How Fullfunnel Grew from $200K to $700K Projected Revenue with 4 People (Interview with CEO Andrei Zinkevich)

Introduction and What Fullfunnel Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Andrei Zinkevich. He's the founder of Fullfunnel. An ABM and demand generation training for b to b companies with high ACV and long sales cycle. He lives and breathes B2B marketing all the way since 2007 as the author of LinkedIn Content Marketing book. Andrei, you ready to take us to the top?

Andrei Zinkevich

00:17>> Yeah. Thanks a lot for inviting me again. Happy to chat with you.

Who Fullfunnel Serves: Enterprise B2B Clients

Nathan Latka

00:21You bet. So just to be clear, SaaS companies can hire you to help, like, basically spin up SDR reps and close deals?

Andrei Zinkevich

00:27>> Yes, that's correct. But more precisely to land enterprise deals.

Nathan Latka

00:32Enterprise. Okay. What does enterprise mean? Above what ACV?

Andrei Zinkevich

00:35>> Yeah. So five, six figures.

Nathan Latka

00:37Okay. Interesting. Five, six figures. And are there any brands you can talk about that you've that you're working with that are SaaS companies?

Client Segments and Average Contract Values

Andrei Zinkevich

00:45>> Yeah. I mean, I can't reveal, you know, existing customers because of NDA, but I can share some of the past clients happy, you know, to discuss, like, specific use cases. But generally speaking, a survey of our clients, we have two subsegments. The one is service based companies that are selling high ticket services, and average contract value is around 500 k, in between 1 500 to 1,000,000. And when it comes to b to b tech companies, usually,

01:17>> their ACV is in between $102,100 k.

How the ABM Engagement Process Works

Nathan Latka

01:21Mhmm. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. Now explain to me how the process works. If someone is listening right now that that has one customer paying $200 a year, they don't want to hire 30 sales reps to do this. They want to rely on you to help sell more $200,000 a year contracts. What would that look like?

Andrei Zinkevich

01:34>> Yeah. So, look, we have a very dedicated, like, very specific methodology. And we usually involve just two people, one marketer and one SDR to build ABM motion inside the organization. And why that way? Because other, you know, team members are running different operations. Sometimes something works for them. Sometimes it doesn't work. So the way how we usually start is we start with alignment where we involve executives, sales and marketing, and we start talking about the goals, the

02:06>> bottlenecks, the challenges they are currently facing, and where they want to be. Right? Setting up the realistic expectations. So the next step is we talk to sales and marketing, diving deep into marketing and sales processes, campaigns that they have done in the past, how the prospecting process looks like, how well they are satisfied with different, you know, funnel stages, And review this campaign's goal is not criticizing the teams, but basically understanding what can be done

02:36>> better, what should be fixed in their businesses. And based on our experience and based on our learnings, we create a customized plan for these companies. Now the next step is basically launch and pilot campaigns. One of the biggest mistakes I believe these companies are making if when they hear about new, you know, tactics strategy or whatever it is, ABM demand generation, they usually don't have skill set. But what they want to do is they want to

03:05>> launch a massive campaigns, you know, to impress executives or investors with the results. And usually, these campaigns suck. Why? Because they are heavily dependent on automation, on software, on different things, but the truth is that they skip lots of fundamental things like marketing message, talking to their customers to understand the buying process, how to influence the buying process. Right? All of these things that are really, really important. So this is the way how we start launching

03:35>> the campaigns. I

Nathan Latka

03:37But, Andrei, sorry. Just to just to jump in for a sec. So when someone hires you to do this, how do they pay you?

Andrei Zinkevich

03:44>> Yeah. So we usually have, like, two options. Option number one is payment per sprint or per project.

Nathan Latka

03:54Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this, we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

04:18your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

04:42get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

05:04not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

05:30going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second. But

05:52if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

Pricing Model: Pay Per Project vs. Pay Per SDR

Nathan Latka

06:18the interview. So So what what why not, like, pay per SDR?

Andrei Zinkevich

06:25>> Never consider this option for several reasons. Why? Because, as I said, initially, we start pilot campaign with just two people, one marketer and one SDR. Right? And in this case, basically, we'll make less money if we're considering, you know, your offering. So our goal is to build the momentum and build the trust and get the results fast. When it comes to the results, we usually focus on some leading indicators, right, that can tell us that we

06:52>> have traction and we can we can generate revenue with this campaign if we'll maintain it in the future. So the next stage is operationalization. And this is where we start bringing more people. So in this case, it might make sense to share or let's say, offer the this price and like you suggested that in

Nathan Latka

07:12the So, Andrei, when you say, sorry, pay per project, what how much are we talking? How do you define what the project is?

Typical Project Value and Entry Engagement

Andrei Zinkevich

07:17>> Yeah. So typical project value is around 50 k for our company.

Nathan Latka

07:22Okay. Well, yeah. But no one's gonna pay that unless they understand what it's for. So how do you define what the project is?

Andrei Zinkevich

07:27>> So this is why I'm saying that initially, we have a low ticket engagement, this marketing and sales alignment. Right? And plus audit and then road map. And so it's a two k activity. It's just transparent price. We have fixed price model. It's two weeks engagement. And based on this, we create a customized program. So every single company knows what exactly we are going to do.

Current Client Capacity and Booking Status

Nathan Latka

07:49And how many of those companies are you working with today?

Andrei Zinkevich

07:52>> With how many companies? Yeah. So we don't take yeah. Considering our capacity, we don't take more than eight clients. And whenever we have, let's say, empty space, so we just involve a new client. So in our case, for now, we are fully booked until the end of q two of the next year.

2022 Revenue Projection and 2021 Actuals

Nathan Latka

08:13Mhmm. Okay. And so what does that mean? How much revenue will you guys do this year, you think?

Andrei Zinkevich

08:18>> So this year, I believe, will be close to I mean, projected revenues should be around 700 k.

Nathan Latka

08:26And what what did you do last year?

Andrei Zinkevich

08:29>> Last year, it was when we chatted with you, it was 200.

Nathan Latka

08:33Yeah. That's really impressive growth. How many folks are now full time on your team?

Team Size and Structure

Andrei Zinkevich

08:37>> So two full time people, two part time.

Nathan Latka

08:40Two. Okay. So four so your team's smaller than last time. You had six last time.

Andrei Zinkevich

08:44>> Yeah. Because then at that time, we were we were working on some SaaS project that we paused just because we got traction with this with this business and that's why changed?

Nathan Latka

08:56What how did you, you know, what how did you start getting traction with this business? You changed your pricing or your model or what?

How Fullfunnel Got Traction and Grew

Andrei Zinkevich

09:01>> Just basically the evolution. So we doubled down on demand generation last year and especially in United States and Canada got some fairly good traction. And basically, the evolution of clients are more challenging projects, more advanced clients. And I I mentioned with your typical price, but with some of these clients, we have retainer. Right? And that's diff different story. It's usually customized price. And so

09:29>> this is how we ended up where we are now.

Nathan Latka

09:31Mhmm. Okay. This makes sense. So four people, $700,000 in revenue this year. I mean, how do you service eight customers that with four people? I guess one marketer and one salesperson can work up with eight clients at a time?

Revenue Breakdown Across Three Tiers

Andrei Zinkevich

09:42>> Not exactly. So when it comes to consulting business, basically, let's split this revenue. So when it comes to this because we have three tiers of clients. Right? Tier one clients, these are our consulting clients and we generate from consulting. If, like, let's say considering this 700, I believe 500 k more or less would come from consultant, then we have what we launched this year for our tier two clients. So basically, for smaller tier teams, so called

10:14>> live boot camps. These are four, six weeks, you know, group training programs on specific activity like ABM or demand generation. So we expect 150 k, and around 50 k will come from on demand courses.

Plans to Reinvest in SaaS Product

Nathan Latka

10:32Mhmm. Mhmm. Got it. On demand. Okay. Got it. On demand. So people can, use on demand courses. Do you put them in an element like a learning management system where people can pay to put their team members through it?

Andrei Zinkevich

10:42>> Exactly.

Nathan Latka

10:43Okay. So you figured a way to sort of scale consulting in a high margin way?

Andrei Zinkevich

10:46>> Yeah. Exactly. And what we are planning to do just to scale our operations and basically diversify the revenue is because we got lots I mean, our profitability helps us to accumulate some cash that we can, again, reinvest in the SaaS product that we started to work last year. Right? And we chat with you about this. So next year, we are going to basically double down on it. Double down if if it will be validated that

11:12>> if it will get traction. So that's that's the point and add a new line and slowly moving towards SaaS business model from consulting.

Nathan Latka

11:23That's Yeah. I mean, you're going the opposite way. You had a SaaS company at your agency. You shut it down because the agents started taking off, but you still have that DNA of a SaaS business. Do you think you'll ever sort of double down and refocus on that next year, 2023?

Andrei Zinkevich

11:34>> Yeah. We hope to do the because I mean, while what was our problem? We didn't dedicate enough time, and that's this this is one of the biggest mistake I realized we've made last year. So we didn't dedicate enough time, you know, to basically generate traction for that SaaS product. And it also, you know, impacted the way how we communicated with the development team, etcetera. So now based on the feedback and, of course, we feel market much

12:01>> better and we speak with every single customer launched. As you know, we have our own community. We got lots of feedback how this SaaS product might look like. So we have much better idea what to sell and more or less what would what we are doing now. Again, we are creating a better version of this new product. And until the end of the year, we want to have, like, first paying customers for the beta. Of course,

12:26>> collecting the testimonials, the use cases so we can, you know, release it next year and start scaling it.

Bootstrapped and No Plans to Raise

Nathan Latka

12:32Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. That all makes sense. Well, we're certainly rooting for you. Now you guys are still bootstrapped. Right? Or have you raised capital?

Andrei Zinkevich

12:38>> Yeah. We are bootstrapped.

Nathan Latka

12:40I love that. Any plans to raise or you wanna stay bootstrapped?

Andrei Zinkevich

12:44>> At current point, we just prefer to be bootstrapped.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

12:47Alright, Andrei. I love that. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Andrei Zinkevich

12:51>> Favorite book,

12:54>> if when it comes to business, it's 80/20 by Richard Koch as well, 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall. When it comes to nonfiction, I love the cyberpunk books by Neal Stephenson. So he's like yeah. He's crazy guy.

Nathan Latka

13:13Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Andrei Zinkevich

13:18>> So I left I told last year, I'm following you. I'm following Casey Craig. I'm from Craig. He's really a fantastic guy. So but not that much. I must have if if I must have following folks from my marketing space. We can call Chris Walker, for example, from Refine Labs. He is also CEO, but still he's b two b marketer.

Nathan Latka

13:38Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business?

Andrei Zinkevich

13:43>> Good question. So I would say probably something that is related to my marketing space. I love a new marketing automation software, Encharge. I switched from ActiveCampaign, and this software is dope. I would say that they have a bright future if they will continue to grow the product the right way. That would be a fantastic marketing automation software.

Nathan Latka

14:05Number four. How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Andrei Zinkevich

14:13>> Good question. If I can can honestly just think about this.

14:21>> If I if I can skip it, let's let's

Nathan Latka

14:24We'll skip it. Number last one here.

Andrei Zinkevich

14:25>> What's your situation? Married, single, kids?

14:28>> Yes. Married, two kids, two sons.

Advice: Start Personal Branding Early

Nathan Latka

14:31And I think you're, what, 35 now. Right? Yeah. Very cool. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Andrei Zinkevich

14:39>> I recently wrote post about 18 things I wish I had learned when I was 20. But if if I would share just one thing, start the personal branding sync and building the audience as fast as possible and getting read from corporation world and start my own business as fast as possible.

Nathan Latka

15:01Guys, fullfunnel.io is an agency that helps you scale your sales and your outbound quickly. They did $200,000 in revenue last year, on track this year to more than triple that to $700,000 in revenue and with a smaller team. So revenue per employee went up because they got more efficient. They're recording their systems. They're putting in a learning management system, which you can pay to put your team members through, or you can pay full funnel directly to

15:20run that ABM and spin up that ABM campaign for you. Working with about eight customers right now booked through Q1 of twenty twenty three. You can also listen to Andrei and his co founder on September 1 in Austin, Texas at our event, Founder500. We hope to see you guys there. And Andrei, thanks for taking us to the top.

Andrei Zinkevich

15:35>> Yeah. And thanks a lot for inviting us again. Super excited about your conference. And again, happy to chat with you.

Nathan Latka

15:44One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live, the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM Central.

16:09Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big fundraise,

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16:53for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got

17:12to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments.

Andrei Zinkevich

17:19>> See you.