Paul M. Caffrey (00:03.15)
Aviv, how's it going? Delighted to have you on the show, CRO at DataRails and knocking it out of the park. I noted that you just had your best quarter ever. Congratulations.
Aviv Canaani (00:15.987)
Thanks, well, delighted to be here. Yeah, we're having some fun now. And yeah, thank you so much for inviting me for your podcast.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:24.398)
I'm delighted you're here. And there's a lot of questions which have been given to me when I mentioned to a few people that you were coming on. There was great interest. And one of the big pieces of interest that I've seen is how you've been able to manage to drive so many inbound leads. So I've seen a lot of people who spend a lot on advertising and they just don't get that return. Whereas that really seems to be something that you've cracked over the last...
I don't know, six, 12 months, maybe a bit more.
Aviv Canaani (00:56.541)
Yeah, I'll be happy to dive deeper into it. The way I see it, as a CRO, as a CMO, my goal is to create a go-to-market machine. I think about it like the Henry Ford factory. Everyone is in charge of doing a different part and serving a different part in that machine. Maybe because of my background as a marketer as opposed to a salesperson.
I never saw like the value or the logic of asking AEs in addition to handle all the inbound flow to also do prospecting. The way I see it is, marketing should generate the leads, SDRs are qualifying them, we bring as many meetings as possible for AEs.
Then they go through the sales cycle. In our world, it's also they involve like in a second demo, like a solution consultant. And the goal is to get, course, the closed ones. know that conversion rate from each one of them and the way that we built it is really this kind of waterfall system where based on that.
target, the revenue target we have, I can say how much marketing budget we need. From the marketing budget, I can say how many meetings we're going to generate. From the meetings we generate, how many of them are going to become opportunities? How many opportunities are going to become sales? Based on that, I know how many account executives I need to hire. I estimate, for example, about 40 meetings per account executive a month.
And every time I hire a new account executive, I also increase the marketing budget accordingly. So I really want to operate everything like a machine. And if you want, I can dive deeper into like how we do it, like in marketing, but the goal is to create this kind of predictable revenue go to market machine.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:32.98)
There are so many questions that are popping to mind. And one is you're talking about 40 meetings, is that 40 new first time meetings per day that you're hoping to generate?
Aviv Canaani (02:44.583)
Yes, yes. So that's my goal to generate 40 meetings per AE per month. That's about two or three a day. And adding to the fact that they also have follow-up meetings, what we call deep dives or demos and pricing discussions. My goal is to make sure that that piece of that go-to-market machine is full. I want to see the calendars of our account executives as full as possible. Once I see they're full.
I increase the marketing budget, increase the goals and I generate more meetings. And that's the way that we plan it throughout the year. Me and the CFO, the CEO, and you know, every time I have to have the same discussion, you know, with our account executives, like, yes, we're hiring more people, but don't worry.
We are going to make sure that, you know, we fill your counters because we want to make sure that this system is working. And again, and I really think that in these days, as opposed to a few years ago, especially if you sell, would say to SMB at mid market where the top total addressable market is usually very big. It's so hard to do outbound today. So I don't want them to waste time on that. I don't want them to prospect. I know for some, sales leaders, you know, you have to.
teach people how to become great prospectors. No, I want them to be great in closing deals, just doing the intro calls and closing deals. I have other people that are in charge of actually setting the meetings.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:38.016)
Is there any specific metrics that you look at throughout the journey for someone? So for example, is there a close rate that you're looking for when someone has qualified a deal? Are you big on medic or is there anything like that that you're looking at before you get to that closed one?
Aviv Canaani (04:57.353)
Yeah, so we really break it down in this machine in terms of the conversion rate. I know from example, from all the leads that come in, how many are supposed to be scheduled by the SDRs from the meetings that are scheduled by the SDRs, how many meetings are going to be attended or not attended. And for the meetings attended, how many of them are going to be opportunity conversion rate from opportunity also to what we call commercial discussion and finalizing agreement and so forth. So I really have it breaking down to different steps. The most important metric for me, if I look at it from the AE perspective is
meeting to close one because that's the most objective because we work in a round robin system and again I know what I'm saying is more relevant for SMB and with market as opposed to enterprise I think that's the most fair one because I know some people might qualify a bit more some people might qualify a bit less of course we are creating very specific you know medic practices and SLAs and what you should qualify and what you don't but you know people might be different but what really matters at the end of the day is closing the deals so meeting to close one is the
most important thing for me and this is how I look at the quality of the sales account executives. Based on that I also want to hire only senior account executives because like you mentioned people want to come work here because they don't have to prospect our
Quarterly quota is what our competitors have as an annual quota, which sounds like a lot, but more than 80 % of our team actually hit the quota every quarter, which means like when one quarter they hit what they would hit in another company in a year. So they also make much more money here. But because the cost of generating the meetings is so expensive, I want to make sure I have the best team there, that they know exactly what they're going to do with the meetings because the cost of the meetings might be even more expensive than the cost of the sales account executive based salary or
commissions and so forth. So we've raised a very high bar. Our mission is to be the best place, the best company for leading account executive that want to make a lot of money. we, Michael as a CRO is to create that kind of environment where they can flourish.
Paul M. Caffrey (07:09.014)
OK, it's pretty amazing. So you're looking at meeting to closed one. And is there a percentage that you're looking at? Like is a 20, 30 percent or is it like do you do those numbers change based on territory or based on on segments?
Aviv Canaani (07:25.767)
Yeah, so unfortunately I can't share like the exact number, but I can say like for the past few years, like, yeah, the same, the same metric of like the meeting to close the one rate. again, because we're generating so many meetings and we have no more than 20 account executives, I can say for the first time in three years in the past quarter, we were able to raise it just by 1 % and 1 % is
Paul M. Caffrey (07:28.393)
Okay, yeah, yeah, no apologies. Yeah.
Aviv Canaani (07:46.373)
hundreds of thousands of dollars, just because like the amount of meetings is so high. So we constantly look at the numbers. We also compare it across, you know, the account, the executive team. and, yeah, of course, like it might be a bit different, you know, a little bit per industry or per, region, usually like North America versus, you know, America can be different. but, we want to make it as fair as possible for the whole team and set, you know, the quotas and targets accordingly.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:15.274)
And do you, are you strict on this is ICP, this is the right persona or is it purely they're in a company and they want to meet us and you know, they could potentially buy from us. mean, is there a threshold there that you kind of advise upon?
Aviv Canaani (08:32.966)
Yeah. So if we take like a step back data rails, like we're AI FPNA platform, this financial planning and analysis, focusing on SMB and mid market offices of the CFO finance teams. So it's very industry agnostic. Our goal is to help those finance team.
dive deeper into insights and get better analysis with our solution that integrates with Excel. So because it's so wide and like every company, it doesn't matter if you're a SaaS tech company or a manufacturing company, a real estate company, you would have a CFO, you have a finance team. The total addressable market is more than a hundred and a thousand companies. So the potential here is huge. And it's not actually that different from one company to another in terms of the needs. Like sometimes they want to see different things, like different terminology.
and different like spreadsheets but finally we sell it to everyone so because the scale is that large and we're able to generate this kind of demand.
Paul M. Caffrey (09:32.728)
Amazing. And with hiring senior account executives, you've got people who know how to sell, who've been successful before. Do you leave the sales process for them to manage or do you have a, I want you to qualify it and we want a discovery. We want to have a demo business case and follow along maybe certain steps or, is there a, is it.
You figure out what way to run it yourself.
Aviv Canaani (10:03.719)
Yeah, so we have a very set methodology. I've been here like for four years now and
It was interesting to see like with time, know, some account executives are able to set them apart from the rest of the team. So actually the sales leadership team now is mostly made up of account executives that grew up the ranks like our VP sales and wherever sales directors started as AEs just three years ago. And they just built this kind of system that works for our specific target audience. So it's actually, we have a very specific framework. Can we start, know, with discovery, how actually as opposed to
of our competitors, actually do like a very short demo with the account executive in the first call. If that works out, we set up like a second meeting with a solution consultant, like a demo that we have scoping pricing discussions and so forth. And yeah, we have like very specific criteria in terms of a company size. Like again, we're focusing like an SMB, it'd be market usually companies from 50 to 2000 employees. Also like specifically like we're focused on the right budgets or the right titles.
and so on and we want to create this kind of system that is as scalable as possible because we know we have the kind of executives that grew up the ranks that they know how to sell it. So we want like everyone that comes in we want to train them to do that like going back to this metaphor of the Henry Ford factory like we know there's a system that works we want them to follow the system even if they were great on different company doing something else. So that's like the kind of methodology that helps us grow and scale.
Paul M. Caffrey (11:37.618)
And how do you prompt people to follow that process or remind them that they should? Because obviously we can't be with, again, executives the whole time. There was a lot of autonomy there. But for other CROs who are maybe struggling to implement the methodology, any tips that you'd recommend, Aviv?
Aviv Canaani (12:00.135)
Yeah. So someone that came from marketing, I think it was very challenging at the beginning, working just with sales people, because if you look at, again, the go-to-market machine, the first steps are all automated. Like when you run marketing campaigns and all that, you get the specific things that you want, know, exactly like the numbers and with people, you know, it can be different. So at the beginning, I put a lot of emphasis in making sure that account executives write the right notes, that the directors really make sure that the team is doing what's needed. But what really changed in the past,
year is the advancement of AI. Like there are so many different AI tools out there today that help with that. So now we're using a tool called Momentum, but there are other ones like WinAI and others. I think they call like this whole category like vibe selling and the Momentum actually listens to the calls. It summarizes everything, updates Salesforce and also it creates different triggers for the sales directors to notice. Like if the salespeople didn't follow, you know, the specific questions that we asked them to
ask or if someone let's say mentioned a competitor they want to see like how that kind of executive handled it so everything is now more automated we do it works with account executive and for the solution consultant and this is I think a way to scale especially in like high velocity sales you can't listen to
all the calls all the time, especially now as a CRO, I manage like 25 different people. I just can't do it. Even the sales directors and Manit-6 people, they can do it. But with AI today, and again, we're using momentum, it works. And I think this is the way that's going to help us scale and grow in the coming years.
Paul M. Caffrey (13:34.976)
And I'm not familiar with that specific tool, but I'm guessing it's capturing the transcript and then it's, it's updating the Salesforce or the CRM fields or whatever that you're using. Yeah.
Aviv Canaani (13:45.769)
Exactly, exactly. captures like all the transcript and it creates both the summary and then I see all the directors think about different triggers like I mentioned, for example, okay, competitor, like the prospect mentioned a specific competitor. How did the AI respond to that? And then they get actually in Slack notifications, the director saying,
So this guy mentioned a competitor, but the AE didn't say anything about it or just moved on to the next topic. So they know that they need to coach that counter executive. So again, I think really making this as methodological as possible, making sure that nothing is missed because like we said, the conversion rate is so important. So making sure we have a tool to help manage it and make sure people are following the guidelines is critical for success.
Paul M. Caffrey (14:29.126)
Absolutely. I spent some time with Guy Rubin, who obviously releases these incredible reports with EBSDA and Pavilion and sneak peek. mean, the data that's going to be coming down the track, there's going to be some differences, but there is still a minority of people who are delivering the majority of revenue at the moment. And that trend is kind of continued. One thing which I'm curious about is
Do you have people? The OK, three questions really. Are you big on multi-trending in this sale or is it if you're speaking to power that maybe it's it's less important if you're if you're speaking to, say, CFO, CXOs. And then the second part is, do you have mutual action plans, mutual success plans? Are they shared or is that something that maybe in high velocity says you kind of don't need to follow?
Aviv Canaani (15:24.841)
Yeah, so we do all of that, but of course, like we do multi-threading also the team sometimes asks me to sound like, you know, it's like an executive sponsor and.
We look at it and also like the mutual action plans. think like we're progressing as it as a company, like one of the things that we're working with the team on is how to create like a different methodology for more enterprise clients. We're getting more and more of these because like you mentioned, like some of that is much more needed in an enterprise client as opposed to like, let's say a company with 5,000 clients. Like we just closed one like the other week as opposed to many other clients we have that only have 50 employees or a hundred employees. And then you just work with one CFO that's practically practically doing everything. Maybe they have like one analyst.
So we really need to update like the system based on the target audience and that we have So it so I think it really depends but again, we're trying to make it like as critical as methodological as possible for us to get there and yeah, I Listen like two guys a podcast also like read his report and I I'm happy to say that at least for us based I think on
The fact again, we're selling in high velocity to SMB and mid-market and because it's around Robin, I can say that many of our top salespeople, even in the past quarter, which was an amazing quarter for us, were people that we just hired in the beginning of the year. So 80 % of our team is hitting quota. We have new people coming in immediately like delivering results because we saw some to SMB and mid-market, the sales cycle is like 30 to 45 days. So it's very fast. And again, I think that's really like a sign of optimism for us.
because it shows us we can continue to invest in this kind of machine and grow. And we're not reliant on one or two CIS people that just have bigger books that just deliver all the results.
Paul M. Caffrey (17:06.486)
Yeah, it's it's an incredible place to be. you look, you're really building something special here. One of one of the things I was in with Zendesk this week and we were doing some work and what what came out of those conversations is challenges of selling in times of uncertainty and particularly over the last six months. There's been a lot of that, especially in the US market.
Is that anything that you've seen come up in your sales cycles or any anything there that you've you've maybe been able to deflect or get past?
Aviv Canaani (17:42.761)
I think like a few years ago it was tougher also like last year. I'm actually optimistic now. It seems like the market is
going in a better direction. was also concerned about, know, like all the stories now and what's happening in the world with world conflicts and tariffs and so forth. if we're looking at the results, seems like the market is going up. People are looking for new solutions. I would say it seems like in the North American market, they're more open to try new things, invest in growth as opposed to Europe. Although we do see that in Europe, but I would say not in the same extent as in North America. But yeah, based on just like the past couple of
quarters. I want to be optimistic. We're in a positive trend here.
Paul M. Caffrey (18:23.936)
Yeah, well, I mean, well, the markets are roaring at the moment anyway, that's for sure, which is always a good sign. And when you're looking at motivating people and motivating the account executive team.
Is there anything in particular that you haven't played? there's obviously commission and pay plans are there. Is is is that probably would you call it the biggest driver, the biggest motivator? Or is there anything else that you think other CROs maybe could be could be thinking about?
Aviv Canaani (19:01.769)
Yeah, so of course, you know, pay is important with salespeople. Again, like I think a lot of other companies, but we put a lot of emphasis in trying to be as transparent as possible like monthly college this year, like all the numbers and want to get people to feel a part of the...
the company and the system and what we're trying to do is not just the hired guns, but I would say like something we do in our model, which is again unique with the inbound motion. We also have like many other companies, like the motion of, you can be a kind of executive, the senior account executives in principle, but the difference here is that we also have a tier system for the leads. And once you become a senior account executive, that you only get tier one leads. So people want to work really hard, prove to us that they have going back to our previous point, like a very good conversion.
rate that they hit their targets, overachieve, and then we promote them and then like the quality of the leads are going to be twice as good as the leads that they get before, which are both tier one and tier two. It's important to mention we are giving tier one to also new employees, but like once you become senior or principal, you only get tier one leads and that way we believe we're able also to maintain the team and have the growth like a trajectory for them to stay for many years because they are already in a position where
There's no reason for them not to like crush their quotas and make a lot of money.
Paul M. Caffrey (20:19.724)
That's I've heard so many people talk about doing that and say like a lead is one of your biggest assets in the business, but then still give a lot of top quality leads to maybe people who are underperforming or maybe people that were new who are still learning how to sell. Is this something that you've always had in place or is this something that you've you've newly added in over over the last year or so?
Aviv Canaani (20:46.025)
Yeah. And introduce it about two years ago. started as four years ago as VP of marketing when the company was 95 % out, but now four years later, we're 95 % out inbound. So like two years ago, like the CEO and other co-founders asked me to take over sales as well. The problem is now I have no one to blame, you know, for not closing all my amazing leads I sent to the team. And as you know, as the head of marketing, don't have, as was the head of sales, can't blame marketing for all these crappy leads. But once like I took over, I decided, you know, it's, it shouldn't be fair. I want to make sure.
Paul M. Caffrey (21:08.524)
Yeah.
Aviv Canaani (21:15.979)
We as a company generate as much revenue as possible. So that's why we have the tier system. And again, everyone can get there. It's not based on like who I like or the VP likes or anything like that. If you prove yourself one quarter after another, after a few quarters, you know, you can become a senior account executive. like when you asked me the question before, showed it why it's important from the account executive perspective, like why they should stay for a while with us and why they should produce and perform. But also from a company perspective, it's like, I want to make as much money
as possible for the company. So I want to make sure that the tier one leads are going to the best account executives I have in the team because that's how we're gonna grow as a company.
Paul M. Caffrey (21:58.574)
Yep, absolutely. And what sort of criteria would you use to to score a tier one lead? it is a persona company turnover or is there you don't have to share anything that might be proprietary, but roughly how many different things would you score a lead on?
Aviv Canaani (22:18.845)
Yeah. So let's see if I remember all of them. Like one of the main ones is like the size of the company because again, like if we're looking at like companies, let's say like 150 or 50 employees, it's.
Usually not going to be like a tier one. We're also looking at the budget. We're looking at the title. Of course, there's a difference. We're talking with a CFO or with like an FP and a manager. We're also looking at geography. Of course, you know, we're more focused on North America, UK, a few other countries in Europe every now and then we might get, you know, a lead from a different country, but it might not be, we might not call it like a tier one because we're not sure like how good we are in selling in that country. So, you know, we have this.
different system. actually like, if I go even deeper into the weeds of it, the way that we do it, like in the past, was either you meet like all of these criteria and then we schedule it. But then when we introduced tier one and tier two, what we did, we have these four criteria that I mentioned. If it hits all the four, you're tier one. If it's three out of four, it's tier two. Because, you know, I want to give them a chance. Like I'll give you an example. It's a, like we mentioned geography. Maybe we're not that focused on Germany, but if a company of 500 employees, the CFO there, you know, hears about
the data reels, they wanna have a demo, they wanna learn more about us, they have budget, why not schedule it? It's not like a key target account, but they heard about us, it's worth scheduling it. And with time, we learn which countries we can do better or worse and same thing with the company size or budgets and so forth. So again, because we have a big team, I'd rather always schedule it than just not send them anywhere. And we're always surprised, you never know what the kind of leads that sometimes say, we close.
Paul M. Caffrey (23:55.566)
Yeah. And I mean, some of the different companies, you know, popping out of these different countries now is phenomenal. Like I imagine if a personio came inbound, you'd be only too happy to jump on that. You know, and like there are so many different companies which are are really growing out of Europe. That is it's that is definitely going to be motivating people to be top performers. And is it a case that you hit your number for 12 months or is it 18 months or X amount of quarters that you can
qualified to potentially move up into ranks, some sort of trajectory like that that you bring AEs in onto.
Aviv Canaani (24:30.589)
Yeah, exactly. If you hit your quota for four quarters in the row, we have another like SPF level that if you hit that even three quarters in the row, you can immediately become a senior account executive. We're now talking at the beginning of July, like we just promoted the three account executives. All of them joined last year and they're already there like in the of last year. And yeah, we wanted to make it as transparent as possible. And again, like motivate them to want to take more meetings and crush their targets. And again, like if we speak again about, know, the
of meetings I generate for the account executives. Actually, it's not like a number I set for them.
I know how much I have the whole pool of meetings, but it's up to them how much they open their calendar. Someone can open their calendar for 10 or 11 hours. Some people can open for five, six. If you want to have errands during the day, you can do it. If you open your calendar, you might get a meeting. Uh, it's based like around Robin. We're actually using chili piper. It's a tool. highly recommend it. A hundred percent fair. There is a whole system there and like how it picks, you know, the account executive just based on availability, how many meetings they got before. So if people want to really.
mark hard, when I open the calendar more, when I get more meetings and you know what you just get more at bats and the opportunity to close deals, you can be a top performer here.
Paul M. Caffrey (25:45.838)
Amazing. And we often we always hear of speed to lead being being so critical. Is that something you're focused on trying to meet people same day next day? Or is there is there a sort of number you're operating off of that's kind of manageable?
Aviv Canaani (26:00.327)
Yeah, so in the past we would qualify every meeting through an SDR. Now that we introduced ChiliPiper, so we do two things. you, going back to the tier one and tier two system, if you update all your information on the websites, let's call it correctly, you hit our SLA, you will be able to book immediately a meeting with an account executive. You don't need to go through an SDR.
But if again, if some of it is not correct or doesn't hit exactly like our target audience, you would get that SDR to call you. We built a team in the Philippines. We have an amazing team there of more than 20 SDRs. There are SDRs that they have to call you within five minutes. One of the things I changed when I joined the company four years ago, it was just so backwards. Like we would send the leads just once a week over email. Now like we have a full system that the SDR director manages. You have to call them within five minutes. Like you said, speed to lead.
is critical because think about the target audience like they're now on your website, they're looking in the FPNA solution, who knows what they're gonna do now? They might be with their kids, they might be in another meeting, you have to call them immediately. So we have a whole SLA of how they call them, how they send emails, we don't wanna lose the opportunity to sell them. And again, if you do hit all the criteria, just book it immediately on the AES calendar.
Paul M. Caffrey (27:16.142)
Amazing. And is there is there a sort of number that you you have your STO or is targeted with? Are they is that outsourced function or is that your it's your team that are just operating in a different area?
Aviv Canaani (27:29.673)
Yeah. So it's interesting. Like we used to have many SDRs in North America. We still have a few more on the outbound, but for inbound we do it all in the Philippines.
talking about like other hacks that I can share here. We do everything through Upwork. We hire all of them through there, or as the director interviews them through Upwork. We hire them and pay them through Upwork, but really treat them almost as employees. They are in our Slack channels. We give them shout outs, you know, when their leads come in and become closed one. And we really have an amazing team out there and I really appreciate them and they work.
amazingly. And yeah, just like a system that we built that's really working for us.
Paul M. Caffrey (28:14.326)
It's a genius model because traditionally we've kind of used that as this is where you go to learn to then step into or into the sales org. But if you're only hiring tenured salespeople, well then yeah, that makes total sense and getting the speed to leave being so fast again. We've seen so many companies talk about the difference that's made for them. And so no surprise to hear that when it comes to.
Two questions, but I'll ask them side by side because they're somewhat related. There's a lot of CROs who are stepping into roles where they might have small sales teams, maybe five or six salespeople in situ. So they've got to figure out, these the right salespeople to take us forward? How good are they? And then the other side of it is new CROs are typically having to hire salespeople and generally have to hire them all the way through. And a lot of salespeople can sell themselves as being top performers in an interview.
but they may not be when they end up working with you. How would you judge the ability of an existing person and what are you looking for in new hires?
Aviv Canaani (29:23.655)
Yeah, so I'll start by saying, you know, like I don't have the sales experience as an account executive. I started from marketing, but when you look at the role of a CRO, today's CROs lead the whole revenue organization. So it's marketing, sales, customer success. So, know, some might come from sales, some from marketing, some from customer success.
I come from marketing, so I know it's not something I'm an expert at. So that's why I mentioned before, like I promoted a few people that I really trusted in the sales organization that have an act for it. And they already proved themselves that they're great. And now that when they're teaching, you know, new account executives, the new account executives are actually listening to them because they know these are people that actually were like in the top of the charts before. And, know, when we were hiring new people, so that's one of the things that I mentioned that we're only taking like experienced people because we did actually try to
one or two times like to promote this DRs just so hard in our system where from the beginning you're to get like high quality deals. So actually we have some of the top account executives from our competitors come over to us. Also some directors of sales joined us from our top competitors because of like the system that we have. And they help us train our new account executives. think one of the things that we look at, like you're looking at like the hiring
process, we do like, you know, an intro, like meeting with like your manager. And of course, finally around could be with me, but like, usually we also do a simulation where we ask them to actually pitch their existing solution. And then we can see how they act selling because it's fine that, you know, we don't know their product, but I can tell you, even if someone that wasn't in sales, sometimes, you know, when you do that kind of simulation, I would let the VP do it. I'm not as involved, but it's very clear, like what kind of salespeople.
seem like they're really good at what they're doing. Like they're convincing you during the sales calls as opposed to ones that aren't as experienced. And of course we have, you know, some questions or some kind of things like some kind of pushbacks that we try to like, you know, push on them like during the sales process to just see how they react. See that, you know, for example, that they had the end of the day, they're not going to finish the call before without scheduling, you know, the next call. That's like one of them. So, you know, we tried to do that, but again, it's not perfect.
Aviv Canaani (31:39.971)
But it's mostly working for us. And again, if we hire someone that we see as not the right fit, and like I mentioned, for us it's 30 to 45 day sales cycle, we can decide to let go of someone like after a few months, but also it can go the other way. We can also promote someone within nine months, they will already be a senior account executive. So it's very clear after a short while who is great and who isn't.
Paul M. Caffrey (32:01.612)
Yeah, so you, you got that quick feedback with the shorter deal cycles. So good to know that, you know, having a competency based part of your interview is quite, it's quite a part that's overlooked by a lot of people, but you do see a lot when you put someone through that sort of test in a situation where it matters. one other thing that comes to mind is you're obviously forecasting the number each quarter.
you know, to, you know, to stakeholders, you shareholders, you know, all the, all the wider parts. When you're looking at your pipeline, are you looking for next steps and mutual action plan to be completed? Are you looking at anything else at a high level when you're trying to see are these deals on track or is there anything you'd recommend CROs be on top of if they're trying to forecast a sizable amount of deals, which I can only imagine the amount that you have to forecast.
for the numbers that you're producing.
Aviv Canaani (33:02.237)
Yeah, so like I mentioned, like we have this kind of waterfall model.
And because our sales cycle is relatively short, about half of our deals actually come within quarter. So it's also very hard to estimate what's going to happen in the next quarter. It's mostly based on like the marketing budget and how much we put into it. And again, we're all supportive. We also have a partnership motion and elbow motion, but everything is like tracked in Excel. And we try to always update that kind of hypothesis, you know, we have there. So it's interesting that, you know, I, when I give my forecast, it's a mix about between
what the salespeople are telling me like our VP sales and sales directors.
as well as what the numbers are telling me saying, okay, we have these amount of meetings, these amounts of opportunities that we did this quarter. I think based on historical numbers, I think this is the numbers that are gonna close. And again, once you work with like high velocity deals and all that, and many times like the numbers can tell you like the true story because you have enough of history to project that. But you know, it's never perfect, but that's what we try to leverage as we scale and grow the company.
Paul M. Caffrey (34:09.184)
Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And for any account executives listening who maybe work for you or who are listening, probably want to work for you, which I imagine there's going to be quite a few. they're here in this this interview and you talk about the company and how things are going. What are things that are very important to you that you want to see your account executives doing repeatedly?
Aviv Canaani (34:34.913)
yeah, so I think it's one of the things is giving a hundred percent to every lead that comes in because some deals have to say it, even if some of the salespeople on my team are going to listen to some are ready to just to buy, just so you know, you're taking the order. They already maybe used it in a different company or their friend recommended it. It's going to be easy sell, but the best salespeople are the ones that can take,
a lead that maybe is 5 % interested in buying you and make it 100%. And because of our motion, where we get like our account executives to sell about 12, 15, 17 deals like a quarter, I would say everyone can sell two, three deals. Okay, you can sell it to people that are ready to buy. But making sure you give 100 % to every opportunity that comes in, you prepare for every meeting, you follow up with them is not...
obvious, you need to be organized, you need to be very diligent about it, especially in our model where you know that like even if someone, if the lead isn't that good, okay, we're gonna get another one the following hour. But I wanna make sure our salespeople are gonna give 100 % because if not, like the whole model is gonna break if they just wait for the next meeting.
I put a lot of emphasis to make sure they're doing all the right things on the call. They follow up with emails and follow up with phone calls. And we look also like at conversion rates because we know it's like around Robin and supposed to be fair. So that's, I would say one thing that's very important. The other thing.
just you we have this kind of no asshole mentality it's like you can't be a lone wolf you need to like work well with the team a big part is working well with your management team that has a lot of experience selling and also it's a partnership with the solution consultant is really critical because it's a tag team that wins deals so I take a lot of
Aviv Canaani (36:21.865)
My thoughts on the account executive based on what others in the team were saying about them, what the solution consultant is saying about the AE, what the AE is saying about the solution consultant. We want to build this kind of environment where there is trust. After a call, they can speak with each other and say what we did well, what we didn't do well. So having team members that can really work well as a team is really critical. And this is what I see as people that are really excelling in our environment.
Paul M. Caffrey (36:48.128)
Yeah, it's how people, how people talk about you when you're not in the room is massive, particularly in that solution consultant and account executive dynamic, because it can be the best in the world when it works well. But when it's not working, everybody knows about it very, very quickly. So it's nice to hear that you're you're listening out for that as well, because so many tend to put their head in the sand and ignore that. Now, I am big on preparation.
I suppose one of the key cornerstones of what I teach people to do. My recommendation for people is if someone's worth half hour, hour of your time, putting 25 % of time that you're going to meet that person aside to adequately prepare for them and for that meeting, is there is there a process that you have or is there information that you want people to prepare and look at? Or is that really just up to them? You just be prepared and be ready, whatever that means to you.
Aviv Canaani (37:45.607)
Yeah, so I think it's, to be honest, it's hard to track, what we do to make it as easy as possible for them, once they get that lead, they get all the information in Salesforce. I can mention using systems like Momentum and Orem and others. They get the information, both of what we know about the company and what the SDR knows. So, you know, within five minutes, they can just read the whole thing. Of course I expect them and that's what the best account executive do. In addition to the notes that they read, they would also look online, research, you know, the client look on their LinkedIn.
look at the company's website, but we are trying and I mentioned it, like we want to create this kind of environment that's the best one for account executives. So I want to make it as easy as possible for them. Like I really want to spoon feed them because like they're lazy because they want it to be effective. So because the questions they asked on the website or the SDRs are supposed to ask are very detailed. It really helps them. Like for example, not only do we ask about revenue, company size, titles and all that. We ask them, okay, what are you looking to learn more about today? Like what are your current
Also we ask how did you hear about us? Again, it's important if it's like a friend that mentioned them or something they saw online. So everything is summarized. So once the account executives goes on the call, they can reference it. And I think again, the best account executives come prepared. They know how to reference it. And this is how they win. And I would say it's not only the account executives, the same thing goes with the solution consultant because the same thing we summarize for the account executive like all their notes.
which again are all automated with AI. For the solution console, the solution console has to prepare at minimum half an hour, if not an hour for the cause and make sure that when they show a demo, it's not going to be like a generic demo, but something very specific based on what the prospect said they're interested in. So, yeah, we put a lot of emphasis on it. So I really agree with you.
Paul M. Caffrey (39:30.294)
Yeah, really, really like that. And do you encourage your leaders to have one on one forecasting reviews with with teams? there is there that is there that sort of cadence where you started a quarter, everybody tidies up their pipeline and we're always very, very big on on rigor when it comes to the CRM.
Aviv Canaani (39:52.925)
Yeah. So it's also something that we were challenging in the past. Like when I stepped into this, sales were like a lot of people wouldn't update it as much and now they update it all the time. And so it's two things like in the past, we just had a system where it was based on the stage and we had like a percentage of how much we believe like are going to convert from, say commercial discussing or discussion or finalized agreement. But what we added that whenever the sales director suggested his confidence level, especially like at the end of the quarter, let's say like it's mid June, they all update.
the confidence level, one to five, you know, for each one of their opportunities and they have to update it like on a daily basis and the VP of Sales and the sales directors really manage that. And I have to say like after like last quarter, which is again, it was a record quarter for us. It was great for me as a CRO with a high velocity team to just being able to look at Salesforce or Gong through the pipeline and
view the ones that are hot, the ones that we believe like the team are going to close. And I think it's so important because like, again, like I'm with you, like in the past, like sometimes like things would close that I didn't even know were in the pipeline. I'm like, okay, so maybe I'm happy that it happened, but I'm wondering how many other things we missed because the salesperson forgot to even monitor it. So yeah, I think it's, it's really important, especially in high velocity.
Paul M. Caffrey (41:07.918)
Yep.
Paul M. Caffrey (41:11.874)
Okay, and I'm mindful that we're coming on time. I have a few quick fire questions I'd love to throw your way, Aviv. And considering you've just had a record quarter and the business is growing, I'm very excited to hear the answers that you're gonna share with us. What is your number one prospecting tip?
Aviv Canaani (41:31.667)
Prospecting tip. So for us, it's the A's don't need to prospect. The prospecting tip is leave that to marketing and the SDRs. They're going to do the job for you. I know it's not what you're expecting, but that's what works for us.
Paul M. Caffrey (41:46.048)
I like it. And look, it's in line with our conversation. What what what went before. So from that perspective, this will make a great snippet for people to tune in and go, what did he say in the rest of the episode? So that'll be useful when it comes to sales. What's what's your number one sales tip, Aviv?
Aviv Canaani (42:08.169)
Trust the people you work on. It's a team sport. Trust your manager. Trust your solution consultant. Work on it together. Be transparent. The management team and the rest of the team are all here to help you win. Don't try to do it yourself. We want you to succeed. Share your concerns. We're here to support.
Paul M. Caffrey (42:29.28)
And I think I might know where you go with this as well, but when it comes to getting promoted or seeking promotion, what tips would you recommend account executives follow?
Aviv Canaani (42:42.281)
Crush your numbers, go above and beyond. think especially these days, some people expect this kind of nine to five job, just do bare minimum, just cash in and go home. I think that if you really wanna be successful in your career, see what others are doing and do more. Spend more time on it. If you need to like review things in the evening or earlier in the morning, do whatever's needed. Again.
My expectation is not like we don't have any hours you're supposed to work and you want to run errands during the day, do that. But you need to go above and beyond to crush it. I think, especially in this generation, it can sometimes be missed by people that feel, I can stay at home and do everything and never have to meet anyone. But I think that if you really want to crush it, leverage the time you're at home to really go above and beyond, like I said, also prepare for meetings, consulting with the sales management team, work with the solution consultants, like do.
more than anyone else because you just have to crush it and number stock and it's very obvious in sales.
Paul M. Caffrey (43:39.18)
Yeah, I like it. Numbers never lie. And that is for sure. When it comes to books, is there any books that you recommend people read or check out to help advance their career?
Aviv Canaani (43:50.627)
Yeah, so I really love the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. He's really from the 80s, but they have like updated versions. He talks about the six principles of persuasion. I think it's relevant for everyone, not only if you're sales or marketing or just if you want to be a successful person in the world or even have like good relationships with other people, you need to understand how persuasion and influence works. And in terms of sales, they're also like older book. I really liked the little red book of selling that I
also always recommend, also had some great tidbits because you never know, like some great insights about sales haven't really changed in the past 10 years or 100 years or a thousand years. And some things always work. And I think it's sometimes good to go back to the basics.
Paul M. Caffrey (44:38.67)
Yeah, it is remarkable how many of those older sales books still ring true today. Frank Betch is how I raise myself from failure to success in sales is another good example. It's written in a certain time, but if you follow a lot of what it says, you'll be successful today, even though it's 100 years old.
Aviv Canaani (44:54.535)
Yeah, I can even, yeah, I want to share also, you I watched recently the movie, Glengary, Glen Ross, and like then they shared it with the sales team and it's amazing. It's like, you know, from the eighties or something, all they fight there about is like the quality of the leads. These are crappy leads and you can never sell anything with the leads and they share with the team. Listen, it's the same thing that's happening with us today. Just now it's everything online, but this discussion between sales and marketing and getting quality leads, something's never changed.
Paul M. Caffrey (45:21.004)
Yeah, absolutely timeless. And it's amazing. Somebody says people haven't even heard of that movie. They've worked on back in finding and having to watch for sure. When it comes to preparation, what does doing the work before the work look like in your world of Eve?
Aviv Canaani (45:38.099)
Can you repeat that?
Paul M. Caffrey (45:40.098)
When it comes to preparation, what does doing the work before the work look like in your world, Aviv?
Aviv Canaani (45:46.953)
before the work, would say it's, again, looking at all the notes you have about that prospect. Again, for us, it's like everything is generated by AI from SDRs and marketing. Research them online.
Whether it's like LinkedIn, like about that person or about the company looking at, know, recent news about the company and so forth. And yeah, even coming prepared in terms of case studies and knowing like other companies like that company that might have bought from us before, because, know, there's nothing like FOMO. So I think coming prepared like that can really set the difference as opposed to some sales people just show up to a meeting and figure it out during the.
discovery.
Paul M. Caffrey (46:31.212)
Yeah. And that's where experience can become your biggest nemesis. I've done this a hundred times before. And then you miss an open goal because you don't realize, as you say, they've referred in by such and such. And we've missed something really important. Final question for someone who is just starting out as a CRO and the fact that you have not went the sales route to get there. What advice would you give that person who's in that role and
wants to make an impact and is maybe even feeling a little bit of an imposter as they step into it.
Aviv Canaani (47:07.613)
Yeah, so it's like you're an engineer. You're the go-to-market engineer. You need to think about the organization.
I guess, of course it depends, you know, at what stage the company is at. But if you are at least managing a few dozen employees, whether it's, you know, in sales and marketing or customer success or account management or other organizations, like you're not the salesperson anymore. You're not the marketer anymore. You're the one building the machine. want to make sure like the machine operates again, like using the Henry Ford metaphor. You want to know that every step of the business is talking with each other. I'll give you another example is a lot of times when the teams are separated.
the prospect has a very different experience in terms of what the experience for marketing or the SDRs or the sales team, it's one experience, it's one company. And you want to make sure the handoffs are working really well. That's always like a challenge in all companies between marketing and SDRs and then SDRs to salespeople and salespeople to say solution consultants. And you want to create this kind of either waterfall or other system where you can project
and how you are delivering results because what as a CRO what you're in charge of is making sure your CEO is happy. The CEO ideally wants to be in a situation where they tell you okay this is the target and you tell them okay this is the budget I need to hit the target and that's it. So I think every CRO needs to understand as opposed to let's say being a VP sales. It's not just about hitting the number.
it's what it's gonna cost. So I think every CRO needs to be measured also on the cost of acquisition, because then it's the best conversation for a CEO to have. You just say, this is the budget, this is the target, hit it, and the CEO doesn't need to care exactly like, know, how you make the sausages and so forth. if you're able to deliver that and creating this kind of predictable revenue, that's where the CEO is happy, and this is how you can grow a company and grow your career.
Paul M. Caffrey (49:02.67)
Couldn't think of a better place to end. Aviv, thanks so much for coming on. If people want to find out more about you, more about Data Rails, how can they do that?
Aviv Canaani (49:12.425)
Follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn.
Paul M. Caffrey (49:16.674)
Perfect. We'll put the link below the notes. Thanks so much and really enjoy chatting with you.
Aviv Canaani (49:23.283)
Thank you so much, Bob. It was a pleasure.
