Pilot's Waseem Daher on nailing first impressions

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Patrick Campbell

Have you ever absolutely.

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Patrick Campbell

Blown a first impression? Maybe it was that first date where you showed up hitting out after running.

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Patrick Campbell

Six blocks to.

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Patrick Campbell

Be on time and then tripped over the tablecloth at the restaurant falling flat on your face.

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Patrick Campbell

Just me. Or maybe that one time you showed up to that important business meeting after a bad lunch and just couldn't help but pass gas almost continuously in that very, very small conference room? Probably just me again. But life throws you some curveballs that will leave you absolutely wondering, what if I had a second chance? But in the world of B2B SaaS, there are rarely second.

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Patrick Campbell

Chances.

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Patrick Campbell

On making a first impression. And sometimes the bad first impression doesn't ruin the next date or the chance of getting the next meeting. But those first impressions are definitely burned into the psyche and make it that much harder to climb whichever hill you're climbing. So it's probably just easier to nail that first impression in the first place. Someone who thinks intensely about those first impressions in B2B SaaS is Waseem Dar, the founder and CEO of Pilot.

00;01;03;28 - 00;01;28;16

Patrick Campbell

Waseem is an incredibly deep thinker and serial founder. And in our talk, we went over a myriad of tactics and strategies that go into scaling a successful B2B SaaS business, including nailing that first impression with sales and onboarding. His wisdom and expertise are coming up next. For profit will recur as Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator.

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Patrick Campbell

On today's episode, Waseem Dar dives deep on growth and those first impressions. We talk about end to end ownership of a problem. Having a marketing led sales motion, how to nail your content distribution plan, applying TLC to every aspect of customer experience, and identifying a consultative, advisory driven salesperson.

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Patrick Campbell

Who are you? What do you guys do? Sure.

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Waseem Daher

I'm Waseem. I'm CEO and co-founder of Pilot. Pilot specializes in bookkeeping, tax prep and CFO services for high growth startups, ranging from PRE-SEED to Series D. And when you work with us, you get the expertise of a finance team that takes all this work off your plate so you can focus on your business. And we're the largest provider in the space.

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Waseem Daher

We work with a thousand plus startups, so we're really, really great at seeing and helping with that scaling journey.

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Patrick Campbell

That's really cool. And what I love about this type of business is it's normally the thing that product people are like, Oh, this is, you know, this is an AI or nuclear fusion or like some fancy you accept. It's very much, you know, I don't want to call it a boring business because I feel like the offensive, but it's one of those businesses where then you start getting into it, you realize like, Oh, the tech has to be really good because there's so many complications and you're taking manual things and making them automated.

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Patrick Campbell

So I guess why this like why this over? Anything else you could do, you know, given your background?

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Waseem Daher

Sure. And certainly I love boring businesses. I think boring businesses are the best businesses to start and invest in. And we could talk about that at length. If that's your interest, then this is really the culmination of a long journey for me and my co-founders, which is Jeff, Jessica and I all met a million years ago at MIT undergrad where we'd say computer science right out of school.

00;03;05;11 - 00;03;24;01

Waseem Daher

We started a company called K Splice that did software update to that rebooting that Oracle acquired. We ran Oracle for a year and a day transition over the tech, kind of got out of there, started another company together called Zoom that there was a group chat tool for businesses or like a Slack like product. At a time when Slack was making a mobile game, Dropbox acquired it.

00;03;24;01 - 00;03;43;15

Waseem Daher

We were at Dropbox for about two years. We helping out in the production engineering side and when we set out to start a pilot, we wanted to solve a problem. We very, very viscerally had ourselves, which is in our previous companies. You know, as a startup founder, you want to be devoting all your energy towards hiring and building the product and figuring out the sales strategy.

00;03;43;15 - 00;04;02;06

Waseem Daher

And we found that so much of our time was consumed by this back office stuff, specifically on the accounting side, but just more generally. And so we said, Look, we want to build the service that we wish existed. And importantly, when you hire pilot, it's not, oh, here's a piece of software. It's well, I've got a point of contact and a team that is actually taking care of this for me.

00;04;02;06 - 00;04;08;28

Waseem Daher

And and so really ultimately we were solving a problem. We ourselves had, which is I think actually where some of the best business ideas come from generally.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah. You can also use your own product, which allows you to kind of figure out what's good or bad. And I guess what's interesting just to kind of like scope this for people because I think that we all feel this pain, but we don't necessarily we feel it very acutely. Like just as an example, when we started off all of a sudden it was like, Oh crap, payroll.

00;04;26;17 - 00;04;41;16

Patrick Campbell

And then it was like, oh, taxes, oh, expense. Like it's all these little like moments that pop up and you don't think of like, what is the totality of this of your product? Basically, you're like the solution you're going after. Like where does it start? Where does it end? Which I know is a kind of a weird question, so I can rephrase it.

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Waseem Daher

That's hard. Sure. Well, I mean, I think the question is there's today and there's in the limit. What does it look like? I think the 20 year plan is really policy to run your entire back office for you, because all this stuff does bleed into itself and you do want someone with expertise helping shepherd the whole thing. Like it's pretty wild.

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Waseem Daher

Every business owner has to sort of individually reinvent the wheel to figure out, Oh, these are the tools I should use. And this is how I should stitch them together. And these are the providers I need to hire. And these are like the quirks about like it's totally wild that folks are reinventing itself from scratch. And our vision actually, in many ways is a lot like if you look at the history of something like Amazon Web Services, which is pre us, a big fraction of your engineering time was devoted to running the infrastructure.

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Waseem Daher

In our first company, we had a bunch of Linux servers and a data center somewhere and like someone had to go and rack them there. And periodically the hard drive died and so I had to go and swap them out and then came along and said, Look, we can run the infra for you and we're going to do it differently than anyone else.

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Waseem Daher

We're going to do it in a way that is more scalable. You want more ram, click here, you want more CPUs, click here like it's magic and we're sort of like the NWC for your back office, which is the day everyone is out there. Kind of like racking their own servers or like figuring out how to connect Gusto and Brex and Expensify and all this stuff.

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Waseem Daher

And it's like everyone is inventing it from scratch and it's very bespoke way, but there are real economies of scale of solving the problem, solving it well, solving it's scalable. And I think ultimately that's pilot's ambition. If we can run the infra for your company, you can focus on developing the app that is your company.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah. Now that's really interesting. And is that because there have been like back office solutions in the past and they're mainly been like humans, right? Like, hey, well we'll have this human here, this human there or like stitching everything together. And so from a product perspective, how did you, like, change this, Right. Like, how did you like, think about it to, like, you know, not just stitch things together because you could offer us like an interface, right?

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Patrick Campbell

Which is interesting, but it's like you guys go way beyond that, which I want you to talk about a little bit from a product perspective.

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Waseem Daher

Yeah. So I think the insight here was twofold, insane. Number one is the customer doesn't want to buy accounting software like I've never heard of founders say, Oh yeah, I get it. It's like, set me up when you're a better version of QuickBooks or whatever. Like know what the founder, the business interactions is. Solve this problem for me and solve it better than anyone else.

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Waseem Daher

Well, like, I'm coming to you because you're the experts and I know you'll be able to scale with me. So I think the interface or the abstraction the customer would like is the end to end ownership of the problem. And the reason that it can't just be an army of humans is fundamentally, if you want to do it well and you want to do it well at scale, you need the computer to be at the core of what's happening.

00;07;17;23 - 00;07;36;29

Waseem Daher

It's the only way to actually do the work reliably. It is easy to do a good job for one customer. It's reasonably easy to do a good job for ten customers. It gets pretty tough to do a good job for 20 customers. It's basically impossible to do the job for 100 customers and then it is literally just structurally, you're not going to be capable of doing it for a thousand customers and doing it well.

00;07;37;00 - 00;08;07;27

Waseem Daher

Unless you are smart about process and having computers do the things that should be computers. And if you think about pilots growth, it is people with doing what people do best and software doing what's offered as best, and the two kind of fuzing together in a way that allows us to serve thousands of customers in a really, really high quality white glove way that is honestly better than they would get if just someone was doing it entirely by hand because the computer doesn't make mistakes like you want the computer doing the things that should be the computer and you want the person doing the things that should be the person.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's really interesting because I think that you're seeing this trend, particularly in product where and we've always had this trend, but it's like you either need a workflow product where it's like active usage is the game, like measuring that active usage or this thing that we've kind of coined is and I don't know if we've coined it, but like I like to call it anti active usage where it's just like, no, like do not use it like we take care of things or you use it to more monitor it, but you're not actually doing the work because like robots, you know, or computers are actually taking care of things.

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Patrick Campbell

I think for you though, what I'm kind of curious about is like everyone when it comes to their back office, like there's the standard customer, I'm sure, who's just like, just do it. Whatever you tell me to do, I'll do it. And then there's like this other group that's like, everyone's a snowflake, like a beautiful snowflake of, like, well, the way I do my expenses is this and I don't like this setting and I don't like this.

00;08;54;29 - 00;09;09;29

Patrick Campbell

And how do you kind of like square like first, like, do you see that with your product and then suck in? How do you square that with, you know, kind of telling them what to do, I guess is like the more aggressive way to say it versus like providing some sort of flexibility because that can make the product like spiral out of control.

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Patrick Campbell

I imagine.

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Waseem Daher

Yeah. So the nice thing again is we sort of had the luxury of deciding is the computer going to do this or is the person going to do this? And so if you insist on some totally bespoke workflow, as long as we price it correctly, we should be able to accommodate it. Now, I think that what we have seen very firsthand in the market is actually our customers would love for us to come and say this is what the best practices.

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Waseem Daher

And if you set it up in this way, like we can take all of this friction off your plate. And sometimes that does require a little pushback. Sometimes we have to say, listen, the reason that you're coming to us as opposed to hiring someone on Upwork or using the provider down the street or whatever, is because we know this stuff, we do it for a thousand plus people.

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Waseem Daher

We do this scale that no one else does and trust us. With all of these reps, with all of these other companies, we have landed on this particular playbook because it is what's best. And so I think our customers do want a little bit of like give me best practices. It's it's not exactly tell me what to do, but it's tell me what best in class looks like.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's one of those things where you can take advantage in a good way of the like curse of knowledge, right? Like when I'm starting out or even if even now, like a lot of these accounting practices and things like that, like I'm not going to go deep into learning them. Like you can tell me and I can trust you naturally, because it's not something that like I feel like I know enough about, like I know I don't know anything about it.

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Patrick Campbell

So I could just like, Hey, right off to you.

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Waseem Daher

I think it's many ways. It's like, look, when you go to your doctor, you're not like, No, I think you should prescribe me X, y, Z. It's like, No, you're going to them because you trust that they know what they're talking about and they're well referenced and they like they've seen a lot of people and they have you know, they have a bunch of insight that you don't like if you if you already knew what to do, you wouldn't go to the doctor.

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Patrick Campbell

Totally. And that's always the fun part because I'm sure. So your customer base, I know you said everything from things that precede up to, you know, series D Right. Y you know, requirements obviously, but also like a really kind of, for lack of better phrase, like funky go to market, right? Because you have, you know, I'm sure like the series D folks, they get it because they already you're like more of an automation of what they've already cobbled together if they're not sure already.

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Patrick Campbell

But then all of the early stage folks like those are some hard people to like sell to oftentimes. And they're not necessarily worth that much. Right. And so tell us, like I'd love to get into, because I think you guys have done a phenomenal job of like, what's your framework? What's your strategy, your tactics of like going after this like wide important, but sometimes finicky for to say it nicely, like customer base, especially the earlier stage folks.

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Patrick Campbell

And so I'll have you first react to that and then we can kind of dig deeper and hopefully build a framework for it.

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Waseem Daher

Yeah, I mean, anything is interesting here is that the motion and pilot is a very marketing led sales motion and the reason here is sort of twofold. One is that it's not obvious Our priority, like when there is a compelling event that requires you to buy bookkeeping or tax prep. I mean, we know like the year ends or the tax deadline is coming out.

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Waseem Daher

Like there are some moments where it's like, okay, yes, very clearly you're going to be in market, but if you're starting a new company or, you know, you just raise a little bit of money or it's time to get serious about professionalizing the finances, there are signals that exist in market, but they're not the easiest to pick up on necessarily.

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Waseem Daher

And so our kind of go to market motion requires us to make you aware of our brand. So the when the time is right, you will come to us and you'll say, Hey, I'm interested in getting up and running on pilot. And I think that's maybe piece one piece too, is this idea that normally if you're buying something and the buyer has a very detailed sense of exactly what it is they want, maybe even to the point where it's like, I want these features or I want these specifications or, you know, I know all about buying CPU's and I want I want the spec sheet to match these parameters, whereas hiring pilot is much more

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Waseem Daher

often to go back to the doctor analogy, hiring pilot is much more often like picking your doctor where when I pick my doctor, it's like I go to the office. I like see if it looks clean. Oh, they're wearing a white coat. There's like a diploma on the wall. My friends say that they're like, checks out like, I'm not going to quiz them to be like, What was your grade in immunology?

00;13;15;00 - 00;13;34;01

Waseem Daher

Or like, what does the pancreas do? You know, I'm the reason I'm coming to them is because, like you seem to know about this thing that I don't know about that I have a problem with. Like that's sort of how I make the hiring decision or the buying decision for my doctor. Sure. And similarly for pilot, it's like, look, you folks are experts in this space.

00;13;34;09 - 00;14;01;29

Waseem Daher

You do this more than anyone else does. I heard good things about you from my friends or other people now where it's like, yes, I will sign up so that the notion is a varied, brand based sales motion because it's super high trust where the average buyer, unsurprisingly, like they don't know about this stuff and they want to hire an expert who does know more about them about this thing than they do.

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Patrick Campbell

That's interesting. If we go a little bit deeper on the brand part, because brand always I think it's a misunderstood wrap, right? And I actually am not a brand expert by any means, but it's one of those things where, you know, the first question, well, how do you measure it? Right? But then the second question is also like it's always tough with brand because you have awareness type content where it's just like, I don't know what they do, but this was cool that I read this, watch this, saw this and whatever it is and then there's also the like deep, like fear based content sometimes of like this is what you miss out when you

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Patrick Campbell

don't have a good bookkeeper, that type of thing. So like, tell us a little bit about your go a little bit deeper on brand and like how you think about brand and also like, you know, specific is possible on like you know, the strategy there.

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Waseem Daher

So I think everyone wants to work with companies that get them like you as a buyer, you're looking to see, oh, this vendor or this partner understands me. And so I'm going to work with them because they get X, Y, Z. So for us, a lot of our initial energy and this came very naturally because like again, our third startup, this very much is our world, but a lot of our positioning was really about like we're a startup too.

00;15;06;03 - 00;15;23;29

Waseem Daher

We get startups like I am a three time founder. I understand your journey. So like in the early days it was literally like I called you up or my co-founder Jeff called you up, or my partner Jessica called you out like, Look, I know what you're going through because I also, you know, this is my third startup. Trust us, you're in good hands like we've seen around the corners.

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Waseem Daher

We know where this is going. Like we take care of, you know, what that looks like from a brand perspective is like it's about leaning into content that is highly relevant to our audience. And interestingly, it's not like ten things you need to know about bookkeeping. It's actually like, how do we write stuff that is actually authentic and appealing and useful for our target audience, even if it has nothing to do with accounting?

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Waseem Daher

And let me give you a great example of this. We recently published a piece actually, we do this every year Pilots Founder Salary Survey, where we survey technology startup founders in a variety of markets and industries, and we put together a comprehensive guide that's like, this is what you as a founder should be paying yourself cut by Gio by stage, cut by amount raised, etc., etc..

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Waseem Daher

And the reason we do that is because founders ask us this question all of the time and.

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Patrick Campbell

It's.

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Waseem Daher

Super useful. It's very helpful information. It actually has very little to do with literally are doing your bookkeeping or your tax prep, but it's signals to the market, Oh, pilot no start ups. Pilot gets what I'm about and so that that same throughline is present in like the content we produce in the events that we run in the wake nurture sequences that we send to folks in the content that's on the website, like as much as possible, we think about the strategy and how do we make you aware of us on each of those touch points?

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Waseem Daher

How are you left with one, something that's actually useful to you and the impression that like, Oh, these folks get what I'm about so that when the time comes, when we can solve a problem you really have, you're like, Well, yeah, these, these folks are of my world. They understand what I'm struggling with or what I'm dealing with.

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Waseem Daher

Like, of course I'm going to work with them as opposed to someone who is not going to speak the language as fluently.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, it's interesting. And if I go like one layer deeper, if we go one layer deeper on that. So is it something where you've kind of I know you're a big advocate or you tweeted recently about you know, you're not necessarily a creative genius, you just talk to your customers. I like that little the little three thread that you did, a three tweet thread, is it something where in that research do you have you now discovered, like these are the three things and I'm just making this up, but like, these are the three things that every leader needs to hear.

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Patrick Campbell

Therefore, like anytime someone comes in, this is our nurture campaign or is it more like and maybe it's both like, okay, this quarter, these are they're like six things in these two categories we're going to do. Like how do you how do you structure if you go if I was like, cool, I'm, I'm bored now. I want to like get my tempo and my cadence of the things I publish or the things I do like.

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Patrick Campbell

How do you think about that in terms of campaigns and things like that?

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Waseem Daher

Yeah, So for the startup market, like it's actually comparatively easy for us because I'm basically writing content that I would want to read myself. So I have some cheat codes there. I think an industry that are less sort of like needed for me personally, that's where you really, really especially need to just spend a ton of time and customers to say, Well, look what are they asking?

00;18;14;02 - 00;18;34;02

Waseem Daher

What is top of mind for them? I'm like, What are your top three hair on fire problems? Can we produce something that helps you? Those things, even again, if that has nothing to do with literally what it is we do. So for example, we had a great blog post a while ago about like best practices for getting your make your first sales hire or like thinking about strategies for your for sales.

00;18;34;02 - 00;18;55;16

Waseem Daher

You know, it has nothing to do with bookkeeping or tax prep or budgeting or whatever, but the person who reads that is also probably the buyer for yeah, it's like it's the startup founder or it's the business owner. We we did a similar article for e-commerce companies about like how to think about what your KPIs are or like, you know, best practices and like some like so you start an e-commerce company one one here's what you need to know.

00;18;55;16 - 00;19;11;18

Waseem Daher

It's like I think we really try to pay attention to what our questions, our customers are actually asking. What are they looking for? How can we help solve one of their top three problems, even if the solution again, has very little to do with the specific thing that we do, because this is this is fairly top of funnel content, right?

00;19;11;18 - 00;19;22;09

Waseem Daher

We're trying to make you aware that we exist, that we know what we're talking about, that we have authority in your space. And then over time, you know, we about when it's time for you to actually buy something, hopefully we will be top of mind for you.

00;19;22;12 - 00;19;28;26

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. What's the cadence of this content like? You're doing something new every week. One big thing a month. Like how do you how do you think about that?

00;19;28;29 - 00;19;45;12

Waseem Daher

It's a mix of stuff. We have like posts that we try to publish space once a week. We have sort of maybe like a more premier or like featured piece of content, those 2 billion, the monthly cadence. We do a monthly webinar or event. So there's, there's a, you know, there's a content calendar that happens kind of better variety of spaces.

00;19;45;14 - 00;20;00;19

Patrick Campbell

And do you support a lot of that with like demand gen or, you know, ads and things like that? So is that stitching together a playbook? You have weekly plus a premier saying plus an event all that get supported by ads to kind of like fill the funnel is that pretty much the the funnel basically there?

00;20;00;22 - 00;20;16;24

Waseem Daher

That's exactly right. And I think very, very critically before you do anything, you have to understand the distribution plan. I mean, if you do anything, you should really have the brief who is this for? Like, why are we making this? What is the point of this thing? Is it about awareness? Is it about trying to actually drive conversion?

00;20;16;24 - 00;20;43;25

Waseem Daher

Like, you know, who is it for? What is the objective and how are we actually going to get it into the hands of folks? Is this okay? We the distribution plan is we're going to run ads on LinkedIn. Is the distribution plan like like how do we actually make sure that it once we produce this thing that is really good, that it actually gets into the hands of people where you get familiar on social I mean, email to our database or the sales reps going to use it as part of the sales process is like, the saddest thing is when you produce a really awesome piece of content or you have a good plan for

00;20;43;25 - 00;21;00;26

Waseem Daher

a really great event or whatever, but you haven't thought about how to get it into the world. And I was like, Well, why did you do all this work? We made this great thing like, it's not going to benefit anyone if they can't see it. So I recommend in general, as you think about like briefing a piece of content or an event or whatever you're going to do is like actually do that work backwards.

00;21;00;26 - 00;21;05;07

Waseem Daher

Like what is success look like? What are the metrics we're trying to do and how we actually can get the store front of people.

00;21;05;08 - 00;21;12;06

Patrick Campbell

What's like the standard distribution plan right now, let's say for one of your events are premier pieces of content on a monthly basis.

00;21;12;07 - 00;21;30;20

Waseem Daher

We'll do something else like almost on every channel, like we'll do paid ads, we'll post about it on LinkedIn and Twitter, will email to our database, will like train the sales team on it so they can possibly inject it or maybe it shows up in their email signature or like it is this like, you know, if we also it's actually good in the bar to produce something is like, it's not good.

00;21;30;20 - 00;21;40;23

Waseem Daher

We shouldn't release it. You know, there's a sort of like, let's try a couple different oh, we'll like pass it on to our partners to see if they want to promote it to their customer. Like, you know, there's a variety of kind of touch points we'll use here.

00;21;40;26 - 00;22;03;16

Patrick Campbell

That's cool. And so we have the premier piece of content, Brandy focus, maybe not directly tied to the product sometimes not even directly, not even tied to it at all. Those folks come in for the event or maybe to consume the piece of content. What happens from there? Like, you know, attribution is always tough, but like sales takes over like standard kind of inside sales model.

00;22;03;16 - 00;22;05;10

Patrick Campbell

Like what? What does that look like for you guys?

00;22;05;12 - 00;22;20;15

Waseem Daher

It is a contact. Like if you request a copy of our founder salary survey and you download it from our website and you're in Salesforce, we've tagged you. Okay, This is the campaign you came from. You're probably like, don't want a sales rep to call you up and be like, Go my pilot. You just it's a little bit too far.

00;22;20;16 - 00;22;40;13

Waseem Daher

Sure, it's fine. We know that we have that touch and so maybe we like put you on our nurture track email newsletter where once a month we email you useful stuff for founders and maybe will occasionally show you a LinkedIn or a Facebook iPad. And like we look for some hand raising behavior. Like if you do something that suggests that you want to talk to us, then cool, we'll reach out.

00;22;40;13 - 00;22;57;26

Waseem Daher

But if you don't, we don't like I don't want to create the association that like, Oh, you download this piece of content and now you're going to be like incestuous, obsessive. So yeah, it's like, like if you are not in the headspace to actually want to buy the thing or to evaluate a solution, it's just going to totally backfire.

00;22;57;26 - 00;23;13;20

Waseem Daher

If we're like, Hey, let's do a call next Tuesday to talk about accounting. It's like, Well, no, my top three problems right now are A, B, and C, and I'm not ready to think about this particular problem.

00;23;13;20 - 00;23;28;15

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, and it's kind of interesting when you think about like the other part of your framework was the expertise piece. Like the you know, you're talking to your doctor does that. I'm sure that comes in some of the brand aspects, even if it's not really related to the product, it's like, Oh, you get me, therefore I can trust you.

00;23;28;16 - 00;23;44;22

Patrick Campbell

Does a lot of that come in the sales process then? Because I'm sure that's where you're handling most of those objections. So what what's that kind of look like? Or maybe ask more broadly, assuming your kind of inner splicing some of this expertise stuff in the content, where else are you splicing that into to kind of the experience?

00;23;44;22 - 00;24;04;18

Waseem Daher

It's got to be everywhere. It's got to be in every touch, like it's got to be the website, it's got to be the initial call of the sales wrap. It's got to be the actual onboarding flow. Once you've purchased like at every point we really need to convey, you're in good hands. You made the right decision. We know we're talking about like that and it worked for you.

00;24;04;18 - 00;24;24;09

Waseem Daher

And here's a this is a little bit of a silly example. If you're buying, I don't know, a wireless router or like a computer and you're talking to a sales rep and like, you just like, don't get a really good vibe from the sales rep or maybe they're like sloppy on follow ups or whatever. You may still buy the thing and you're not going to assume that like it's going to work less well.

00;24;24;10 - 00;24;48;14

Waseem Daher

Like you're like, well, the computer is going to do what the computer does, or no matter who sold it to me, or it's, it's going to route the packets just as well. Whereas for pilot, if you talk to the sales rep and you kind of get the vibe, the like this person's know what they're talking about or it's not a very professional experience or the ball was dropped, you're assumption is like, Oh well, they must not be good at accounting either because again, you're not buying a piece of software, a piece of hardware from us, you're buying the pilot team is going to take care of me.

00;24;48;14 - 00;25;06;08

Waseem Daher

And so the stakes in many ways are actually much higher in the sales process because not only do we like have that knowledge and like there I talk tracked, if the experience doesn't feel good, the customer will assume not. Oh, the sales rep was bad, but the product is good and else you know, this company is actually not for me or they don't know what they're talking about.

00;25;06;08 - 00;25;23;20

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's got to be really complicated though, because obviously you guys have scaled considerably and I don't know how big your sales team is, but to be frank, there's a lot of really bad salespeople out there, and it's not because they're bad people necessarily. It's just like they've gotten really bad advice on how to sell. And we are selling something that's more advisory or trust based.

00;25;23;24 - 00;25;38;06

Patrick Campbell

The bar has to be much higher. And so has that been really complicated to, you know, and I'm making an assumption that you've hired a ton of salespeople. Is that is that been like really hard to like not only filter in the beginning, but also like enforce, you know, when you have that sales team selling?

00;25;38;09 - 00;25;55;05

Waseem Daher

I think the biggest challenge for we we have learned a lot about the profile of a person that is successful, a pilot in a sales role, and this is going to sound like a little arrogant or impolite, but like our sales team is just smarter than the average sales team. And I think they just the you have to be to do the role.

00;25;55;05 - 00;26;08;28

Waseem Daher

Well, it's an extremely consulting sale. It is very white glove. It is like if we don't think we can do it or we think we're doing a bad job, we just tell you that. And if we're not sure, we say we don't know and we're going to pull someone out on the next call to really get into the weeds with you.

00;26;08;28 - 00;26;30;23

Waseem Daher

And it is because it's just like the stakes are just too big and the stakes are really high. The sales process doesn't feel good. It impacts customer numbers for like the whole I'm we don't even get the sale. Or if we do it like heads, turn it off on the wrong foot, where the customer's going to assume that the service is not very good.

00;26;30;23 - 00;26;42;11

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, it's interesting. How do you go about filtering that? Obviously a little bit, I guess. And maybe, I guess like how do you identify I shouldn't say smart salesperson, but how do you identify a good consultative, advisory driven salesperson?

00;26;42;11 - 00;27;11;21

Waseem Daher

Well, I mean, ideally your interview process looks like your actual job in other words, I don't really like this kind of like tricky questions. It's just like, let's actually try to simulate the experience as much as we can. So like, Hey, here's the sample customer email you received. How would you respond? Or let's do a mock call. Or like, you know, there's a bunch of stuff we do kind of in the interview process and there's a bunch of stuff we do in a kind of like ramping and training process where there are sort of two profiles that we're very successful at kind of hiring from.

00;27;11;21 - 00;27;30;19

Waseem Daher

One is that kind of like classic tech seller where our job from a kind of a rapid ramping and training perspective is, okay, how do we teach you what you need to know about accounting so that you can talk about credibly? The second is a properly sort of call reformed accountant, which is like you were at one of the big four firms and you decided, Hey, actually I don't really like this job that much.

00;27;30;19 - 00;27;58;10

Waseem Daher

I actually don't like talking to people. I like the client facing part of their role and so they're you sort of have the accounting knowledge and then we say, fine, how do we train you up on the basics of, you know, executing this kind of Texas style sales process well? And so there are two parallel tracks. And I think we we look for a spike in, you know, ideally both, but certainly one of these areas I would rather have like, you know, really seasoned accountant who loves to talk to people but who has never used Salesforce before.

00;27;58;10 - 00;28;09;14

Waseem Daher

We can train you to be effective or I want to get the like very concentrated text seller who is smart and hungry. We can teach the basics of accounting so that they can also sell effectively. I think we've seen success on both of those profiles.

00;28;09;16 - 00;28;30;19

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's really interesting. So we I don't know if you know anything about our business, but we know we have a very similar like advisory driven sales and it's the smart salesperson aspect. I think it's something we struggle with because, you know, when you reviewed 100 people and again, it's not that they're not smart to be sure, sure word, it's just they're they're not wired for that consultative or like advisory driven, you know, sales.

00;28;30;19 - 00;28;33;04

Waseem Daher

But it's a different position. It's a different motion totally.

00;28;33;04 - 00;28;59;09

Patrick Campbell

And so it's just when you interview 185 of them are you know, 85 of them are more like featuring traditional sales motion. Let's say. It can get really frustrating. And so it gives me hope that you guys have a pretty large sales team that tends to go for this. I also really like you wrote an article in your substack about I can't remember what he wrote, what you said, but it's something like like an email can only have one objective, right?

00;28;59;09 - 00;29;14;11

Patrick Campbell

Like an email can only have one objective. And that's something that like we talk a lot about because what I've noticed is that someone who's a little more competitive advisor, he understands that the sale is a multi move game. And so it's like, I'm going to try to get this. Then the next thing I'm going to try to get So on and so forth.

00;29;14;11 - 00;29;36;13

Patrick Campbell

And whereas the kind of like kitchen sink sales folks, maybe a better way to say it, it's like, here's everything, you know, like under, you know, you in, you know, that type of a thing. It's more of a numbers game. So kind of when you look at this like the one thing when I was thinking about when you were talking about the consultative or advisor driven sales is like sometimes you do so well at the trust that the person doesn't really understand exactly what they're buying.

00;29;36;23 - 00;29;52;15

Patrick Campbell

And then it sets like a weird, ironic expectation where you're like, Oh, we didn't do anything wrong in the sales, but we actually had a really good sales process. But all of a sudden they're like angry, right? Do you ever maybe not angry, but do you ever run into that because it's so trusting? Like, tell us a little bit about.

00;29;52;15 - 00;30;10;27

Waseem Daher

Yes. I mean, I think one of the themes of our sales process, just echoing what you said in some cases has been like thoughtfully slow it down and just just let's make sure we understand what your problem is, what you're trying to solve. Let's make sure we've actually explained to you what it is we do and importantly, what it is we're not going to do or we can't do today.

00;30;10;27 - 00;30;28;21

Waseem Daher

And then once we're aligned on that and we price it correctly and all that stuff, then we should sign you up. I think there's one of the challenges we have again is like the buyer may or may not know a lot about accounting and sort of maybe what the typical firm would do or not do. So everyone shows up with kind of their own preconceptions about what it is that pilot is going to do for them.

00;30;28;29 - 00;30;46;09

Waseem Daher

And if those preconceptions don't match what is we actually do, that's a problem. Yeah, and that's a problem that's aggravated actually by like, Oh, well, I trust my sales rep and I even know what they're talking about and like they do. And one of the jobs is to make sure that you understand what it is you're buying so that we're both set up for success.

00;30;46;11 - 00;31;05;27

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, it's one of those things where the we ran into this where trust, they're like, Oh, I didn't know that this was what. So we're like, How do you not know that? Like, you know, But it's interesting. I think that that alignment that you said of kind of combining the brand that builds the trust as well as the expertise that clearly needs some mechanical explanation of what they're getting is so, so powerful.

00;31;06;00 - 00;31;18;06

Patrick Campbell

I know we're short on time. So couple of like quick, you know, kind of more personal questions. Sure. They're not actually that makes it weird. So let me and let me just ask, what was your first job ever and what did you learn from it?

00;31;18;06 - 00;31;23;14

Waseem Daher

Well, let's see. Are we talking about paid jobs or like what an internship can? Where do you want?

00;31;23;14 - 00;31;24;29

Patrick Campbell

Whenever you want, Whatever you want.

00;31;25;05 - 00;31;51;13

Waseem Daher

My first real job. I'm not going to count like shelving books at the library, which is like an unpaid thing I did for some summer. Or like, it was actually this was I guess it was like my it was senior year as before is after high school and college. And I actually got a little like a programing job at a tiny consultancy that was sort of in the town I grew up in and we worked on some like component of a larger sister was like some government contracting project.

00;31;51;13 - 00;32;14;05

Waseem Daher

What did I learn there? I think I really learned about like the importance of having a great team. Like it was this just like very small, tight knit group of folks where there was like real, I don't know, a devotion to the craft of like doing the job well. And I think one of the things that probably I did not realize explicitly there, but has been a through line and the stuff that I've done since then is like, your team matters.

00;32;14;05 - 00;32;29;06

Waseem Daher

So, so, so, so much. And I've said this in the past, it's like I would work on anything with like my co-founders or our team. We happened to be doing this particular thing. I think it's a good business and I'm excited for and like and stuff, but like, I actually almost like care more about the team than I do the product or the space.

00;32;29;08 - 00;32;32;19

Patrick Campbell

Got it. I like that. What did your parents do and what did you learn from them?

00;32;32;21 - 00;32;56;13

Waseem Daher

My parents mostly worked for the government. My dad started teaching Arabic at the university level, and then there's a part of the State Department where they basically teach diplomats foreign languages, and both my parents work there. Actually, that's cool. I think one of the interesting things about, like the folks who choose to become diplomats or to work in the Foreign Service, to work in the State Department is like almost in a self-selecting way.

00;32;56;13 - 00;33;14;07

Waseem Daher

It is a very outward looking like inclusive is maybe the right word, maybe not like environment, Like fundamentally, you're you're going to go and live in some totally different country with some totally different cultures and totally different language, completely different like expectations of how things are done. And like, you're signing up for that and you're signing up for it because you think it's interesting.

00;33;14;09 - 00;33;32;26

Waseem Daher

And so there is this certain amount of listen, and this is actually a thing I think about all the time at work. Like just because they don't do it our way doesn't mean that their way is worse. There are like there's more than one way to do it, right. And like, you know, there's a distinction between kind of lifestyles like taste and like, is this effective?

00;33;32;29 - 00;33;33;08

Waseem Daher

I like.

00;33;33;08 - 00;33;36;17

Patrick Campbell

That. Awesome. In where where can people find you and anything you want to promote.

00;33;37;01 - 00;33;55;01

Waseem Daher

Will you show me? An email was seen at PACOM. As you mentioned. I write a fair bit about startups and start things on Substack. So we're seeing that Substack NBC.com and then if you're a founder or a business owner or a business owner, obviously we'd love to help out on bookkeeping, tax payer, budgeting, forecasting. You can check us out at pilot dot com.

00;33;55;03 - 00;33;56;03

Patrick Campbell

Awesome. Thanks.

00;33;56;07 - 00;33;59;06

Waseem Daher

Of course. Thanks for having me.

00;33;59;06 - 00;34;21;10

Patrick Campbell

It's a huge shout out to Waseem for doing the podcast. Now you have what it takes to scale effectively and nail those first impressions today we talked about end to end ownership of a problem having a marketing led sales motion, how to nail your content distribution plan, applying TLC to every aspect of customer experience, and identifying a consultative, advisory driven salesperson.

00;34;22;01 - 00;34;39;18

Patrick Campbell

And if you want to support profit well in the show, you would greatly appreciate it if you left a five star review of the podcast or the equivalent rating. Wherever you listen and watch the podcast, Gods tend to like that type of thing. And hey, we like to appease the podcast gods. Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle.

00;34;39;18 - 00;34;47;15

Patrick Campbell

A podcast from Profile. Well Recur, the largest, fastest growing media network dedicated to the world of subscriptions.