[00:00:00] Luigi: Welcome. This is the sales IQ podcast. My name is Luigi Prestinenzi, and I'm on a mission to help salespeople be the best sales professionals they can be each week. We will bring you a different message from thought leaders around the globe, so we can help you master the art of selling.

Have you ever sat there at your computer wanting to prospect or wanting to call a customer and you sit there going, I don't exactly know what to say or that reluctance build or that fear kind of dwells and then starts to bubble inside that prevents you from taking action. Well, you want to email someone and you sit there kind of looking at the email, taking a word out here, trying to pick up.

And it just slows you from taking action and then you procrastinate, you put it away and you might come back to a lighter. It happens to the best of us. What I love about this episode is that we're talking to a sales, professional and account executive turned founder a few years ago, four or five years ago, Kris, who is the founder of Sint also decided I want to move from selling an on a build mode.

And he's created something so unique that sellers, thousands of sellers globally are now using every day to enhance the sales process by sending things as part of the sales process. The tool now integrates with Salesforce, they've just raised over a hundred million dollars, and he's done that within five years.

He's a seller that decided to take action. And that is what I love about this week's episode. It's not the fact that he's now being able to raise so much money and his company employs hundreds and they're opening up in different markets all over the world. That's just a result of him deciding to take action or him and his co-founder deciding to take action.

And again, that is what I love about this week. And there's so much learning for sellers, for anyone that's looking to improve the sales process. Any marketer that's trying to do a new campaign is sometimes you've just got to take action regardless of how perfect your platform, how perfect your campaign, how perfect your email, how perfect your sales process might be.

You just got to take it. And that is exactly what Kris has done. Revenue operations is much more than words in a job title. It's a movement that is transforming sales, marketing, and customer success teams into high-performing revenue. Drivers ring DNA is a recognized Gartner cool vendor. That makes rev ops possible by driving improved operational efficiency and revenue capture from sales, marketing, and customer success trusted by the top companies across the globe ring day night offers a complete sales engagement, conversational intelligence and revenue intelligence platform for Salesforce customers.

Learn how we can transform your results@ringdaynight.com that's ring dna.com. This is an awesome episode for us all to take such incredible learning from, and also be inspired that you don't need to be a tech professional to start a tech company. That's another thing that I took away from this great episode, but the most important thing that I've taken away is the fact that if you've got a goal, if you've got a dream and you just started to take action, you can turn that dream into reality.

Welcome to the show, Kris,

[00:03:44] Kris: thank you so much for having me excited to be here. 

[00:03:47] Luigi: Awesome. 

And I'm really excited, especially after hearing you on, uh, Roslyn's the revenue engine podcast. Talk about all things growth and, and how your business has really propelled and excelled over these last 12 months.

So yeah, really excited to have you on the show.. 

[00:04:01] Kris: Yeah, thank you. 

[00:04:03] Luigi: Mate. Before we get into all things growth, um, you know, sales, marketing, would love to learn a bit more about you and how you started in the world of selling. . 

[00:04:13] Kris: Yeah. So I'll take you back. And I started Sendoso about five years ago, for those of you who don't know what Sendoso 

 Is we are a sending platform that makes it easy for other companies to send out direct mail promotional products, custom gifts. And if you name it, we can send it out. It's a mix of software. And then we have warehouses around the world that fulfill things. And so I started that company about five years ago, prior to that spent about 10 years in software sales in San Francisco.

So I, I found myself mostly an account executive roles at fast growing startups. And, uh, that's really how I got my, uh, kind of like my feet wet. in sales. , 

[00:04:53] Luigi: Fantastic. And I'd love to know, like, you know, with the world that's gone essentially completely digital over the past few years. Yeah. What, what inspired you and motivated you to start a business that was kind of going against the, the wave, so to speak to more of marketing 

materials. 

[00:05:12] Kris: Like the opposite.

It's almost like, uh, there's a phrase like what's old is new again. And I, I kind of found myself seeing that. You know, getting digitally overloaded myself. I was sending out a gazillion emails and I thought when I was in sales, Hey, how do I be creative? How do I use creativity as kind of a secret weapon?

Because you know, automation was my previous secret weapon. I was really good. Mass emailing people before like outreach and SalesLoft, and those tools came along. And once those tools came along, my automation secret weapon was kind of gone. And so I was, you know, looking for new secret weapons and I thought, Hey, creativity is one of those secret weapons.

And so I found myself, you know, writing handwritten notes, I'd go, you know, research someone's background. Uh, maybe they're what they're tweeting about, um, or their university. And I'd find something on Amazon to send them. Going into our swag closet and grab swag and pack boxes. And I found myself doing that like day in and day out, working really well, getting results, but kind of tired of spending hours in the manual process of doing that.

And I kind of just dreamed up on ideas. Like why can't I just click a button inside of Salesforce and send something. 

It's pretty cool. And is that how Elsa was born? Was it just that? Yeah. 

Fantastic. It was as easy as that. I mean, there was some things along the way where, you know, I, I attempted to try to convince the marketing team at the time, uh, where I was at to manually, you know, do this through spreadsheets and that didn't work.

Um, I also found myself, uh, as a version one, actually building out this tool called coffee center and there was a way to send Starbucks gift cards through Salesforce. And so that was a little bit easier of kind of version one before opening up like these huge fulfillment centers and shipping out all these physical products.

That's a really interesting story. Uh, w w when did you realize that you had come up with an idea. It wasn't just unique, but was something that could scale and could really enable organizations to create better level of customer engagement. 

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of different phases go in. I think it coming really referred to as like product market fit.

I think that is something that I feel like I had day zero because I knew that I wanted to use this product. Uh, and so I think I had product market fit, even before we launched. I just knew it was going to work. And after our first couple of customers, you know, 10, 20 customers that myself and my co-founder were able to sign up, it was very apparent that there was product market fit.

I think from there you go to. When I would call it, go to market fit. And like, can you build a go to market engine that can actually start to sell this? And, you know, at unit economic costs where your, your CAC and your LTD and everything kind of aligns so that you can continually add salespeople in a, in a more functional kind of B2B motion.

And so that took probably about a, it seemed to be six to nine. After that to Wehrli where we hired a couple AEs, we CA we hired a couple of SDRs and we started to see their, their monthly and quarterly output. And once that machine started to get going, then we really knew we had something there that we could put more fuel on the fire.

[00:08:19] Luigi: Yeah. Awesome. That's really a cool story. I'd love to know, like at some point, um, you know, you had, you knew you had product market fit, but the minute you started going to talk to companies about. You know the solution. Um, what was some of the resistance that you received early on? And then how did you adjust your messaging to then get them to really understand the true value proposition that you.

[00:08:43] Kris: Yeah. So I think, um, uh, for, uh, the, the, there's a handful of kind of different use cases or in terms of like why people are, we're excited about Sendoso. So there was some customers that were doing this already manually. And so that was like a, you know, a home run. So if you're already packing boxes, kind of the same problem.

Like, why wouldn't you invest in some software to do it like 10 times easier and better for you? So those were kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. People had a big problem. We were the solution. There was no other solutions out there. We'll solve it for them. Here's some software. Boom. I think the other scenario that was a little bit harder was when people work.

Um, yet you, you had the semi convince them that, Hey, you know, you're sending a gazillion emails. Why don't you try something else in your outreach to get in front of prospects or to engage with customers? And so you kind of have to sell them on the strategy, not just the solution. And so there was a bit of evangelism in the early days and still is today where people might have not thought this, or might've not done this yet.

And so you kind of have to teach. Um, and that becomes a little bit more of a consultative approach than just a solution. 

[00:09:51] Luigi: Yeah, that's really interesting. And cause I, I suppose, you know, when we think about the modern marketing and sales engine today, you've got multiple tech stacks that are automating and the world of automation for some reason, it's, it's, it's just.

It's what sellers and market is a trying to continue to find ways to automate more and more. But when you look at a lot of the data engagement with those automation platforms are dropping, like we see in the pandemic email, open rates dropped, um, deliverability dropped. There's been a huge impact. Not necessarily in the positive direction as a result of platforms.

So how do you go about educating companies to say, Hey, as part of your overall strategy, you should really consider, uh, an Omni touch and actually add physical elements to their, to their marketing journey.. 

[00:10:47] Kris: Yeah. So I think that, uh, for the most part, , I, I agree with you in that there's like an over automation and everyone goes to automate things.

But one of the, I think the unique thing about direct mail and gifting is that there is a cost component to this more so than maybe email or social or digital touches to where, you know, you can't just throw a billion dollars at this overnight. It's something that, you know, you have to be cost-conscious about.

So there's a sense of. Uh, a self-controlling mechanism to where, okay, this bottle of wine, I'm going to send you, you know, $80 and I'm going to have to be thoughtful because I can't just send it to everybody. So that puts a little bit more of a, okay, this is a limited resource. We got it. We got to think before we send, and it kind of polices this channel a little bit more than other things.

Um, so that being said, people have already kind of known that gifting is something that they want to do or direct mail is something they want to do. I think it's also part of human nature. In some cases, it's like a, a psychology where I want to thank you. Or I want to impress you, or I want to reward. And so some of these feelings were Sendoso can come in.

And what we found is that we can make it easier than you just do it more often because you already kind of want it to do this. And most salespeople, you talk to have done some sort of, you know, sending or giving or gifting or, uh, something like that at some point in their lives manually as a salesperson.

Uh, but now we make it so much easier that you can incorporate it into kind of your day-to-day process. 

[00:12:18] Luigi: Do you have any examples? Like, and I look at, this is not a podcast where we're selling Sendoso although we will put it in the show, notes for our listeners to jump in and check it out. But, um, I'd love to, I'm a big, big sort of a believer.

You know, activity needs to have sort of outcomes. And how do you sort of like track performance of some of the things that sellers are sending out to know that, because just like, look, we look at emails, we say, okay, the subject lines resonating. Cause we're getting a good open rate or we know that the message is getting good.

Click-through because we can see people booking. Um, how do we think. Fantastic. We've sent this. Great, thank you. Letter or bottle of wine, or, you know, you've got multiple things that you guys can send out. . Yeah. How does the seller and a marketing team assess the return on investment for that? Yeah. 

[00:13:08] Kris: So I'd say we see them in a couple different ways.

I'd say the first is that when anything's being sent out, that recipient is getting tagged to a campaign on Salesforce or potentially being tagged back to Marketo are there others systems? And so there's a nice paper trail to say, okay, well, depending on your attribution model, the last thing we sent was this Sendo soak gift, and then the person.

You know, responded and we scheduled a meeting or, you know, maybe it's a weighted average approach and you have, or the w the companies have different attribution models. But I think what we've done differently than you maybe couldn't have done before is a lot of this was happening offline or manual, and it was never being put into your CRM.

So you never really knew if it was working. And at least we have all the data points in your CRM now, so that. You know, run your reports. You could push that into other BI tools to run even more reports. And so I think that's first foremost is now there's kind of a data trail. Um, I think that's really important.

I think there's other things that you can do if you want to go past that. You know, QR codes or short URLs or, or unique phone numbers on the items you're sending out. Um, some of those ways you could see, oh, how many people scan this QR code or went to the short URL and you can track conversions that way.

Uh, but, um, you know, that's a little bit more advanced than some people need to do. 

[00:14:29] Luigi: That's 

pretty cool. And do you mind telling us now, so you started, there was yourself and, and, and, and a co-founder. Um, and do you mind sort of giving us some insight into how big Sendoso is now. 

[00:14:39] Kris: Uh, 450 employees. And we, uh, started in 2017 and really went to market 2018 was our first full year.

So, um, been quite, uh, quite the growth story of the last couple of years.

[00:14:53] Luigi: That's a 

rocket ship and what there a. Is there a point of that sort of, you know, that period, when you look back, you go, well, this is when we've really got the model, right. And started to accelerate. 

[00:15:07] Kris: You know, I'd probably say after we had like 10 employees, it felt right.

It felt like, like we are, we are onto something. There's enough people here where we're starting to get momentum. And it was like, okay, let's hire our second customer success manager. Let's hire our third account executive. And so once we started to get past, I feel like 10 employees, it just felt right. So like the difference between a hundred or 400 to me, Wasn't like we we've got all these new and unique roles and all these managers and other functions that maybe we didn't have before.

But, um, I would say like after we got past 10 people, it really felt like we are. You know, a snowball heading down a mountain and we were nothing was going to stop us. No, 

[00:15:50] Luigi: that's an amazing what an amazing story could 

[00:15:52] Kris: also be my kind of optimism and, uh, you know, some of my positivity that I, I, I try to lead by kind of being a little bit more overly positive and, and celebrate a lot of, uh, you know, small wins and really try to build momentum and as part of my leadership strategy.

But, uh, you know, I think that also may be contributed to some of our early successes. 

[00:16:13] Luigi: Man, that's insane. And I'd love to know. Cause I could, when I really think about this, you know, that's an incredible growth story. Right. Um, did you have outside capital to help accelerate that? Um, and we did. Yeah. 

[00:16:26] Kris: So we, we try, we, uh, initially bootstrapped for the, I'd say the first nine months, um, then.

We're able to get an advisor to just introduce us to a couple of his friends, where we were able to put it about 350,000 in a convertible note, which was very simple. It was like one paperwork form and it was boom, we got the cash. So it was like too easy not to take. Um, and then about, uh, four or five months after that, I was actually at a dream force party.

And my past CEO connected me with a VC. He knew that was one of his previous VCs. And they were like, yeah, great track. Should we love it? Like, can we invest kind of thing? So that was also a very easy 2 million seed round where, and again, we overly focused on traction and customer success and, um, revenue in the early days when we went to raise our seed.

We already had, uh, about 600,000 in ARR, um, which, you know, you'll hear companies today that, you know, are going to rates seed rounds with zero ARR. Uh, and so we were very focused on traction early on, and it kind of paid off for us when we went to talk to investors. And after that, you know, first 2 million seed, we then, uh, about a year later, did a 14 million series a.

A year later did a 40 million series B. Um, and then we got some, uh, some more funding in the works that I can't pronounce, but stuff's got some good stuff coming soon to, 

[00:17:56] Luigi: so that's, that's pretty impressive. Right? So you went from seed, you've now raised, you know, a significant amount of capital, which is helping fuel the growth.

And I mean, from a strategy perspective, obviously the focus that you guys took. Was really thinking about that customer journey and how you can elevate that customer journey to keep them connected. Um, what's changed since your business went from 10 people to 400 people. And how are you managing to keep the customer at the center of everything that.

[00:18:27] Kris: Yeah, I think we've been able to invest a lot more in customer resources. So we've expanded our kind of our customer account team. We have these send curators that are all they do is come up with ideas for our customers. Um, we've, we've split up onboarding. So we've got an awesome onboarding team that helps customers get on our platform faster.

And then they have a customer success manager. Um, we've got an account management team that helps our customers find new opportunities within their organization. So, um, when we first got started, we were really trying to sell into, uh, sales and marketing teams. As we, we found that those were the two most obvious use cases.

We quickly found that. The customer success, account management, uh, HR recruiting, all we're interested in use cases for companies and areas where we could help them solve their kind of challenges there too. So we met, we've now found that we can really help companies across multiple different departments.

[00:19:20] Luigi: Yeah, this is awesome, but I love stories like this. I mean, this is something that was born from just an idea and you've really taken significant. What, um, how did you come up? One of the things that I often find when I speak to a lot of. You know, businesses that are starting to form or they've got funding now they're trying to grow and scale.

Um, you go to market strategy. How did you actually develop the kind of the structure? Did you look at the typical assembly line model that most SAS companies use, or, you know, how did you go about coming up with the right structure that allowed you to take the product? 

[00:19:54] Kris: Yeah. So I would say we used, you know, the common kind of Salesforce, predictable revenue kind of B2B model, where you have S SDRs that are going outbound against named lists.

You have some inbound SDRs that are handling inbound. Those are passed over to an eight. That then closes the deal and passes them to customer success. And you have, you know, a marketing team that's trying to drive inbound leads. So I knew that model really well. I grew up in that model. I spent decade being a part of that model, so it was very easy for me to understand.

Um, and I think, you know, B2B sales in general, that's been kind of the most popular. Um, I will say that there is an emerging kind of the product led growth or self service model that started to, uh, take more popularity where people can just come into the platform, sign up, don't pay anything, get using it.

And then kind of sales gets a product qualified lead to then kind of like slack did that pretty well. Dropbox. And these other companies have done that well. Um, but I think that's kind of a newer model I'm seeing. Uh, that, uh, is a little different than your typical, you know, SDR to AEM, to CSM 

[00:21:06] Luigi: model. Do you think that product kind of led growth is something that will become as.

Influential as, you know, the historic model that's allowed companies to get to this point in, in, in, in sort of from a salesman, 

[00:21:23] Kris: actually. Yeah. I actually think it shifts a little bit more of the experience to the buyer who can actually try things out before maybe getting gated by a request demo wall.

And so I think for certain software, it actually makes perfect sense to be able to get in there, click around and start using it. Um, and then hit. Uh, versus perhaps getting a paywall without even seeing the product. And so I think you'll, you'll see that certain buyers want that experience. And I think that you'll see certain salespeople gravitate towards being better at one or the other, because I think that the product led growth strategy really relies on salespeople to understand product usage and really help coach, uh, a potential prospect into signing up based on.

You know, the usage data, which is different than maybe an SDR and AAE who is just selling the slide deck or a demo that they control. Um, so I think it's, uh, um, you know, you'll, you'll see maybe the different breeds of, of salespeople emerge from that. And, uh, it'll be interesting to see the next 10 years, um, to see if, you know, I think the, it was almost a gold rush for the SDR function where you could just, you know, uh, meeting after meeting, after meeting, after meeting.

And is that going to be. Uh, keep him in play or are you going to have to adapt and maybe take a hybrid approach, which is part, you know, outbound SDR part PLG, or it will be interesting to see the next 10 years in sales. 

[00:22:53] Luigi: It's interesting. Right? Because with all the funding, there's a, it's like, there's an endless amount of money right now.

You keep saying. More and more companies raise money. There's more unicorns being created than ever before. Right. Especially in the tech space. Um, and it's really interesting to see all that, but in, in a world that requires in that, you know, the companies that are getting that funding, there's an expectation of growth attached to it.

Right. There's an expectation of stakeholders and shareholders. Now, at some point they want a return on their investment. Um, And often a lot of these companies are using the traditional model of just, you know, top of funnel, SDRs, BDRs, creating net new they're hiring young people. They're not onboarding them correctly, um, because they need to get him into the hot seat as quick as they can.

Um, you know, how did, how did your business. Combat that problem by bringing the SDR model into the business, to generate top of the funnel and also enable them to be able to have, you know, deeper conversations with the customers and bring them along the binder. 

[00:24:01] Kris: Yeah. So I think we did a couple of things we did there.

One of the things we did early on is we're, we're a San Francisco based company from the start. That's where we were founded. We actually found success very early on. Like once we had about 40 employees, we actually diversified and opened up an office in Phoenix, Arizona, which is, uh, what, which was allowing us to pull an SDR talent in an area that.

Um, could be more cost-effective for unit economics so that we could overpay them more than they're used to, but have a model that still worked out really well in terms of our customer acquisition costs. And so that was, um, a smart way for us early on to make a SDR successful and organization without, you know, in a, in a San Francisco environment, you might need to make.

A couple hundred thousand just to, you know, pay rent. And so it makes it kind of skews your predictable revenue models. So that was one of the things we did early on that helped us. Um, we also. Um, w um, really made STRs feel like they had a long, diverse journey ahead of them. It was not just SDR to AAE. So we have a fair amount of our, uh, SDRs move into our partner or into our account management org into.

Uh, SDR our CSM org. Um, and so, uh, we opened up multiple career paths and really at, uh, educated our STRs that they can do more than just a E. And I think that created more longevity too, because that, that role at times can get, um, uh, kind of, uh, you know, tiring. And so if there's a. You know, and the end of the tunnel, where they can see other areas of interests that helped drive more longevity, because ultimately you need to basically be hiring SDRs, keeping them there long enough that, that you can see success with them and then, and then promote them in some way.

Um, and so we, we found a good kind of career pathing through the organization. 

[00:25:53] Luigi: Fantastic. And, and just on, do you know what you mentioned earlier that the change to product led, um, And then what are you guys doing as a business to kind of be in front of. That trend and make sure you're accommodating for the changing dynamic of the customer.

[00:26:11] Kris: Yeah, that's a great question. So we've been, uh, beta testing, uh, kind of our own version of that, where, uh, you know, a sales person can come into the platform, sign up, send stuff without even, you know, having their, their boss, you know, by, uh, you know, get a subscription of the platform. So we've been testing that out and we see that will be a potential opportunity for our.

Uh, efforts, you know, in a couple of quarters to come. Yeah. Yeah, because it's interesting. 

[00:26:35] Luigi: I mean, I've my whole career I've been in, in a sales role. Um, obviously moved my way up to managing a sales team and being head of marketing, et cetera. But I remember early, early days, My sales leader never would pay for any, any gifts or campaigns.

It was always coming out of their pocket as a salesperson. I'm like, well, it's okay because I am getting commission or deals worth X. Um, are you seeing more sellers kind of bypass their boss and their company to say, Hey, I do see value in creating more human connection with my customers outside of. At automated platform that people know now it's automated.

Like they're getting so much automation. You can actually tell just by, even if it's plain text, you know, it's automated because it's got the bloody unsubscribe on the bottom. You know, people are getting sort of connected to the fact that it's not a real person. Same thing they say to me, direct. Um, so are you seeing more sellers now kind of use your platform in a, in a, in a, you know, bypassing their company and they're making.

Um, 

[00:27:49] Kris: we definitely see a lot of requests for that. And that's why we're coming up with a package just for sellers, where they can sign up on their own and bypass that. Um, I think for certain organizations, you know, people feel maybe less empowered and they feel like they have to go talk to their boss, but for, uh, you know, for certain companies, Uh, F it I'll do whatever I want.

Like, I need to make my money. I need to hit my quota. I need to get commission, so I'll do whatever I need. So I think we, we get a mix of that. Um, I also think we're seeing a, a greater trend in just the overall sales tech landscape. I think for the last, you know, five to 10 years, the mark tech and marketing technology landscape, there was just an explosion of tools.

Um, but marketing always had to pay for the budget on it. Now you're seeing these sales tools pop up and sales. Commanding. Hey, I need these tools for me to be successful. And I think that we've seen big companies like the gongs and sales lofts, and, you know, outreaches of the world that have, uh, garnered, you know, unicorn status and are ultimately built just for salespeople.

[00:28:53] Luigi: So, and it's interesting, cause that was like LinkedIn back in the, you know, now companies are buying LinkedIn packages, but historically was the individual and you try to get your boss to give you that. Right. Um, but it is, it is an interesting paradigm, right. Because I think, um, When we look at the data even before COVID, you know, that the pandemic hit the biggest issue facing most companies was they just didn't have enough pipeline.

Um, not enough sellers were hitting target. And I, you know, my professional opinion or my personal opinion, um, I believe sequences and the tech is a great tool, but I believe it hasn't been loaded correctly with the right intent or the right level of skill. Um, people are thinking. You know, mass automation will fix the problem when it doesn't, it actually makes the problem even worse.

So, I mean, how have you guys kind of managed through that, that, that world of automation in making sure you're connecting to the buyer in a way that it's meaningful and one time. 

[00:29:58] Kris: Yeah. So one of the things we do is, you know, we obviously invest in all the automated tech too, but we have investing in people too that will help, uh, take a step back.

And really, we have two people that all they do is, uh, really look about copywriting and really sequence design. And what are the different things we should think about? Because I think it's almost like just giving. You know, uh, a sales person, like a loaded gun. I'm like, okay, go for it. Then you don't know what they're going to do with it.

But if you give them some training, they can be a little bit smarter about it. Or if you tell them, if you say, Hey, let's think about our buying experience. Like what would a buyers want over the course of three months and take a step back there and work with maybe marketing work with, uh, somebody that's dedicated to.

You know, sequence design, you can start to think about, okay, well maybe we shouldn't just blast five of these emails out and week one, maybe we should send something more personal or maybe we should add in a non-automated step so that someone actually has to go do some homework. So we're, we're very methodical in terms of how we think about the approach to these.

And, um, you know, we don't know. You know, compensate our rep side, like activities of like, okay, you need to get a hundred emails a day to be successful. We really try to focus on the outcomes and having them spend more time building the relationships are quality over quantity. 

[00:31:16] Luigi: Yeah. I think that's incredible advice.

So I think that's credible advice for anyone in the revenue structure, you know, from CMO CSO, right through to sales professionals that I love what you said. Non-automated task of actually maybe doing some research. Cause I find that level of personalization, it is lacking somewhat. Um, you know, and they're forgetting the basic principles of what makes a great relationship is, is an understanding and a level of empathy between two parties.

[00:31:44] Kris: Exactly. And I think there's this, uh, kind of lot lost art or even a, a potential to be more creative. And I think that goes back to one of the areas that I was trying to do when I started the company or why I was, you know, trying to get more creative with my outreach. I think creativity is one of those things you can't really automate you.

That's a human to humanity approach. And so if you can. Be good at being creative and, you know, think about what's the right message to ride or the right gift or the right approach or the right time. And some of these things, you know, can get you meetings, get you deals closed and you can't automate it.

You just have to be human. So that's 

[00:32:21] Luigi: awesome. And mate, what's the best gift request or the best gift that you know, that the business has said. Oh 

[00:32:27] Kris: man, there's some good ones. Some, a couple of my favorites, one, I there's this one where you sent a bottle of nice high-end liquor, and then there's a combo lock on the top and you have to take the meeting to get the code to be able to get in, get in.

So that would just drive me nuts. If I saw a really nice bottle of booze and I couldn't open it. I, I liked that one. Um, there's, uh, some cool. I mean, I'm a big fan of like desk plants. And so there's really cool plants that people have sent like this money tree. Um, we've seen someone send like, uh, these, uh, you know, uh, really like, um, kind of, uh, high-end like Legos.

Is that like, have like these really thoughtful, creative ways that you can like build a Lego kit, um, and it's related to the person's product or service. So, um, there's really endless things that we see and we've got. The cool thing is too. We've got thousands of these examples that we share with customers, or even on our website, in our resource section to get inspiration, because I think it's not a, you know, it's not a golden gun bullet that you can do the same thing for everybody.

You gotta be thoughtful and there's, you know, get it getting inspiration can help you find that right. 

[00:33:38] Luigi: Yeah, that's fantastic. I actually love that. I love the idea of the alcohol and you put a lock on it. That is fantastic. Well, Kris, before we sort of come to the end, we'd love to, if you could just share where our listeners can connect with you, what's the best place for them to connect.

We'll also put it in a show. Yeah, w 

[00:33:52] Kris: would love to connect on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn. Um, email me, if you want to talk more. I love networking with people. So my email is Kris dot com. Um, and I'm always happy to talk with other entrepreneurs to talk the salespeople. I honestly, I love being pitched to new products or if you've got a cool new sales, tech tool or new software, like it's me, I'm always interested in what's the latest and greatest 

[00:34:18] Luigi: that's awesome.

Well, may I just want to say, like, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I think for me, this is a very relevant discussion thread that we just got to keep heavy. Uh, in the community because you know, the lost art of sales, I believe it's happening. It's people are forgetting the whole premise of the unique experience.

Um, setting yourself, differentiating yourself. Um, and I believe this is the type of way that sellers can do to elevate that buying journey. So my, I want to say, thanks for your contribution. Um, we'll put the show notes, we'll put where they can find more about Cindy. So, um, I think what we'll do at sales IQ, I think we're going to play around with this and we're going to do a couple of campaigns using it because we, we, we love testing new concepts and we'll share that with our listeners as well, mate.

So, which want to say thanks. Perfect. If everything that you do. 

[00:35:09] Kris: Yeah, thank you. It's great to be on.

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