YouSaid · the spoken record

Sahil Mansuri

lines on the record: 100
first: 2022-12-04
most recent: 2022-12-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“First of all, you can just email me and just bravado.co. I love responding to emails and meeting people, so I'm always down for that. Secondly, you can find me on LinkedIn where I regularly post content around sales and revenue and hitting targets and all that. And then lastly, if you want to learn more about Bravado, it's just bravado.co sign up, check it out. And if you like something, let me know. If you don't like it, then please let me know so we can make it better.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sails when done well is a delightful experience. People love paying you money. People love consuming your content because it's good. That's what makes a great salesperson. Facebook didn't regret taking that meeting with me. Facebook didn't regret signing that contract. They enjoyed it. They miked it. They were happy for it. And it felt delightful to them. And that's how sales should feel. And so this notion that like the way you're good at sales is because you're super extroverted and pushy and willing to put yourself out there and whatever is a misguided notion. You are the future of sales. If every salesperson gave a ton of value, played the long game, nurtured their community, and created products and services based on the feedback from their customers, the world would be such a better place. So don't sell yourself short, my friend. I think you are a phenomenal salesperson.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you are the best at marketing that and turning that into you got distribution around it. You've given so much to the world of product and been kind of a bright light that so many people have gravitated around and such so that when you launch Lenny's talent collective or Lenny's whatever podcast or whatever's the latest Lenny thing. In fact, I remember you did a poll to try to figure out what should be the name of this podcast. ultimately the thing that one was Lenny podcast, I think. And so like, I think that is the core of sales. Like I want to go back to the first principle, right? Which is that sales when does when done well does not feel salesy?”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lenny, you are a salesperson and you are one of the best that I have met. And the reason why that's true is because You have built a business from the ground up. Like, I didn't know who the heck you were a couple years ago. Now, and maybe you had a big brand more than a couple years ago too. And I was just the idiot, but everybody I know now knows and respects you. And the reason for that is because you, I mean, I think you have really deep knowledge on product. I think there's probably other people that have really deep knowledge on it.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to jump in. You've said that once you've said that once to me before, and I can't let you end on that note because it's not fair because”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let other people hear it from their words. I think that's really powerful and something that I really enjoy Maybe that's great”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a huge lotdate because my favorite tools to use are pen and paper. I like to write by hand. I like to write on a whiteboard. I enjoy the tactical part of that. I've tried to use the remarkable tablet and other stuff like that, but I don't get the same pleasure of writing like on actual pen and paper. Like that's my favorite. I mean, in terms of tools that we use at Bravado that are hugely impacted by being Slack is the central OS of our business, as I'm sure it is for many others. Obviously, we use Zoom a lot to meet and that's a core one, notion operates everything for us as well. So I don't think I'm saying anything that's exciting here. There's a product called grain that I really like that I think is really cool. Grain allows you to make clips of Zoom meetings and send them out. And the reason I really like that is because if I have a customer call or if I have a user interview or a VC call or whatnot, I can take a snippet of something that someone said.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I don't watch a lot of TV or movies, but I would say that a strong exception to that is I really like the blacklist. I don't know if you've seen that show, but it's a pretty good one. James Spader. Yeah, I really love James Vader. I find him to be someone I really, really like. I'm also a big fan of Aaron Sorkin, so I liked the newsroom a lot and West Wing and whatnot. I think the thing is I like really nerdy stuff, you know, like Jeopardy and like Razier. I never liked friends, you know. I think it's just like the dork in me that I like to watch nerdy stuff.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, and I'm excited to for that as well. And of course, I listened to yours, but I figured that was too limited.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's actually only two other podcasts I listened to, so it's a small choice. I listen to the all in podcast because I love the fact that they have really good show notes. So I can just jump to the section that I want to hear them talk about instead of listening to like.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's a really fun book. A lot of interesting studies and reading. And I think especially if you're a founder or an executive who wants to learn how to sell and wants to understand how your buyers make decisions, I think it's really impactful and teaches you a new way to think about sales using psychology.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, wait a minute. This is actually pretty cool because now instead of just hiring one person at a time and training them, I can hire 10 people at a time and I can have multiple, you know, kind of fish in the sea. And so we just changed the rules of the game around sales hiring as a market. And I think that's the sort of innovation that you have to bring to the market if you want to survive in the downturn, which you can't just sit there and just try to do the same stuff over and over and over again. Like you got to really be willing to break all preconceived notions of what success looks like, innovate something new, and then give, like, take bigger swings, I guess is the thing I would say.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in doing so, you suddenly will learn something new. No, it may not say bravado flex may not work forever. It may not be the who knows. But maybe, just maybe as we've been doing this, we realized that there's actually a lot of sales reps that prefer this because they can do flex for multiple companies. So, you know, all of a sudden we learned something really new, which is that our audience, the same candidates that we're placing to full-time jobs are actually in some cases preferring doing this factional work because now they don't need to go to all the meetings and they don't need to update Salesforce. They don't need to do all the boring shit that Salesforce don't like to do. And instead, they can just work for three companies, use the existing network they have, get meetings set up for all of them, pitch the best product to the right customer. And all of a sudden, they feel like instead of having to pitch one, you know, like one hammer that you need to use for every, they have a my tool set that they can bring to their customers. And all of a sudden, companies are like.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing I can do about that. I mean, I can stick my head out the window and scream and cry and complain, but that ain't going to get me anywhere either. So what I need to do is change the rules of the game and start to think about the problem differently. And I think that not enough founders do that. They just kind of bash their heads against the wall with the same kind of preconceived notions of what success may or may not look like. And so I would really advise, you know, and I'll give you some examples of where this goes beyond bravado flex. But like, you know, change your pricing strategy. Let's say that you sell a product and it's $12,000 for a year. Try charging $1,000 a month and going month to month. Try charging 20 bucks a day and going day by day. And you might be like, well, wait a minute. That just changes everything. But you have to adapt, right? Like if your old model is not going to work, it's asinine to just sit there and then try to like make minor changes. Like, oh, instead of 12, we'll reduce price to 10 or something. People try to like optimize their way out of problems. You can't optimize your way out of a problem. You got to completely change the rules that they get.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An example of the type of innovation that companies should be thinking of, as well as if you are a company that is thinking of like increasing revenue but doesn't have enough levers to pull, maybe this is one that you might want to explore. But I think it comes back down to that like fundamental staring at the whiteboard being like, if I'm a customer and I'm in this world, what can we do today to change the rules of the game? Because sometimes the rules of the game are stacked against you. You know, like as a recruiting business, the rules of the game were now stacked against us. No one's got money. People don't want to hire. They're hiring freezes, et cetera. Like, you know, there's more candidates in the market than ever before. Companies are going to be less and less likely to want to pay us to recruit for them.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Counter cyclical businesses What would we be able to do for our community instead of putting them in a different field, lets them use the skills, the network, and the expertise they already have in order to do the thing they want to do, but be able to do it in a down market as well? And so we launch something called bravado flex, which is a way for companies and candidates to work together in a non-full-time employment way. And that can mean contract hire. It can mean 100% commission. It can mean fractional work. It can mean, you know, small stipend plus milestone base. Like there's a bunch of different ways it works. And overnight, we went from, you know, having a massive slowdown in our business to one of the best months that we've ever had in company history, which was last month. And this month will be even better than that. And so while our full-time recruiting business slows, our fractional business grows. And so there's, you know, I use that as”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if we created a 100% commission only sales rule? It doesn't exist today in SaaS. It does exist in other places. It just doesn't exist in SaaS, really. But what if we created a way for sales reps who can't find a full-time job because the market is slow and companies who can't hire a full-time sales rep but still want customers to work together on a commission only basis? Now a year ago this product would not have worked, right? Because the supply demand equilibrium was so tilted where every company needed grade sales talent and every sales rep was getting multiple offers. So in that world, this product makes no sense. But in a world in which you have far more sales reps who are looking for work and far fewer companies who are hiring, maybe we can create a new model of sales. You know, if Airbnb and Uber were grew dramatically during the pandemic and actually are somewhat”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Full time people. In fact, I might be forced to lay off my team What do I do And we kind of just sat there with him, quite bored, and just said, all right, let's put ourselves in this situation, what would you do? And one of the things that I think would be really interesting is I'm actually willing to pay money to acquire customers. I just can't take the risk that I hire someone and they won't bring me customer.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess there's just one last thing, which is innovation is often put to the side. People just try to do the things that everyone else is doing. And so I'll tell you something that we did at Bravado as an example of this. So we run a recruiting marketplace and, you know, competing with LinkedIn and Angelist and hired and all the rest of it. And like all those companies, we have seen a massive slowdown in our business. Unlike those companies, we didn't take that as kind of the end of the road for growth for now, but instead said, okay, so let me put myself back in the perspective of my buyer, my customer who are often founders and CROs and CFOs. Those are the people that tend to buy from Bravado because they're the people who care the most about growing revenue. I can't hire any more full-time salespeople because, like, you know, the market is tough right now and I can't increase my burn or what. But I still want to get new customers. It's just I can't afford to hire.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Constantly misled by VCs, where the VC says like one or two good things and they're like, oh, they're definitely going to invest. As opposed to giving that VC every out to not continue the conversation. And if they still are willing to talk to you after that, then you know that they're for real. And I think that like, you know, being a CEO and being a salesperson are the same job, different forms of it, of course, like different audiences, different products, et cetera. But ultimately, they're the same thing. So no, I don't miss it. I do it every single day and I love doing it. And I'm learning more and more every day from the failures and shortcomings I have.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great salespeople are extremely pessimistic internally and are great at being able to then still be domestic externally where they're actually trying to disqualify you. They're looking for signals that you're not going to buy and weeding those out while still at the same time positively spinning you and selling you. And that ability to juxtapose is what diverges good from great because good salespeople will get misled by customers who tell them they want to buy. But if you would really press harder, you'd understand that they can't or won't or whatever. So you waste your time on a bunch of companies that never buy versus great salespeople know how to prioritize and spend their time properly. The same applies in venture. You know, like if you are a CEO who's fundraising, I cannot tell you. Honestly, Lenny, I can't tell you how many other CEOs I know get.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Founder does a sales. It's kind of like venture. People don't misunderstand this. Like, VCs are salespeople 100% of VC is a salesperson because they're selling LPs to give them money and they're selling CEOs to take their money in exchange for equity. That's the job of a VC. All the analytics, all the data and this and then that. Those are just like updating their CRM. Like the core function of a VC is to sell, the core function of a CEO is to be a great salesperson. And like any great salesperson, you have to balance cynicism with optimism. Great salespeople don't have what I call happy years. This is a problem that people misunderstand. People think that being a great salesperson is being ever the optimist. And that's actually not the case because then you'll waste your time on a bunch of deals that'll never close.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Assuming you do those two things, you still got to do one more thing, which is you got to actually sell an investor to give you capital based on typically virtually nothing or maybe like very little attraction. And then you have to go and convince your initial customers to believe in you. Because sure as heck, no startups product is great, right? Like everyone wants to be like, oh, we're going to go change the world. You're not changing the world today, right? You cut, you know, one hundredth of the feature set of any of your competitors. All you have is this dream and this energy and this belief and somebody who's willing to take a bet on you. You got to get someone to be willing to bet on you. That sales. And then if you do all that, then maybe you need to get some press. And so now you got to convince a reporter to write about you. And you got to be able to do that. And then maybe you need to hire some more people. So you got to convince some candidates to come work for you. And then you again go, I mean, like I spend my whole day selling. All I do is sales. And all anything.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think CEOs are full-time self-evident people. I mean, think about the job of a CEO, right? Like your job, like, let's start from the infancy, right? Let's start from starting a company from scratch. First thing you got to do if you want to start a company is you have to convince yourself to do it. You have to sell yourself on the fact that you want to do this. This is where most people fail, actually. They can't sell themselves. They're not able to convince themselves that they should take this leap and say they don't believe in themselves enough to do it. And so first, you got to be good enough to sell yourself. Maybe that's delusional. I don't really know how to coin that, but let's just say sell yourself. You got to then sell other more talented people than yourself to join you at a time at which you have no money, often no idea, no traction, nothing. And they're typically making a lot of money at a well-paid founders. They have a choice of where. And you got to convince them to believe in you, believe in your idea, believe in the future that can be. This is the second place where most people fail.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Glassdoor rating literally got added to the ELT report that went out every single week. That's the part of the story I'm proud of.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contagious, it's addictive, and it's rewarding. And so closing Facebook was a blast because I really got a chance to flex into something that I take a lot of pride in, which is being able to deeply understand my customers where they sit and how I can be not a sales rep, but someone who actually changes your perspective and how to do your job. Like that's what I live for. And so I think that's what you have to do in order to be a great salesperson is I think you have to be willing to go beyond just the, oh, I want to hit my quota or whatever. If you're a founder and you're trying to like sell in this market, it's like, how do I get my product in the hands of customers? Like, you got to go beyond, like, how do I change the way you operate as a business? How do I do something that is transformative?”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love to play chess. It's my favorite game. The reason I love chess is because I love to think a few moves ahead. I expected to get that email back. Like I knew when I sent the email that this was going to work. I was like, there's no way this will work. The only way it wouldn't have worked is if she never saw it. So if she sees this, she's going to respond, you know, because it would be crazy for her not to. Like the information on here was so good. And so I felt a sense of satisfaction that I had played the game right in a way that no one else at my company had. You know, like no one else understood the psyche of the buyer, you know. And so to me, sales is, I don't, I don't care about the commission. I've never cared about the money. I think this is true for most great salespeople. I think this is actually true for most people who are great at something is that they don't do it for the money. They don't do it for even necessarily the trophies or whatever. They do it because they love it. And like winning is.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what I would say is you got to really over, over, over index in the whole, I'm going to teach you something, right? It's not that I'm going to give you value because that's like a really weird thing to say. And it's not like my product's going to solve a problem for you because frankly, I don't know if you know what my problems are. But I think that like one thing I would advise is how can I do something that will make, that will make this worth your time in a way that it isn't about buying my software or putting job ads on my site. And so that's how Facebook became a customer.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what people were writing, et cetera. And it became like a thing. It became like, I don't know if it's still a thing today. I have no idea, but I got to have this in-depth strategic conversation with the executive leaders of Facebook around their reputation, what their employees thought, their pay bands, their interview questions, you know, leadership guidance shared the word cloud, sentiment analysis, et cetera. And then needless to say, of course, we closed a massive deal with them and whatnot. But like, that's the kind of shit it takes in order to close deals, right? So like this idea that like, I'm going to go on to my CRM system and fire up 100 cold emails and I'm going to close business. Like that works when capital is cheap and everyone's buying everything and every rep hits quota and every company's growing, et cetera. That shit does not work when you are in tough times and desperate measures trying to figure out a way to build your.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So at the time I was 22, 23 years old, or something like that, it was pretty new to Glastor anyway. And so then, of course, I said yes. I sent the email to the CEO. It was like, do you want me to come? And, you know, whatever. And I just didn't know I'll handle it. I brought a customer success person and the two of us went. And we actually got to meet first with Cheryl. And then I got to go to the fishbowl. I don't know if you know this story, but like Mark had a famous like office that was all glass in the middle so that he really believed in transparency or whatever. So it was known as the fishbowl. So I skimmed the fishbowl. I met Mark Zuckerberg himself. And as it turns out, that report and that rating got added to their weekly packet because Mark wanted to know on a weekly basis how his rating and how their employee's view of Facebook was how it was changing week over week.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I sent the email around 3 or 4 p.m. on a Sunday. By 6 p.m., I got a response back from Cheryl Sandberg, CCing ELT at FB.com or something like that, which I later found was executive leadership team at Facebook.com, saying, Hi, Sahil, this is super interesting. We'd love to meet with you tomorrow. Are you available to come to Facebook HQ at 10 a.m.?”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Etc. And the title of the email was Mark's approval rating on Glassdoor. And I was like, hey, Cheryl, you know, I'm from Glassdoor. I was doing research on Facebook and comparing it to all the other big tech companies. I personally work with Microsoft, so I have a little bit of insight in this. Here's what your employees think about you. Here's what marked approval rating looks like versus others, et cetera, et cetera. This whole research report, I kind of broke out some highlights, a couple screenshots, attached the report, and said, hey, I'd love to discuss this with you sometime.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A nine page report That broke down how Facebook employees, specifically software engineers, because that's what we're specialists at recruiting for, how software engineers have Facebook talked about working at Facebook and how it compared to how Google Engineers talked about working at Google and whatnot. Salary band comparisons and even reviews of Mark specifically versus the other CEOs of the other big tech companies. And then sent an email to Cheryl Sandberg, a cold email to Cheryl Sandberg, whose email address I did not have, but that I assumed had to be one of like 15 things. So I think I put like, you know, S. Sandberg at Facebook.com and the two line. And then in the BCC line put every variant I could think of, like everything. And when I say, I mean everything I could think of, I put underscores and dots and first name and last name and abbreviations and, you know.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so again, Einstein writes same thing over and over again, different result. So I tried something different. And I sat there and I went through every single review that had been written about Facebook on Glassdoor. First, I had it pulled by a data scientist and did a word cloud and did a bunch of analytics on what was being discussed there, pulled salary ranges, pulled salary just for Google and Amazon and Microsoft. So Glastor had three types of information. They had like the review of the company. They had the outlook of the company. And then they had the review of the CEO. So it was like, do you approve of Mark's handling of the company? Yes. And Mark had, I think, like 96% approval rate, who was one of the highest rated CEOs on Glass Store at the time. I have no idea what it is today, but that's what it was. And so I basically pulled every review, all the salaries, and then marked approval rating and turned it into like.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I looked at it and I looked at who we are talking to, Lori Gohler, who's the chief talent. I think she's still the head of talent there, but was the head of talent who we had pitched. And every time we got the same response, no, we're not interested in outside partnership time. No, we are not interested. I think she had a canned response for all vendors. And it was just like the same response in the CRM over and over”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a recruiting firm to put branding and to put jobs and whatnot. Facebook was a most visited page on Glass Store. So by virtue of that, it was the best account to sell to. And it had gone from CEO to VPS sales to new VPS sales to rep to rep, et cetera. And I finally got my hands on it like Feb of 28, 2011. The only reason I got my hands on it is because I closed Microsoft. And so because I closed, I think I closed both Microsoft and Google at that point, but certainly at least Microsoft. Well, it's important.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could pretty much call any customer I've ever sold to and have a conversation with. And it would be like, hey, sales, how's it going? Whatever. And that's because I put a tremendous amount of energy into investing and building a real friendship, not relationship, not friendship with the people that I sell to. So I'll tell you a couple of sales stories and maybe from that we can mine the nuggets that you're fishing for. I will tell you about how I sold to Facebook when I was at Glassdoor because this is a fun story. So Facebook was the Moby Dick of Glassdoor. I think the first time they tried to sell to them was like the beginning of 2008 or something like that. And Facebook was one of those accounts that obviously should be on Glassdoor because the way Glassdoor's product worked is that the more people that came to your company page on Glassdoor, the more value there was for you as”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here we are now. That's right. But the point is, sales, when done well, doesn't feel weird. Okay. If it ever feels weird, you're a bad salesperson, right? I've been selling now for 14 years. I've sold literally hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deals.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. Like, for example, I didn't have your phone number and I told my wife make sure you take a selfie with Lenny and then send a text message to the three of us on one thread so that I know how to get a hold of Lenny in case he felt smart.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, yo, you're making me look bad here. So that pressure is like force. And then we got them as a customer and now things are good. So like, you know, it just takes all that. It takes those little things. You got to build a bridge from your current customer base to future customers and parlay the goodwill relationship, et cetera, that you've earned in serving your current customers to get new ones because otherwise I don't think it's going to, I don't think just relying on a bunch of STRs and cold emails and stuff is going to get you through the next six to 12 months.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little things, right? 2% here, 3% here. This is how you win in this economy. You got to do all the things right. And so you keep the person on the thread long enough so that you've actually built that relationship for the first call, obviously not forever. But in the first 10, 20 messages, I keep the person on. And that allows you to ensure that the person ghosts you, which happens a lot. I'm sure you know. You get an intro and the person never responds or they cancel on you. You can't get back on their calendar. You stay with them. This happened recently where I got intro from one sales leader to another. And that sales leader basically then had a family or a legit situation, but then got busy and was like, I'm not taking this thing. But it just kept pinging into that group that, you know, every week or two for like actually nine weeks. And then by the two and a half months later, the person finally is like, I'm so sorry, you know, et cetera. Only after my original contact was.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All sales leaders, everyone out there stop using email. Email is where deals go to die. Text message is where deals get done. And so this notion that like I'm going to entry you over email and that's how we connect is just far worse than the thing that I would really recommend, which I do all the time. Like, you know, we have Webflow as a customer. I love Webflow. I know their sales leadership. We try to do a really good job for them. Anytime that their sales leader mentions a company that might be needing to hire or whatnot, my only response is great. Connect me over text. And then I get the text intro with the person and then I'm and here's the other fun part. I don't take the intro off the thread. So the other thing we tend to do is BCC, the person who responded. But in text, you don't need to do that. You can keep the person on a little bit and it holds the person's feet to the fire to actually show up for the meeting. Again, it's these little”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although co-mingle and sell each other, right? Not the smartest way to do it. You weren't only customers in the event and you want to use that against your thought leadership and such. But then it's during all the happy hours and the lunches and the late evenings and whatnot, where you start to say, hey, look, in this market, you're finding value in our product. Cooler one or two other folks that you know in the same position as yourself that might also find value. Who do you know that has the same problem? Who do you know that's going through this? Who do you know that might benefit from this research paper, et cetera? And you just start collecting a bunch of warm interest. But then you don't just stop at getting the name because a lot of the teams stop here. They'll basically get the name and then they'll be like, okay, got the name knocked up. Actually, not the right way to do it. You get the name and you say, great, can you make me an e-intro right now? Actually, even better. Can you connect me at over text? So one tip that I have for all founders.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three, you're invited to this all paid trip to Napa to go drink a bunch of wine for a week. But that would probably meaningfully change your churn range. It's not going to change everything, but it'll change something. I bet it would because, you know, at the end of the day, people are people. Sales is done by people. It's a belly to belly human sport. It's not just lines of code on a piece of paper. Like you got to talk to another human being, which is what makes it hard and unscalable and more of an art than a science. also makes it really fun because it just plays by different rules a different set of rules than many other things do recruiting being the other thing that is like this the so in-person customer event the other reason why i like in-person customer events is because they're a perfect opportunity for you to get new deals done and and so how does that work does that mean i also invite prospects to the event no actually i wouldn't do that so i think a lot of companies do this we're going to invite customers and prospects the same event”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, here's something here's a couple ideas. First is let's cut a bunch of stuff, but keep some money that we're going to invest in doing an in-person customer event. Okay. Why do I think that's a good idea? I think it's a good idea because, first of all, we've all been stuck in our houses for a couple years. And so when we get a chance to go on a trip for free somewhere, we tend to say yes. That's nice. And secondly, I think that you could be strategic and maybe have the trip be for customers only and in February or something. So maybe you survived the budget cuts this year because people are like, well, I've got this great trip and I really don't want to miss it. So like, is there a way we can just keep this tool on? And you might think, oh, well, you know, are you bribing customers or whatever? I mean, it's just psychology. I think you have to use psychology to your advantage. I would do a big customer event in February, invite all my current customers and say, hey, as long as you're still a customer as of February 10, 2020.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the odds empirically, no startup should ever begin because the odds are like you're going to fail. And that failure meets you in the eye over and over again as you're shrinking the size of your team, as you're shrinking the size of your budget, as you're doing fewer things, and you're taking things away. And so I don't really believe in this like, oh, we were just going to like survive mentality. I think you have to adjust, of course. I think you have to be a realist. I'm not suggesting that you.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a good segue because it'll bridge us back to where he just came from and hopefully move us forward, which is warm intros. So if cold outreach is going to be less effective, then what increases in efficacy in this time is, again, warm intros. So one thing you got to remember as like a more general statement is that companies either grow or they die. There's no middle, right? There's no like, oh, we're going to cut burn and just try to like survive the winter long enough so that doesn't work, right? Because employees get demoralized, investors lose faith, the days become long and the nights become longer. And eventually you just run out of energy as a business. Like I think startups in particular are effectively energy driven. And the more energy, the more belief, the more momentum that you have, the more tailwinds you have, the more things grow and feel possible. But of course, if you want.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You just focused on how I can jam product down your throat to how do I use my unique perspective in the customer segment we serve in order to create broader insights for the industry is something I would heavily prioritize. You know, I take my product marketing team and I'd kind of shift them to be my research team. I take a data analyst or two and stick them on the project and start to create content that is exclusive for my customers and have them see that as another point of value that they can get that would maybe help stay off chart.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What can you do that nobody else can do in order to give your customers a really good insight into how they should navigate thinking about hiring versus layoffs versus headcount versus burn per department, et cetera? Because you've got some really interesting data, don't you? You know exactly how many customers have paused, how many roles and whatnot. Like if I was greenhouse, I would be putting out all kinds of reports that tell me, you know, that let's use me as a customer here. Hey, you know, of series B companies that have a roughly 50 employees, they used to have eight open headcount, but now they're down to four. The main area that they're investing are X, Y, and Z salaries are moving up and down. Like, you could get a lot of insight from a company like Greenhouse. And then I'd be like, whoa, this is so valuable. Like, I can't live without this data because this is actually helping guide my business decisioning. And I think moving from a world where”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To them. That's still something that they can't get elsewhere that I am uniquely positioned to offer to my customer base. What are you uniquely positioned to offer to your customer base? I think about, let's pick another example that I think is really easy, which is greenhouse or lever or another app and tracking system. If you're an ATS, you know, and all of a sudden every recruiting budget's getting slashed and recruiters are getting laid off faster than any other department because no one's hiring, et cetera. You're probably at the most risk of being rooked out or being downsized or getting downward pressure to your business, not obviously.”
2022-12-04 · Lenny's Podcast · How to hit revenue targets in a recession | Sahil Mansuri (Bravado) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source