Why You Can't Sell Your Way Into PLG

0:00 One of the founders of Qualtrics used all the time, he said it was nail it, then scale it,

0:03 and I think that that's the model for business. My guest today is Bryce Winkleman, Chief Revenue

0:08 Officer at Typeform, where he's leading the evolution of a 140,000 customer forms business

0:14 into a full workflow platform with half his organization operating out of Europe. What did

0:20 you see that made you believe the front door was worth so much more than just the form itself?

0:25 You know, as you talked about, you know, we own the front door, and it became pretty clear to us

0:30 that, you know what, if you own the front door, that's incredibly valuable. First of all, you have

0:34 to accept the fact that to have a well-functioning PLG engine, you're going to lose some enterprise

0:40 deals, you're going to lose some sales light deals. I'm like, that's okay. I really appreciate

0:44 how you take these approaches of knowing maybe let's be less worried about the math upfront

0:52 and focus on customer impact. How do you make these decisions with the higher level of scrutiny

1:00 that companies are in now versus five or so years ago? You know, there's a praise growth at all

1:05 costs. You know, and eventually you had to clean that up, especially as you became a public company

1:10 and things of that nature, but it was really just growth was the premium. And now it's, yeah,

1:14 you still need to grow and growth still has a premium on it, but it's all about like you got

1:18 to be profitable. You got to show that you have an efficient, effective, profitable business model

1:22 that also can grow. How have you fought for or positioned further investment in brand marketing

1:32 with your board and with your executive team? Yeah, it's a real tough one. And tech was a lot

1:39 easier, you know, 2021 and early because it was all just growth. Bryce type form is known to

1:52 millions of people as a forms tool. You're in the middle of turning it into a workflow platform.

1:59 What did you see that made you believe the front door was worth so much more than just the form

2:04 itself? Yeah, that's a great question, Anthony. And thanks for having me excited to have this

2:10 conversation today. So, you know, it's this is a critical evolution in our business. And really,

2:16 when I think of type form, there's two key distinct parts of our business, right? And this

2:20 is the case in a lot of PLG organizations, there's the, there's the self serve base. And then there's

2:26 the enterprise base. And they really require two pretty distinct emotions. And so as you think about

2:32 self serve, you know, as you talked about, you know, we own the front door, and it became pretty

2:37 clear to us that, you know what, if you own the front door, that's incredibly valuable. If you

2:42 have, you know, companies that operate through a self serve motion, typically, they're a little

2:47 smaller, a little more nimble, you know, say startups, solopreneurs, organizations that are

2:52 in that active growth mode. And they're trying to avoid at all costs, building a hairy tech stack,

2:58 particularly when it comes to activation of leads, right. And so in type form is very commonly used

3:04 for lead generation. And so we said, Look, well, we own the front door. And we are the data collection

3:10 side of that equation. But it makes a ton of sense, because there's a ton of value. And there's also a

3:16 ton of stickiness when it comes to activation. So it's not just collection of leads, but it's

3:20 also the whole activation side. And so if we own the front door, the whole workflow, the back end

3:26 workflow around activation just makes a ton of sense. It makes it again, stickier for type form,

3:31 but also way more valuable and way more impactful for these organizations that operate in that kind

3:36 of a self serve type of motion. And so it became pretty clear that well, hey, if you own, yeah,

3:42 if you own the lead, then it makes sense that you would own enrichment that you would own routing

3:47 that you would also own the ability to properly segment that you would also own the ability to

3:52 do payment processing, right. And so the kind of end to end flow just made a lot of sense. And the

3:57 front door again, if we're already in the in the organization, adding the elements of the broader

4:01 workflow, just it just made a lot of sense, right. And I think type form does a great job as well of

4:06 listening to its customers, which was a key driver behind how we think about evolution and development,

4:12 right, if you listen to your customers, they'll do a really good job of pointing you where you should

4:16 go. So there's, there's that side of the business. On the other side, on the enterprise side,

4:22 the use cases were actually very different. It was much more feedback related customer experience,

4:27 some elements of employee experience and research, right, there was a much more kind of enterprise

4:33 grade series of use cases that went outside of that world of lead generation. And so with that,

4:39 and with the strong AI capability we had built into the product, we said, look, if we're already

4:43 utilized for research in a lot of organizations, and for consumer insights and things of that

4:49 nature, what's the hardest challenge that exists out there in that world. And what we saw in

4:56 collaboration with our board and others was, you know, qualitative research is incredibly painful

5:01 for a whole range of reasons, and I won't pontificate too much about it, but the logistics

5:06 of organizing focus groups, you know, the amount of time that it takes the pain of analyzing the

5:12 data, transcribing everything down, creating video clips, you know, and then really analyzing and

5:18 coming to an executive summary of what does this look like, you know, you also have to know what

5:22 you're doing to go and do qualitative research. And we said, look, if we're already used in the

5:25 quant side of that equation very actively, let's go tackle this really hard challenge that AI has

5:31 made easier. And so let's get into qual. And so we said we can build an end to end research workflow

5:37 out of our product as well. Again, it's an expansion on existing use cases,

5:41 and we can completely upend and create a whole new modality in the world of research and AI can

5:45 moderate it. AI now has the ability, you know, so it can moderate the interview in the focus group,

5:51 it has the ability to much more effectively analyze the data in real time, create executive

5:57 summaries, create video clips to everything of that nature. If you don't know what you're doing,

6:00 AI does a great job at spinning up and doing research design. So all of these critical pain

6:06 points that exist in the world of research, particularly around qualitative, we figured,

6:10 hey, type form is in a great position to go solve that problem. And so those are those are a couple

6:16 of things that we've been seeing and thinking about of like, hey, if you own the front door,

6:19 and you own distribution, a really a more aggressive multi product strategy makes a ton

6:24 of sense. And, and you kind of figure out where do you go in that strategy by, you know, thinking

6:29 what is the best next step that an order, you know, that an organization would take on the back

6:33 of the data that you provide, and then you got to listen to your customers, and they'll do a really

6:38 good job of telling you where to go. So it's kind of a long winded answer. But that's how we that's

6:42 how we're thinking about our product evolution. It makes a ton of sense, especially earning the

6:47 right to get to those next use cases and listening to the customers that are telling you exactly what

6:52 they need. The biggest thing that comes to mind for me is the education needed to shift on the

6:58 brand. How are you thinking about doing that with the existing customer base as well as when you're

7:03 landing net new logos, what motions or moves had you had to make to help up level the brand to get

7:11 people current to what type form is today? Yeah, that's been one of the most challenging aspects

7:17 of it. One, you have to be true to your brand. When we still invest in the core that made us

7:22 who we are today, right, you still build an incredible form experience, and you have to invest

7:26 there and build great UX and beauty of design and all those things that were known for you can't

7:29 just stop doing that. So it requires real dedicated investment, ensuring that you keep your your core

7:35 strong. But then you also have to let people know that like, hey, by the way, type form can do a lot

7:40 more than what you may think about. And so we've had to think about activating new channels. So

7:45 one is, you know, we do a lot in paid media, and we have to continue to aggressively go into paid

7:50 media, but test new channels and avenues, we have to get into new keywords, and that's expensive. And

7:56 so we spend a lot of time with finance ring fencing investment to help us break into those

8:01 areas and paid saying, hey, we're going to have a much higher CAC in this area for a while because

8:05 this is what is going on. So no one panic, like let's let this go run its course, you have to

8:10 think about, again, new avenues and channels as well. So, you know, as you think about the world

8:14 of research as an example, and getting in front of researchers, well, you kind of got to start

8:18 spinning up an event strategy. So we started going into small format events, you know, starting to

8:23 really entertain third party events and go, we got to go to where those people are. And this

8:27 developing and emerging ICP as we're getting into it, we also aggressively utilize influencer

8:33 strategies, I think that's actually been one of the coolest things because influencers have the

8:38 ability when they have broad reach, but they also have the ability to tell a really cool story,

8:43 right? And they actually articulate a case and they, you know, there's a use case in front of

8:47 everyone in addition to a trusted voice out there, right? But to access, you know, influencers, you

8:53 actually have to be good as well, because often they're in there playing with the product, they're

8:56 testing it, they're trying it, they're actually deploying it. And so you got to put your money

9:01 where your mouth is, if that's going to be a strategy that you go and try. And so, you know,

9:04 those are just a few examples of how you start creating broader brand reach and helping

9:09 organizations know like, hey, there's a lot more that we do that goes beyond this. But there's also

9:14 been internal shifts, right? It's not just about brand, it's also about are we organized as a

9:19 company around the different motions that we have to now go and activate? Are we willing to go and

9:24 invest aggressively in accessing that audience that we want to go to? And so there's more on

9:28 that front that we could dig into, but it's been a, it's been a big effort.

9:33 Is there anything from the Qualtrics playbook that is opening up this idea of

9:38 landing into qualitative research with Typeform? You know, Qualtrics is from a playbook perspective.

9:48 Yeah, Qualtrics was very much enterprise tech sales led, right? That was one of those

9:52 organizations. It's not a PLG business, it's sales led. And, and so there's a lot of aspects of that

9:58 playbook that we can go and adopt as we move up market, as we move into the research space,

10:02 I would say on the, the growth flow side, which is the lead generation side, probably not as much

10:08 outside of just they're really good at and have been good at deploying a multi-product strategy.

10:12 So for us, I think some of the playbook things is, you know, some of the event strategy, right? How

10:15 do you go get in front of the right people at the right time? How do you have highly curated events

10:19 that really resonate where you can tell a story, but also create an experience for folks? You know,

10:25 and so I would definitely say that there were parts of the playbook that are, that are really

10:28 helpful. They're known in the research space. What we do is very different in a lot of respects for

10:34 what they do today, but they've done a really good job at creating more of a services-based

10:40 flow that I think has resonated. And I think there are things we can learn from that.

10:45 Let's talk a little bit about the PLG, SLG motions that are running simultaneously.

10:52 The major issue I've always run into previous companies and the companies that we work with

10:58 at LeanScale is that messy middle of it might be a sales opportunity that came in through self-serve.

11:05 We have to get the sales team engaged. I would love your perspective on how to manage that

11:12 and any lessons learned that would work well for the audience.

11:16 Yeah. This is, again, it's a very challenging one. This is one of the main reasons why

11:25 I believe sales-led first companies or enterprise-led companies really struggle to get into PLG.

11:32 In fact, I've never seen it really, I mean, I'm sure it's happened, but very few examples of it

11:36 ever succeeding going from sales-led to product-led. But I've seen it flip the other way, right? Where

11:42 product-led can go into sales-led much easier for a range of reasons. And I'm happy to kind of go

11:46 into some more detail on a few of those reasons, but I would say generally it's, first of all,

11:52 you have to accept the fact that to have a well-functioning PLG engine, you're going to

11:57 lose some enterprise deals. You're going to lose some sales-led deals. I'm like, that's okay.

12:01 You have to be able to understand that. And then as you deliver value and as you package things the

12:05 right way, what you lose on the self-serve side out of the gate will eventually come up and become

12:09 an enterprise customer as you go down the road. But you just have to spend a lot of time from a

12:17 packaging perspective. Packaging is really hard in self-serve and especially where you have self-serve

12:22 and sales-led, it's really challenging. I don't think any organizations actually fully cracked

12:28 that yet because you say, hey, we want to shore up our core. We want to create a strong base of

12:33 customers. And so we have to give them the right capability to self-serve, but at the same time,

12:37 what do you reserve for a market? And typically we found that things that are geared around

12:41 enterprise needs, it's just that's kind of led to the better packaging opportunity.

12:46 Data center location, you think about security and privacy, you think about scale and enterprise

12:52 scale. You think about administration capabilities and the ability to do much more around SSO and

12:59 things of that nature. You got to make sure that you resist the temptation to move everything into

13:03 self-serve and say, what are the things that true enterprise needs? And then let's make sure that

13:08 that's left in the right spot. It's also really important that as you think about how you

13:14 organize internally, our marketing organization is very much organized around sales-led and

13:21 product-led. And then a range of shared services, whether it's content and creative and things of

13:26 that nature. And I think you need to do a similar thing on the product side where it's like, how do

13:31 you build dedicated investment arms in R&D that are focused on key parts of the business? So we

13:37 have a dedicated R&D team focused solely on enterprise capability. And so when stuff comes

13:42 out from there, it's a lot easier when you think about, hey, it's coming from this team. We should

13:47 be packaging that in the right enterprise package, or this is coming from this team down here. That

13:52 should probably be utilized to go and shore up our self-serve core business. And so it's a lot of

13:58 conversation, a lot of effort, a lot of experimentation. Things move regularly and you have

14:02 to continue to have a culture of experimentation because you rarely get it right out of the gate.

14:07 But I think the more that you create dedicated bets and dedicated organizations, the easier it

14:13 is to figure out where things should be packaged. And again, it's a journey that we're on right now

14:17 and we're continuing to pound on it, but we definitely made a lot of progress over the years.

14:23 I'm curious of something you mentioned at the front end of that saying it's nearly impossible

14:28 to go from a sales-led organization to a product-led organization. And it's a little bit easier the

14:34 other way. What barriers are sales-led growth companies running into that just make it so

14:40 difficult to implement an effective PLG motion at the same time?

14:46 Yeah, so the things that I've run into in the past that make it especially challenging

14:53 are things like there's a lot of fear on the finance side of business. So first of all,

14:58 it's sales-led or product-led. It's a real cultural thing, right? And you get used to KPIs

15:03 and metrics looking a certain way. And the minute you start saying, well, in a self-serve business,

15:09 especially if you provide things like month-to-month contracts, you're going to see churn numbers that

15:14 are probably really scary for a bit. And if your team is not rallied around that concept,

15:19 if the board isn't rallied around that concept and you're willing to accept that,

15:22 it's going to create a lot of fear and you're going to pull the plug way too early. So I think

15:26 things like churn models and fear from the finance team, from the board, from others is one of those

15:31 things that is a real hurdle to get past. I think the other thing too is one thing we were just

15:37 talking about is you look at enterprise leakage, right? You got to have the sales team that

15:42 is also patient and understanding that like, hey, with this motion, we're going to lose some

15:46 business. We're going to lose some existing customers that are going to opt for self-serve.

15:49 We're going to take existing pipeline. And we may lose some of that into the self-serve motion,

15:54 but like we're okay with that concept because if we add a ton of value down there, we'll get them

15:58 to where we want them to be. It's better to acquire the customer and then really drive them

16:02 up market than it is to try to really be too protective on an enterprise versus self-serve

16:08 for a while. The other thing is just packaging is really hard. As you think about, well, what

16:12 do you put in a self-serve package? What do you put in an enterprise package? That is debilitating

16:18 for a lot of organizations. If you've never done that, if you don't have people that are used to

16:22 doing that, it is a real challenge, right? And it requires, again, a level of experimentation that

16:28 a lot of organizations rarely do. And then I think the other thing too actually goes back to

16:33 what we were talking about earlier, Anthony, on the brand side, where we're working on saying,

16:37 hey, we're going from forms to broader flows and workflows. That concept requires a brand shift in

16:43 the mind of our customers. But I think we're up for that challenge because we also have consumer

16:48 grade marketing, right? We are used to paid media. We're used to lifecycle marketing. We're used to a

16:54 whole bunch of things because we have to acquire thousands and thousands and thousands of customers

16:58 a year. And we do, we're talking millions of signups, thousands of customers. That requires

17:03 a different grade of marketing that feels much more like consumer grade. It doesn't mean we don't

17:07 do enterprise marketing too, but you got to have that consumer grade motion, right? Because you have

17:11 to have the brand investment to be able to create a PLG engine. And it's expensive and it is a huge

17:18 investment. And some of these more enterprise led companies are like, well, we're used to just going

17:23 to events and like the motion is very different. A lot of ABM, a lot of high touch. Well, you're

17:27 never going to build an engine big enough unless you invest aggressively enough in brand. And brand,

17:34 it's hard sometimes to track full ROI. So that's when I talk about organizational culture and

17:40 readiness. It's all those kinds of things that become death by a thousand cuts and take these

17:44 enterprise led companies. And those are big significant hurdles that they have to get over.

17:50 Whereas going the other way, it's a little bit easier. It's much easier to layer an event

17:53 strategy on the back of an existing media strategy that is consumer grade. You've already wrapped

17:58 your head around CAC and cost models and things like that. And so layering things on and building

18:02 an enterprise motion becomes easier once you've built the PLG engine. So those are just a few

18:07 thoughts and observations I've seen as I've been in pure enterprise tech and sales led. And as I've

18:10 been in PLG, it's just there are some pretty big hurdles to go over going from that sales led to

18:18 PLG. Can we double click a little bit on the brand investment philosophy? I think that is something

18:27 that I've seen so many companies struggle with. It's very easy to make more investments in demand

18:34 engine. One dollar in brings three dollars back from all of your channels. It's a reasonable bet

18:40 to make. It's a little bit more difficult on the brand side. You know that it's really greasing the

18:47 whole system for everything else that you're running. But how have you fought for or positioned

18:54 further investment in brand marketing with your board and with your executive team?

19:01 Oh yeah. First of all, we have an incredibly supportive board and the whole leadership team

19:09 at Typeform is very open to making big swings. And so that's helpful. If you add a ton of

19:16 conservatism on that side, that could be really challenging to get past. So first of all, it's a

19:21 few things. One is that it's really hard to make the case if you're not an efficient organization

19:26 already. If you're not profitable and efficient in your approach and in your go-to-market engine

19:31 and you're not able to use existing cash for it, that's a real tough sell. So one, you've got to

19:36 actually just make sure that your own house is in order before you go really, really big on some of

19:40 the brand stuff. But I would say that it is a challenge because ROI on brand is really, really,

19:46 really tough to show. And some of the things that we've done is we do brand tracking research. We

19:53 actually go and say, let's run a consistent brand tracker. Let's see, can we actually determine

20:00 where we are seeing a brand lift? But we have to go test it out of the gate. And so I think a lot

20:05 of the conversation is like, again, let's ring fence a budget. Let's go test this channel. Let's

20:10 test this concept. Let's test this brand initiative. And here's how we're going to measure it. And you

20:14 got to be really clear up front that it's not typically in the form of new business, for example.

20:20 It's going to be in the form of, you know, things like recognition and things of that nature. And

20:24 so you would you would go and you articulate how we measure it. And then you go run it. And then

20:29 you circle back and say, okay, here's generally what we saw from that. And here's and here's what

20:33 it looked like. We also made it very clear that we want our our CEO and our leadership team to be

20:39 with us in the whole every step of the process. So right now we're in the process of building a whole

20:44 new video highlighting a few of our new product lines. And that's very much a brand initiative

20:50 in a lot of ways. And so we make sure that our chief product and technology officer, our CFO,

20:56 our CEO, they're involved in the development of that they get their eyes on it, they feel like

21:01 they're a part of the brand initiative. And it makes it easier. Like if it's just a hey,

21:05 just trust us, we'll go do something interesting over here. It's a lot tougher to do. Now, eventually,

21:10 we may get to that point. But first, you got to go build the trust with the team, paint the vision,

21:13 and help them understand this is what we're trying to do and come along the journey with us.

21:17 And obviously, our whole leadership team is not involved in every single campaign that we do on

21:22 the brand side. But those big ones, those those things that are big investments, and that we

21:26 believe are going to move the needle, we try to make sure that they're actually bought into the

21:29 whole concept start to finish. I think, you know, a few other important points is that if something

21:37 doesn't work, you got to be willing to pull the plug on it. If it's like, hey, you know what,

21:41 we tried this thing on the brand side, we didn't see a lift from it. We didn't see any new business

21:47 increase, right? If that is something that you're going to measure in that market. And so we're

21:51 going to stop doing it, right? And when the organization knows that they can trust you to

21:54 make the right business decision, not just to protect something because it's your own,

21:58 you know, your own project, that also buys significant trust, right? And so, but brand is

22:04 a brand's a tricky one. It's something that does require investment. I think the other thing too,

22:08 is there's a bit of a business imperative because if you're over reliant on one channel,

22:13 this is one of the most disruptive times I've seen in tech in 20 years in tech. Like this is like,

22:17 it's insane what's happening with search and paid media and CAC and all of these things that are

22:22 kicking off. Like it's really, really challenging. And so you have to have a diversified channel

22:26 strategy on acquisition. You have to. And in order to do that and to activate those channels,

22:32 you have to have a strong brand. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself overly reliant

22:36 in one channel. And so with that business imperative and but that's that's part of what

22:40 has to be pitched as a part of this. It's not just, hey, we want to go create a brand video.

22:44 It needs to be there's a shift happening in the landscape. We need to go diversify our

22:49 acquisition channels. Here's one of the ways we need to go do it. We need to invest in brand.

22:53 And then you start the pitch. So you start with the business imperative too. And I think that's

22:57 another lesson that can be learned. Sometimes it's easy, especially when you have very creative

23:01 people to dive directly into the creative side of it. You got to start with the business imperative

23:05 of like, why are we doing this in the first place? And then you go into the creative aspects of it

23:11 and the project management side of it. And so those are just a few learnings over the years of

23:15 like how I think you can get better brand investment from your team. But having, again,

23:19 a very supportive leadership team and board goes a long way. Are there any heuristics that you use,

23:26 maybe percent of marketing budget, percent of total revenue, anything that gives you

23:33 back of the napkin math to say, hey, we're probably investing enough or we're probably

23:39 not investing enough. That's a good question. I don't think there's a clear cut rule

23:49 for how to think about brand investment. I mean, ultimately it needs to trickle down to,

23:54 I mean, you can see, we can see things like we have dedicated campaigns that are designed for

23:58 brand and you can see what it clicks look like, right? Are we seeing a reduction in clicks? Are

24:02 we seeing more, you know, there's a lot of things brand related that's pure content, right? So you're

24:06 not actually designed for, you know, a click through. It's designed for, you know, you're not,

24:12 it's not designed for signups. It's not designed for new business. It's purely designed for like

24:16 thought leadership and creating a brand in the space. You know, you can see how the how the take

24:21 is on that. Is that performing well? Is it not performing well? Is that because of the channels,

24:25 because of lack of investment? So you just have to have really smart people that are very driven

24:29 and good at this stuff to be looking at it all the time and say, this is working or not working

24:33 because of this. And so here's what we recommend we go do. And so, but yeah, from a, from a pure

24:38 numbers perspective, I don't think there's really a clear guiding principle on that aspect of it.

24:44 It's kind of, it's, it's a little bit of art and science. Yeah. And like most things, it depends on

24:49 everything happening internally, but just wondering if there was any, anything that stood out, just

24:55 because I know it's so tricky and a lot of people are having a tough time getting budgets for brand

25:01 related investments approved and getting the support behind them. But I, I agree with you.

25:08 It is the most disruptive time. And I think the companies that are investing in brand though,

25:14 are actually performing really well. They're showing up in the LMS. They're owning their

25:19 audience. They're creating relative content that brings people into their brand and then

25:25 gets them into their ecosystem. So I don't have one either. I wish I had some guidance on it,

25:31 but I do see the companies that are investing in it are performing really well and they seem to get

25:37 it. Yeah, no, I absolutely believe you're right. And that's been one of the unique aspects of

25:44 this new world of AI search. It's that brand and content have never been more important. And so

25:50 whatever it was, like it needs to be more, I think is what I'm seeing. It's a, you know,

25:55 if you want to be recognized, you need to be nailing it on review sites. If you want to be

26:00 recognized, you need to be creating incredible content, like actual valuable content. If you

26:04 want to be nailing it, you need to be being discussed. You need to be in things like Reddit

26:08 and other channels, right? You have to have that, that owned audiences you're talking about. It's,

26:12 it's so disruptive that if you don't have the brand investment, it's going to be really,

26:15 really hard to cut through the noise. It's going to be really hard to be found now

26:19 because of the way that search is changing.

26:24 We talked a little bit about getting the market up to speed on new things that you're doing,

26:31 going from forms to flows. Where my mind goes is it may be equally as difficult to get the

26:40 enablement internally, especially on sales teams, SDR teams, the whole go to market organization.

26:47 I would love if you could share a little bit about your approach to enablement

26:52 to get those teams up to speed and ready for the change that Typeform is going through.

26:58 Yeah. Yeah. So enablement is critically important and it's a team effort, right? We have great,

27:03 you know, sales leadership that's driving enablement and thinking about it and customer

27:06 success leadership that's thinking about it regularly and joint enablement sessions. And

27:11 we have incredible product marketers and folks like that that are kind of teaching positioning and,

27:15 you know, and all that stuff. But I think one of the biggest takeaways, and I think a lot of

27:18 organizations are doing the, like, the, you know, the classroom teaching, which I think is important

27:24 and to teach them, hey, here's what the positioning is. Here's how you talk about it. Here's who the

27:28 ICP is. Here's how the ICP thinks. Here's how they buy. Here's what it looks like. But I think

27:31 there's a few things that have been some good best practices to think about as you go. One is that it

27:36 rarely is ever, mission is not accomplished after one enablement session. It's ongoing enablement.

27:42 It's ongoing conversations. And I would encourage any leaders out there that may be listening to

27:47 this to think about, like, when was the last time I had a skip level with that team and was able to

27:53 dig in and understand like, do they get this? Do they understand this? Like, what's going on,

27:57 right? Sometimes, and it doesn't mean that, you know, the other management layers are not doing

28:01 a great job. I'm sure they are. But sometimes you need to go down and hear it for yourself. You need

28:06 to be listening to call recordings. You need to be actually attending enablement. You need to be

28:11 doing those things and seeing what's taking what isn't. And it's an ongoing process of continuous

28:15 enablement. And as you learn more, share it, right? So with this new product line, this research flow

28:20 product line, I've been going out to my own network and setting up conversations to go learn, like,

28:25 how does, you know, how do great executives in the space, like, how are they thinking about what

28:30 we're doing? What do they think about the ICP? What's the problem that we would be solving for

28:34 them? And so I've been having a lot of those conversations. And then I take that information

28:38 that I learned, we distill it down, and I send it out into a field channel, so that everyone can

28:42 learn like, hey, okay, here's the conversation I had. And here are all the key takeaways that you

28:46 should be thinking about, right? And so it's continuous enablement, continuous communication.

28:51 So that's one, I think important point. The second point, and by the way, I think it's important that

28:56 you lead from the front as a leader, right? That you're actually having the conversations as well,

29:00 you can see where things are breaking down, right? You, they're just delegated to your team and hope

29:04 that you eventually hear from it, right? One of the things that I've learned, and this isn't a

29:08 natural part of enablement, because often, again, you focus on things like product capability and

29:12 messaging and how to position it and, you know, medic related to it. And there's all this stuff

29:17 that you would typically go and teach. But it's really important that you bring the team along

29:22 with why did we make this strategic decision? This is a big takeaway recently, I was having a skip

29:26 level team meeting with our customer success team. And we were talking about the research flow product

29:32 that we had just launched. And I just naturally started telling the story of like, why we made

29:37 the decision to enter the space and talked a lot about the interactions we had had with the board,

29:41 where they saw investment going, what was going on. And I started just sharing some of this,

29:45 this context. And one of the CSMs came off mute and said, that is the first time we've heard

29:51 why we made this decision. It's not like we ever doubted the decision. We think it's a great idea,

29:56 but we no one had ever brought us into the like, why did we go there? And why is this so important?

30:02 And so that was a big aha moment for me that sometimes it's not just the skills based

30:07 enablement. But sometimes you need to actually bring the team along with you as to why this

30:12 strategic initiative, why does this matter so much? Why did we make this decision as a leadership team?

30:18 And so I think that's another piece is that you may actually need to take your enablement playbook

30:22 and take it a click or two deeper into the concept. Because when you can bring the team around

30:27 mentally, then all the skill stuff layers on a much stronger foundation. So I think that was a

30:33 big takeaway over the last three weeks, regarding how to just keep keep pounding on and driving

30:38 enablement in the right place. Getting that buy in is so difficult. And especially when you're

30:44 sitting in rooms, you you know, every detail of the strategy and the plan, and then you forget that

30:50 so many people have not been as privy to the information that you have. So intentionally,

30:56 going back, reminding the team of why we're doing what we're doing, I think it makes a ton of sense.

31:02 I tend to call myself the chief reminder officer. And I need to remember that just because I know

31:07 something, it doesn't mean everybody else knows it. So I have to be okay with repeating myself

31:12 over and over again to people. And I think a lot of organizations miss that layer. And just I think

31:20 they have assumptions that people already get it. Yeah, I totally agree. And you may think, well,

31:26 I said it once, like, how many times do I need to say it? Well, the answer is again, and again,

31:30 and again, and again. And then you need to have skip levels with folks. And, you know, obviously,

31:34 you're already having conversations with your directs. But then again, these these skip levels

31:38 open up to like, Oh, you know what, that didn't land, like, I need to repeat, we need to talk about it

31:42 again, I don't care how many times you've talked about pricing, and packaging, and I don't know,

31:46 I don't care how many times you've talked about positioning and messaging. You know, stuff isn't

31:50 always landing. And unless you're really close to the, to the individuals that are taking it to

31:55 market, like you're going to miss the fact that it just is not really connecting at this point. And

31:59 that's why I would recommend there's something really important to you, as well as a revenue

32:03 leader in an organization, sometimes you need to deliver that message yourself, right, and then do

32:08 the follow ups and then do the conversations and the skip levels and the, you know, regular check-ins,

32:13 you got to watch the calls, and you got to see how they're doing it, you have to do that work

32:16 yourself. Again, it doesn't mean that the other people that are designed to do it are not critically

32:20 important. But sometimes you have the context, you have the understanding that can be really helpful.

32:25 And so I don't know, that's, that's one of those things that you just, you just kind of have to be

32:29 involved in the process to, yes, you delegate key critical things that you need to delegate,

32:34 but you can't just blindly just say, okay, someone's got enablement, and I'm going to

32:37 carry on with my day. Are there any key roles that you have on your team, that you think maybe other

32:43 companies are not making this level of investment and enablement operations, all the support

32:50 connective tissue that keeps these initiatives moving along? Oh, geez. There, honestly,

32:57 there are so many people that, and we've spent a lot of time over the last, you know, year and a

33:04 half or so, of refining the organization. Because if your organization does not look and reflect

33:12 the investments you're making from a big bet perspective and the products you're, you're

33:16 investing in, there's going to be weird dissonance in the organization. So you have to actually make

33:20 sure you have the roles and the structure that reflect your priorities. And so I, you know,

33:26 there are a lot of roles, like I have never leaned more in my life on product marketing.

33:31 Incredible, like so much work that they have to do, you know, in helping us transition and form

33:36 into a whole new, whole new side of the business, right? I think about revenue operations, like how

33:42 critical they are as like strategy partners. And I view revenue operations for me as it's not just

33:47 a data and reporting function, like they're true, like the operational leaders of the business in a

33:52 lot of ways, right? We also brought in marketing operations, right? How do we make sure that as we

33:58 are transitioning and transforming as a company, that marketing and product stay in complete sync.

34:02 And so you have product operations and marketing operations that work so close together. That's

34:07 been a huge unlock from an efficiency perspective, but I'll just also just communication and

34:12 transparency. And because, you know, there were times, you know, where you found that like, hey,

34:16 we're running this marketing initiative and product has no idea what's going on,

34:19 our product is making this change on the roadmap and marketing has no idea what's going on, right?

34:23 So how do you actually bring some of those operational roles together can be really,

34:26 really helpful. Obviously, being careful to avoid glue functions as well, it's an important part,

34:31 you know, so I would say those are some really critical things. We also have hired a head of

34:36 field engineering, kind of this combination of like custom engineering, making sure that the right

34:41 kind of level of solutions are built for organizations helping out on the pre-sale side,

34:46 you know, from pre-sales to post-sales. There's also, you know, as we entered the research space,

34:51 we said, look, you know, one of the big unlocks I've seen in multiple companies is bringing in

34:56 experts to go in and talk about the product, right? So if you are happy at deep industry

35:00 focus, you need to bring in an industry expert. And they're incredibly impactful in a pre-sales

35:05 motion all the way through to like post-sales delivery and knocking it out of the park for the

35:10 customer and building that continued trust going forward. So whether it's an industry expert,

35:14 or we just hired a research expert to help us with the research flow side, it's like, look,

35:19 you know research, you know research better than anyone that's here. And so one, we want you to

35:23 pound on the product to we need you to be involved in pre-sale conversations, be a thought partner

35:27 with the customer, think through what they're trying to do, help them design POCs, you know,

35:31 and then you're going to be responsible for delivery on the back end. And so bringing in

35:34 some of those real specialists and experts has been a massive unlock again, and that's multiple

35:39 organizations where that's been really, really huge. So I would say those are a few roles. But

35:45 again, it gets tough when you start naming roles because everyone has some critical part to play

35:49 our content team. We couldn't do all this AI search stuff if we didn't have a killer content

35:54 team that was pumping out great content. Head of web strategy has been transformational in our

35:58 organization. You can just go down the list and everyone has a really important part to play in

36:02 our story. I think one that was pretty unique and I have a couple questions on the revenue ops and

36:10 marketing ops side. It's a near and dear place to me, but I want to spend a moment on the industry

36:17 experts and I want to make sure I'm understanding right. So if you're going into a particular

36:22 vertical or function that has a specific audience, specific customer, and you're bringing in these

36:29 experts to speak to it, how are you structuring that team? Are they reporting into sales? Do they

36:35 have their own division? How do you hire for those type of roles? And what does day to day look like?

36:41 Because I'm asking because I think a lot of companies could benefit from having a roster

36:46 of people like that on their team. But functionally, how do you get that into the organization?

36:51 Yeah, we could do a whole podcast on this one. This has been again, this is an area that would

36:57 be happy to have you back for another one. Yeah, there's there's so much that we could go into on

37:01 this front. So, you know, in a past life, you know, I was operating, you know, I was on a leadership

37:08 team of a business unit in HR technology. And it was a very scientific aspect of it focused on the

37:15 world of, you know, employee engagement and things of that nature. And the industry had been very

37:19 reliant on agencies for a long time, it was very services heavy. And then we were the technology

37:24 disruptor. But we found that there had to be some kind of a blend of like, these organizations value

37:29 the thought partnership, and the guidance that was given through the agencies and going pure tech,

37:34 and relying just on in house resources that they had available was really challenging. And so we

37:38 launched team that was a bunch of organizational psychologists. And, you know, and so when you in

37:45 when you bring in individuals like that, like like PhD level, you know, organizational behavior,

37:51 you know, in folks with that, you know, IO psychologists, things of that, like they were

37:55 able to come in in a pre sale motion, and they were able to collaborate with the customer and

37:58 say, Well, let me help you understand how these benchmarks work. Here's how you should think about

38:02 measurement and design here. And so they were that, that upfront, consultative partner to get

38:07 them to feel comfortable to move on to a more tech based solution. And then there was a services team

38:12 that would kind of pick it up from their post sale and take it and run additional services on the

38:15 back of it for organizations that were ready to self serve it. organizationally, often this group

38:21 reports to me like, these folks are typically again, you get a lot of folks that are PhD level,

38:28 late career, right folks that have done it before been there done that. And so it can be challenging

38:33 to just purely bury them in an organization. However, I also have seen them, you know, inside

38:37 of a pre sales organization, you know, and so the structures are kind of all over when I was a chief

38:43 strategy officer at quantum metric this, they also reported to me we were much more industry focused.

38:48 And so it was okay, well, we want to go deep into travel and hospitality. That's a huge play for us

38:53 within our technology. And we, you know, we have a ton of airlines, we have, you know, hotels, we

38:58 have all these different groups that we want to work with or are working with, let's go hire the

39:02 head of digital, which was the product that we provided was it was a digital analytics application,

39:06 let's go get the head of digital at this hotel chain. And let's bring her into the organization

39:13 so that when we are working with other hotel chains, she can come and say, let me tell you

39:16 lessons learned. Let me help you understand why this technology is differentiated from a

39:20 trusted voice that's been in those people's shoes that you're selling to. It's incredibly impactful.

39:26 And so those individuals were part of the organization. So we had someone, you know,

39:29 for retail, you had someone for travel and hospitality, you had someone for financial

39:33 services, right, you go get people that have done the job, and you bring them in. And what's cool

39:37 for those folks, too, is it diversifies their career, right? They have, they've been on that

39:41 client side for so long, that coming in and getting to cut their teeth in tech, it opens

39:46 up a whole new world of career for them, too. And so like, it's been very mutually beneficial.

39:51 And then similar thing here, we actually are our associate principal researcher that we brought in

39:58 to help us launch research flow and get it off the ground. She's also she's really spanning both

40:02 pre and post sale. And we're going to be investing in this part of the organization. She sits in

40:06 customer success reports directly to the VP of customer success, because that's where post sale

40:11 lives right now. And so we said, let's, let's put her there. But there's probably about three

40:16 different places in the organization where she could sit. Because she is involved in pre sale,

40:21 she is involved in post sale, she is involved in everything in between, she could probably sit in

40:25 the sales organization, and she's doing a lot of that work to directly with the sales team.

40:29 And, and so, organizationally, there's a lot of places that you know, you could go and put this

40:35 person, I think the biggest challenge is less organizational structure, and probably more of

40:39 like, how do you get a team that maybe has never sold with someone like this, and get them to

40:43 effectively incorporate them into the process. So one, it's, it's how do you take a team that's

40:48 never had that subject matter expertise? And how do you help them know what this person can do and

40:53 why you want them at the table with you and strategic deals? So getting that to take is the

40:57 first problem. But then when you do that really well, you run into a secondary problem, which is

41:03 now how do you create an intake process, because it becomes so powerful, everyone wants to use that

41:09 team. And that's usually not a huge team, right? It's a few people. So you then have to say, okay,

41:14 well, now we have to figure out what are the right deals that these people work on. And so you're

41:19 going to run into the other problem where they'll become so popular, everyone wants them on every

41:22 deal. So then you have to figure out, well, how do you actually structure this and find the right

41:26 strategic deals. And then you have, you know, what do you do on the post sale side, one of the best

41:30 ways to scale in post sales is you do have an in house team that can do this work. But that's

41:35 where we scale through partners. And I've typically found 70 to 80% of your post sale work,

41:39 we would typically send to partners who can then take what was done in pre-sale and then take it

41:44 and carry it forward and continue with program development and design. And so really thinking

41:49 through one, how do you get people to understand how to sell with the person is number one. And

41:53 that's something that's very doable. Second is once you get those wins, they become in major demand.

41:58 So how do you now figure out what are the deals they should be involved in and make sure that those

42:01 get to that person or those people. And then the third step is now how do you scale because

42:07 the services component becomes they're so valuable in pre and post sales. Now the customer wants to

42:11 utilize them all the time. So how do you scale the services side? And I've typically found partners

42:16 are a good way to do that. So it takes some time, but it's a massive unlock.

42:23 As most things, it doesn't sound like a cookie cutter approach and you'll have to tailor it to

42:26 your industry. But I love hearing how busy they get. It sounds like you might need to hire them

42:30 an agent to manage all of the work they're getting internally, keep up with the volume.

42:35 Incredible, incredible people out there, super smart people that just do such a such a great

42:40 job. And so these have been some of the most successful teams I've built in the past. And

42:44 it's so fun to work with them. I really appreciate how you take these approaches of knowing

42:53 maybe let's be less worried about the math upfront and focus on customer impact. And then

43:00 we'll measure the results later. I think when you juxtapose that against kind of the current

43:06 environment where the market's really, really rewarding efficiency and making sure that you're

43:14 being hyper efficient with the bets that you're making, if you could maybe walk through your

43:20 decision-making process when you're saying, "Hey, we're going to hire more sales people here. We're

43:24 going to hire more in customer success here. Yes, we need to make a bigger investment in brand.

43:29 Here's why." And then here's some industry experts that we need to get on the roster for XYZ reason.

43:36 How do you make these decisions with the higher level of scrutiny that companies are in now

43:43 versus five or so years ago? Yeah, it's a real tough one. Tech was a lot easier

43:52 2021 and earlier because it was all just growth. There's a phrase, "Growth at all costs."

44:00 Eventually, you had to clean that up, especially as you became a public company and things of that

44:03 nature. But it was really just growth was the premium. And now it's, yeah, you still need to

44:07 grow. And growth still has a premium on it, but it's all about you got to be profitable. You got

44:12 to show that you have an efficient, effective, profitable business model that also can grow.

44:17 And so that's one of the big shifts that happened. I would say probably 2022 is when it really kicked

44:22 into gear. And it's a lot more of a delicate balance and you have to make trade offs. You

44:27 have to figure out where you're going to bet. And is there a bet where you feel conviction enough,

44:32 where you're willing to forward invest, you're willing to go into the red a little bit in this

44:36 bet. Overall, as a company, you should never be going into the red. But in this bet, I'm willing

44:40 to take on a higher CAC or I'm willing to take on a little bit of burn here because I feel enough

44:47 conviction and see enough signal that I know that this is going to work. I would say we've talked a

44:52 little bit about a culture of experimentation. You have to do the same thing as a revenue leader and

44:56 say, "Let's go and experiment with this idea." So let's say it's a brand initiative. That's where

45:01 it's really important. You ring fence budget and you say, "Okay, let's go ring fence what we're

45:05 willing to invest and what success looks like. And let's put it out there and let's see if it

45:09 delivered what we thought success looked like." And then let's have a real honest conversation

45:13 where we say, "Are we ready to go big with this or are we going to move this money or are we going

45:18 to go somewhere else?" We see enough signal with this product that we're willing to hire ahead on

45:24 the account executive side and bring in more account executives who we feel confident can go

45:29 and create pipeline and go build this product. And so you just have to make some of those bets.

45:34 And honestly, a lot of it revolves around what are your big bets as a company? If you don't have a

45:38 vision and you don't have clarity in what you're betting on, it's really hard to make those

45:42 decisions. But when we say as a company, "Hey, research flow is a huge bet for us." Okay, well,

45:47 in order to activate research flow, we need to have investments A, B, C, and D. Okay, let's go

45:52 forward and invest, but let's not do, again, 2021, which is like, let's go hire 15 people to go do

45:58 this now. We don't need to scale before we have the signal. Let's invest, gauge the signal,

46:04 signals there, let's invest a little bit more aggressively, signal still there, invest a little

46:08 bit more aggressively. And so it's a constant game of test and iterate, which a lot of functions

46:14 inside of companies have been doing for a long time. And now I think it's time for revenue

46:17 organizations to do that too. I think gone are the days of just saying, "I'm just going to go

46:21 hire 50 AEs and that's my growth strategy." It doesn't necessarily work that way. It's like,

46:25 how do we have measured investment? But then also, and I think one of the things our CFO has been

46:30 fabulous with is that he is very clear on like, hey, let's just make sure that we define what

46:34 success looks like out of the gate. So let's be clear in our own thought process. What does

46:38 success look like? What are we ring fencing for it? Let's go execute, and then let's regroup

46:43 and say, "Did this work or not?" And so I think it's a constant test and iterate is the new model

46:48 for how to decide what goes from there. I think the other thing too, to know what to invest in,

46:52 is you just have to hire really smart people too that are, that have a good read on it, that say,

46:56 "Look, there's 15 things that we could go do. We feel conviction that the signal is leading us to

47:01 this. This is what we want to invest. This is what success looks like. Now let's go and invest. Let's

47:05 go try that thing." And then let's circle up and say, "Did it work or not?" So it may lead to a

47:09 little bit slower, but then you're ensured to keep yourself out of trouble and you're going to stay

47:14 efficient and profitable. So again, but stage one, again, before you do any of that, the most important

47:18 thing is that you can build an efficient, profitable growth model, and then you can go and start to

47:26 play with bets on the back of it. So overall, the company stays efficient and effective, even if one

47:31 bet isn't for a period of time, but you're willing to, you're all signed up with that concept of like,

47:36 we're willing to let something go run for a little bit and see how it works. So we know if we're going

47:40 to scale it aggressively or if we're not. There's a great phrase that was used that Ryan Smith,

47:47 one of the founders of Qualtrics used all the time. He said it was, "Nail it, then scale it."

47:50 And I think that that's the model for business. Absolutely. And I think there are so many that

47:57 are trying to scale it to nail it. So if you can just reverse that order and would love to hear

48:06 in order to stay in touch with the signals on all the bets that you have to balance

48:12 leading the GTM of a company like Typeform, what dashboards, reports, and report reviewing cadences

48:19 do you have to keep you plugged in? Yeah, so there's quite a few. So when it comes to the

48:26 overall core business, the self-serve side of the business, we have a Vitals dashboard that shows

48:30 everything from signups, conversion, all the way down to churn and inactivation. And so we have

48:38 everything, kind of anything and everything in between. Very, very detailed. We have invested

48:42 in a data team. That's amazing. And so they're able to serve us up with the right data that we

48:46 need to look at the funnel holistically and understand what that looks like. On the enterprise

48:50 side, it's a little bit of a different flavor. Now I have product specific and industry specific

48:55 dashboards as well. So I can gauge, hey, what's going on in this product line? What's going on

48:59 in this industry? But then there's kind of a more holistic one and the things that I really focus on

49:04 are inputs and outputs. And so when I look at an organization, if the outputs aren't there,

49:09 you have to go to the inputs. And so a dashboard would typically be, hey, here's what, you know,

49:14 here's what forecasts look like, but then here's what pipe gen looks like over here. And then

49:19 here's actually on an individual rep level, what pipe gen looks like. And so if we're having a

49:23 problem with the outputs not producing, we have the ability to take it down to a campaign level

49:28 and say, is something broken in that area that we need to go think about and focus on? And so that's

49:33 what typical dashboards for me look like is, yes, there's the stuff on, you know, forecast of

49:38 performance against last year, against targets, against quota rollup, against all of these

49:42 different things. You can see all of those like output metrics that are really important. You can

49:46 look at ACV, I can look at all of, you know, deal velocity, that stuff all exists. But what is

49:50 really important for me is that you're also always looking at the inputs as well, because it's,

49:55 it's the other side of the equation of if the outputs aren't there, there's something typically

49:58 upstream on the inputs that may or may not be broken. And then I think again, one of the

50:04 important aspects of that is the world is not dashboards are not always a complete picture,

50:09 you got to be talking to your team, you got to be having conversations and another team meeting I

50:13 joined with the sales team, it was leads are down 36% in this channel. Wow, like, wow, I had no idea,

50:22 let's go look at that and come to find out we had made adjustments on a pricing page that dropped the

50:26 enterprise lead gem form below the fold. It's like, oh, my goodness, okay, well, now we know,

50:30 and we could kick things into gear. And so dashboards are critically important,

50:34 but nothing ever really replaces those direct conversations as well. And so you got to manage

50:38 through both. Brice, I really appreciate everything you shared going from moving type form from just

50:46 forms to expanding through flows, all the mess and excitement that comes with getting your go to

50:52 market team geared up to go through that transition. Really appreciate you sharing also how to manage

50:58 PLG, SLG, the messy middle and all of the advice on where you should be investing now and go to

51:06 market. Brice, I'm a huge fan of type form. Thank you for being on the podcast and can't wait to see

51:11 what you guys do. Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Anthony.