A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:36:20 · Aaron Schumm
[00:36:20] S0: Yeah, so on the enterprise side and the channel partnerships, for better or worse. It was kind of all I knew, right? I had spent my career doing it, living inside of these large organizations. I started my career at Northern Trust on the ERISA side, kind of almost serendipitously, fell into this world. If you asked me back when I graduated undergrad, if I would be in the space. I would have laughed at you and it's all just taking these, weird twists and turns. And I ended up here, but I knew how to engage with large institutions, right? And think through, okay, what's your tech landscape look like? What is the business P&L owner think, right? And how to cultivate those. Now there are different sides of the house. Although I sold it to advisors in my former life and broker dealers. The wealth side operated very differently than the retirement side and I was very adamant of like, why? I was like, it all should be one. You should think about these as the same thing and Morgan Stanley, to credit James Gorman. When he was running the show over there, he was a visionary and was like, this is the future of how this business works. So you can get a like minded individual who sees the future that you also see, right? Being able to get that buy in from an executive level is a lot easier than if you're just trying to convince someone like, hey, this is where the world's going to go. So that was kind of what we did and then we got a couple of early buys. Now, I would say, well, if you looked at the first deck I built for Vestwell before we had written a line of code. There was an element of direct to consumer, right? Think of a robo advisor type thing and I remember some investors like, pick one or the other. You're not going to do both. At least you're not going to do both well. So I was like, well, I don't really know the direct to consumer side. I didn't have that performance marketing tilt to my experience. So I was like, let me go the enterprise route. Cause I know how this is going to work and at least it's way more painful. The times you get kicked in the gut or you get to the finish line and everything falls apart. I mean, it is heart wrenching oftentimes. So, you got to have some thick skin and be able to deal with that, but it's worked out well for us.
00:38:22 · Pablo Srugo
[00:38:22] S1: Well, I'd love to pick one of the two. Whether it's the enterprise channel partnerships, like with the big financial institutions or the advisors. Which is more of a long tail, and just go deep on how you cracked that. What is the playbook that you used to get into, like we said. Either Morgan Stanley on that side or the long tail of advisors that fed your business for the first few years?
00:38:45 · Aaron Schumm
[00:38:45] S0: Yeah, I would the enterprise side, right? Because I think that's closer to my core of what I gauge on. On the enterprise side, there's a lot of it. I think you have to look at some of these deals you do is, it's a long road that you're marching down and you may not make the right turn or it may not fall into your lap the first time around. But often they come around if you just continue to do it. Interesting example, this was JP Morgan. When we sold, the first time we pitched, I think it was 2018, 2019, somewhere in there. We're maybe forty people deep and all of Vestwell. And we went in there, and we pitched. We got to the finals and it was a big RFP process. And you deal with these large banks, the procurement processes. All these things are their own animals and I remember we got to the finals, everyone around the table on their side was like, we want to believe this but they're like, you guys are a Series A company or something. They're like, I don't know if we can bet on. We're JP Morgan, we're the largest bank in the world. How can we bet on this forty person startup to carry what we think is going to be the future of a lot of our business, right? So we lost that, right? And I remember the guy who ran the winning bid. I knew really well on the other side. So they're another solution. I don't want to name the name but he was selling. He called me and he goes, it was you in the finals. And I'm like, yeah. He goes, how the hell did you get there? I laughed because I've known him for decades, right? And I was like, come on, man. I was like, how long have you known me? I was like, I'm going to show up. I'm going to be there and he goes, man. He goes, if you're there now, he's like, I'm screwed. He's like, there is no way I'm going to be able to keep up with the pace at which you're moving and I was like, no, man. I'm coming for you and I'm going to get this account back. I'm like, I'm going to win JP Morgan. Sure enough, fast forward three years later. That other vendor they selected was falling apart and I got a phone call and said, hey, you guys have clearly executed and everything you told us three years ago. The markets are singing songs about you guys. Let's go through this again, right? So we did it again and we won it. And now they've become one of our largest partners, I think we run like seven or eight programs across that bank now.
00:40:58 · Pablo Srugo, Aaron Schumm
[00:40:58] S1: During those three years where you'd lost it. What did you do with JP Morgan specifically to stay at least somewhat top of mind? [00:41:05] S0: Really, it was kind of like we just. I remember maybe once a quarter, just like, hey, remember this? We said we're going to do this, we did this, right? We said we're going to do this, we did this, right? Nothing grandiose or anything and then, you know, we'd go out there and we have our typical press releases, and posts, and everything we do out there, right? So it was just really just like, hey, go execute on what you said you're going to go do and the business is going to come back around. Similarly, it happened with John Hancock. We pitched John Hancock. We got to the finish line. It all fell apart and that was out of our control. That was more an internal thing. It all fell apart and then it all came back around. And now, again, they're one of our largest partners, right? It's like all these things you just kind of, as much as it was painful, and I remember just like, oh, like being so frustrated. You're like, just do what you do, guys and it's going to show up again. And we're going to win it the next time around. And that happens a lot. It's expensive and you want it the first time around. But, you know, when it shows up that second time around. There's an element of sweetness to it. You're just like, yes, we did it.
00:42:03 · Pablo Srugo
[00:42:03] S1: You know, it's something I hear often in enterprise sales and I guess the lesson is the bar is low. Most people, if they lose a sale in enterprise deals. Especially, because the little ones, they really just kind of go away. But, you know, you lose a big bid and you just kind of go to zero. You're like, OK, move on to the next one and that's it. And all it takes is a little touch point, like you said, quarterly cadence and doesn't have to be exactly that. But some sort of cadence, some sort of touch points. So you're not completely forgotten. Because the cycle is going to repeat and that's just another bad. And you do this ten twenty, thirty times over. You're going to win some of those.
00:42:33 · Aaron Schumm
[00:42:33] S0: Yeah, you get new leadership. Now, I've had on the flip side, too. Where you get there, you want an account, you want a deal, and then there's a riff or something, you know, the leadership gets changed. And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I got to start over again, right? So I think it goes both ways and, you know, enterprise sales is very expensive, right? It's some of these sales cycles that they're multiple years long. The procurement processes are, you know, slower than surgery. And, you know, but if you do it, you do it well. We spent a lot of time up front in our business knowing we're a new enterprise. On making sure our procurement, your responses were super buttoned up, right? We did our security, you know, our audits, all these things that you would typically kick the can on as a business. We pulled forward and got a lot earlier, more expensive than us but it was the right call. Because it allowed us to sail through these processes.