Hey everybody welcome to the stacking growth podcast. I am Tory Kindlick and today I've got a couple of guests with me here So first I've got my colleague Matt that is joining us Matt Wilbanks. We get a lot of maths on the show lately And so Matt you want to just say hello real quick. Yeah, how do you everybody?
I'm a director of demand gen at refined labs. Happy to be here And we also have a guest whose name is not Matt which is exciting in and of itself, but Michael Michael Ashford is joining us I'm Michael You want to give a quick intro and maybe a little bit of a rundown as far as you know where you're coming from and the company that you work for? I appreciate it Tory and thanks for having me on that Yeah, I'm Michael Ashford. I'm the director of marketing at a company called the receptionist We have a product called the receptionist for iPad Which is a just as it sounds an iPad based visitor management system So if you've ever walked into a building and checked in on an iPad to let the person that you're there to see know that you're there and Maybe sign some documents or whatnot.
That's that's what our system does We were founded back in 2013 as the original iPad based system First of its kind based on the iPad and just have experienced a lot of growth in the time that I've been here I'm coming up on five years and I was the first full-time marketing hire that the company made almost five years ago five years in October Since then have grown a little team here of a creative manager and a digital campaigns manager and perhaps most interesting for this show and You guys and your audience we are almost entirely inbound In terms of our marketing and we don't do any cold calling we'd go outbound for existing accounts But yeah, our growth is heavily heavily marketing driven So pleasure to be here and I know we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff today But I love marketing and all it entails that's awesome and I'll tell you the You know having been there for five years and being I suppose the first marketer on that marketing team I'm sure you've seen quite a bit of growth quite a bit of change throughout that that period of time I'm really interested to hear what your journey has looked like going from a one-person team and you know moving towards a model That is a hundred percent inbound because it's much easier said than done Right? There's a lot of marketers out there right now talking about demand creation versus demand capture and you know Trying to move away from a lot of that cold prospecting and outbound work and it sounds like you have done that successfully So what's your secret? Yeah? Well, I appreciate that You know the receptionist before I came on board as the first full-time marketing hire The company was doing a lot of marketing.
I will say it was it was kind of piece milled with freelancers and agencies and things like that The first gosh year year and a half of me coming on board was Kind of tracking everything down understanding what had been done and not only that not only trying to understand what had been done Did any of it talk to like did the left hand talk to the right hand so to speak? There was just a lot of discontinuity if that's even a word across different things So paid search was kind of over here running its own thing and doing its own thing The the review sites that we all know and love and hate and have that love hate relationship with they were kind of doing their own thing Email marketing was doing its own thing content creation a lot of the early days was just getting everything in House in in an order where I could understand what was happening and how it was was or wasn't driving growth and Like I said, I spent quite a bit of time doing that and then it was okay Now, let's see if we can start to measure some of this stuff like we're investing in so many different places Is it even working for us? Can we can we direct stuff one way or the other where it's actually paying off for us and to use you know The refinery labs language it was it was and still is heavily based on the demand capture side I will say we've only probably in the last year really focused our efforts into the the creation side going out into the places and spaces where our Ideal customers live and exist and that's an interesting story because if you think about it and the things that our system does I Tell people all the time if you have visitors walking into your building or your facility or your office We can help you and for a marketer some marketers probably just like choked like What is the ideal customer look like then, you know in what size company? That's really difficult so a lot of what we're doing over the last probably last year certainly since COVID has happened and some of the adjustments We made there has been we got to go into these places where our ideals live where where they exist because they're not coming to us right now With everything that happened over the last two years that was at least that was the fear So I don't know if that answers your question.
I kind of went on a winding journey there No, it sure doesn't and it brings up something that I believe you know You and Matt had talked a little bit about when you you met up at the in-bound conference last week Which I definitely want to hear more about that in a few minutes But I know that what the two you had talked about was along the lines of you know when COVID hit and You had a business model that was really predicated on people physically entering office spaces Which there wasn't a whole lot of that happening you know throughout 2020 and 2021 Obviously, that's a pretty big wrench to throw in the gears there So I don't know if you wanted to kind of add more color around you know What you and Michael had talked about and kind of you know help set the stage here, but yeah, it sounds like it was an Intruder conversation. I'd love a little if you could bring us all up speed on it. Yeah for sure I mean the topic is the topic is relevant now because we're we're seeing the we're seeing slowness in the economy What what we'll call that whether it's a recession or it's not I guess we'll find out sometime in the future We're seeing the economic slowdown for sure and to me it kind of feels like the market is sort of in this awkward holding pattern of Are we gonna get worse? Are we gonna start doing better?
Nobody knows yet, but sales cycles are starting to slow down across B2B And if the economy does continue to get worse They're going to slow down even more and so the question I think for everybody is what do we do and for you guys especially This was definitely I imagine a question that was coming up when COVID really first hit and everybody was sent home and nobody's walking into Office buildings what what did you guys do? Can you can you talk about that time period? What was going through your minds? Well, we freaked out for about two weeks What are we gonna do because just things plummeted off the cliff right and not unlike many other businesses But then you know once you settle in and you're like, okay, we've got to figure this out We've got to figure this out quick I'll ask you guys to worry Matt.
What was the thing at the beginning of the pandemic that people were absolutely freaking out about it Was flying off the shelves you couldn't get it Toilet paper toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper, yeah You know we tried to get a feel or a sense for okay if the world is shutting down we're even remote We're a visitor management system. We're going remote. What is still open? What is still working?
And so our director of engineering and our co-founder Dylan Barry He dug into our data and took a look at all across all of our accounts and said okay Here are the customers that are still checking in people obviously the the amount has dipped a lot But they're still using the system what can we glean from that and as we took a look at the data? It was consumer packaged goods. So the toilet paper the hand sanitizer It was logistics and transportation companies everyone all of a sudden was ordering everything online You know we were doing it before the pandemic, but now it was it was literally everything So those transportation and logistics companies and move in those goods all across the country and it was manufacturing folks people who were building All sorts of things like manufacturing didn't stop during that time and food processing food manufacturers So that the data specifically told us these people are still active That's where to put it in your guys's language again That's where the demand creation engine went full throttle and I'll have to say it started on the product side I mentioned to Lynn we did some things in terms of is there anything with our system that we can do to not I don't want to use the word capitalized but but add value to our system where it would help people during this time and One of the first things that we were hearing from customers And this kind of goes into my whole thing of talking to customers and interviewing them and asking really great questions We were hearing from our customers. You got it.
You got to integrate with temperature checking Everybody was checking temperatures, right? Everybody was having a little scanners anytime you went over into any sort of business or office or facility It was temperature checking and we just heard it over and over and over again Well, those systems cost thousands of dollars and we're a $70 a month average on average product And that made zero sense for the majority of our customers who were gonna spend X number times more in just a the machine to take the temperature Let alone the integration, right? So we just kept asking questions. We we felt we needed to own Own the expertise in this area on behalf of our customers If we were gonna do something if we were gonna introduce a new feature If we were gonna introduce a messaging to them on how they could use our system to help them get through this time We had to be the experts and so we did a lot of research on our end We talked to a lot of customers and more than anything It was well one thing we found out that temperature was a horrible gauge of whether or not yet COVID or not So so it really became it's a performative action Like these these companies and businesses wanted something to prove to their guests that they were at least trying Right to mitigate contact and mitigate spread And we dug in more and more and more and we found out that and now even this has since been disproven But touching the iPad was the biggest concern of guests of customers and so we thought what's something long-term?
Like let's think when we're outside of a pandemic and we're not still not there yet But we developed contactless the ability to contactlessly check in with the system whether from your vehicle or whether you're there on site But you don't want to touch the iPad because somebody right before you touched it and it hasn't been sanitized yet So it started with asking customers digging in researching On the product side and then going and using that data that we talked about earlier to take that and get go to the places and spaces Where those customers were we started? You know whether you want to call it ABM or just enterprise marketing We went to our customers that already had us in several of their facilities and started talking about expanding into other facilities We created content that was ungated that was educational like that that proved some real value to folks One of the most popular blogs we created at the time was a blog about why temperature check was actually a poor way to screen for COVID And and just all of these things came back to we had to not only listen to our customers and ask them questions and dive deep with them But then we had to provide a level of experience and expertise and research and information that made them comfortable choosing us When we went to them with that message so long when did answer to your guys this question Tori and Matt But it was it was a whirlwind It was an absolute whirlwind, but we sustained growth during 2020 and 2021 it fell off of course You know we have been growing 30 40% each year and we went down to 2023 But I'll take it that will take it Well, it sounds like you you guys kind of went into it You went into it with the right mindset was one you you knew that you use the phrase own the expertise you needed to be experts because It's in any type of change most people don't know what to do and they want somebody to be able to come alongside them and hold their hand and say This is what you do or this is what you should be doing right now or the way you should be thinking So owning the expertise and being able to start producing content on that educating that totally makes sense But the way that you went about it I mean to me this is the way that you should do about it is with lots of customer research You dug into the data you talked to people you tried to figure out, you know, where could you add value? Did you you know what I will say with that contactless later down the road as businesses started coming back and they wanted a way to make sure again Contact tracing was still a thing Contact or a contactless way to check in all of a sudden made all the sense in the world So business picked up for us as companies started coming back in and we had a solution to offer them beyond the fact that I mean, I don't know about you guys But I haven't gotten my temperature taken other than maybe going into the hospital for a physical checkup I haven't gotten I mean it's been I can even remember the last time but contactless everybody would like to check in from their car and not Walk in until their appointments ready, right? I mean that that's something that makes a lot of sense So that just digging in with our customers asking them what are you trying to accomplish here?
Why is it important? What would it mean to you if this were a feature versus this thing over here? You know, what are the things that are important? Where are the pressures that you're getting?
Where are those coming from it? I mean, we all know businesses highly political as well And we've got to make sure that we do right by our main contacts the people that we're talking to and we want to serve them As best as we can with the solutions that we're delivering. Yeah, and what I think is so interesting about the story Michael is that You know, obviously You know, maybe your immediate focus was around okay. How does this gonna?
How is this going to change our marketing strategy, right? You know, what are we gonna do differently? But just by way of having those customer conversations, you know what that led to was organizational pivots, right? This became so much more than just marketing.
Marketing obviously played a huge role at the forefront of it in collecting those customer insights, right? That qualitative research, figuring out ways to not just bring it back to your colleagues in the business so that you can make some some tough decisions about, you know, does the future direction of the business need to change, but also, you know, trying to find ways to package up those insights to share them with the rest of the world. And that does really kind of put you in your company in a position of authority when you are now sharing information that many people don't have, right? And so it's not just about like producing content, right?
It's about producing legitimate helpful content that people are going to seek out. And that's how, you know, I'm sure that you probably saw in downgrowth continue from some of these pivots in areas that, you know, perhaps you weren't expecting before, because all of a sudden, you know, the businesses had in a different direction. And there's some huge unlocks there that your team, you know, uncovered around just like these contactless check-ins. And it's funny, I was with a friend recently who owns a deli.
And during COVID, that was the way that they stayed afloat, right? Was pivoting into more of a contactless transaction. And at the time, you know, I was really asking him like, is this, you know, do you think this is the way forward? Because from the sounds of it, they were getting more business just by way of this contactless transaction.
And now it's a huge part of business. You know, people are still coming in. They are now getting back to normal, we'll call it with that foot traffic. But there's a new part of the business that came from this, right?
And it all came from talking with the customers, asking these great questions and figuring out, where do we go from here? How do we pivot? How far do we pivot? Right?
So, so yeah, what, what are you seeing now, right? Let's say, you know, I don't think any of us are ready to say we're on the other side of COVID and the pandemic. Who knows, really? But it sounds like, you know, your teammates, some significant changes that are still impactful today.
So, yeah, what kind of things are you seeing out there, especially as you head into 2023 planning? You have no idea, Tori. Not because the interviews didn't stop. We kept saying, hey, there's something there, like the fact that manufacturing and logistics and transportation and all the things that circle that, the fact that that was such a strong continuing market, you know, and Matt, you brought up, you know, we're heading into a recession.
That's top of mind for us. Like, what are those markets that are, I won't say recession proof, but they've got some barriers to make them stronger against the tide that's going to come in, right? Yep. So, the customer interviews didn't stop.
You know, we released the feature. We're doing marketing. You know, eventually people start coming back into the office and we expand again, marketing-wise out into those other places. Behavioral Health Clinics, for instance, is a fantastic market for us.
Small behavioral health clinics that don't have, you know, somebody sitting at the front desk. So, we go all in there. We're sponsoring podcasts. We're in Facebook groups.
We're publishing LinkedIn content and podcast episodes specific to those audiences. But we continue to talk at a leadership team. There's something here. And, you know, cat out of the bag.
We're releasing a new product here in the next month that is specific to that industry. Like I said, we didn't stop the customer interviews. We went even deeper. I mean, we interviewed at least two dozen customers in this space, full hour-long interviews.
We incentivized them to make sure that we got them on the call. And it led to not just the new feature of contactless. It's led to a new product. We're going to launch this year.
It's already in beta. It's in the hands of some customers. So, the growth for our company didn't stop at what are those initial things just to get us through COVID. It's now an exercise that we run consistently to make sure that, hey, we're developing the things for our customers that they need.
They want, maybe they don't even know that they need or want, but we can glean those things from going really in-depth with our customers. So, that's, I mean, for us and that product, it's going to be huge for us. It's going to be out because there's just things that are going to be developed in the insight that we got from those interviews that nobody else in our space is going to be able to touch. It's pretty awesome to see how much innovation comes out of really difficult times.
Like, that's not a new idea, right? So many people have talked about whether it's economic slowdowns or whatever it is. All the big innovations typically come out of times when you are challenged the most and you're forced to deal with all we've got is chewing gum and bubblegum. What do we do with this?
You kind of become a MacGyver in your business. That doesn't take me. MacGyver was an awesome show and I was a little, by the way, I loved that show. I watched MacGyver and I watched the SNL spoof from a Groover.
So, yeah. I was a big MacGyver guy. Yeah. But that innovation, it starts from a, how do we keep things afloat?
How do we keep things growing right now? But what it turns into is, as everything starts picking back up, these are things that we've learned that maybe our competition hasn't, and it becomes the new way that you grow your business. You guys are a great example of that. And again, that's the value of what we've kind of been talking about here is you have got to talk to your customers, but you also have to add a layer of your own sense of where the market is on top of that.
I mean, if we had gone into what our customers were asking for and quite honestly, what a lot of our competition ended up doing, we would have integrated these $1,000, $2,000 temperature checking machines into our system that at this point would be obsolete. It would have been wasted dollars. It would have been wasted time for something that had a lifespan of, we'll call it 18 months, max. And so yes, talk to your customers and understanding them and digging in with them is important, but there's got to be a level of your own research, of your own adding your knowledge of the space.
This is the stuff that we all think about every single day. We think about our businesses. We think about the products that we have. We think about the markets that we serve.
We're more an expert than in those realms than anybody else out there. So why would we not apply our expertise on top of the information that we glean from our customers and find those touch points, where it makes sense. And it's not always what you think. It's not always what your customers say at the beginning.
Like I said, they want a temperature taking, but what they actually wanted was a way to prove to folks we're trying. Yeah. And that's a big difference there. So how?
Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Taylor. Okay. So here's what I'm most interested in, Michael.
So, refined labs, we've had a narrative for quite a while around here, started with Chris Walker, our CEO, kind of evangelizing a lot of this through his podcast. It's about talking to your customers. It's about uncovering these insights. And I think that you're going to be hard pressed to find marketers or really anyone in a business out there that disagrees with that.
The concept of talking to your customer. That's where the best insights, the best values are going to come from. But there's still a lot of question marks that I hear from marketers out there around, how do I do it? What do I say?
You know, what's the right way for me to conduct these conversations? What are the questions I should be asking? And it sounds like you've had a lot of success in doing this for your company. The questions and conversations that you had led to some monumental organizational pivots.
And it sounds like a lot of success throughout. But I'm interested to hear what has your personal learning been around that? What's the right way to approach these conversations? And yeah, I would love it if you could share more about that.
Because we all know we want to grow our businesses. We all know talking with clients is a great way to do that. But help us connect the dots. What's the right way to have these conversations with your customers and find these hidden gems that could be such massive discoveries for companies?
I'll start by saying this. You've got to invest. There's got to be a tried and true investment in it. Like if you're going to do it, do it.
So I'm a former journalist. I love interviewing people. I have my own podcast. I host our podcast, The Fabric Podcast.
I love interviewing people. It's just one of my favorite things to do in the world. But so I'm leading these interviews with our customers for a majority of the time. However, our CEO is on the call as well.
Like this is not something that we're pushing off to the latest hire in the marketing team. This is something that you've got the director of marketing and you've got the CEO and founder of the company on the call because it is that important to us. So just even presenting that to your customer that this conversation that we're having right now is that important to us that we're going to have two execs on the call, including the founder of the company. That levels things up a bit in your customers mind.
There's some legitimacy there, right? Secondly, I think the thing that marketers, if there's nothing else, I mentioned this in my inbound presentation last week, there's nothing else that marketers can do to prep themselves for these types of conversations. Leave your assumptions and your opinions behind that. That feeds the questions that you ask, how you ask the questions, how you phrase the questions, what you ask about.
Early in my marketing career, I would go into customer interviews with an assumption that, hey, I've got this piece of content that I want to create. And this is a really great customer that loves us. So I'm going to ask questions that box them in to say exactly what exactly what I want them to say so that the case study can come out exactly how I envisioned it in my head. And so whether we're creating content as marketers or whether we're doing customer research, like what we've kind of been talking about, we have this tendency as marketers to kind of write the story before it's already been written.
And that just cuts it off at the knees. That cuts off the conversation at the knees because then you're not getting the full story from your customer. You're not getting what actually is the value that they see in your product or your service. That's where the gold lies.
And so you've got to ask open-ended questions. You've got to check your assumptions and what you think you know about how they use your product or system or how they interact with your company or maybe they're not even a customer. This can apply to the sales side as well. You know, if you go into an initial discovery call as a sales rep and you assume you think you know what they need in that your product and solve that issue for them, you are boxing them into a corner where they may not be comfortable going.
Right. And assumptions are just, they're killers when it comes to podcast interviewing, when it comes to being a journalist and writing a story and when it comes to being a marketing or a sales professional and trying to grow your company assumptions. Yeah. And you know, if you're going down the line of the assumptions that you've made and maybe you might be right in your assumptions, but you don't know their assumptions and you can completely miss out on where the opportunities are.
You know, if you guys had made the assumption that all of these offices would want the integration with temperature sensors and we're all going to buy the temperature sensor systems, you could go down that route. And now here we are two years later. And my guess is that most small to medium sized office buildings did not buy expensive temperature sensor systems. No, nobody's using them now.
You wouldn't have known that if you had gone with the assumption that, you know, maybe the rest of your competitors did. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And that assumption would have wasted, who knows how much time and money and effort.
Right. And yeah, it's fine to have assumptions and take that into an interview, but don't let it fuel your or a customer conversation. But don't let it fuel the questions that you're asking. Instead, ask questions to let your customer validate or invalidate that assumption.
And that comes back to the questions that you have. So you might have an assumption about how a current customer based on what you know about them. How they use the product and the value that they get out of it. But don't ask questions that just get them to agree with that.
Because we as humans have a tendency to do that, especially, like I said, if we're being incentivized for the conversation, we just want to make somebody happy. So whatever they say, we want to just go along with them and agree that can be that can send you down some some paths that you maybe not want to go. You don't want to go. We love confirmation bias.
Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Always thinking out how far as you guys were doing your customer research and starting to discover here are some places that we can focus on and maybe some value we can provide through the product or through the content that we're creating. How far did you go with the rest of your top line messaging in the business and changing it and adjusting to the context of COVID?
Yeah, we did go through a pretty substantial messaging shift. But we did shift our messaging to really focus on safety, security. I mean, we had been more of the top level, like ease of use and get up to date with technology. I mean, that was one of the words that we use.
But that was kind of the overall, like us, not assumption. That's what we were kind of hinting at in all in a lot of our messaging. And we did. We went to streamline your front office so that you don't have people standing around in the same small confined area right around your front desk, move them quickly to where they need to go so that you can get people safely and securely in and out of your business.
I mean, that was really a we did substantially pivot our mess a lot of our messaging that way for sure. How long did all of that take? I mean, you know, we're all thrust into this suddenly. I actually remember the day March 23rd was the day that I got sent home and stayed home for a while.
How long did it take before you guys felt like maybe we've got a handle on this or we're moving in the right direction? You know, I will say, yeah, like I mentioned, I mean, we were right around the same period, Matt, when we all said, okay, we're remote for the foreseeable future. Mid March to late May, early June was kind of the figuring it out, trying to understand what the heck we're going to do here. By June and July of 2020, we had we had published a we called it our COVID-19 Resource Center, all that all that ungated content, all that research that we had done, all the all the blogs.
And we went heavy into video to try and teach people how they could set up their system to be able to appropriately intake. COVID-19 questionnaires and screenings through the system. We went heavily into video on that. We had published that by that time.
We had published an interactive guide for the supply chain and transportation company. So we had we had created an interactive element where there were videos for each part of a different facility and how they might utilize and implement the system. Again, this is ungated stuff. We wanted to get this in the hands of our customers.
On the enterprise side, where we were running those ABM motions, we were going into companies where we already had an existing presence. We were spinning up landing pages and specific marketing material for those companies so that our sales rep could say, here's this landing page specifically for you. Here's this document specifically for you and how we are implementing this across your other locations. Do you want to jump on board mid June mid June to into July and August was really where we felt we had a good handle on what our go forward process would be.
It's fascinating. I think it reminds me a little bit of I was working for a healthcare tech company right around the same timeline and you know, supporting the sales team that was trying to get meetings inside of hospitals was challenging, if not impossible, because it was hard enough for people who actually needed actual care to get into hospitals, let alone people and were trying to sell something. And so yeah, we were kind of forced to pivot to a all digital strategy as well, which for me was I mean, I guess you could call it great news relatively speaking, right? There's a lot of bad news going on around that point.
But what we found was, you know, similar to what your company did, we were creating these kind of COVID-19 resource center. We pivoted our content strategy heavily towards keeping people up to date, you know, as far as our product and what we offered and some of the new some of the new information that was was, you know, coming available through, you know, public health systems and finding ways that we could bring that out into market and educate people as quickly as possible. So we were a company that put on a webinar maybe once or twice a month. We started doing it every week and our numbers went from 100 people to 1000 people over the course of the next year who were joining all these events.
And so that became the biggest part of our strategy. And towards the end of the year, you know, that company ended up getting acquired. They had a successful exit, very unplanned one, but you know, the right offer came around that was able to, you know, kind of give that company a little bit more infrastructure that they needed. And it was just a great success story that started out in a period where, you know, there was a ton of uncertainty and none of us knew what was going to happen next.
And for us, you know, we went with the live event format, but the Q and A that came from those live events became our biggest source of insights coming from our clients and prospects. And it also we pivoted that into a content strategy of itself, right? It was it was frequently asked questions around, you know, COVID-19, you know, billing and coding and that's what we did. And so, yeah, the companies all a lot of success really just coming from understanding what their clients and prospects were needing from us the most.
And it wasn't just our normal, you know, run of the middle information that we were putting out. There were a lot of people that benefited from that. But now it was hyper focused on, you know, what can you tell me about COVID? What's changing today?
We became the source of insights for so many people. And it all came from just right having that pulse on, you know, on what our clients needed at that point in time. So, so Michael, what I would love to hear from you, right? You obviously had a lot of success in conducting these conversations, these interviews.
So, is there a single question that you like to ask your clients on every single one of these? Is there kind of a staple that, you know, you always try to ask or to at least find a way to extract from those conversations? I think we've probably all heard it and know it. But it's not anything earth-gattering.
But the question, is there anything else I should have asked or anything else you want to talk about? Giving that open-ended permission almost for your customer to bring up something, even if it's a feature request or, you know, they've been dealing with a bug, you know, in the system or, you know, they're struggling with something as part of your service or offering. Like, give them that voice. Give them that opportunity and chance.
Like, most people go into a conversation thinking, okay, this is what they're going to ask me about. This is who it's going to be. I know how this conversation is probably going to go. And I really want to talk about this.
And even things today, honestly, there are things that I could think about that we could have this conversation for another hour. You know, in the things that you were just talking about, our implementation of a product to run our website so that people could look at the system faster, like get them into the system faster and implement that always available product to her. Our switching up of how we did customer reviews on our customer experience side of things. Reviews are huge for us.
And so making sure that we were asking people to write us reviews about their experience implementing us during COVID. That was huge for us. That question. Anything else you want to talk about?
Anything else that's on your mind? You get gold. You get absolute gold because that gives people free range to just say, you know what? We're going to go on a completely different tangent here, but it's really important.
It's stuck in my mind so much so that I'm going to bring it up right here. Let me go ahead and ask that, then, Michael. I feel like I was doing a disservice. If I didn't throw that one out there, I think we're probably getting a little bit close towards the wrap up period.
So is there anything else that you wish I'd ask anything else that you'd like to chat through here today? I did mention it a little bit. One of the things that we implemented during this time, and it took us a little bit longer to get to it. But we were doing biweekly at first and then weekly live demos.
So our director of sales, Tom Foster and I would jump on a go to meeting or go to webinar. And every alternating Monday or Wednesday and Thursday, we would do live demos of our product. And it was part of our nurturing campaign or whatever you want to call it. Our BDR team was inviting new prospects to that to check out the system.
That's an expensive meeting. If we're doing that every week and you've got the director of marketing and the director of sales doing that, so we started searching for a way to automate that and also meet people where they were at. So if somebody came to our website and wasn't ready to start sign up for a free trial, but they still wanted to see the system in use, we needed a way to get them there. Even if they were jumping on at, you know, let's say 9 p.m.
at night, Eastern time. So we found a software product called Ewebinar shout out to Melissa and her team. One of the best products I've ever ever used as a marketer. Absolutely go check them out.
But we created a 12 minute product tour. It's really highly done. The quality of its fantastic are our creative manager, James Jordan, is just a phenomenal, phenomenal marketer. So we had different members of the team film in front of a green screen.
We overlaid product shots as we discussed what the product did, how it worked. And we implemented that. So at any point on our website, you can go and sign up for a product tour that launches within five minutes, usually within three minutes actually. So if you are sitting on your computer at 9 p.m.
at night, like I said, and you want to check out what we have to offer, you can jump into a 12 minute product tour, take a look at the system, see what's going on there. And then, you know, of course, we're asking people to sign up for free trials for that. But that has shortened our sales cycle. That's a learning that we learned during the COVID phase was we were all going digital, right?
Buyers were buying even more so online and not talking to sales reps nearly as much. So we had to get our product in front of people faster. And the reviews from our sales team, from our BDR team, people are more qualified when they get on a sales call. They're ready to talk about deeper things within the product rather than just trying to experience what it is our system does.
I hate using the cliche of a game changer, but it was a game changer, man. It was absolutely a game changer. That is so what you guys did is so contrary to what a lot of sales teams and marketing teams think about is we're going to hold a demo hostage so that we can get them on the phone. We're going to hold back our best content so that we can get their email address.
But the opposite of those things was a pretty constant theme of what you talked about today. It was ungated content, giving away all that information, exposing the product, allowing them to have their own product demo. What do you say? You give that to the buyers in a way that buyers want to buy and it shortens your sales cycles.
That's awesome. That's great that you guys went that way. Too many assumptions around that can be dangerous as well. We talked a lot about not having assumptions.
I think in terms of that piece of content, there's a lot of assumptions around the intent that a buyer has when they want to see a product tour. But I think it's important to understand that there's a difference between the automated product or the recorded product tour and perhaps one that they might request. That was a little bit more customized. The one that they are finally raising their hand and saying, I'm ready to talk to a salesperson.
Here's what's unique about my company. What can you tell me in the context of a demo to help me really come to a decision faster? That I think is brilliant. Just understanding that there is still a need here.
You're not going to be losing out on anything to the competition by showing your product more. That is something that we hear from a lot of marketers that they're hesitant about. What if my competition sees it? If your competition's looking hard enough for it, they're going to find a way to see it anyway.
That should not hold you back. If it's something that your clients are telling you or showing you that they have an interest in, you've got the data to vouch for it. That it can effectively speed up that sales process, that inbound process. Why not do both?
It's not going to slow you down. It's not going to cause all those concerns that so many folks will try to poke holes in a strategy like that one. I think that that's a great example of going against the grain a little bit, trusting the insights that you're getting from your clients and doing something a little bit differently. Those experiments oftentimes are the ones that can be the biggest unlocks.
You guys like Chris Walker says, you've said you both have said a couple times here, you give that information up ahead of time when they're requesting a quote, when they're requesting a demo, when they're signing up for a free trial, they're so much more ready to buy at that point. Honestly, guys, we have so much competition. I do not care a bit. They could all sign up for that product tour and I wouldn't care at all.
Fine, do it. I really don't care because I'm going to focus on us and what we do really, really well. Exactly. And by the time they're trying to mimic what they might have seen from your product or is you already doing stuff ahead of them because you're focused on something else and they're just focusing on trying to be where you were.
All right. Well, this has been awesome. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. This has been Chuff Full of Insights.
I think I personally have learned quite a bit about some new interviewing and question asking tactics that I'm going to put into practice here. Probably immediately. So thank you for that. And I do hope that our audience had the same level of take away.
So Michael, Matt, any last words before we wrap it up here? Michael, thanks for being here. This is fun. It's great to hear about what you guys went through during COVID.
If things slow down anymore in the economy and people need to know what to do, there's some great information here that you provided to. So thank you for that. I appreciate it guys. This was a lot of fun.
I love talking marketing and interviewing and all that good stuff. So appreciate it so much. Matt, it was great meeting you in Boston last week. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I'm a big fan of the work that Refine Labs does. So thanks for having me on guys. Well, much appreciated.
And Michael, how can people find you if they wanted to hear a little bit more about some of your thoughts? I know you've got a podcast or company does as well. So how about a quick plug for all of it? Sure.
I'll try and be brief. Our website is thereceptionist.com and our podcast is the Fabric Podcast. Fabric actually stands for fun, authentic, bold, respectful, innovative and collaborative, which is our core value. There are core values here at the receptionist.
We're a bootstrapped company. So we are exploring how companies scale and grow their culture as the company scales and grows and don't lose sight of who they are. That's what we're exploring. I've only recently taken over the hosting duties of that show, so the last six or seven episodes of the me now.
And then, yeah, on the personal side, Michael Ashford.com and my podcast is the follow-up question where I explore how we communicate well, how we ask better questions, how we find come around and have difficult conversations. Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much.
And for all those who listen, thanks for tuning in. Until next time.