February Demo Day Recap

The participants in our monthly tech sales competition really set the bar high this February!

For 12 weeks, Uvaro trains some of the best tech salespeople on both sides of Silicon Valley. We help them hone their skills in tactical prospecting, discovery, objection handling, and weaving in customer stories.

Watch these talented individuals each deliver an uninterrupted software demo for 15 minutes!

Event Recap: February Demo Day

Event Transcript:

Joseph Fung: Hey everybody! Welcome to the demo day. This is going to be a lot of fun. We have a fantastic panel of judges competitors everybody's sitting tight in zoom right now. For those of us on YouTube, we're going to cover some bases and actually get things going and bring you right into the zoom room.

So let's kick things off first off. We can't do this without an illustrious panel of judges. I'm really excited to share the judges that we have. You’re going to hear introductions from them in just a minute.

But Jordana, Drew, James, Charles, they'll not only be watching for techniques skills competencies, but we'll also be providing color commentary during the chat and afterward. So stay tuned for their insights. But most importantly, we have four incredible recruits who are going to be sharing everything that they've learned over the last 12 weeks and I want to set the stage.

This is a really tough competition not just because we have four incredible competitors, but what we're asking to do is really difficult throughout the program. We cover discovery demonstrations how do you run a sales call, we're giving them 15 minutes to show the best of their skills. So stay tuned now you see the four candidates that we have up here. This is not the order they're presenting. We haven't told them who's going first. Yet we'll do that in a minute.

But first, let's cover the house rules if you are joining us. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. If you're in zoom please keep your mute on so that our competitors can focus on getting their message across, please keep your cameras on so that they can see your reactions, it makes the settling much easier. We also encourage you to engage in chat whether you're on zoom or on YouTube. That commentary is great fuel for the competition but also our buyer.

Our head instructor Sheila is going to be watching those chats for tidbits and suggestions and what questions to ask so if you want to keep the pressure on the sales competition toss them in there and then our judges are always tossing in commentary and insight. So stay tuned for great tips.

There, key reminder this is a place to build up. So make sure you frame that commentary with ways to improve not just any slips or hiccups. There are always areas to improve so feel free to bring those out and I’ll be staying tuned on some of the logistics like our time limit. So this is going to be a lot of fun. And then of course, if you learn zoom, watch for that YouTube link. Feel free to share it.

That link will also be available on demand right afterward. That’s enough for the audience. Our competitors here are for you. Our rules of engagement; number one, when you start your session be sure to remind the audience what you're selling and who you're selling it to.

We have four incredible products being shown today, what's also really cool is one of our recruits has already been hired by the company that they'll be demoing for everybody in the audience. Try and guess who it is for the judges. Try and guess who it is because this is gonna be a lot of fun. It’s a brand new rule, but this is a real demo in every sense of it. So this is going to be a blast.

You have 15 minutes. It is a hard limit. I am going to be interrupting you if you run over so run your own timer. Keep an eye on your clock but I’ll be running a timer here. So we'll watch for that after each presentation. we'll let the next competitor know who's up so they've got a couple of minutes to organize, get themselves set up, but you'll see the flow as it goes there will be a brief break in the middle, so we'll get waters, coffees whatever caffeinated beverage you need and then at the very end, we will provide feedback and crown our next demo champion.

So stay tuned, we'll get through all of that today. Ultimately, though let's dig in we'll get some introductions for the folks on zoom. I'm going to stop sharing my screen and for those who are on YouTube, let's bring you right into the zoom environment. Here we go. Welcome! Okay let's kick things off.

I want to get all of our judges to introduce themselves. But before they do promise our competitors, we get two minutes to know who's up next. So our first presenter will be Angie, you've got a couple of minutes to get yourselves ready. For our judges, we'd ask you to introduce yourselves we're going to take the same order as we had at the introduction. So Jordana, Drew, James, Charles, can you tell the audience who you are. Jordana, you're up?

Jordana Zeldin: Yes! Hello everyone! I'm Jordana Zeldin. I am the Founder of a Sales Coaching Consultancy called Spriing Training. I am a massive Uvaro fan and what I do is help sellers to be more human in their selling so that they feel better about their selling and get better results from it too!

Joseph Fung: Thank you so much. Drew, can you introduce yourself?

Drew Williams: Hello everybody. I am Drew Williams, founder of salesplaybookbuilder.com and I help founders specifically in SAS transition out of founder-led sales with confidence good luck everybody.

Joseph Fung: Awesome! James, you're up next!

James Howell: Hi there! My name is James Howell. I founded mine floss and we also work in the coaching space for salespeople, a little bit more on the soft skills side, so things like building a growth mindset and resiliency. And I’m really excited to be here. So good luck to everybody.

Joseph Fung: Thanks so much James! Charles, bring us home!

Charles Muhlbauer: Hi everyone. I’m Charles, Head Sales Coach at a company called CB Insights, unlike Jordana. I teach my sales team to be more animalistic, no, I'm just kidding. I specialize in discovery and I'm excited to be here.

Joseph Fung: Awesome! This is such a great panel of judges. I can already see the chat a lot of activity, a lot of commentary, this is going to be a lot of fun. We’re happy to jump right into it. We’ve got two competitors, our break our last two then closing out Angie how are you feeling?

Angie McCarthy: I would be lying if I wasn't saying that I'm nervous which I definitely am but I'm excited to go first and hopefully I do well.

Joseph Fung: Awesome! So for our competitors, any outstanding questions before we get started? None coming that's awesome and our judge's quick check you've got your scorecards you're hooked up can I get a thumbs up if you're ready to go fantastic hey Angie you up, remember to introduce yourself you've got your 15 minutes I’ll start my timer after your introduction and when you get started and we'll be cheering you on the mic is yours.

Angie McCarthy: Awesome! Thanks, Joseph! So hi everyone I’m Angie. Sheila is going to be the CEO of a WISP which is a Wireless Internet Service Provider. They have approximately a thousand subscribers currently and she is looking for help with gaining more visibility into her network.

She’s had an influx of support calls and she and her team just need a little bit of help with dealing with those. Okay! So, I also hope that my dog doesn't try and participate too much. He’s on his bed right now hopefully that's where he stays. So, I'm just gonna start my timer! Hi Sheila, how are you?

Sheila: Hey Angie! I’m good how are you doing?

Angie McCarthy: I'm doing well thanks I’m good so last time we talked Sheila. I know that you had recently moved to Vancouver Island how are you settling in?

Sheila: I love it thank you for asking and well remembering it's been busy for sure but I love it here its beautiful!

Angie McCarthy: Nice! Yeah, I went actually a few years ago one of my friends was living in south Saanichton!

Sheila: Okay!

Angie McCarthy: It was a really beautiful area yeah so yeah so Sheila I just want to confirm that we have 15 minutes for our talk today is that still good?

Sheila: Yeah 15 is perfect! It’s got to be a hard stop though I’ve got a jet right after!

Angie McCarthy: Okay! Sounds good! So basically, I just want to quickly go over kind of an informal agenda and things that we'll be discussing today. I really want to unpack the types of support calls that you're receiving and how your team is currently dealing with them and then I'd also like to talk about what type of insights that you'd like to see in your network in that whole ideal world scenario.

I also want to show you the pre-steam UI. I think that's what we kind of both came here for today and take you on a mini-tour of the type of network and subscriber data that you'll be provided with and then last but certainly not least, we'll chat about pricing and if it makes sense we can definitely discuss what it will look like for you to get started with our 30-day free trial? How’s that sound?

Sheila: Yeah! That sounds great!

Angie McCarthy: Okay was there anything that I didn't touch upon in the agenda that you would like to cover or I mean certainly feel free to interrupt me as well with questions?

Sheila: Yeah! I think I'd prefer to just kind of ask questions as they come up because that sounds like you've got a good plan.

Angie McCarthy: Okay! Great! So Sheila I know on our first call that you did mention you've been kind of shoulder to shoulder with your support team trying to remedy the root cause of the support calls that you're receiving and I mean I speak to a lot of CEOs at emerging WISPS that do have their boots on the ground along with their support teams trying to identify and locate and mitigate these issues.

So can you please walk me through your current process about what it looks like when a support call comes through?

Sheila: Yeah! So, I'm gonna say that it's been fluctuating a lot in terms of the timing of the volume. So previously I could have given you a walkthrough of what it looked like with most of our support calls because we knew what time to have people on staff right?

Just more predictable patterns of behavior so when it happens at the right time, there's a series of support tickets that go through, a call gets answered if it's a thing that whoever answers can deal with at the moment, they'll do this sort of FAQ you know have you tried this, can you try that troubleshooting. And then if it needs to be escalated to our engineering team, we do that from there and that's through a series of support tickets.

Angie McCarthy: Okay! That makes sense and that seems it sounds like something very similar to what we're seeing a lot of our customers using before they have pre-scene deployed and I mean those peak hours of internet usage are kind of gone now with the age of everyone working from home and just the increased usage of high bandwidth applications.

So that is definitely a pattern that we've seen across the board. So now when we're speaking on the support calls that you're receiving it seems like you and your team are really just going off of more so anecdotal evidence with a common complaint of my internet is slow. Is that accurate?

Sheila: Yeah so it's ANECD, we're tracking the data on it but we're tracking the qualitative feedback from our customers when they call in so yeah. And of course, it's always after the fact that we can look back and see it. I’m hoping that this is something a little bit more proactive as opposed to reactive.

Angie McCarthy: Right! Yes and pre-seam is absolutely a proactive solution to these support calls. So going back to if you had the magic wand what would you prefer this process to look like? I know that you mentioned to have a little bit more inside invisibility but is there anything else?

Sheila: Well! If I were gonna be like it can have everything, I would love to see something that gives us a warning so we have some kind of lead time before we're getting phone calls and sort of in reactive escalation mode.

So something that gives us the ahead of time, heads up, that there's going to be an issue. And then if there was a way to pinpoint, not just the customer but like what's going on in the area is it an individual user that's experiencing the issue is it happening with neighbors as well.

Angie McCarthy: Okay! That sounds great and all things that I’m going to be showing you today so that gets me excited. And just before I do that I really want to just take a step back again and so back to your support process, now it sounds like you are doing some truck rules, is that correct?

Sheila: Yeah! We try to do as few as possible but, yeah.

Angie McCarthy: You have like a general average of how many per month that you've seen. I know you said it's been fluctuating but any average?

Sheila: Yeah! It’s fluctuating a lot pre-Covid, I would have said maybe anywhere from two to six was normal but we've seen some months with double that I've seen it's been fluctuating. I don't know if that's a thing you guys can help with?

Angie McCarthy: Yes! Certainly! And that sounds really stressful to have that many truck rolls going out per month. So I feel for you there but like I said we will be touching on pricing a little bit later in the call but I wanted to just give you some food for thought in the meantime that we hear from our wisps that by saving even two truck rolls per month, it offsets the price of the pre-seam monthly subscription.

Now, that definitely depends on how many subscribers that you have but it's just something to kind of mull over as we continue our conversation and I mean with the amount that you're getting. I think that would be a clear offset in terms of price.

Sheila: Yeah! Okay!

Angie McCarthy: Okay! So, I'm actually just going to bring you in to share my screen. Before I do so I just want to preface with what I’m going to be showing you there's going to be a lot of information Sheila. So I don't want you to get overwhelmed, but I would like to just take you to some specific area so we can tell a little bit of a story together and so you can really envision yourself using this product.

I also have a few different tabs up and that's just to be mindful of time today. You can definitely seamlessly navigate throughout the UI itself. But like I said just in the interest of time I just have everything kind of set up already.

Sheila: Okay! Okay! Great!

Angie McCarthy: Sound good! So, I’m gonna start sharing my screen in just a moment. Alright! And can I get confirmation that you're able to see?

Sheila: Yeah! It's just a bar graph.

Angie McCarthy: Okay! Yes! It is. So this is actually a great place where I wanted to start we have a lot of CEOs that this is where they like to start their days off it provides a really great bird's eye view of your entire network health, over the span of four weeks. So I want to ask you Sheila can you picture yourself coming into the office sitting down at your desk and turning this on first thing in the morning?

Sheila: And this gives me an overview of everybody wow okay yeah I can see that the red ones. Are those the ones that are I’m assuming the ones in Christ’s highest latency points?

Angie McCarthy: Yes! So this is actually a live network that we're peeking inside and you're one of our first customers with pre-seams. So they have their red dialed down pretty well. But yes the red is high latency, yellow is mediocre there still will be some buffering on the subscriber's end and then green as always is good.

Sheila: Okay! Very cool!

Angie McCarthy: Yeah! So this is just what I want to show you first and foremost because like I said our CEOs, just they turn this on the morning and then it gives them a really good idea of the kind of where to direct their attention for the day, if there are any fires that they have to put out or if everything's looking good then they can direct attention elsewhere.

Sheila: Yeah!

Angie McCarthy: So yeah! I'm happy you like that. I'm gonna bring you over onto our next screen and this is where there are just numbers and information flying at you from all angles. So I really just wanted to show you the latency column right here. So right now we're looking at all of the towers and sectors in this one network. So first things first I'm just going to sort it from worst to best so we can take a peek at what's going on with the towers that are experiencing high latency and take an even deeper dive into the subscribers on that tower. Does that sound okay?

Sheila: Yeah!

Angie McCarthy: Okay! So, I'd like to start off with this Simmons shores tower. We can see that there are currently five active subscribers and a pretty high latency. So I'm sure that if they haven't already called the subscribers on this tower will be calling yes so we're just gonna pop in here and look at the sector details to have a little bit more of a granular idea of what we're looking at and what's going on.

Alright! So again I know with no context it looks pretty complicated a little bit confusing. But to the right here this graph with all the colors happening these are all the subscribers that are on the tower. So we are able to see their internet usage and their patterns throughout pretty much the span of one day.

Sheila: On an individual basis.

Angie McCarthy: Exactly! We can even on this view as well isolate a certain subscriber.

Sheila: Okay!

Angie McCarthy: So, Sheila can I ask have you ever had this type of visibility into your subscriber usage pattern before?

Sheila: Never! This specific!

Angie McCarthy: Okay!

Sheila: And this is live, this is real time?

Angie McCarthy: Yes! Up until well you know what right now. So let me backstab again, I did because this is a live network they have their support team dialed down to make sure that there's really no latency occurring at all. So for the purpose of today's demo, I had to backtrack a little bit into the end of January for a time that I was able to look at some exciting figures because I mean from your perspective you don't want there to be latency for the purpose of the demo, I would like there to be a little bit to show you what it looks like!

Sheila: I understand! Okay! That makes sense.

Angie McCarthy: Yes! Okay! So, we're back on this graph right here and we can see that subscriber 1899 has consistent activity just going on at all times. So there's one of two scenarios that I could see. One being that there is an issue with their home Wi-Fi, either connection or their customer premise device, another one is and I mean please let me know if you have some of these in your network as well? It could be a gamer so just constant streaming we have a lot of downloads happening.

Sheila: Yeah! Weird timing, non-stop the times that you think it's going to be quiet, it's not because there's downloads happening, for sure, that's the yeah!

Angie McCarthy: And if you look to the left so this graph right here is the actual performance of the tower itself which is this blue line and then that straight horizontal dotted line is the device on there. So to kind of give you a high-level understanding of why I’m pointing this out to you is that you can see the individual 1899.

And the overall tower performance is pretty lockstep. So what that's telling me is that this individual is having a negative effect on the entire tower and we need to dive down a little bit deeper on this person.

Sheila: Okay! Maybe upgrade their plan. I can ask a quick question. Does it matter where I deploy this like or how I guess that's a hardware question like can I put it anywhere or does it always have to be deployed from the same place can it does it cover all users or does that move around?

Angie McCarthy: those are some really great questions. So I’m going to try and give you a piecemeal approach on how to answer them or give you my answers for them. So it is an inline device and it is deployed south of the main edge router in your network.

So that is kind of our general high-level explanation to that. But there certainly are some more unique network topologies where it would go a little bit different but that's something that if you would like to proceed with the next call, then one of our solutions architects would be on there with you. And they could definitely unpack your network and tell you exactly where it would be the most beneficial place for the device.

And then your question on deployment and who to deploy that with that's really up to you Sheila. So a lot of our WISPS they like to start off with the partial deployment just to be a little bit more financially efficient that way. And then once they see the value that we bring to their network then they kind of open the floodplain gates and then want to monitor and optimize all of their subscribers.

Sheila: Okay! Thank you!

Angie McCarthy: Yeah! Yeah! You're very welcome and so I know that we are cutting it a little bit close on time. So, I'm just gonna stop sharing my screen and honestly that was really just to the tip of the iceberg with what we can look at with the app itself. This is something that we could really just drill down much deeper on the next call with one of our solutions architects as I did mention. But just while my screen is up Sheila did you have any more questions about what you saw on the screen?

Sheila: No more questions about what we looked at today. I want to see more it seems like this, does a lot so I think a closer look would be would be helpful.

Angie McCarthy: That's really great and so based on that feedback. I would really like to schedule a next meeting. But just quickly before that did you have a chance to look at our website to see our pricing? If not that's perfectly okay.

Sheila: I did not! No!

Angie McCarthy: Okay! So just to let you know our pricing is super transparent and very straightforward. It is based on the subscriber so it's 50 cents U.S per subscriber per month so with you and your thousand active subscribers it would be 500 and that is if you wanted to do a full deployment.

We also do provide cost breaks based on growth so you're about a third of the way there for our first price break which would happen at 2500 subscribers and then pretty much the more you grow the more you save. So that's really our pricing structure in a nutshell.

Sheila: Okay! Great!

Angie McCarthy: Yeah! So the next thing to do would be to set up a call to bring. And I would suggest you're a network engineer as well as our solutions architect so we could really dig into your network topology and discuss the best plan of action for deployment. How does that sound?

Sheila: That sounds great! Yeah! I'll bring the technical team as well maybe also a support person just to see what their first response to it is.

Angie McCarthy: Yes! Absolutely! And it's one of those applications that you're going to see a lot of different teams members companywide using so definitely the more the merrier and just you bring in whoever you think would benefit from the meeting. So I’m just going to pull up my calendar really quickly Sheila. Would Tuesday at around 10 A.M pacific time work for that next meeting?

Sheila: Yeah! I can do that! Maybe can we do to 10:30?

Angie McCarthy: Sure! It’s going to be an hour long. So 10:30 to 11:30! That’s all right?

Sheila: Great! Perfect!

Angie McCarthy: Okay! Sounds good! So I actually did record this demo as well, I’ll send you the recording of this along with the invitation for the next meeting.

Sheila: Perfect thank you, Angie!

Angie McCarthy: Thanks so much Sheila. I'm excited to work with you.

Sheila: Thanks!

Joseph Fung: Well done!

Sheila: What was the time on that?

Joseph Fung: I've got 12 seconds on my timer! Angie, well done! Okay, giving our judges a couple of minutes and then I’m going to come back to you. Our next competitor. So the next person up, get ready is, Lance. You’ve got a couple of minutes to get yourself sorted. Give our judges a couple minutes to finish out their evaluations and scores. Angie, how are you feeling?

Angie McCarthy: I feel very relieved. I feel like my heart is back in the proper place and then I can breathe.

Joseph Fung: 12 seconds! How much did you have left on your timer?

Angie McCarthy: I guess, I jumped the gun on pressing my timer, because it was 15 or 14 seconds over and I was like where is this gong sound, I was expecting it, but I'm happy I came under.

Joseph Fung: There you go! No that was that was really good. This is a nice flow! I see our judges focusing as they fill out score sheets. Some fantastic comments in there! I’m really looking forward to our debriefs. This will be you know some fun items unpack. And having four different products being featured today always makes it a challenge too.

So, I see eye contact quick check with the judges. How are you doing? Can I get thumbs up when you're done? One! Two! There we go. Great! Okay! I think we're ready to get ourselves going Lance you're gonna be up next. How are you feeling? You all sorted?

Lance Davis Jr.: All sorted! Still nervous, but ready to kick butt!

Joseph Fung: Fantastic! So great reminder of the best practices, your name, what you're selling, who you're selling it to and again that there's a lot going on in the chat. So feel free to punch it off to the side to avoid the distractions. I'm gonna mute myself and the floor is yours.

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! Let me finish the last bit of getting ready. Alright, everyone! I am Lance. I'll be selling Vidyard today. Sheila will be a manager of training and delivery for an airline. She is responsible for getting new hires up to speed about 30 to 35 individuals at a time. Hey Sheila, how's it going?

Sheila: Hey Lance! I’m good how are you doing?

Lance Davis Jr.: Good! I had to ask you one quick question before we get started I saw on Instagram that you and your children were building forts yesterday. That is amazing! That’s a level up of what we've seen from our days!

Sheila: Yeah! It's this crazy kid with like sticks and balls and holes and you can build castles, it's chaos it's very cool but it's very messy!

Lance Davis Jr.: It seems like you got two engineers up under you!

Sheila: Engineers of chaos! Yes!

Lance Davis Jr.: Alright! Before we get started, I just want to say thank you and confirm that we still have 15 minutes today?

Sheila: Yes, 15 minutes is perfect! But I have a call right after, so, I will have to jump out!

Lance Davis Jr.: No worries! I'm trying to get you some a bit of that time back what I really want to go to and make sure. I have a goal for today is to understand that if Vidyard is a good use of a case for you to be able to use and if you see in the future?

Sheila: Okay! Right on! Sounds like a good use in 15 minutes.

Lance Davis Jr.: And if you have any questions throughout the duration of our consultation, would you feel free to jump in and let me know at any time?

Sheila: Yeah! If you're okay with that I will interrupt as they pop up.

Lance Davis Jr.: I actually prefer it finds that it calms both of us down and also I want to set an agenda for today. So first I just want to pick your brain to make sure we have the right fit I want to ask you some questions just to ensure that we're on the right page. Second I want to make sure I get some insights. I want to share about other companies who I am working with at this time and then lastly if it makes sense we can talk about the next steps and moving forward. Is that okay with you?

Sheila: Yeah! Great!

Lance Davis Jr.: Fair deal! Fair contract!

Sheila: Sounds good to me!

Lance Davis Jr.: So, I do look off to this screen right over here just to take some notes to make sure I'm keeping up to the time that I have set with that being said let's get started. So what I hear typically with the companies that I work for that there are three different aspects to onboarding that is the learning material, applying the material, and then studying the material. Is that resonating with you?

Sheila: Yeah! That's accurate! Those are the three parts and I think that's part of the struggle of trying to do it all remotely now. I'm very used to doing this training in person and we've changed it. I'm trying to be as safe for everybody as possible. So those are the three pieces I care about most. Some of it is easier than others.

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! Can you speak to me about your process in handling those three components of onboarding?

Sheila: Yeah! Sure! So the adjustments that I’ve made all the stuff that used to be delivered in person we're now doing a group call via zoom. The difficulty being that a huge part of the in-person training involved just sending them off and doing some role play or doing role play at the moment. Can’t really do that zoom lets me use breakout rooms so that's kind of what I’ve swapped that out for.

But in a room, I can wander over and I can listen and add feedback and I can hear what's going over there at the same time and pop over and zoom I don't have any, I have to just basically do it by time. I spend this much time in this room this much time in that room and it's not the same. I also don't get any feedback from the sessions that I’m not in. and then when it comes to like the stuff that I can just send them home to read, I can send them home to read it but I don't really have any way of knowing if they're all reading and absorbing it because I can't be in every room at the same time when they practice it.

Lance Davis Jr.: So it sounds like you are having trouble being able to be in multiple rooms at once and truly analyzing the systems that we've got in place?

Sheila: Yeah!

Lance Davis Jr.: Zoom is only meeting you halfway where you need to be. Am I understanding that correctly?

Sheila: Yeah it does not feel the same or at least I don't feel as confident that what I want to be happening is happening for everybody in the room.

Lance Davis Jr.: So other than zoom, are there any other tools that you're using to facilitate that learning?

Sheila: It mostly zooms and then written documentation I just share pdfs with them. I don't know how they use them they might be printing them they might be accessed from their own device but I have a giant file of resources but they're all text-based.

Lance Davis Jr.: No that makes sense! A question about how they're learning with questionnaires do you have any questionnaires in mind or?

Sheila: We do some questionnaires and it's something that I’m not great at I feel like I should start incorporating more of them because these questionnaires and quizzes would at least let me see how they're doing. It feels weird quizzing adults but if that's going to get me the feedback that I know or the feedback that I need then maybe that's the next piece.

Lance Davis Jr.: No! That’s fair to say I understand that. Quizzes are very important in your industry just to make sure safety is of the utmost importance. The last thing you want in the airline is to have any accidents that could be catastrophic. So, I definitely hear you where you're coming from there. Can you talk to me about a scale of one to ten where you're currently at with the zoom?

Sheila: So, that's a tough one because at the beginning of the work from home. It’s the only thing that let me do any of this. So it kind of saved my butt. You know and thank goodness it was there because what else would we have done but at this point, I don't feel like I’m in band-aid mode anymore. I want this to be better and I can see the things that are not as good as the way they used to be in person. So right now I’m sitting at like a six for zoom. But, I don't I'm not detracting from the product as I've, I don't know what I'd be doing without it at this point.

Lance Davis Jr.: Six! That is not a be all end all we want to get you implementations to see if we can boost that number up with our product. If you had a magic wand can you talk to me about what requirements you would need to fulfill your onboarding?

Sheila: Magic wand would have recording and conversation analysis in every single breakout room. I think that might be too magical so from my understanding that technology doesn't exist yet but you know best next best alternative would be a way to get the information going back and forth spending less time in zoom because as much as I appreciate that it's been letting me do this, we're all kind of tired of it a way to get the information going back and forth not inside a zoo room. But also with the feedback that they're watching that they're learning and understanding I know that's a lot.

Lance Davis Jr.: So one key takeaway I'm hearing from that little unpacking that I did was integration is that is that resonate? Do you looking to integrate zoom with other platforms to better get an understanding of analytics?

Sheila: Yeah! That's kind of what it feels like getting you know zoom plus but the plus is the what's going on in the breakout room and then knowing what's going on outside of the zoom room as well.

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! So we do have an answer for that here at Vidyard. I wanted to give you a little bit of social proof before I show you my screen and show you exactly what I'm talking about.

So I consult with other companies and they're finding that they too when they're using zoom for onboarding, use yard in tandem with their trainers to conduct the breakout rooms and record those and then give it back to the instructors to get analytics based on who's watching it, who's performing well, who are underperforming. I would love to show you my screen and show you exactly what I’m talking about and how they're using it.

Sheila: Okay! Yeah that sounds I didn't realize so it's not a direct integration, it's just using the two on top of each other?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes! That is correct!

Sheila: Okay! Cool!

Lance Davis Jr.: Can you see my screen?

Sheila: I can.

Lance Davis Jr.: And you can still hear me okay obviously?

Sheila: Yeah! Sounds good.

Lance Davis Jr.: So, imagine yourself as the manager right now on our Vidyard platform. This is the library you would see. So those videos that you are referencing when you're trying to assign homework to individuals these are those videos that you would be assigning homework to, so for week one say you wanted to check in someone, how to find a reservation?

You would send this out by clicking these three dots and hitting share and then you'd be able to share that homework and you also mentioned with those questionnaires and quizzes, you can insert a call to action. So what you would do in that case, click on that video and then video insights and then this is where we can implement a call to action up here. Do you see me if you follow my mouse?

Sheila: Yeah!

Lance Davis Jr.: So, this is all in one place where you would have the analytics and the call to action. Is this something that you can see yourself using?

Sheila: So, yeah I'm seeing the analytics benefit right away just in terms of knowing who's watched to completion and not. That call, that action. Can I make the call to action a question and then what they put in is the answer is that what you mean?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes there are different levels of call to action so I would want to dive deeper into what specifically you were looking for in call to action and that way I can give you a better answer.

Sheila: Okay! I think what I I'm thinking of you know a training video and then the call to action is a multiple choice question.

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes, that, our platform can handle that easily.

Sheila: Okay!

Lance Davis Jr.: So this is also what I wanted to take you to the page for with those analytics for the sake of this video and privacy concerns, I had to set this up on my personal account and then implement a couple videos to demonstrate what it would look like for each of your homeworks and or quizzes. So the video I clicked on you won't be able to see specifically the video play rate. But here's the information and where you would find it.

Sheila: I see! Okay so it's dummy data that's fair.

Lance Davis Jr.: Exactly! Now before I close my screen, is there anything else that you'd like to see?

Sheila: I guess, I'd like to hear a little bit about pricing structures and what that looks like?

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! So, with the pricing, it is on our website. I suspect that you'd be in the teams account. So you'd either be looking at three to five users or five plus users. Can you tell me how many users you would ideally want to see at our platform?

Sheila: That is an excellent question! So, based on that, it sounds like the user license is for content creator only. Is that actually?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes!

Sheila: Okay! So just the people who are making the videos as opposed to the people who are watching them that's really good to know I could use that with my whole team then. So in terms of content creators we're probably looking at three to five sounds pretty good actually.

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! With three to five, it's going to be about 300 dollars annually. Does that sound like it is a good deal for you?

Sheila: Yeah! That actually kind of surprises me! Okay! And can that change? Can we start with you know one user size and then add more is that?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes! That is an option that is definitely an option we can work with you on. I’d love to get you set up on a next call if it makes sense from what I showed you experienced in video art now that you've seen the platform. Is there anything else that's preventing you from being able to move forward in this?

Sheila: Last steps for me before signing up for more than just a person like I see there's the free version I’m just looking at the tab here. But before getting my team on it, there would be a security audit that would be our next steps.

Lance Davis Jr.: Security is very important! Yeah so with that being said I have a calendar schedule. What is Monday at 11 am sound?

Sheila: For the security audit?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes!

Sheila: Right! On how long does that take?

Lance Davis Jr.: Typically, it takes about seven to ten business days that's what I find when I work with other companies that I’m working with but …

Sheila: Okay! So, I guess in that meeting then we'd just be exchanging info filling out questionnaires is that what that looks like?

Lance Davis Jr.: Yes!

Sheila: Okay! I’ll have to bring another person with me. But that works for me.

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay! So, I'll send you a calendar insight. It’s typically about a 90 minutes so I’ll make sure if it's at 11 PM, 12:30 we'll try to wrap up and get you out of there.

Sheila: Okay! Did you say P.M? I'd prefer AM. Can we do AM?

Lance Davis Jr.: 11 A.M, yes.

Sheila: Yeah! Okay! Thank goodness!

Lance Davis Jr.: I must have blank that must have blended I don't know

Sheila: Thank goodness! Okay! Yeah! Yeah! That works for me. Thank you if you couldn't shoot better.

Lance Davis Jr.: No worries! It’s my Free day give me that! I got the super bowl coming up! There's a lot on my mind!

Sheila: Okay! I got you! Alright! Sounds good!

Lance Davis Jr.: Okay so yeah once again I’ll be looking to send you that calendar invite for you and your team and then welcome to Vidyard.

Sheila: Great! Thanks Lance!

Lance Davis Jr.: Alright! Bbye!

Joseph Fung: Wow Lance! Well done! He had over two minutes left in there and you were efficient. This is awesome! Okay! We’re gonna take a break in a couple of minutes! But Lance, good job! Great job! Keeping an eye on the timing! That was a good flow! For everybody in the room, we are gonna take a quick break! So if you're on YouTube we're going to toss up an intermission slide and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes.

Joseph Fung: Hey everyone! Welcome back! Hope you got a chance to top up your waters your coffees your vodka sodas whatever is keeping you going. We have got a couple of more presentations. This is going to be so much fun! So our third competitor is mike. Mike, I’m going to hand it off to you in just a moment. A quick reminder to introduce your product, who you're selling to? I will start the timer right after your introduction. I'm going to mute myself and the floor is yours.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Hi everyone! I'm doing a demo for Loopio. It’s a cloud-based RFP response management system and Sheila my ICP is a VP of Sales. I'm a multinational company, most something mostly enterprise and government customer. They have a team located in four different cities right away. Good morning Sheila! How are you doing?

Sheila: Hey Mike! I'm good. How are you doing?

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I'm doing very well thank you for coming in today. Before we start, I have a quick question for you though on a scale from one to ten, how excited are you about the new dune movies?

Sheila: Okay! I gotta be honest. I'm one of those annoying elitists who prefer the books almost always. So while I’m excited that it's happening. I'm not super excited to see it.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay! Let me assure you. I saw the trailer and I got to say the casting choice is spot on right. You love it? You will love! You will love! Simultaneously in power trees, when I talk with Callum about the, from your team that he mentioned dude I know that I have to bring it up. It’s a geek

Sheila: Yeah! I thought the sci-fi thing is always it's, I try to pretend it's not awkward, because it's me but it's awkward.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: No! I love it! I fell asleep to do an audio book all the time.

Sheila: Oh! Okay

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yeah! So let's shift gear a little bit but not really so the reason. I brought up Loopio, was really, because usually when a VP of sales come to us, they are looking for a kind of special spies that can celebrate their space travel journey. So does that resonate with you or am I off obvious here?

Sheila: So, it resonates from both the sci-fi always direction. But yes I am looking for something to. I don't want my team addicted. But yeah if it can solve all the problems that make us into super people that would be great.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: That's awesome! I'm so happy you mentioned that and to be able to do just that I just need to open up a little bit about your current IP process…

Sheila: Okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: And with that in mind, I'll be able today to walk you through a couple of solutions we have in place. Also just let's just make it a conversation right and just feels free to just jump right in that's all right?

Sheila: Yeah! I will have questions, so that's great! That's my preference!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Jump right in! At the end, though if we deem that this is the right spice for your space travel. Sorry it's a little bit cheesy. I'm gonna…

Sheila: Yeah! It’s okay! I like it because I like it!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Let's carry this on to another deep-dive conversation.

Sheila: Okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Otherwise if it is not the good fit, let's call it the day and part of friend. How that sounds?

Sheila: That sounds great! And if we part as friends I’ll let you know what I think about the movie.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I love it! Yeah I love it! So we lock in about 15 minutes we have a little big room at the end. Is that possible?

Sheila: I do not! I’m sorry it's a hard stop by the 15^th.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I understand I understand! And will there will there be anybody joining us today or just us?

Sheila: I think, it's just us today if anybody jumps in I’ll give you a fair warning.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Awesome! So Sheila, help me understand here why managing is important for your team to achieve your sales target this year?

Sheila: Yeah! So of course the RFP process always slows everything down. We’re working with enterprise, level deals, or government. so you're looking at anywhere from one and a half to three months if we're doing things well and when we're doing them not well it takes longer of course. So in the interests of keeping things on track on time actually hitting not just targets but our forecasted expectations. We need a smoother process. It’s part of, I’m gonna say every single sales cycle that goes through our hands.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I feel you and I know that your company has office from all over the world. I imagine they turned around time and version control also a bit clunky as well right?

Sheila: Yes! The time zones insert an extra step in terms of how long it takes to get things completed and then because we have the four different offices. The version control becomes more of a thing especially in deals where they pass back and forth between offices. So it's there's a lot of moving parts. You’re nodding like its familiar. Okay! Yeah!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: So since this is what since we're working here I imagine the current process just doesn't cut it for you guys. How you guys are like, what are the bottom neck you're looking at here?

Sheila: Okay! Don’t judge me! But we're using excel sheets. And we have of course a shared drive and yes we try to keep it organized but of course with excel sheets, you run into version issues just depending on who's shared? Where, what their privacy settings are? And then who's downloaded and completed? And it's yeah we're trying to make it centralized with the shared drive. But it’s I just know it could be better. And at this point we're really focused on dialing in the length of our sales cycles.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: This horror story sound familiar to you. I have customer who open a 100 megabyte excel file just to open up, it took about five minutes to open everything.

Sheila: Yes! This is familiar to me. Okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: And it sounds to me like it's just not a business problem. It feels to me like you personally agonize over this a lot of you, its losing sleep?

Sheila: It’s Frustrating! It’s not losing sleep! It’s how many times in my day am I resisting the urge to punch my computer. And I like I know that sound ridiculous. I don't have a problem. I promise, it's just…

Mike (Hieu) Truong: No! You’re not alone here trust me, no, you're not alone at all. And yeah that's a common thing we hear from VP of sale this especially in your space where enterprise and government involved. I have seen, what I see in the industry is that working on the IP respond time actually not just has a linear but exponential impact on sales. So a VP of Sale, I work with gave me a really cool bike up the envelope calculation on this one. Do you want to hear it?

Sheila: Yes, I do.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: So imagine your process is not clunky anymore right what do you want to see in that perfect world?

Sheila: I want it to be smooth, seamless and I want to feel confident that the file is going to open and it's the up-to-date version that I need. I would love to real-time be able to just get insight into what everybody is working on, I mean, I like to think, I know, I like to think. I'm checking all the boxes and not missing things but the reality of it is that I probably am and if I am it means some of my team members are as well

Mike (Hieu) Truong: And collaboration. So, I imagine if two teams from two different offices you can collaborate on the same account that would be a problem as well would you like to see that result?

Sheila: I would love to see that looking smooth we're piecemealing it right now. And you know excel is great. But, it's not perfect by any means!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Awesome! So like right now let's say your teammate managed to turn around like a hundred RFP per year is that is that number fair or more or less?

Sheila: That number is the fair estimate and then again if things take too long, the numbers smaller, but then the next year it's bigger. So that's on track with where we're at right now.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Cool! So, let's come back to the math right? so if like is it fair to assume that we can if we cut the turnaround time in half, which we did, which we usually did with our customer, your team can easily double the number of submitted RFP per year. And even with the same conversion rate that you currently have, your team can double the sale target. It’s just linear logic that I’m using here is that fantastic?

Sheila: Yeah! Yeah! I like that logic! I like the sound of that that does make sense. Is that a thing that you guys actually have done?

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yeah! But guess this Sheila and this is what I hear from my favorite customer VP of sales because we free up so much brand power of the salespeople. So my client team was instead like be able to dedicate 80 percent of the time to actually doing sales and discovery compared to before where just 40 percent of the time is calculated into sales and 60 is in the meantime.

Right? So that is where the exponential growth comes in place right? So the RFP is much better because the salespeople have more brand power to invest in that right now. The conversion rate actually skyrocketed right? So that's where you can see the exponential gray instead of the lining frame?

Sheila: Right! Because the context switching is less and the frustration is probably lower as well.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: It takes a lot of mental load just to switch in task!

Sheila: Exactly!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Can you imagine the same thing happened to your team as well?

Sheila: I would love to imagine the same thing happening to my team I'm also imagining a few specific reps who don't like anything to do with process just being a little bit lighter.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yeah! who does, I mean it is gunky process. Okay! So if that that happened how much better do you sleep at night as the VP of sale?

Sheila: Yeah! Well, we've been making a lot more money so, I’m going to say that's a that's a lot.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yeah! I'm here! I'm here to make that happen. I think I hear enough here. I you want to show you want the RFP process to be short seamless it support across the board collaboration right security am I right? And version control.

Sheila: Yes!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay! So before I share my screen this on this demo, I use about three people with different role just give me a second here. Yeah! I use just random name but if you can just think of team lead and two people who usually work on IP like if you get that name in place, I appreciate.

Sheila: It is okay! Oh sure yeah! Team led Sydney and then the other two people most often involved are Terry and Lance.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Sydney, Terry and Lance. Yeah and where is Sydney at?

Sheila: Oh! I think Sydney's in the UK right now.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: In the UK?

Sheila: Yeah!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: And Terry and Lance would be in your New York office?

Sheila: Lance is in New York, Terry's in Australia.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Lance is in New York and lands Terry is in Australia! Wow! Look for the place here, different time zone, as well! So, exactly, yeah! So I’m going to share my screen here, Sheila. Okay! So you're the right?

Sheila: Yes! Okay! That looks great!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Alright! So let's put yourself in this let's put your team on this. Okay. The power of this is you can assign different people for this product right? So I’m seeing Sydney here sitting in the UK managing the RFB for customer. Let's say in the UK and Australia.

Sheila: Okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: So, I can see Lance in Australia. Sorry, Lance in New York and Terry would be in Australia right?

Sheila: Yeah!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: So how does collaboration look like it will look like this? So you have everything, you have the project started you have the timeline that you can monitor. What question is assigned to whom? And what question is an answer or in review in different stage of the IP process?

Sheila: Okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay what amazing is, I think this is this actually helped a lot is that you have the project manager or the project owner. Sydney will have the ability to just nudge Lance or Terry when something is falling behind.

Sheila: Yeah!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay!

Sheila: So, they can see who it's waiting on and then a little a little bump like that? Okay.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Exactly! And thing that I that we're really proud of one feature that we're really proud of and it will help you with everything is respond automation. I know that RFP sometimes can be repeated?

Sheila: Yes! Yeah and I’m copy pasting things!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: From yeah! From a 50 megabyte XL file to another 50 megabyte of XL file can be crazy. It drives me crazy sometimes when I do it I’ll be myself. So what we do is we literally develop something called run magic. Right? You know that you can build a content library; you can pull all the information that is repetitive and put it in the content library. And using the response automation it will automatically recognize the familiar question.

Sheila: Oh!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: And just literally on a press of the button, you can feel then.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay! I don't have to go find it?

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yes! So I’m helping! I'm counting like around three seconds here. I'm not sure how long it takes.

Sheila: Okay! That is very different okay!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay! So I’m gonna stop the screen right now! Sheila, so on from on a scale from one to ten how well do you see this fit into your perfect scenario that you imagine?

Sheila: Yeah! So it's hitting all the points I covered that running magic piece is extra. I didn't realize that was a thing and I feel a little silly for not knowing that this already existed. Because the things I’m complaining about to open the file to find this stuff like that's a huge part of it. Yeah so I don't know how to give you a number. It looks good!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I find I find collaboration is actually like a productivity booster. It can it can empower your team to no end. So Sheila if we play mending tomorrow, how soon you wanted to roll now for the whole team?

Sheila: Well! What are we; we're at the beginning of February. So we were talking your goals and how much we could exponentially increase revenue. So I’m gonna say if we're implementing it sooner is better. I don't know what your security audit process looks like. I'm not sure how long your rollout takes. So yeah like that I feel the sooner I can get my team. Using that button the half year they're gonna be.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Lovely! I really happy to hear that because I just like usually when we involve with companies like multinational companies like yours you usually have to involve a buying committee. Is that a case for you as well?

Sheila: Oh yeah of course! There’ll be there'll be a couple other people who need to see, eyes on this, my CEO and CEO for sure. I would love to get the eyes of the team leads from each of our offices on it as well! Not part of the purchasing process but just to see what they think because I think they're gonna love it!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Awesome! So is that the crazy idea to set up another meeting to go into integrity of it?

Sheila: No! I think that's a great idea! Please!

Mike (Hieu) Truong: It looks like we're really the spy, you're looking for here!

Sheila: Of course! You have to.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Okay! I just hit over an invite and yeah and we just set the time for it. How does it go?

Sheila: Yeah that sounds great! There'll be some weirdness with time zones if we're gonna get them all on there but I think if you can prioritize the New York, UK alignment, then we'll figure it out with the other group.

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Yeah! We are about 20 seconds over time so. I just have to let you go right now. I am going to schedule it for let's say…

Joseph Fung: I am sorry Mike! We are over time! I'm trying to squeak it in but no he lost you there.

Sheila: There you go!

Joseph Fung: Great job! That was that was tight that was a lot of a lot of information in there. But straight up I'm glad I got to choose my sound board at least once today. So thank you for that! We have one competitor up her on you're going to be going serious you've got a couple of minutes to get yourself sorted, give our judges some time to fill in. Mike, how are you feeling? Oh I think we might have lost your headset there. So if you're still popping them back in? There we go. Mike, how are you feeling now that you're all done?

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Accelerating! Yeah! I didn't make the time. But I feel like I get my message across hopefully. She let's feel the same so yeah tried my best.

Joseph Fung: It was good! I was watching the clock there. I took a note there, my timer hit the five minutes left mark and you still hadn't pulled up anything on your screen share so I was worried about how that was going to go.

So good job squeezing that in. I saw the comments in the chat there too that was pretty quick, screen sharing. That was wicked! I still see a couple judges heads down. If I can get a thumbs up when you're done with your scores just so I know? Nice okay got James and Charles tightening those up. Karan, how are you feeling here? Have all your things in gear ready to go?

Karan Kumar: Yeah! Feeling great! Thank you!

Joseph Fung: Fantastic! I got the last thumbs up so our judges are all set again for everyone once. Karan finishes up! We’ll give judges a couple of minutes we'll invite. Sheila to provide some comments and the individual judges but we'll crown our winner today. Karan same thing, introduce your product. Who you're selling to? I will put 15 minutes on the clock as soon as you've done your intro. But the floor is all yours.

Karan Kumar: Great! Thank you, Joseph! Hi! Everyone my name is Karan. I'm going to be presenting GURU and Sheila is going to be VP of Customer Success. She’s at a growing SAS company they use Slack for internal communication and they're looking to hire a new, five new customer support reps to support their growing clientele. Hi Sheila! How are you?

Sheila: Hey Karan! I’m good how are you doing today?

Karan Kumar: I'm doing great as well thanks for asking. Hey I noticed on your LinkedIn profile that you're a competitive at you said you're a competitive athlete. What’s jiu-jitsu mostly?

Sheila: I guess martial arts as a whole but the one that I’ve most recently been competitive is jiu-jitsu, but pre-pandemic of course.

Karan Kumar: Hey! I've seen those videos! That’s an amazing sport and kudos to you.

Sheila: Thanks!

Karan Kumar: Of course yeah! I thought when I was younger but my days of wax on wax offer day.

Sheila: There's something incredibly satisfying about choking people in a socially acceptable way you know.

Karan Kumar: I hear you going!

Sheila: Yeah!

Karan Kumar: Hey! this had a bit of an agenda. We have 15 minutes today. And what typically follows this is a deeper dive around an hour scheduled with you and anyone else on your team that wouldn't see a benefit in GURU. so you know towards the end of our call I'm going to ask you this question and if it makes sense to go into that deeper dive and you'll feel comfortable doing so we'll go ahead and get that set up and if not then I think you know if you don't think it's a good use over time we can just part as friends. How does that sound that sounds?

Sheila: Great! Okay! that makes sense if that's your next step cool

Karan Kumar: Great! Awesome! So, Sheila, I know we got to chat a little bit about your process you're growing clientele and you're looking to hire possibly five new support reps on your team, what does onboarding look like at your company right now?

Sheila: Yeah! So I'm gonna say that we've been trying really hard to make onboarding remotely work previously it was a lot of job shadow of a lot of one-to-one meetings and interviewing anybody that they need to in the first few first two weeks really. and then after that, we kind of you know once they've shadowed for a while they start taking more and more responsibility with calls and tickets, and then we kind of let them loose by week four, there's a lot of back and forth we don't just leave them out on their own.

But previously it was like go ask for what you need when you need it. We’ve kind of replaced it with slack at this point we were on slack before but not the way we are now. So most of that conversation is happening in the slack instance. We’ve tried to make the team dynamic, work with the zoom calls, the regular check-ins but then again it's a fine balance of not having us all on zoom too long.

Karan Kumar: Yeah, and it sounds like you definitely like you mentioned you stepped it up on slack. And also that these individuals are going through a quick onboard you would say you know in four weeks and really got thrown into, not the wolves but you know into their respective positions here. Stepped it up on slack could you tell me what that looks like now?

Sheila: Yeah! So we have our CS channel. And then there’s the channel for when things are escalating quickly. And then there's a lot of direct messaging. So I'm going to say at the beginning of anybody's onboarding phase most of the communication happens by DM.

It takes them a while to get comfortable asking in public channels. we encourage it the whole time and of course, we try to lead by example but I'm gonna say a lot of it is hey where do I find that thing and that's fine that it happens over dm. is that kind of what you meant in terms of where it's happening or are you looking at looking for a how?

Karan Kumar: Yeah! No that definitely answers it. and it seems like you know slack is primarily being used to really communicate not only questions but also part of the onboarding process and how that's going to go and also once they get past that questions that they might encounter with interactions with clients are that right?

Sheila: Yeah! So some of it like if it's a question I can just answer in a moment I'll just throw it in. sometimes I have mapped out workflows and they're saved in my drive somewhere so I'll go and I'll search I'll pull it I'll copy-paste.

I send that over I'm trying to reduce that as much as possible and just remind them of resources but the first two weeks for sure it's just like, I will take you exactly where you need to go and then I sort of pull back from that. I might share links so they can find it themselves or just a reminder of which resource they need to be looking for for that answer.

Karan Kumar: Yeah! So it seems like you have a process in place there I did hear you also mention links and resources. How accessible are those to those onboarding?

Sheila: Well, most of it's in a shared drive so they have access. I think the main issue is just remembering where to look for it, repeatedly. I'm not dragging on my team but it's like the start of the process is a lot of just reminders pointing them at the right thing over and over again.

Karan Kumar: So it sounds like it might be a little difficult for these on-boards to really find what they're looking for?

Sheila: Yes! Accurate!

Karan Kumar: Where do you see them getting stuck the most?

Sheila: I think maybe it's a result of us having, we have the shared drive but then we also have a bunch of stuff in confluence, and we have a video library as well. So you know I've tried to centralize it as much as possible, but, I think they get stuck most frequently just remembering where to find the thing, I know that sounds really silly, but it's the most common thing we run into.

Karan Kumar: Right! And it's actually really common because when I was speaking to another VP of customer success earlier this morning they had mentioned the same thing they were kind of in a place where their information was there but it's scattered across different platforms so it's making it a little tough for those onboards to really access it easily.

Sheila: Exactly! Again we try to make it as simple as possible but inevitably they need a reminder and that look over here.

Karan Kumar: So going back to like you had mentioned you know these folks they're getting onboarded and then by week four ready to go with clientele and having that interaction with the clients. Would you say this is a top priority for you going into 2021?

Sheila: It’s a top priority for me right now! I mentioned that we've got five new posts or five new jobs that we've just posted for. I also know with our hiring plan for the rest of the year that there are other departments that are going to grow as well.

The CS team right now is growing in advance of some news like we had a lot of growth I think I mentioned. And then we've got the sales team growing as well right after. So if we're gonna do this like a catch-up thing. So short answer, yes! There is kind of an immediate need and then throughout the rest of the year as well it's going to be top of mind for us.

Karan Kumar: Great and I also heard that you mentioned that this was also possibly a top priority for other departments as well. Is that right?

Sheila: Yeah sales for sure and then eventually the dev team yeah!

Karan Kumar: So what I found is that in our demos they work really effectively when we can have voices from other departments because GURU is not only a tool for CX but also for sales in other departments and the organization as well.

Sheila: Okay! Well great okay so we can maybe look at that too at some point!

Karan Kumar: Yeah! Definitely so what I'm about to show you is a quick demo of how you could use GURU from an onboarding perspective. But before I jump into that I definitely want to give you the chance to make sure we're using this time appropriately we've got about seven minutes left. Anything else you need to see today to make that decision if we continue?

Sheila: Or not nothing so. When making decision decisions I will need to talk pricing of course but I don't think I have any other questions before deciding on whether or not the tailored dive makes more sense.

Karan Kumar: Great! So I'm going to hop into the screen share here real quick and then if it makes sense to talk about pricing from then we'll touch on that okay?

Sheila: Yeah! Absolutely!

Karan Kumar: Awesome! So real quick I'm just going to ask you to close your eyes and just picture that you've implemented the GURU platform.

Sheila: Okay!

Karan Kumar: And go ahead and open your eyes. Do you see my screen?

Sheila: I do!

Karan Kumar: Great! So it should look familiar and I promise you I'm not selling slack to you. so one of the things that our that even myself, working at GURU and also using GURU, that I love is our integration with slack and what that allows us as you know either sales reps or even customer support reps to do. So you had mentioned that a lot of your communication takes place on slack right?

So a typical interaction would you say it's you get a lot of questions throughout the day and you know you have some time to answer them and then when you do you know maybe an hour later someone else asks you the same question you kind of have a lot of copy and pasting.

Sheila: Yes! Yeah! I'm going to say that happens a lot.

Karan Kumar: Great! So with this integration you can actually create a GURU card right inside slack. Is that something that would be helpful to you?

Sheila: So when you say a card do you mean like an answer to that question that I could just send the next person who asks me the same thing?

Karan Kumar: You got it!

Sheila: Okay! Yeah! So that's helpful!

Karan Kumar: Great! Awesome! So, real quick I just want to walk you through what that would look like and also kind of put it in perspective of what your support reps are gonna kind of encounter as well. So here I have a question here. And then a response, right below which I've kind of clicked and hover over so to get this created into a group card you're going to go ahead and click on the more options here.

And then you'll see the option create a card, and then it automatically populates that answer right there in that content section, and then up here you can go ahead and get this title. So I know you've mentioned that it's really important for your customer reds to have this information you know. So this is gonna make sure that they're not they're reaching out less to you and interacting more with the GURU platform to look for these answers before they actually reach out to you first.

Sheila: No! I like the sound of that if they're just going to the platform instead of coming straight to me.

Karan Kumar: Yeah! Does that really like impact your day to day when they reach out to you directly instead of going and searching for it?

Sheila: You know that you know that slack interrupt sound? Okay, if you spend a lot of time in the ocean you, can hear the ocean your ears that sound, the slack sound, that's what I hear, all the time. So yes that's gonna change my day-to-day for sure if they're coming to me less frequently. Short answer.

Karan Kumar: Yeah! definitely! And I know how you want to help your reps at the same time but also how that can kind of become a little annoying you know once you're trying to do your day-to-day tasks as well. So real quick, I've created this card here and I can go ahead and actually publish this into the GURU platform and hit save.

Sheila: Okay!

Karan Kumar: So what that does is essentially like I said, it allows you as the customer set to the customer support agent so when they're looking for this information you know because it's scattered in different places, they can actually redirect directly to GURU first, instead of having to reach out to you and find this information if it already exists.

And if it doesn't, they can go ahead and create a GURU card right then and there like we've done here using slack without having to leave their screen or you know open up another browser or another page and then and then real quick here at the bottom, like, I was mentioning there's different GURU works with different platforms as well. So not only that it allows you to you know create a collection of support questions specifically for your CX team and also for your sales team and other organizations as well.

So, I think for this purpose we'll go ahead and just save this in client and hit next and then the neat thing is, or what I want to ask you is, how often do you use do you have someone that actually goes in and updates this information in these different documents that you have?

Sheila: Yeah! It's usually me! Yeah! I do!

Karan Kumar: So, I'm sure that's really time consuming would you agree?

Sheila: Yes and I like to think that I'm doing it often enough but I don't think I am

Karan Kumar: I hear you! Definitely! So what this criterion here allows you to do is, set up verification. so this can be either assigned to you or another supervisor who's kind of overseeing that support team and what it's going to allow them to do is you know any time there's new information being brought over from either the product team, any changes to the product or you know you just acquired someone else, you can update and get reminders sent out to make sure that your reps are using accurate information.

So that can be set on either a monthly or a weekly basis. So after making that selection, you can be sure that the information that your reps are accessing is trusted and it's also verified by an individual as well.

Sheila: Did I catch that correctly that I can assign that notification to someone else or does it always go to whoever created it?

Karan Kumar: You can assign it to someone else. That's right.

Sheila: Nice! Okay! I like that.

Karan Kumar: Great! I’m just going to go ahead and stop my screen share real quick. So, Sheila you have you're more familiar with the group platform now that I've shown you how you can really connect and serve new both new and existing content to your support team. Do you think it makes sense to pull in that VP of sales and possibly another team member to continue the conversation?

Sheila: Yeah! I think we'll have to because I am not sure if his workflow looks the same as mine. my entire team does all of it here in slack but he might have something else in place I don't know about in terms of where they keep their information in the questions and everything. So, I would like to share this. I would also if it's possible in that call like to see what the actual platform looks like by itself not through slack, mostly, curiosity.

Karan Kumar: Yeah definitely! And that's kind of what that deeper dive will help us do. Bring in the VP of sales and anyone else on the platform. But also at the same time what you can also do is you can if you can come with a headcount because I know you touched on pricing as well, so typically it's per person per month. But if we have an exact headcount, I can provide you with that honest quote then and there. How does that sound?

Sheila: Okay! that's great so I need head count I'll break it up by team as well because I think that there might be a difference there if we're going to go with both or one at a time. Head counts, anything else that you want for want me to bring for that?

Karan Kumar: No! I think that's it! And then how does next week at the same time sound for you?

Sheila: What day is it today! Yeah! That works for me! Okay!

Karan Kumar: Great! Awesome! So I’ll get that email sent out to you and we will see you in that deeper dive. Thank you so much Sheila!

Sheila: Sounds good Karan! Thank you!

Karan Kumar: Bye!

Joseph Fung: I saw you pick up speed right at the end there! That was close! I had an about 20 seconds left on the clock! Good job! Watching all that clock is really good! Although, I confess, I was hoping to be able to use my sound board again, but, good job! So take a breath there. We’ll give our judges a chance to finish up their scores. How are you feeling?

Karan Kumar: Feeling really good!

Joseph Fung: Nice!

Karan Kumar: Yeah! just I was nervous in the beginning, but you know I'm happy I'm done with it. But also I feel like I did myself some justice there too.

Joseph Fung: That was good! You covered a lot of territories! There were some great comments about the rapport building, the flow, you know good job covering your bases there! I see the scores still trickling in so while we're letting those happen. Sheila, are you up for jumping in and offering some feedback to today's competitors?

Sheila: Yeah! And did you want me to approach it from this sort of overarching bird's-eye view type are we going to have time for judges as well?

Joseph Fung: We do have time for judges! So why don't we start at the top level!

Sheila: Yeah I love it! So I have the frustrating difficulty of getting to see this after watching them grow for 12 weeks. So, I find it very hard to remove that lens. And I'm so glad that our judges are here today to quantify this and score them because I would really struggle to separate where I've seen them start from to where they are today.

Overall, this group, the entire class very collectively elevated of all of each other at the same time. And instead of the normal, sort of one person jumps ahead and pulls someone up behind them and then they pull the next people up which I see in the classroom all the time.

This group very specifically built like a scaffold-style platform and they all just climbed together and it was amazing to be part of it. And I really struggled to pick who should even be on this platform, today, for the group. I'm really happy with how you remembered to go next level with your discovery. We went past just the surface questions and that made me really happy. I could hear the nerves from all of you.

And you did a great job managing it, thank you so much for all of that hard work. And overall, I just wanted to thank all of you for your hard work over this course it's obvious just in your performances today but also what I saw happen with the entire class was it felt pretty special. So thank you so much for all your hard work. Joseph, that's all I've got.

Missing Voice of Joseph Fung and Transcript – (86:21 - 87:00)

Sheila: Sure! So I'm gonna call on each of you and I'll try to give you as much time to think about it as possible. Jordana, I was gonna start with you. And if you don't mind, can you direct your feedback specifically to our first presenter, Angie, does that work, okay, great!

Jordana Zeldin: Do you want me to do, I deliver it now, Sheila?

Sheila: Yes! Please!

Jordana Zeldin: Well! Okay!

Sheila: And then right after, I'll give you a moment right after, Jordana, Drew, I'm gonna put you on the spot and I'm gonna ask you to speak to our second presenter Lance. I'll try to give you guys a judge's worth of time to think. Alright! Go ahead Jordana!

Jordana Zeldin: I just want to say, holy crap, all of you! Angie, well, I'll talk about you in a second but I cannot, I mean, I think that the level in which you guys are operating is better than many sellers that I work with who have been selling literally for years.

And I think this is like the strongest demo day that I've seen to date, so well done all of you! Angie, I thought you did a phenomenal job. I really like establishing yourself as a credible source of a hell of a lot of knowledge like right at hello your questions were so thoughtful. You led with really compelling insights that I think turned you into far less of a kind of like salesperson and more in the territory of like a trusted advisor. Which was super impressive to see.

The one area of opportunity that I called out here and I think this actually goes for everyone, as I think that there's a real opportunity sorry my water's going upstairs, before you launch into selling your product, I think it can be really helpful to play back what you've heard. Basically, to recap, to do a summary of you know the kind of pains or circumstances that you've discovered to check in to see if there's anything that you've missed and use that as your transition to then move into all of the amazing ways your product can help them. But, all told wow!

Angie McCarthy: Thank you, Jordana!

Jordana Zeldin: Yeah!

Angie McCarthy: You scared me for a moment there when you were silent. I was like is there no feedback at all, but I know you're just waiting for Sheila. But thank you!

Sheila: Thank you so much for that Jordana, Drew, I'm putting you on the spot next as you're speaking I was gonna ask Charles to speak to our third presenter Mike. And then and then after that we'll be moving on to Karan. But I'll give you enough lead up James. Let’s say you've got time to think. Thank you! Go ahead!

Drew Williams: Yeah! Sweet! Yeah! Great job everybody! Once again, it's always like it's just so impressive to see the calm, cool, and collectedness of someone doing a 15-minute demo where you're being watched, it's being recorded, you have to get in all these checklists of things, that you've been learning for the past 12 weeks and it's really impressive just to see how cool and collected everybody was. And just extremely like came across very professional like Jordana said you could be in if you said you had five years and selling SAS then nobody would blink an eye at you.

One quick overall feedback before I just get into Lance is, well two things, one is just giving some space when you're chatting with people. So, you have an agenda and it's hard in the 15 minutes, I get it, but you have an agenda, you have some questions that you need to get through before you get to the demo, but, when you are asking a question or you're telling a story that's you're leveraging social proof just pause after that.

And give them space to react and give them a face to answer, just give them space to think about it for a second because that's how conversations go, they don't just go back and forth. Otherwise, it just feels like an interrogation from the buyer's side.

And there's a couple of follow-ups where you're scheduling a second meeting where it is clear like other stakeholders that are going to be a part of it. It's a great opportunity to ask not just who they are, like what their roles are, but get their contact information so then you can add them to the calendar invite or you can include them on the follow-up so then you're getting deeper into the organization so don't be afraid to just ask who they are and get their contact information because worst-case scenario they say, no, best case scenario you get three more contacts from that account.

Lance, great job! I think that was awesome! I think your, just overall approach it was like, I feel like some people could see okay well I think he needs to smile more and enjoy himself a little bit more but I think you did in your own way and that was your personality and I think it showed me if I was a buyer, that you're serious about what you're doing you're serious about people's time and I thought that was really great you outlined the process from the very beginning.

So I thought that was super respectful. you did a great job of active listening like there were just countless times where you repeated back to Sheila like, am I understanding you correctly, does is this really what you mean, so I think that's really awesome another question that you talked about that you said was like have you tried any other tools. And that's a great way of digging deep into their buying decision and buying process to see if they have tried different tools if they're ready for change if they've already explored that. So those are two really great points.

One thing I would have gone down especially with like the airlines like, you talked about it about the safety of being utmost importance like, I feel like that could have been the theme of the entire demo, where you're like digging into that safety piece because it is important like you can't just deliver learning or deliver content to airline workers and then not actually learn it or not be accountable for it.

So I feel like the fact that Vidyard could provide that to Sheila. It could have been a huge and like a no-brainer to signing up. So other than that, yeah it was it was awesome and go chiefs.

Lance Davis Jr.: Go bucks! No that was…

Drew Williams: No come on okay! Well! I take back all my good positive feedback!

Lance Davis Jr.: No, no that was great feedback! Much appreciated! I'll definitely learn from it!

Sheila: Okay! Charles, I was gonna ask you to speak to Mike now, if you're ready.

Charles Muhlbauer: Sure! Am I speaking about a specific individual? I apologize!

Sheila: Yes! Mike, our third presenter!

Charles Muhlbauer: Oh Mike! Okay!

Sheila: There we go!

Charles Muhlbauer: Gotcha! Okay! So first of all, of course, you're very dynamic, that goes without saying. Oh, I’m not on mute anymore! Right! Okay! I'm good just in general, as an overall view I pay attention a lot to road maps and so you were the road map for all of you was quite excellent. from the notes that I took for, Mike, one thing that I admittedly don't hear every single thing but one other thing that stuck out that you might do which I really was hoping to see what you did was the if it's not a good fit no big deal, which I really liked.

In terms of the third-party stories, I imagine that it takes some extra time right the empathy that you gave the prospect, while you were listening, was fantastic. I even liked what you said at the end which I wrote down, is it fair to say that if we were to you know do acts that that might be something that would be helpful, I like that language there.

In terms of just one piece of feedback that I find not, it's not unique to you, Mike, but in general, there were questions that everybody had asked with regard to it sounded something like do you see yourself using this, something along those lines everybody asked a question like that.

I find that question sometimes was asked a little bit too early maybe a little bit more context can be explained on a specific part of the platform before that's asked. and I think when asking a question like do you see yourself using this, three words that help up to help you open up a question are like, to what extent might you see yourself using this? Or how might you see yourself using this? Just to open that up a little bit.

That’s like my main takeaway from that question, what Drew said in his earlier comment about alternatives or I think that's big across the board. I kind of didn't hear that across the board. That helps maybe dig a little bit deeper around you know how kind of like how else have you been doing this before we ever spoke kind of question.

I thought would have been additive. But other than that's really all the feedback that I had and to be very honest with you, the guys were amazing. Really were amazing! I feel just personally like my role as a coach, if I don't have anything to say then I won't say it. And that was just those that was really I was very impressed.

Sheila: Thanks so much Charles! Okay! James, if I can ask, I was going to ask you to speak to our final presenter, Karan?

James Howell: Yeah! And I just echo what the judges have all said I mean absolutely phenomenal by everybody. And it's amazing to think like that these are demos that have been created without necessarily actually working at the company.

I mean even practice demos with people I used to do at the company that we all worked for, some of them weren't as on point as what I've seen here. So I don't know who the person is who has the position at one of these companies because you all did a phenomenal job.

And Karan, your natural speaking style, the cadence that you have, the way that you just naturally have this authentic way of speaking is phenomenal. it was like, yeah it was just it was a wonderful way to build rapport to ask questions without actually maybe having them put their guard up or anything like that.

I also, I mentioned this in the, I mentioned this in the chat. I'm a huge fan of time checks. And you did that like there are seven minutes left, anything else you want to cover. like what that does is it makes sure on the other side that the person can turn around and say like actually you know what is really important to me, in the next seven minutes I want you to tell me this you know or I want to hear about this and you're going to you know get that specific information.

The one thing I will mention for you is that I think that you know very friendly and authentic way that you have can sometimes be a double-edged sword when it comes to opportunities to dig a little bit deeper and this is something that I personally had to work on a lot in my career, was sometimes like it feels unnatural because it might feel a bit weird in the flow of the conversation, to dig deeper to get more of a quantified pain when the opportunity is there sometimes the other person you know the prospect doesn't necessarily want to say you know what I spend like three hours a week doing this.

Because it's painful for them as well. But there's a huge opportunity there for you to dig in deeper and for them to hear themselves, really describing exactly how painful it is. But all in all, fantastic job man! I thought it was great! And thank you very much!

Karan Kumar: Thanks so much for that feedback, James! Thank you!

Joseph Fung: So Sheila, you've had a fantastic opportunity to see the feedback, the notes. Everyone, we're getting close to crowning a winner but before I hand it back to Sheila to help run that, I got to set the stage. This really was incredible. This has been our 10th demo day. and not only did everybody crush it but you've bumped us into an edge case of our rules, that we haven't yet had to exercise, where our judges have actually come back with a tie. And our rules state that when there's a tie, the lead instructor has to dig in and task that tiebreaker. So I know when you actually dig into the feedback and know that's going to be a lot of fun.

And I usually tell the judges, I'm glad that I don't have the job to judge. And I feel like this has all been a setup for a fantastic troll because. Now Sheila has to toss that tie-breaking mode. So Sheila, make sure you give us the breakdown of the feedback on what caused you to cast your vote the way you did. And for everybody, I would ask that you unmute yourselves so that when Sheila does announce the winner, we can give a good fantastic round of applause! So Sheila, is on to you, give us the thoughts comments, and let us know who wins.

Sheila: I totally did this to myself by saying how happy I was that I didn't have to call it. I just want to stress or preface this that my week 11 with this course was so difficult and draining because I had eight people who could have been on this stage.

Like I was normally I narrow it down to a list of maybe six and then I kind of whittle away at it. It was hard! And you guys you did not disappoint because you've done it again and here I am breaking a tie. So the first thought was well I'll go back to in-course performance and then that didn't work because they're all at the same level there too.

So what I did was I really thought about overarching feel as a prospect, okay? I did not during the demos have time to score when I'm doing the role-play; I find it very difficult to do the two at the time. So I had to bring it all the way back to the customer experience okay.

It’s the only way I could do it I think it makes sense given how customer-centric we're trying to be with all of our selling throughout the duration of the 12 weeks. So I'm ready to announce our 2020-11 demo day winner with the tie-breaking vote goes to Mike! There we go!

Karan Kumar: Awesome job!

Charles Muhlbauer: Great job

Mike (Hieu) Truong: Thank you so much!

Joseph Fung: What a fantastic run! Mike, you came out on top. Would love to hear any quick comments, thoughts, reaction, did you think you won?

Mike (Hieu) Truong: I think Sheila has, I like I said I don't envy see the light job at all because I don't see an obvious winner in this! Everybody’s performance was so fantastic! But yeah I'm, I don't know what to say right now, it’s an accelerating experience!

Joseph Fung: Well! I know that in the class you'll be breaking down the feedback. And the comments from the judges will be valuable. To help set the stage for everyone, especially for those who won't be in the class tomorrow, we have a 15 point evaluation scheme and it breaks it down to quarter-point values and it was less than one point separating everybody in this. It really was exceptionally tight. So judges, thank you. Before we let everybody go, we do have a couple of housekeeping items.

So let me pull those up, we'll get everybody off to the races. So just bear with me. Let me get my slide share for those of you who are on the zoom side of things. A couple of housekeeping things, number one, if you are here in the zoom or you're on YouTube and you want to meet or get connected with any of our students or grads, let us know. Happy to make that introduction.

You can see a couple of links here on the slides and upcoming demo days, you can get our hot sheet that goes out after every group graduates and we pass along the LinkedIn profiles of all of the new available fantastic sales pros. we do have some really exciting upcoming events and so that's where I really wanted to emphasize.

Number one, our next demo day is coming up in early March on the 4th of March 6 to 8 pm eastern. This will be a lot of fun. So if you enjoyed this, come back in. You can always sign up at uvara.com/demoday. We're gonna have a good time again. We have a couple of upcoming workshops and we're increasing the number of our workshops and digging in deep and this is great for not just our students but our grads.

We also have regular workshops that are open to the public, you can also access those at uvaro.com/events. It’s open to the network fantastic practice time. We have a cold calling blitz coming up on the 16th of February and we have a personal branding workshop coming up on the 24th of February.

If you want to attend either of those, you can find them on our events page but you can also see all of our upcoming events and it is promising to be really exciting. The last thing I’d love to leave everybody with is a big congratulation. We saw four incredible demos but we have a whole class that has come through a real crucible of 12 weeks.

It is a tough grueling process and to come out on the tail end, you've learned so much, so job well done. And again thank you very much for our judges. We couldn't have done it without you. For those of us joining YouTube, we're gonna let you go now! For those of us in the zoom, hold on for just one moment.