#002 Voices From the Sales Frontline with Dee Acosta

Steven Morell

Remember, revenue is not a goal. Revenue is a result, but a result of what in this show, we turn our eyes from the output towards the inputs. We speak to sales leaders and entrepreneurs about their journeys. Join our quest to uncover and learn the root causes of success. Let's unpack what works for us and what works for others and what doesn't today in my show, and I'm super proud to have you, Dee Acosta. Thanks for joining.

Dee Acosta

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks Steve. And excited. We've known each other virtually for a while. It's good to be talking and this is an important subject, I think, especially right now for all revenue leaders, whether you're in CS, marketing or sales. So excited to discuss I'm super excited.

Steven Morell

To discuss this with you. You mentioned sales and revenue leaders. Do us a favor, introduce yourself. Who is Dee Acosta. Who are you? What do you do and why are.

Dee Acosta

You so yeah, yeah. So long story. I actually grew up in South Florida. In Miami. My father was a programmer, so was exposed to tech really before my It.

Steven Morell

Runs in the.

Dee Acosta

I've, you know, heard all the stories. It's been a pleasure growing up with it. But my career, I moved to Boston to finish school. I started off at Fidelity Investments doing data entry and just driving me crazy. So I started off as an SDR, first at an appointment setting company and then at Forrester during the Great Recession. My first Ae sales job was at Aberdeen. So talk about an unusual time and tough market. It was a tough market, but I did very well very quickly. I was one of the top reps going into it and learned a Know. Back then, SAS people were still figuring out that SAS was a real. Absolutely most people. My agent up didn't start in SaaS, but we sold research, we sold demand gen. We really had like two products when I started.

Steven Morell

And it's the days when Challenger Sales was born.

Dee Acosta

No, this is before.

Steven Morell

This is before out of the recession in 2008 when they realized everybody stopped selling overnight. But there was a small group of people still selling. And this is where Matt Dixon had the once in a lifetime opportunity to observe this and figure out why are some still selling?

Dee Acosta

I want to give you a virtual hug for bringing that up because it's my favorite sales. Know changed my, you know, my first three, four years at Know was using a lot of older sales methodologies and a lot of hard work to win deals, and it worked. But I then went to two startups. I moved to Minnesota, which was horrible, but that's another story. And it was a very different sale and neither were for selling. I didn't like Minnesota and they were selling the higher end, which is very different. They were selling to recruiters, which is different. It's more mom and pops. And at that time I read the challenger sale. And that had a big impact on me because it made sense. It was data driven. And like you said, we were in the recession and people were still selling.

Steven Morell

I think that was the first time, if I think about that was the first time that there was a sales methodology of not like, look how I did it. But that was actually based on data.

Dee Acosta

It was based on a lot of data and it had great stories, like the Granger story I still read every month or two and it made sense, right? We all know the lone wolf, the hard worker, but the challenger is what works. And today I'm still really hesitant on other sales methodology. I love Gap selling like Medic and MEDPic. I'm like, this only works if there's high demand for your so I came back to Aberdeen, was immediately a million dollar rep. I was there for, I think, an additional six years. They adopted SaaS Solutions. So they inherited the Hart Hanks Customer Intelligence database. They created a content SaaS solution, like some really good ideas. I was the only person that could sell them. I'm not just saying that people were challenged, but selling them. But as an organization, there was just not enough investment in those products and in that process. And something I've learned is services and technology are so different. You can't pluck a service rep and expect them to sell technology. It just never works. It takes a lot of practice and training. So they really should have split the teams. But there wasn't investment or patience for that. So learned a got my demo skills. I then went to metadata. I got their mug right here. Awesome company, highly recommend them. Had a great experience there, learned a lot. Some really great sales reps there. The team, livier was president, clay was the VP of Sales. Danny Reed was my manager, actually. And he's incredible salesperson. And Gil is brilliant. But left towards the end of last year. Some things going on in the market you may be aware of and they're so tied to ad spend. And then started at hockey stack. I was at hockey stack until very recently. I did leave. Great team, great technology, but very early stage startup. Not sure I would have been there long term anyway, but have a lot of things cooking now. You'll see a new title, I'm sure, before the end of September, but there I headed revenue and that was a really that's good experience.

Steven Morell

I think we are down to less than 24 hours for that.

Dee Acosta

Yeah, right. End of September, probably got like two weeks. But yeah, it was great team, great technology, highly recommend them to anyone. They're addressing a challenge that's huge in the market and we'll talk about some more. But was also a great learning experience about how important it is to tie marketing, sales and some success together. And as soon as egos get in the way.

Steven Morell

Let's dive in there. Step me through I don't know what liberty you are to talk about hockey stick stack. Excuse me. Let's talk real quick about your perfect sales process. The way you would run this. Step me through the whole sales process from lead gen over closed one to expand.

Dee Acosta

Yeah, so I'm going to be a caveat here. Everyone's buyer is very different. Steven. So I've worked with countless Aberdeen. I had the pleasure of working with demand gen, sales leaders, product marketers from Tableau Software, Fortinet. HPE was a big client. Each of these buying cycles is different. Each of the buyers is extremely different. A security buyer buys much differently than a sales tech buyer. If you're talking about different sales cycles, different prices, different implementations. So I don't think there's like one overarching sales methodology that works.

Steven Morell

But would you agree that there is?

Dee Acosta

Maybe not methodology is the wrong term, but sales process that works, right?

Steven Morell

Yes. But would you agree that there is a universal buyer journey? I'm totally with you. It doesn't matter all that much how we sell, it matters how they buy. Jacob von der Koy from Winning by Design has documented and brought, at least to my attention and to attention of a lot of people, a universal customer journey that goes along awareness, it's damn, we have a problem over education. Let's Google for a solution selection. I look at this, we book a demo and then that looks great. And then onboarding and impact expand. Would you agree that there is a universal buyer journey through which no, absolutely not.

Dee Acosta

No. And I know people that have worked for jocko. People get little high on their own supply sometimes. So I'll give you an example. I have a friend that sells disaster recovery software and hardware. He goes into a lot of his account less, countless 2030 companies, and they're already contracted with another vendor, right? So there's only maybe ten vendors in the space and they're contracted with a competitor for the next two years. So they already know who the ten vendors are. That entire awareness is pointless because they already know who you are at that point. It's a really sales led journey to build the relationship. Pivot to the classic Challenger sale, pivot to those differentiators and then drive that. And I love Brand. Brand makes everything easier. There's nothing like someone picks up the phone, they know what company you're calling from. Brand gets people excited, gets people dedicated. But we're also in a market where the impact of brand is probably less. People are looking for the quality of the solution. Is it easy to use? Does it work? Does it have the integrations I need? Implementation quick a and then price. So everyone's talking about consolidation. Well, I'll pick on Zoom info doesn't have any of their solutions. They're great company, like really good stuff, good people there. But any of their solutions aren't best of breed, right? Their data is not best of breed. Their call recorder is not best of breed. Their chat isn't best of breed. I know the veteran of the chat there. He's brilliant. But it's not qualified level chat. But it's easy to implement, right?

Steven Morell

Yeah.

Dee Acosta

You probably get a cost savings because it's all consolidated. So that's what organizations are looking for. So. I love Brand. Build a brand. Brand is cheap to do too. You have a content team. I think content is incredibly important. Everyone fired their content teams when they could have used content more than ever.

Steven Morell

Well, I know a lot of companies who fired their sales team because growth wasn't there.

Dee Acosta

Oh yeah. They were just trying to keep know there's sales led companies, there's marketing Led companies, there's technology led companies. Nobody appreciates the other role because they think they're working the hardest. But yeah, brand is important, but CrowdStrike, right? Like CrowdStrike has a great brand, but they're not buying CrowdStrike because of the brand. Sneak has a great brand, but they're buying Sneak because of the brand. If you look at AWS, AWS has really not spent much on their branding, their logo.

Steven Morell

Speaking of AWS, let's talk real quick about your favorite tool stack. And again, let's go from left to right, from lead gen down to closing and beyond. Step me through your favorite tool set.

Dee Acosta

Yeah. So for lead gen, metadata is awesome. If your buyers are primarily on LinkedIn and social channels, they're great at running AI to determine what ads turn into leads. They are a great solution. I'm a big fan of Apollo and that's just because of the cost, because everything is bare and easy to use. There's a lot of competitors out there, but why keep it challenging? Gong is great. There's a company called Attention that I highly recommend. They record your calls and then auto fill your CRM, which is fantastic. I think that's so important because you're not going to remember this stuff and call summaries. AI call summaries are going to forget stuff.

Steven Morell

And I'm terrible at taking notes while I talk. Terrible.

Dee Acosta

You look like you're not paying attention. You look like you're a waiter. It's bad or you're clicking away. So they're fantastic at that. I think they have a really bright future. We are at a point where in SaaS you're going to have to show the product on the first call. So we're going to have to do demos. A's are going to have to do demos. The SC is going to be more of a product maintaining the demo environment, training and being on heavy technical demos.

Steven Morell

I'll challenge you here. I have a not very popular opinion and the opinion is screw the demos are.

Dee Acosta

I used to think that I say.

Steven Morell

Demos are again, not for everyone. But especially in the higher annual contract value segment, the buyer is not the user. So the question is, if the buyer is not the user, why do they need the demo? One reason might be they don't believe it works. So you have to show it. Yeah, but showing that it works is one way. I mean, if you're getting a heart surgery, it's not that the doctor is showing you how he does it. Right. There are different testimonials. There's a lot of ways of showing that it really works. Or you are not very good at explaining what it does. And that's my main critique. I think a demo is always a conversation about how it works. But what you want to have is not a conversation. Not a conversation how it works. It's a conversation why you should buy it.

Dee Acosta

Yeah, I don't disagree. I used to think the same thing. And I used to be confident that any demo in SaaS couldn't keep up with our personal apps. But having been a buyer and having done 1000 demos, people want to see the product. And why do they want to see the product? It's just in our nature, if you're going to buy something, you want to see it. So that first call, like 30 minutes can be five minutes of small talk, 15 minutes of discovery, five minutes of value proposition stories, and then four minutes of demo. But you have to show some product. And then additionally, you have one se and ten sales reps. That technical call. Right. That second demo to actually get in the product, you might have to do that. Right. If the client is in Germany and your SC is in California, you're probably going to have to do that on your own. So it is beneficial to share it. I get what you're saying, and I agree a lot. And then I've been on the other side. This is mainly for SaaS, of course. Infrastructure hardware, it's different, right? Infrastructure software is different. So I had a company that was really recommended and wanted to bring to the team, and they set me up through the SDR. Answer all the damn SDR questions. Okay, whatever. This actually happened to me twice and got on with the Ae. The ae had no notes. Right? That whole communication was just dropped. And I said, Just show me. I didn't want to go through discovery. Right. I know exactly what and, you know, kept pushing back on showing the product. And I'm like, Just show the damn product. Just show the damn product. I've now spent 2 hours. So sales is very direct. Right? Marketing can be direct too, but you need to be able to show the product. And people are usually coming to you with a pain. Right? What's that? Pain, right? Is it? I can't see my pipeline. Our customers have slow performance. Right. I need more better data to set more.

Steven Morell

Is there any tool that you recommend for running Amos?

Dee Acosta

Absolutely. Yeah. So test box is fantastic. Most of these live demo environments, they are chrome plugins or screenshots, which you show me a screenshot and be like, is that a screenshot? And they'll to I want to see the real product because that's know. Right, Steven? Like, I don't know what you're showing. This could be vaporware. And then the Chrome plugins, they're slick, but we're going to see a clampdown on Chrome plugins because of the security problems with them. And then LinkedIn, they're eventually going to say no scraping from LinkedIn. So all these SaaS sales intel crow plugins are not going to be around forever. And I've told Apollo that actually know Apollo's VP of product, and I told Surf that they just came out and like, oh, we're logging your LinkedIn messages. And I'm like, yeah, you think Microsoft wants you doing that? No. You think they want you gathering that data? No.

Steven Morell

Are they pronounced Surf or think I.

Dee Acosta

Just call it surf. It sounds better. I'm American.

Steven Morell

I was just thinking of Nike and the e on the end. Okay, but surf. Are you using Surf?

Dee Acosta

No, I don't because I'm a big fan. Yeah, no, it's great, but those plugins read all your keystrokes at any place with strict InfoSec that's not getting passed, that's not getting in. And then the challenges with bot security are like, I've supported bot security companies. What was the company? Can't remember their name. It's a big problem. So I've been kicked off LinkedIn three times for using too much Apollo. You need to be real careful. And Microsoft, they make that money off the data and the advertising. They don't want you to scrape it. So it's a matter of time. Yeah. These plugins that we love are huge security liabilities and I think small business doesn't realize how much. Right.

Steven Morell

Speaking of being kicked off of LinkedIn.

Dee Acosta

Let me just discuss testbox. So they sit on your UI and they mirror that UI and they auto populate the data using chat GPT. So what's cool is if you update like you update your SaaS solution, it reflects that it just looks like the UI. And then you can also create tours, you can create sandboxes. Ses have reporting to make sure hey, what's being shown much are sales rep showing the right things. It's just really slick. It's what I would nice. One of the top things I would invest in yeah. If I was SaaS Company.

Steven Morell

Yeah. I'm struggling with the problem that we deal with company data from our customers and it's confidential data. So I have to be super careful when I share a screen that I don't share somebody's data. And that's always a challenge. But you mentioned that you've been kicked off LinkedIn three times.

Dee Acosta

Yeah.

Steven Morell

Let's talk. Me too. I souped my way back in.

Dee Acosta

Yeah. I didn't have to do that much, but I just used Apollo too much. That was it.

Steven Morell

I was the victim of trolls who would just gang up on Telegram and then mass report me.

Dee Acosta

Oh my goodness.

Steven Morell

And that would keep doing this and everything on LinkedIn works automatically and there is no real support. They're just underpaid gig workers who send you pre formatted text blocks that makes no sense. And I ended up taking them to court. Luckily, I'm located in Europe and in Germany, where this is relatively cheap and fast, but still it was a couple of thousand euros and it was three weeks, four weeks without LinkedIn. And I realized LinkedIn is more important than email. And LinkedIn is my entire address. Like, there were a bunch of appointments I couldn't take. I couldn't cancel because I didn't even remember the name of the person.

Dee Acosta

That's horrible. I'm glad it went fast here. It would have taken like two years.

Steven Morell

Very efficient system that we have over here. But speaking of failures like this, tell me a little bit about the stuff that you did that worked in creating pipeline and creating results. And tell me a little bit about the things that you tried and that totally did not.

Dee Acosta

Yeah. So at the last two orgs, metadata and hockey stack, what worked extremely well. What I preach is organic social. Now, both of them have buyers who are on LinkedIn all day, so it's easier. But creating content that creates buzz is worth it, right? And it's pretty easy to do. You just find a video editor and you come up with an idea and you say, hey, we're going to do this. And with both companies, that helped create a lot of buzz. Now that buzz was great for pipeline, which is great for filling demos, but buzz wears off, it's hard to keep that buzz forever. So that buzz is a great way to get launched. But then you need real product marketing. And product marketing must understand the buyer, preferably they have some experience in the buyer's shoes. I've known some of the best product marketers out there. Ellie Field. She was at tableau. She's at sales loft now. Paul Ross was headed product marketing at Alteryx. He's at Affinity now. Charles Goldberg. Amazing. He was at Talus and now he's at Peer Storage. All these are friends of mine. Prosh has been at product marketing at IBM and now Informatica for like the last ten years. And what they're able to do is they intimately understand the product, right, how it works, how it's used, and they understand the buyer. They travel with sales. If we went to Japan, I had bad sushi and was sick. They could run the closing call for me. Of course, they're not do the pushy sale stuff as much as I would, but they could run it for me. And that's because they have an intimate knowledge of the buyer and they have an intimate knowledge of the product and how it's yeah, there's so many more. Haley Panad is now an Apollo. She's incredible. I worked with her. So you really have to hone in on that messaging about your product to the buyer that buying process. And you have to be able to do it in a way that pivots to your differentiators highlights, your brand, and you have to be able to do it across formats. Buyers are of different ages, right? Different backgrounds. We all consume content differently. So I love lavender.

Steven Morell

Oh, yes, love lavender.

Dee Acosta

Yes. They're selling primarily, they're marketing to 20 year old sales reps and SDRs. US old guys like, do we really need that? And then that ground swell. They sell up. So it makes a lot of sense to do what they do, and they do it extremely well. But they get Jen Allen Canuth on the line when it's with that $100,000 deal to get it out to a sales team of 1000 people. And they do produce written content. They really do produce written content, data driven written content. But those videos, if you're selling to CISOs, right? If CISO is your buyer right? If you're selling to a developer, those videos are good, but they should not be. Maybe your tip of the spear with marketing because it's not going to work.

Steven Morell

Is a typical land and expand product.

Dee Acosta

Yes.

Steven Morell

Very much like slack. You start for free. Before you know it, there's a whole bunch of your people on Slack, and now suddenly you need the paid version to keep the archive and so forth.

Dee Acosta

Sneaks their way in, and they're selling to a bunch of sales reps that want to get better. Right? So who literally look at LinkedIn all day, but I was at B, two B MX, and they sell medical products and they sell software for IoT, for medical devices. Like, their buyers are never rarely on right, Steven? They're rarely on LinkedIn. There's medical journals and stuff like that, but they're reading those journals. They came up reading. So it's really important. So that buzz is going to create a lot of funnel, but you also have to eventually support that with product marketing. And you want to have someone with experience in the my Alexa just went off experience in the industry. I've seen actually power users become good product marketers. So those are things you want to do. You want to cover all the bases. I used to be against content syndication, but if it works, it works. Ads, if it works, it works.

Steven Morell

What did not what did you try?

Dee Acosta

What did not work?

Steven Morell

And I always like the stories where it took a long time to figure out, oh, that's not working. I thought it did.

Dee Acosta

Yeah. So, a couple of things. Ads definitely took a dip towards the end of last year. Now, I love ads. They work well, but they're expensive, and it takes a lot of iteration, experimentation.

Steven Morell

Let's dive deeper. What type of ads?

Dee Acosta

Primarily so display ads. Never know unless you have money to throw out. But primarily social ads. So LinkedIn Facebook.

Steven Morell

What about Retargeting?

Dee Acosta

Yeah, I kind of put Retargeting in a different bucket. Retargeting, absolutely. Yeah. I put it in a different bucket because Retargeting is like, they've already engaged with you and they probably know you. I would still be cautious on display ads and Retargeting, but YouTube retargeting is great. LinkedIn retargeting, if you can harness that data, it took a dip. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just means you have to refine it and maybe you step away from it for a little bit. I've sold lots of content syndication I've heard of it working, but that is a numbers play. Good content works. So you're seeing own media, I think. Own media. It's just content. Right? It's just good. So, you know, I think of Gong Labs and Gong Labs created incredible empirical content, right?

Steven Morell

Yes.

Dee Acosta

Really great people.

Steven Morell

Yes.

Dee Acosta

And Devin Reed is now doing that at Clary. And Chris Orlob has started his own that that I like data. Just tell me the data. Tell me a story and tell me the data. Don't do fluffy stuff. Like, the fluffy stuff. I'm just like too old. I'm not going to watch that. So that type of content works extremely well. I'm actually doing a project for an agency to deliver that just as a friendly thing to do. So really good content. And then once again, organic social creates buzz if your buyers are on there. Right. I'm a big fan of going direct to publishers, too. So one of the best marketers I know, and I know a lot. Latlena, she used to be at Sneak. She's at solo. She's brilliant. She would go direct to the publisher and she would say, hey, I want my ad here, and I want leads from this and I want content from that. And that's a cheaper way to do can.

Steven Morell

Have you done this yourself?

Dee Acosta

I've not done it myself, but I've recommended it. And my clients have gotten good results. But yet hockey sack was attribution and the goal is, hey, we can see what's working at the end of the day. And marketing can be a dispassionate advisor to show the data. This is working. This isn't working.

Steven Morell

I came across a framework recently. Nothing revolutionary new in it, but I loved the simplification. And there are only four ways to tell people what you do. Number one, you can do this one to one or one to many. And you can do this to people who know you and people who do not know you.

Dee Acosta

Yeah.

Steven Morell

Careful. Absolutely not. People you know, people know you. We spoke about brand earlier. If they know your brand, they think they know you. So that was that makes it automatic. Which ends up with you only have four possible combinations of that. And I like the definition was the definition of cold is if the first contact is a one on one. Think about this. Cold calling somebody. The first conversation is one on one. Right?

Dee Acosta

Absolutely.

Steven Morell

Cold email. Even if you do a lot of this, it's one on one, because everybody receives their email in their inbox. It's a one on one. So whenever the first contact is a one on one, it's cold. And if it's one too many, then this is how they meet you. They see you somewhere on social is one too many. And everything deriving from this is warm. What's your take on that?

Dee Acosta

Absolutely. Yeah, I think so. You just need to test, you need to experiment, and you need to see what works. And there are some things that are evergreen, right? Like, think about Brand, right? Brand is evergreen. A good sales pitch is evergreen.

Steven Morell

Social is evergreen.

Dee Acosta

Yeah. You really have to determine what works. And it's not just work to get leads, right? It's work to get meaningful conversations and opportunities created and move those sales down the pipeline.

Steven Morell

And we are back to the roots. We are back to the roots from, I believe, the Clue Fest manifesto. Markets are conversations. This was a wonderful conversation with you, Dee, that I very much appreciated. Before I call the end here real quick, your three lessons for the audience. If our audience can take three things home with them today, what would that be?

Dee Acosta

Yes. First is the data, right?

Steven Morell

Yes.

Dee Acosta

The data should not lie. People can look at it differently, but always lean on the data. Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to make a decision because of the data, right? But it means if you're going to make a decision, check the data first, right?

Steven Morell

Yes.

Dee Acosta

The second is working. At startups, founders are under a lot of pressure, right? Because you got to be kind of crazy in a good way to put your life on hold, to build a business and tie your future success, your children's college, your retirement to a company. And it's easy at startups for people to get so, you know, Gil told me, do something altruistic before you have a big conversation. So come know, be altruistic. And if you're going to have that hard conversation, be altruistic about it. Be like, hey, man, have positive energy. Then go back to that data and make that suggestion. Right? Have that hard conversation. The third thing is, marketing has a lot of power now, right? And deservedly so. But what we're seeing is more sales led. So big enterprises, companies are saying, hey, we need to have more meaningful conversations. The most powerful metric, right? A conversation that has juice to it. Maybe they can't buy now, but you build a relationship and they're interested in your product. I'm a big fan of, like, there's two sales cycles. There's the traditional one that we measure, and then there's the COVID sales cycle. But it is incredibly invaluable to have a sales rep who can create a process, who can speak to clients as equals, who understands the client's pain and can close deals. A lot of the younger generation, not all. There's some great Brian Lamana for. Example, there's some great sales reps cap from 6th Sense, but they kind of lost that, right? They kind of became order takers. We as salespeople, we can create demand ourselves but we still have to identify, capture. Right. Have that conversation, convince back to the Challenger sale. And I think that's why we're seeing enterprises double down on content syndication and we're seeing companies kind of go more sales. Led vendor had their SaaS trends report. And the most acquired new product technology was sales. Like we've all been sold something we didn't want. It's very hard to do with us. But I'm trying to think what I have here. Cars always like but I like I like the personal. Like, I don't know what car buying is like in Germany, but went to the first car, guy was okay, but the car was kind of small. I was like, Let me think about it. Went to the second car, was ready to buy it. Horrible experience. The manager wanted to punch me. He was like, tiny. Went to the third and I said, this is my budget. This is the car I want. We worked it out. We're off by 1000. I pretended to stand in the door to say, Get $1,000. And I got the car. I got the deal. And it's like, why did I like working with him? I told him exactly what I wanted. This is the price. This is no hassle. I don't want to test drive. I just want to buy the car. And he did his job convincing me. And I still trade emails with him. I'm like, hey, how you doing? When's the new Subaru coming in? And I'll buy another car from him because he knows how I buy.

Steven Morell

It might turn out that we sellers are terrible.

Dee Acosta

We're the worst. I don't want any bullshit. I'm like, but do you like researching stuff, Steven, or you like absolutely. For your personal like, you're buying a new TV? Yeah, it's fun.

Steven Morell

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big fan of the whole theory and storytelling behind jobs to be done and how we have that first moment and second moment. And I love those stories. I love doing jobs to be done. Interviews. I recommend that for every company you can a B split test as long as you want. But sometimes you can just call a handful of customers and ask them. It's that easy. Yeah, just pick up the phone and call them. Why did you buy this? When did you first think about it? And I love the stories behind here's a gift card.

Dee Acosta

Like your customer.

Steven Morell

Yeah, we should do a follow up just on talking to customers and learning from customers. And not only from data. I'm a data person. I have a data startup. I have a data company. I'm an expert in analyzing sales cycle data. Yet it's only data. The story behind this is just call them and ask.

Dee Acosta

You could find out so much and people buy differently. I've been harping on this know, gender, age, background. Like, we're global. You're in Germany, I'm in the US. I've done business in every continent.

Steven Morell

Absolutely. Like, you and I have more in common than I have with any of my neighbors in my yes, and I'm.

Dee Acosta

Assuming you have know you're on we're I was on vacation last week. I have a child.

Steven Morell

We know the same people. We read the same books. I absolutely agree. The village we live in is not in you cannot measure it in miles. It's measured the touch points that we have online.

Dee Acosta

Yes, the car analogy. I drive a Subaru. Whatever. My daughter's mom drives a beautiful car, BMW. IX. $100,000 car. Like, sketchy technology, cutting edge. And it's like, I would not buy that car. She's like, I can't.

Steven Morell

It's from Munich. I live in Stuttgart. We cannot buy this.

Dee Acosta

Yes, well, I love BMW, but I would not trust them with any new technology. I would have to go to VW.

Steven Morell

I'm only allowed to drive Porsche. Mercedes. All right, everyone, that brings us to the end of this episode of Speak Revenue. I want to thank our guest, Dee Acosta. That was a wonderful session.

Dee Acosta

Yeah.

Steven Morell

Thanks for joining us today, sharing so valuable insight and stories. A huge shout out to all our listeners. Your support means the world to us. Remember to check out our website@speakrevenue.com for a full transcript and additional resources. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on Apple or podcast or wherever you go for your listening needs. It really helps a lot and it helps to get the word out. Follow us on LinkedIn and soon on Instagram. Maybe soon even on YouTube. We'll be back soon with another guest. Until then, stay curious, keep listening and keep going. Thanks. Goodbye.