray.

**[9:43]** How much of that spend is brand awareness? How much of that spend is helping brand equity or what have you? I don't know what that means. I can't find brand equity on a balance sheet.

**[9:53]** So that becomes a bit of an issue, but those things are important, but what and how you do that becomes critically important as well.

## 10:02 — BDRs are earned, not given

**[10:02]** Can I go back to the BDR philosophy? That is very unique. I don't think I've actually ever heard anybody frame it that way.

**[10:10]** It's almost making me think of suits or big consulting firms like, "Hey, you don't get an EA unless you're doing really, really well or at a certain level."

**[10:18]** Tell me more about that. What does that look like? How do you earn it?

**[10:22]** That also implies something too in terms of structure of the BDR team. Do you keep that as a funnel to sales? Sometimes it lands in marketing. Tell me more.

**[10:34]** Yeah, absolutely. It's something I discovered actually during my career. The first time I really saw the unique take on it was at AlphaSense when it was in its earlier days.

**[10:44]** AlphaSense was at the time probably about $40-ish, $42 million company in ARR when I joined.

**[10:53]** The way it worked is they had a very strong enablement program.

**[10:57]** Everybody went through a two-week program to learn AlphaSense, to learn the product, to learn the value proposition, didn't care if your job was in ops, marketing, sales, development, didn't care.

**[11:07]** Everyone knew AlphaSense, knew how to use it and do that.

**[11:10]** Then there was a very strong ramping program. They monitored and ramped new salespeople very, very, very closely.

**[11:19]** You were expected to know how to do certain things by certain times, and you were expected to be able to book certain number of meetings at certain times.

**[11:25]** When we had to go ahead and decide how do we allocate additional resource, you want to double down on your winners.

**[11:33]** 80% of your sales came in from 20% of your salespeople, so we know this. This is a known common thing.

**[11:39]** How do we double down on that? The BDR, SDR, whatever you want to call them, that function, it's its own organization but was dotted into the individual salesperson they were helping.

**[11:51]** That, for us, seemed to work the best because we knew that Mary was an incredibly strong salesperson.

**[12:00]** She was booking meetings left and right and doing things the right way, and everything's recorded in monitors, so line managers are making sure the message is being conveyed the right way.

**[12:07]** Let's double down on her and give her Johnny as a BDR to go ahead and amplify her and get her twice as many meetings a month.

**[12:15]** I don't want her to stop prospecting, but hopefully I can get to a point where I can have her so backlogged she doesn't have time to do that.

**[12:22]** Conversely, if Johnny is not booking meetings and saying, "Well, I can't book meetings. I need an SDR," I don't know if Johnny's going to make it ultimately as a full-blown salesperson in a hyper-growth technology-first company in 2026, or at this time it was 2020 at the time.

**[12:43]** But I don't know if you're going to make it, to be brutally honest.

**[12:47]** At the rate we were growing, I was running that team. I was probably spending almost 30% of my time interviewing people for additional roles, either to grow the team or replace the team.

**[12:59]** There's no mercy in sales. That's what kind of makes it fun and exciting.

**[13:05]** An annual review in sales is – I won't say is a waste of time. That's too strong. But an annual review in sales, if you expect the outcome to be different than what you thought going in, then you are disconnected from what's going on.

**[13:18]** You know what you produce. You know what those around you produce, and you kind of know how you do.

**[13:23]** In other softer scales working within the organization, other things that you need to rise, but to be an IC, production is key, and you have that production. So that idea of doubling down on our winners and giving them everything they need, and the other ones we either try to coach up or coach out, that to prove to be exceedingly successful.

**[13:43]** At this point, I believe AlphaSense just crossed over $700 million in ARR, just to give you an idea of the growth that's happened between the time I was there until now.

**[13:54]** Well, I think it's so smart, because the other thing, too, that BDR – most BDRs are in the role hoping to be an AE.

**[14:01]** So then you pair them with the best people who will likely be coaching them how to do their job better and give them the insights they need to be successful. And then you're probably grooming better AEs for the next wave that are going to come out of that pool.

**[14:16]** A thousand percent. So not only you – I'll say it this way. They come without historical baggage, because most of the time these people are fairly early in their career. In the AlphaSense example, they were taught the AlphaSense way to sell, the AlphaSense methodology in sales, etc.

**[14:32]** So not only do I get to raise them and train them and have them be paired with the best, when they are ready to take that mid-market – that was the natural progression – that mid-market AE role, they're already trained on AlphaSense.

**[14:48]** They're already three steps ahead of what I'm going to find in the field and, frankly, are probably a little bit less expensive, because we got them earlier in their career and we invested in them.

**[14:58]** So smart. So smart. To pull on this thread a little bit more, because I believe in the same philosophy, doubling down on your winners, how else can you do that in sales? What's the best way to support the reps that are already producing and bringing in everything that you're expecting them to?

## 15:18 — Tiered commission: pay winners, let the rest self-select

**[15:18]** There's some different ways. I'm going to touch on something on compensation. Not that it really gives them the support, but it definitely builds the right culture.

**[15:29]** I'm a huge fan in a tiered commission plan, and I think a tiered commission plan does exactly what it's meant to do, which is overcompensate my high performers so that they'll never even think about looking anywhere else because they're disgustingly paid, and for those that don't do well are making so little that they're going to go look on their own.

**[15:48]** And that works. So if you have somebody who will use just a simple number, somebody with a $500,000 quota, if I pay 2% on the first 100, 4% on the second 100, 6% on the third 100, 10% on the fourth, 12%, 15% on the fifth, and then 20% anything above that, those top performers can't afford to leave.

**[16:08]** Won't even think about it. And those that are stuck at $200,000 aren't making enough money to stay. And that kind of just leads to that own self-fulfilling issue where I'm not the one having to go ahead and dismiss them, which there's obviously cost involved with that, etc.

**[16:24]** And just allows for that natural evolution to constantly be raising the bar, right? So when I look at any commercial organization, quotas are important, quotas are key, and we can talk about setting quotas and how you go about doing that and dealing with PE and growth expectations.

**[16:39]** But at the end of the day, when you're looking at performance, it's the mean, okay? The sales team across the board sold an average of a million dollars a year. Did you sell a million in two? You're probably not the first person I'm looking at.

**[16:54]** Did you sell 700? You probably are, right? And if you constantly run this playbook and keep doing this over and over again with that tiered commission plan, that mean is going to naturally rise because the team's going to constantly get better.

**[17:07]** And it's just them pushing themselves, right? So that has always worked for me. It's also worked for me earlier in my career when I was doing a lot of line management, reps get quotas, quotas go up, businesses growing, and it's always the same thing.

**[17:21]** How are we ever going to do that? It's January. How am I going to sell $1.5 million? There's no way I can do that. Just sell more than the average, guys.

**[17:28]** And that just leads to a natural competition, and it works, right? Now everybody's looking at everything, and I had years at SNL where the sales team was about 6 A.E.s, where the greatest variance in production was less than 5% across the board.

**[17:48]** I had all the cylinders hitting, exactly. They were all after it. You would think there'd be like two up here and the rest down there, and that's typically what I've seen a lot of other places.

**[17:58]** But if the territories are split right, and you can get the right motivation in place, you can get those bottom cylinders to rise. But I will quote somebody, one of my mentors from years ago, you've got to trust your spidey senses.

**[18:11]** If you know a salesperson's not making it, you've got to cut bait. And I don't mean to sound ruthless, but at the end of the day, it's better for them just as much as it is for you.

**[18:21]** They're going to find somewhere where they can be successful, but it's just not here. And if you're on the fence, then you know the answer, okay? You're not on the fence.

**[18:29]** You're just trying to convince yourself that you don't want to do what you don't want to do. And the faster you do that, the better off you are, and you're always looking for reps.

**[18:37]** Any line manager that is not always looking for reps. I don't mean like lazy man looking like ads on LinkedIn. I mean going out and sniping, going to the competition.

**[18:47]** Hey, your name came up in a conversation about, you know, would you be interested in having a conversation? You'll be amazed. Everyone wants to listen. Everyone loves to feel loved.

**[18:56]** So go snipe. It's a game of winning here. It's not a game of, I guess, whatever. Play nice in the sandbox. I'm not saying do anything unethical. Never do anything illegal. Never lie.

**[19:09]** That will always come back to get you. But playing to win in sales in any kind of SaaS business is table stakes in 2026.

**[19:20]** I think people severely underestimate the level of competition at play in any given market.

**[19:27]** And unfortunately, for the most part, it's a zero-sum game. So if you're not doing everything you can to win, the other person will, and it'll come to get you.

**[19:42]** So if you're thinking like your competitors are sitting around being comfortable, not calling your people, not trying to poach your people, not trying to look at, not trying to get into your best accounts and best customers and seal them from you or build the product that can put your product out of business, every single angle they're looking to take you down.

**[19:59]** And if you're not playing offense and defense at the same time, you're going to lose, which by the way, is not good for any of the people in your company in the first place.

**[20:07]** No, no, it's definitely not. And I say this jokingly, but the worst thing to be is the market leader.

**[20:13]** It's the absolute worst spot to be. I want to be number two, right? With a laser focus on being that market leader.

**[20:20]** That is the best spot to be by far, right? Because you have your goal, you have your target, if you will, and you're going after it, you're going after it aggressively.

**[20:28]** And that works, right? Once you're the market leader, there tends to be a bit of resting on your laurels. And that was really illuminated for me when I worked for SNL and when it sold to S&P.

**[20:40]** And it sold to S&P. It's a Fortune 500 company. They have lots of data. It's S&P, right? McGraw Hill, like everybody knows who they are.

**[20:47]** And there was definitely kind of like, I don't have to sell. There's enough inbound to keep me happy. And everybody already knows who we are and what we do.

**[20:57]** And you found out over time that that works and you'll be an average-ish performing person there.

**[21:04]** But if you go look at the people at S&P that are the true rock stars, because there's definitely that 80/20 split of the company like that.

**[21:10]** When your rock stars are the ones that hunt, you've got to go after it. You've got to play like every sale means everything.

**[21:18]** Now, it doesn't mean hang on to sales that aren't going to happen. Knowing when to cut bait is equally important. But you've got to have passion and you've got to want to win.

**[21:28]** If you're going to approach sales with a clock in, clock out, there's no way that's going to work for you.

**[21:36]** No, not a chance. My COO says probably a couple of times a week, he runs sales here at Lean scale. He said, "Chill don't pay the bill." So he is constantly getting after it and getting creative.

**[21:49]** I want to go back to the team where you said the variance was 5%. I have literally never, I have worked with over 100 different companies here at Lean scale.

**[21:59]** I've operated in SaaS and AI companies before Lean scale. I've never seen a team that tight before.

**[22:06]** Sounds like the comp plan plays a really significant role in that. And before I move on, I just have to say, I've never thought about the comp plan as a way of weeding people out.

**[22:17]** I've always thought of it as like, yes, incentivize performance. But I think that's really unique to think of it as incentivize people to voluntarily go to your competitors if they're not performing.

**[22:28]** So anyway, I think that's a component that makes a lot of sense. There's a couple other things I'd love to pick your brain on because to do that, you rattle them off a little bit.

**[22:38]** But how do you build equitable territories while you're scaling? And then was there anything else that just kept that team running Lean, Mean, and firing on all cylinders?

**[22:51]** So culture eats process for breakfast is another quote, another mentor of mine. So the culture, that was Esal energy where they perform that tightly, the culture Esal energy was a winning culture.

**[23:06]** Like we were in it together. These salespeople hung out together after work. They worked hard together. Like they were a unit. They were all about helping each other.

**[23:18]** They all wanted to be the number one person, right? But at the same time, getting there by not helping your partner was construed almost as cheating.

**[23:27]** It's a cheap win, right? Oh, I didn't help Mary with her lead at XYZ and therefore I got to sell more than her. That's cheating, right?

**[23:35]** We're all on the same team. We all help each other. You need to win, win honestly. And that seemed to really, really work with that.

**[23:40]** As far as the territories went, I think those, it was a couple of years where they performed that closely was there was probably more market than we could have, we could deal with.

**[23:49]** So I think at that point, it was a question of like, I was not expanding the team fast enough in that situation, which is another stretchy thing to deal with, right?

**[23:59]** Like when you start adding more, especially when you have a true hunter farmer mentality.

**[24:04]** I understand it's very simple to decide when to add more customer success, when to add more account managers, farmers, whatever you want to call them.

**[24:11]** When to add more hunters and how many more hunters and when, when you're growing and you're trying to remain profitable and like it was a fairly conservatively run company, et cetera, was a real balancing act.

**[24:23]** If we were VC backed earlier on, we probably would have had a lot more salespeople on that team, to be really honest and using the hindsight of what I know now versus that was 10, 12 years ago.

**[24:34]** Do you think it would have been more successful though? Because I have a, I have an appreciation, so I didn't raise money at all for Leanscove and Bootstrap the whole time.

**[24:43]** I think, because I know what my ideas were five years ago and how I wanted to scale and what I want to do and what I thought would have been important, what I thought would have worked.

**[24:52]** I think I would have ran this company into a brick wall if somebody gave me money.

**[24:56]** It's funny you say that, I somewhat agree. I think the founder, Reed Nagel, along with the CEO Mike Chin, I think the two of them ran the company prudently and therefore kept everyone in check, right?

**[25:22]** I really understood or appreciated how much and how important that controlled growth is.

**[25:27]** I mean, you can see that at Ascent. Ascent is growing and growing nicely.

**[25:31]** You could take like, we have PE backers, so it's a little bit different, but if you had like VC backers, you could argue triple the sales team.

**[25:39]** And you could maybe run the company into a wall to use your phrase, right?

**[25:44]** So being able to have that growth, control that growth and know that growth is paramountly important.

**[25:50]** I also think, and I can't speak to your experience, but I don't think I knew enough about my exact ICP.

**[25:56]** And again, because of size and ability and operational depth, I don't think I really knew like, well, how much can I really capture a year?

**[26:04]** It feels like I can capture a ton more if I hire a bunch more people, so it must be true.

**[26:09]** But I didn't have the data to back that up because I didn't have the operational infrastructure to get me that kind of data, frankly, at that stage.

**[26:15]** I think as companies get bigger, right, you go look at companies, again, like an S&P Global, they know more or less what's coming in, right?

**[26:23]** There is enough analysis. There is enough operational diligence, et cetera, that they can budget out how much commission is going to be paid this year.

**[26:31]** They can budget out how much money is coming in within a couple of points.

**[26:35]** I mean, they have to, right?

**[26:36]** They got to answer to Wall Street every quarter, and they can't be like massive misses, like 20, 30 percent misses. Like, could you imagine if a company was like forecasting like that?

**[26:46]** The volatility of the shareholders, there'd be like mutiny in the streets.

**[26:50]** I think when companies are smaller, unfortunately, there is some gut with that because you just don't have the infrastructure for that.

**[26:56]** And let's be honest, it's not where you're throwing your money early, early on.

## 27:01 — Fix the Frankenstein CRM at seven, not thirty-three

**[27:01]** I do think companies wait too long to sometimes invest in operations, and I do think that comes back to bite them because you build a Frankenstein CRM, et cetera, and it kind of grows and grows and grows, and then all of a sudden, okay, we need a real CRM.

**[27:15]** Holy crap, what did you build, right?

**[27:17]** Now you've got to deconstruct, right?

**[27:18]** So, yes, you're going to build a semi-Frankenstein, but let's go get that Frankenstein when he's like seven, eight years old and fix it, not when it's like 33.

**[27:27]** I love that.

**[27:28]** It makes a ton of sense.

**[27:29]** It's like, yes, it's okay to let it go for a little bit, but if you go, I mean, you're talking to the RevOps guy.

**[27:35]** We have probably seen some of the scariest instances that would just give you absolute nightmares.

**[27:42]** So, obviously, I have a tendency to think like and see the value of investing earlier.

**[27:49]** I'd love your perspective.

**[27:50]** What is the right investment of operations look like at an early stage?

**[27:56]** When do you think you should bring in certain levels of operational rigor along the growth journey?

**[28:02]** No, that's a great question.

**[28:04]** It really depends on like the talent you have in shop.

**[28:06]** So, what I mean by that is you may need to bring in a sales force admin or sales operations person if you have a really strong finance department already,

**[28:18]** meaning if your CFO knows what he or she is doing and your FP&A person, they may be one of the same know what they're doing,

**[28:26]** and if your controller knows what they're doing and can handle the billing and all that,

**[28:29]** then you can get away maybe with somebody who's just a sales force admin and probably run that a little bit stronger.

**[28:35]** If your finance situation is not as strong or as leaner and doesn't have all three of those parts,

**[28:42]** then bringing in somebody from RevOps earlier on can really take a key role in that and work much closer with your FP&A/finance person

**[28:50]** and maybe you just have an accountant on staff and that RevOps person can kind of cover that until the company gets big enough and that kind of splits off.

**[28:57]** But it's such a difference.

**[29:00]** I've worked with companies that have incredibly strong finance departments, which is like fantastic.

**[29:07]** Sometimes I want to over-engineer a little bit and that's fine, that are fantastic.

**[29:12]** I've also worked with ones where they're flying a lot more blind or by instinct,

**[29:15]** and I think the talent you bring in is going to greatly depend on where that is.

**[29:19]** I mean, at the end of the day, businesses are there to make money, and how you're tied between revenue and finance is everything.

**[29:29]** I mean, if you're a CRO and you're not best friends with your CFO, that's going to be a rough slog.

**[29:35]** I have seen that, especially when you get into planning and arguing about the data, arguing about what the assumptions are and why.

**[29:44]** So yes, I think if you have that connective tissue, it's really important.

## 29:47 — AI and the data model pull ops investment earlier

**[29:47]** One perspective I have as of recent that I'd love your opinion on,

**[29:52]** I think the operational leverage you can get now with AI has increased tenfold than maybe what you would have invested a few years ago.

**[30:04]** And what I mean by that is, even if you're a very, very small company,

**[30:07]** if you invest in a data model where the data is clean and you have all of your business definitions codified,

**[30:18]** usually in a semantic layer somewhere somehow, and your data is connected in a way where AI can understand everything that's going on,

**[30:25]** you have your transcripts, you have your close one data, you have your lead data.

**[30:30]** If you have that really tight, you can build incredible AI agents, AI workflows on top of that,

**[30:37]** which I think has pushed that need a little bit earlier.

**[30:43]** It's an interesting concept. This is the first year I'm really using AI for my planning process.

**[30:48]** So it's actually, we're right in the middle of 2027 planning and it is saving me countless hours and the insights I'm able to get in honing in on ICP,

**[31:00]** looking at ICP penetration, looking at total market of ICP, not only what I have in the CRM,

**[31:05]** but what else is out there that I may not be in the CRM.

**[31:09]** Being able to pull all that together and have something codify that instantly I think has been phenomenal.

**[31:15]** So I acknowledge that point. I think you're right that there's probably something to be said that with the power of the tools today,

**[31:23]** the leverage you're going to get by bringing an operational person earlier on is probably going to set yourself up for success longer for sure.

**[31:31]** I could see that.

**[31:32]** Let's go back to this winning mentality that you have because I think that's very, very clear.

**[31:38]** You're making the decisions to optimize your best chance to win and sometimes it's not as obvious in the sales process with your sellers.

## 31:47 — The proof of concept that crashed, and won the customer

**[31:47]** When we were prepping, one of the things you mentioned I thought was really interesting is sometimes problems in a sales process can become huge opportunities and you can almost think that it happened.

**[32:00]** Can you walk me through exactly what it means and what some examples of that might look like?

**[32:05]** Yeah, no, 100%. So I won't name the company or products just for the sake of keeping things private.

**[32:13]** But how to client? Client was doing a fairly large product.

**[32:18]** Our software was going to be instrumental into making that project happen.

**[32:23]** Hundreds of millions of dollars were going to be based on what our outputs were.

**[32:27]** We were going ahead. We were doing a proof of concept. They were actually using it in a semi-live situation and the software hung.

**[32:35]** The studies did not run. They did not get what they needed at the end of the day as early as they expected it.

**[32:42]** Obviously, they're frustrated. They're angry.

**[32:46]** But we ended up winning the customer long term.

**[32:50]** And the reason why we won the customer long term, it was how we reacted or responded to that crisis.

**[32:56]** So we caught that it hung in the middle of the night.

**[32:59]** We were on the phone, leaving them voicemails and emails at 5.36 in the morning saying, "As soon as you show up, this is what happened.

**[33:05]** This is what we're doing. Call us. Let us know."

**[33:08]** And by being ahead of the curve and showing them that that's what you get from us as a partner.

**[33:14]** It's going to go sideways. It's going to hit the fan.

**[33:18]** I can guarantee that no matter who you choose. That's just life.

**[33:22]** But how you respond to that and how you can show customer service and how you can show customer success is paramount.

**[33:29]** And it's a differentiator.

**[33:31]** Something else that we did at another company earlier on in my career is when we put people on trials,

**[33:38]** we did not tell the helpdesk or anybody else they were a trial user or not a trial user.

**[33:43]** And we made sure that the prospects knew this.

**[33:46]** We are going to set you up as if you are a full blown customer. Okay. And this is your routes for escalation.

**[33:52]** And here's your account manager. And this was back in the day. Here's the phone number to call in.

**[33:56]** Like all of that was there as if you were a customer.

**[34:00]** Go test out our customer service as well as the quality of our data and product.

**[34:04]** We made that a selling point. And that became a differentiator between us and our competition.

**[34:10]** Because we were there to help when it went wrong, when the data might have been wrong or he didn't know what you were doing in Excel.

**[34:17]** Whatever. It doesn't make a difference whose fault it is. We were there to fix it.

**[34:21]** And we were there to make sure that you user X looked good. Right. We're behind the curtain.

**[34:27]** We're playing the wizard. We're behind the curtain. We get a paycheck. That's how we're rewarded. Okay.

**[34:32]** I am here to make you look as good as you can look in your career.

**[34:37]** I absolutely love that. Again, something I've never heard another company do just I love not telling the team.

**[34:44]** Hey, this is just a customer. Treat them just like any anybody else. You don't have to do anything different.

**[34:48]** I think that's incredible. It's if you have good customer service, you need to make that a selling point in your process.

**[34:56]** And you definitely want to jump on that. Are there any other things that might seem like challenges,

**[35:02]** seem like things that have given you a step backwards that actually turn into these really big opportunities to shine?

## 35:11 — Let the cheap guy win

**[35:11]** Yes. Some of it's in our control. Some of it's not. But there are definitely been opportunities where we were going after business.

**[35:19]** We had direct competition with somebody. Competitor beat us on price.

**[35:24]** Huge internal discussion of whether or not we should drop price to match or not drag price to match.

**[35:29]** In the end, we said the margins weren't there and we walked away from the business.

**[35:33]** And we actually watched the low-cost provider fold upon itself. And then they come back to us, right, to reevaluate.

**[35:41]** But obviously in that conversation, price just became a tertiary issue.

**[35:45]** It's definitely no longer the primary issue because we both know what happened, Mr. and his customer.

**[35:50]** You tried the price route. That didn't work, right?

**[35:53]** So you saved $3, right, but you made $100 less. Oops.

**[36:01]** So you won't – so paying me $5 versus $3 seems inconsequential when, you know, I'll make you that $100 more.

**[36:08]** And I can prove I did because I can actually backcast and show you what would have happened if you chose us.

**[36:13]** So it's very much an open kimono, open book kind of situation.

**[36:18]** So sometimes knowing when to walk away from business, which again, especially when you're under the – well, at any point it's hard.

**[36:25]** But if you're under $20 million ARR, it's really hard, right?

**[36:28]** But having that discipline to say, you know what, margins aren't there. It's not the right fit.

**[36:34]** Let it go. We'll come back to get you and win.

**[36:40]** Unless you're in a truly commoditized business, as long as you have differentiation and you have some way to show, I guess, independently, objectively performance in ROI that's truly objective, as long as you have those metrics, let the cheap guy win.

**[36:55]** I have run into that time and time again. It comes up a lot in services, too.

**[37:01]** You're usually competing against either an internal hire or independent contractors or whatever it is.

**[37:07]** And every single time we have given in to that equation, two things happen.

**[37:16]** One, we really don't make any money on the deal, and sometimes it's a loss.

**[37:22]** Two, we cannot serve the customer in a way that they actually need, and then it just makes us look bad.

**[37:31]** And so I've been in that situation time and time again, and we had a drawline of, okay, we're not doing that anymore. If it's not a good fit, if it's not a good fit.

**[37:40]** But I think taking on those, and sometimes, like you said, sometimes those losses are wins.

**[37:46]** You really avoided something that could ruin your reputation.

**[37:50]** It becomes a barnacle account in your customer book that's just dragging everything down.

**[37:56]** So I think sometimes you have to really evaluate that.

**[38:00]** The barnacle account, I could not agree more. I think I haven't heard that exact phrase, but I love that.

**[38:05]** Yes, those accounts that really hammer you on price and think they've really got it for really, really cheap at the end of the day usually caused the most trouble internally, too.

**[38:15]** Not the most trouble. They're usually very high demand customers, which you probably didn't count on because you built out your model and your margin calculator based on average help desk, I'm using another example, usage, right, and they're triple, right?

**[38:29]** So knowing when to walk away from that business as much as it hurts, especially in those early stages, will set you up to your point of reputation.

**[38:37]** Like customer service is the one thing I think that you can, if you really triple down on, will separate you from your competitors.

**[38:45]** I think so, too. Especially now, especially now in the world of AI where anybody can kind of build or replicate a feature really, really quickly.

**[38:54]** I think indexing, before RevOps, I ran customer success, so I have always believed in it.

**[39:00]** But now I think it's indexing there even more as a more important differentiating factor of your business because the tech side can start to be commoditized a little bit.

**[39:12]** You can still, of course, have competitive differentiation there, but this is becoming more important and you really need to invest in it and you really need to understand your customers and be a thought leader, thought partner with them.

**[39:23]** It's not just the technology anymore.

**[39:26]** No, I could not agree more. I'm watching that pendulum kind of swing back and forth.

**[39:32]** So if you look at the history of Ascend Analytics, Ascend Analytics started as a consulting firm, right, eventually became much more of a SaaS shop and most of its revenue, over 90% of the revenue, is coming from SaaS products.

**[39:44]** But we're finding out now where it's, I guess, easier to build software, that barrier to entry to build software is getting lower. What's differentiating us is our bench and our knowledge.

**[39:54]** It's the consulting side of the business married with the SaaS that is making us, I guess, a step ahead of our competition because not only can I give you software to do your valuation, etc.

**[40:06]** I can also go ahead and have that in-depth discussion with your board on the outlook of the markets and go ahead and talk to you about regulatory information and other pieces of the business as a true expert.

**[40:19]** And that is something that a software company simply can't do. So that separation is massive.

## 40:37 — How Ascend uses AI in go-to-market

**[40:37]** And what other dynamics of AI being leveraged and go to market are you running into as you're going to market, doing everything you can to win deals?

**[40:45]** So I would definitely say we – I don't think we're as far ahead on that curve, unfortunately, as we probably should be.

**[40:52]** But I definitely think we – well, not think. We are using it for outreach. We are using it for curtailing messages, for getting news, so competitive battle cards, for making sure AEs have, I guess, a breach before they go in for conversations, etc.

**[41:08]** AI is phenomenal for grabbing all that information, saying before we have a conversation with this company, here's everything they're up to and all their initiatives and everything else going on.

**[41:16]** We're definitely using it for automated outreach and cadences, etc.

**[41:20]** We've definitely been optimizing how we're doing search to make sure that we're showing up in Gen AI queries, right?

**[41:28]** So search queries really are not the end-all, be-all metric they once were, right?

**[41:33]** So yes, Google AdWords are cute, but it's not everything anymore, right? Like there's a lot more to it.

**[41:38]** How do I make sure that Ascend Analytics shows up when you query on JAT GPT, Grok, Claude, whomever?

**[41:45]** How do I make sure that that happens?

**[41:47]** And I want to make sure – so marketing, I think, is one. I think outreach is definitely another.

**[41:53]** And then I think sales enablement is probably the third that we're hitting on at this point.

**[41:56]** There's more we want to do, but that's probably where we're starting.

## 42:00 — When the buyer has AI too

**[42:00]** One of the things I think is really interesting is that, yes, we have AI to get into market,

**[42:06]** but when you get into an actual sales process, the other side has AI too.

**[42:13]** And are there any unique dynamics that have come about during this process now that both sides are weaponized with AI?

**[42:24]** I mean, I've been saying this for many, many years that the consumer of SaaS products have evolved,

**[42:31]** just like SaaS products have evolved. So they've gotten a lot smarter, they've gotten a lot more savvy.

**[42:36]** It used to be that everyone would just sign with an auto renewal and no one thought about it,

**[42:40]** and now you're finding out everyone's diving on that and trying to rip that out from the get-go, right?

**[42:44]** There are certain things you're seeing that buyers just kind of intuitively know what to do.

**[42:49]** You can definitely tell that some buyers are flat out using AI to ask how to negotiate

**[42:55]** because you're seeing the same place almost word for word being used by them, so that's kind of somewhat funny.

**[43:00]** But where there is issue is there's a lot more transparency, right?

**[43:05]** So all of a sudden, if you subscribe to a price to value pricing methodology, that works,

**[43:12]** but somebody can very quickly go ahead and pull up all your competitors and get a price range for what they charge as well

**[43:19]** and start asking more questions. Now whether or not that number is correct or not almost doesn't make a difference, right?

**[43:25]** Because that's their perception, so therefore it's my reality, right?

**[43:29]** Like that's unfortunately the way the world rolls, so I think that pricing transparency becomes a lot more interesting

**[43:36]** and it's something that you have to contend with and just accept that that's going to be there, right?

**[43:43]** Now if you've done your sales job right as a salesperson, you've built the value, you've highlighted the cost of the problem,

**[43:50]** you've highlighted how the solution is pennies compared to the cost of the problem.

**[43:55]** We're the right choice because of ABCXYZ, so yes, if we're quibbling over 15%, probably not a big deal.

**[44:02]** If we're quibbling over 40%, you're going to have a problem. So I think there's this, what you can do with price

**[44:08]** and how you deal with price becomes interesting. I will also say companies are trying to change their pricing models, right?

**[44:18]** And that's also because of AI, right? So I'm sure either I've seen or you've seen, it's definitely happening out there,

**[44:25]** that it's no longer flat fee or a per user fee. It's much more now a usage fee, right? Like how many tokens are you gobbling up, right?

**[44:34]** So at the end of the day, when you're looking at like what your product is, how much AI it uses or not uses when users go ahead and deal with it,

**[44:42]** you need to start thinking about your pricing model to make sure your margins are there.

**[44:47]** So that becomes counterintuitive to everything I was taught, right? We were always taught, get them to use it, get them to use it as much as humanly possible

**[44:56]** so they're good and addicted and renewal becomes a non-event.

**[44:59]** And now you're saying, well, but I'm going to charge you the exact opposite of that. Now I'm going to charge you every time you use it.

**[45:06]** So think twice before you go ahead and type, right? So now that becomes an issue too, right?

**[45:11]** Back and forth is kind of unique dynamic and that hasn't really played out yet in the marketplace and whether that's going to be long-term for these customers.

**[45:19]** But one of the companies I work for did a lot of work with the consulting practices and that pricing model has completely changed.

**[45:27]** Now it's a year in, we'll see what happens, but that's going to start getting very, very interesting.

**[45:34]** Something else that I'm definitely seeing in the marketplace as well is it used to always be the more somebody logged in, the better user they are, right?

**[45:44]** So they were your high frequency users or active users or what have you.

**[45:49]** But when some of these companies develop and you start building agents, you're not logging in as much, right?

**[45:57]** The agents are running around doing things. So I think the metrics are going to start changing of how often did Mary log in to how many agents is Mary running and what are those agents doing?

**[46:07]** And I think how we measure success and how we measure use and value, I guess, in the SaaS industry is going to fundamentally change here in the next couple of years.

**[46:19]** Again, depending on how much AI is in your service offering.

**[46:24]** It's interesting because it's that value equation and there's some that are trying to do outcome based pricing or value based pricing, very, very difficult to do, very difficult.

**[46:35]** And for most companies, I honestly think it's a fool's errand to even try.

**[46:40]** But I do think it is important to your point, even if you're not pricing that way, try to measure it in some way to get an understanding of if your customer is getting value from your product or not.

**[46:53]** Because I may burn a million tokens and my grandma might burn a million tokens on Glaad.

**[47:01]** We're probably creating different things that have different sets of value.

**[47:05]** So if you could find a way to measure that, then that should give you some indication of retention, expansion, reference ability, but very difficult to do.

## 47:16 — Why Ari doesn't lock in renewal increases

**[47:16]** Yeah, it's interesting. This will be counterintuitive to what a lot of SaaS companies do today, but I'm not a fan of locking in increases.

**[47:25]** So a lot of times you'll see you'll get your SaaS contract, you're paying 50 grand a year, and it says in there, you know, upon renewal, there'll be a 7% price increase, right?

**[47:35]** You're like, yeah, I nabbed you 7%, that's like double inflation or triple inflation, like, that's fantastic. Maybe, maybe not. What if I used the crap out of the software and it actually like, you should double my price, now you can't, right?

**[47:49]** So I've always been a fan of kind of leaving that blank and kind of saying, I'll take my chances.

**[47:56]** And on the ones I renew flat, I renew flat, the ones I even have to renew a little bit less because they're uber light, maybe they were oversold, I'm good with that because I am convinced the heavy hitters, I will get way more money out of than that 7% when you aggregate it across the company.

**[48:13]** And by the way, if the customer just freaks out and says we don't want to renew anyway, and we're going with a different provider, you're not going to get it anyway.

**[48:21]** So it almost feels like you're only capping the upside, you're not really protecting too much downside, even I know it shouldn't be that way.

**[48:31]** But it happens time and time again, you have a signed contract, you have this customer blows up and now you're doing the calculus of, okay, do I get legal involved and then they go write something crazy on LinkedIn about and you'll always end up being like, okay, fine, we'll just let them out.

**[48:46]** But you're really just capping your upside in that case too. Yeah, no, look, and this this happened to me very early in my career and you know, I use it with vendors that I that I buy.

**[48:58]** They have SAS contracts price escalation, you got to go ahead and give me 30 days notice, you know, minimum 30 days notice if you're going to renew or not.

**[49:08]** That's great. I signed the document and send the cancellation letter on the same day.

**[49:12]** So we're done, right, we're done. So now we're back to square one, you're gonna have to earn by renewal.

**[49:17]** Right, and that's what it comes down to. And if you do, you got me, right, because if I'm addicted and I'm hooked and the values there, and you take me from 50 to 70.

**[49:26]** And I'm like, probably should not have done that. Right. Fair enough, but at least you earned it.

**[49:32]** Right. So like, yeah, it's in my mouth at the end of the day is the customer. It's like, okay, that 20 K hurts because it probably could have been closer to seven K.

**[49:42]** But man, their stuff is good. Right. Yes, their stuff's absolutely mediocre and they got me for seven K.

**[49:50]** Right. Like, treat your customers right. Demand from your customers the value you bring and the world is your oyster trying to trick is a strong word but kind of like get them into this fixed increase.

**[50:06]** And part of that comes internally from finance trying to project what these increases are going to be and they want a nice straight line and they can do that.

**[50:13]** But I've always looked at customer success as passive aggressive salespeople. Okay. You're selling all year and the renewal is your clothes. Right.

**[50:23]** That's basically what it comes down to. Right. And if you do your job right all year, you're going to get that 15% bump.

**[50:29]** Right. You really are. If you don't do your job, right, you're going to get nothing.

**[50:34]** So I like that personally. I think that works. I think that aligns customer success with the customer and makes the understand that they're a lot in life customer success to make sure that customer is happy and be that customer's voice internally.

**[50:46]** And like, you don't worry about cost of goods sold. That's my problem. You keep them happy. I'll pull the reins if need be. Right.

**[50:54]** You go push. You go keep that customer happy. You advocate for that customer inside this organization. I need you to do that. They pay the bills around to your last time I checked.

**[51:03]** Yeah. No amount of contract gymnastics is going to outweigh delivering value being there for your customer going above and beyond.

**[51:11]** And then like you mentioned, if you're providing value, the market's going to be happy to pay you for it. Exactly.

## 51:18 — Recap and close

**[51:18]** Ari, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing everything you did on the podcast.

**[51:23]** I love just the roadmap of what is stage fit for each organization. You definitely don't want to be playing business too early, but you don't want to wait too long.

**[51:32]** I think that like child Frankenstein versus adult Frankenstein metaphor that you gave is going to be stuck in my head for a little bit.

**[51:41]** And I also love the advice that you gave on doubling down on your winners. Get that person a BDR, give him a comp plan that makes it unreasonable for them to leave.

**[51:52]** And I also like how you built that comp plan to help people self-select out as well and peeking into the future, leveraging AI and go to market.

**[52:02]** You're not going to be the only one who has it. Your buyer has it too, so you have to be prepared for that.

**[52:06]** I think just amazing practical tactical insights for the audience. So thank you so much for being on.

**[52:12]** And I can't wait to see what you and assign analytics do next.

**[52:17]** I appreciate the invite and had a great time. Thank you so much.