00:09:41 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:09:41] S1: Yeah. Of course. The one and only, the one true GOAT. And, basically, like, when when you join and, you know, it's it's the early days, it's a bit different versus what you've seen, you know, at at Slack and at Salesforce. So how how did it go, you know, in the first days? [00:10:02] S0: It's a lot of fun, but a lot of work. And this is the hardest I've ever worked in my entire career, but this is the most fun I had. But when I started, like, I was the head of sales, but there was no sales team. The sales team was me, Bret Taylor, Clay Bavor, Elliot Greenwald, Logan Randolph, Natasha, like our leadership team, we were the sales team. So when I first got there, I pretty much did everything. I was an AE, I was an SE, I was a BDR, I was an SDR, I was an office manager. I was putting dishes in the dishwasher. I remember one point, we had one, EA, Ali, who's incredible. She went on vacation and I was Bret and Clay's EA for a week because we were getting so many meetings, I couldn't afford the meeting flow to stop down. So it's a really cool place where you're... You wear multiple hats, you have an ownership mindset, and you have to have a very, very low ego. And it's like a mentality, see a problem, fix a problem. You know, you... If you have an idea, like, let's collaborate and make that into reality. But it's wearing multiple hats, it's having very, very low ego, but it's also, like, working a ton of hours to get something up and running.
00:10:02 · Reggie Marable, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:10:02] S0: It's a lot of fun, but a lot of work. And this is the hardest I've ever worked in my entire career, but this is the most fun I had. But when I started, like, I was the head of sales, but there was no sales team. The sales team was me, Bret Taylor, Clay Bavor, Elliot Greenwald, Logan Randolph, Natasha, like our leadership team, we were the sales team. So when I first got there, I pretty much did everything. I was an AE, I was an SE, I was a BDR, I was an SDR, I was an office manager. I was putting dishes in the dishwasher. I remember one point, we had one, EA, Ali, who's incredible. She went on vacation and I was Bret and Clay's EA for a week because we were getting so many meetings, I couldn't afford the meeting flow to stop down. So it's a really cool place where you're... You wear multiple hats, you have an ownership mindset, and you have to have a very, very low ego. And it's like a mentality, see a problem, fix a problem. You know, you... If you have an idea, like, let's collaborate and make that into reality. But it's wearing multiple hats, it's having very, very low ego, but it's also, like, working a ton of hours to get something up and running. [00:11:08] S1: Yeah. I... I'm I'm sure it was it was hard work. And if if you had to to pit Sierra, you know, to a a five year old, like, how would you do it?
00:11:08 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:11:08] S1: Yeah. I... I'm I'm sure it was it was hard work. And if if you had to to pit Sierra, you know, to a a five year old, like, how would you do it? [00:11:19] S0: Sierra, absolutely. So... And I do this all the time because I I have, you know, nieces and nephews. But Sierra, we make very sophisticated AI agents that represent a company's brand, and we're integrated in all parts of the experience. And it's our responsibility to build deep relationships with our customers and their customers and help them be able to interact with the brand and take care of their business twenty four seven on the on their own terms. That's what we do. And we're able to do that, at a high clip where we're handling the majority of all inbound, customer interactions are being handled by our agents. And we're creating a really, really, incredible experience. We have very high CSAT scores, high resolution rates. We're able to handle really complex things. But that's what we do. We're the front door of the customer experience, and we help you as a consumer take care of your business 20 fourseven in a consistent, beautiful way. [00:12:11] S1: Love it. And what... What's changing versus, like, software when it comes to the business model? Usually, people per per... Pay per seat. So here, it's... How exactly does it change?
00:12:11 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:12:11] S1: Love it. And what... What's changing versus, like, software when it comes to the business model? Usually, people per per... Pay per seat. So here, it's... How exactly does it change? [00:12:22] S0: We have this beautiful business model called outcome based pricing. And essentially what that means is we only get paid when our agents successfully resolve cases or deliver on the use cases that we sign up for. So you're hiring Sierra to do a job, and if we don't do our job, we don't get paid. This is a completely new model. Customers love it because they're paying for results. We have mutual aligned business interests. Our job is to take on more of your traffic at a much lower cost, and you as a customer, you're going to send us more traffic because you're paying less. It's a more consistent experience. So we don't charge implementation fees. We don't charge for any professional services work. We only get paid when our agents successfully resolve cases on their own without human intervention. That's what we deliver to customers. And people no longer wanna pay for seats or consumption or the right to use software. They wanna pay for results, and that's what Sierra delivers for our customers. [00:13:21] S1: And from a It's [00:13:22] S0: fun to sell it's fun to sell this two That...
00:13:22 · Reggie Marable, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:13:22] S0: fun to sell it's fun to sell this two That... [00:13:24] S1: That's what I was gonna ask, you know, like from a from a sales perspective, like on your side and with your team, how do you feel like... How do people react, you know, when they hear, like, they're not gonna pay per seat and they're gonna have to pay per outcome? People get excited because once again, they're paying for results. And [00:13:45] S0: we're able, like, to build a... Like, the ROI is, right there. If we're gonna be able to handle your customer interactions at a lower cost, we're going to do it more consistently, and we're going to do it better than it's being done today, why wouldn't you want to experience a business model like that? So it's fun to sell. It's a clear return on investment. It's a clear return on business value. Once again, our values are aligned to our clients' values, is to improve the overall customer experience at a much lower cost and be able to interact with all of your customers and build more intimate relationships. People buy more from you, they tell their friends about you, and they're really happy interacting with your brand. [00:14:26] S1: Nice. And can you walk us through maybe, like, the the sales process? Like, how have you organized your team, and what's kind of, like, the the sales process?
00:14:36 · Reggie Marable
[00:14:36] S0: Yeah. So we are... This is a brand new category of software, so it's a different sales process than what you traditionally see in SaaS. So with the way we're set up is we are industry focused. So we wanna be in the industries where people live, work, and play when they need to interact with the brand. So that's financial services, healthcare, telecom, retail, media, travel, tourism, hospitality, technology. So that's, and when you're aligned to industries, you understand what's happening in those industries, you understand the trends, you understand the use cases, you can speak the language and add tremendous value. So that's how we're set up. Our selling motion, it's a proof of concept generated selling motion, which means it's AI, it's new, So we wanna prove our value and make this a low risk engagement for our customers. So we do a paid proof of concept where we build a production ready agent, do all the back end system integration work, put the agent into live production so the client can see the value that this agent is driving, the incredible resolution rates, the high CSAT scores, our ability to handle complex use cases. They also get to see what it's like to partner with Sierra. So our, we have very sophisticated technical sellers. And then for every engagement, we have a dedicated agent strategist, which is like a project manager, very technical resource, and an agent engineer. We become integrated with our clients' technology teams or business teams or operations teams. So we show up and we can move really, really fast. So our selling motion is POC, put the agent in live production, you get a chance to see how powerful the technology is, what it's like to work with us. It's a very low risk way to evaluate Sierra. And do you, like, prepare all the agents before actually, like, the POC? Or do... Like, do you use it as, you know, like, I don't know, a way to attract leads if you do outbound, for example? No. So we... Each agent that we build is customized to the client that we're working with. Okay. So what we'll do is with the client and the proof of concept, we'll pick three use cases, one high volume, one easy one, and one really complex and early use case, and then we'll build the agent with the client. Okay.