How SalesScreen Is Targeting $10M ARR With a Culture of Efficiency and Gamification (Interview with CEO Sindre Haaland)

Introduction and Background on Sindre Haaland

Nathan Latka

00:00So good to be here. I'm sitting around Norwegian bike games with a time between Upper West Side here in New York and Norway. I have actually a pretty famous name, brother, called Haaland, if you ever watch soccer. He's actually from the same place as well as Stalingrad. So funny enough, we're not related. So unfortunately, I don't have his talents. But I'm gonna go over, obviously, you know, the heading is about efficiency in the company. And we're

Three Pillars of Efficiency: Aligning Vectors, Bite-Sizing Goals, Motivation

Nathan Latka

00:29gonna talk about three things that has really made it for us. Number one, being you know, Darmesh from CTO coined this, but aligning vectors. It's really really important when you're few people, and you're trying to do a lot, to make sure that there's a top level strategy that everyone is working towards, and that we're working in the same direction. Secondly, and now we're getting more into sales development space, but in general, when you have business outcomes

00:55that you're seeking to to get to and outcomes you wanna drive. Let's say, we wanna surpass a $10,000,000 threshold. Okay. That's great. But how are you gonna get there? Like, really bite sizing it, breaking it down is important. And finally, once you know what actions each individual is has to take, it's all about motivation. How do you get the team rallied out and and make those vectors even stronger? So those are some of the things that

01:21we're gonna go through. Just to set like, salesscreen in a bit of a context, we should be around $8,000,000 this year. We're a sales gamification platform. So we service tons of different inside sales teams and make their sales work really fun and engaging. So you know, think about having your sales team really dialing those extra 10 dice every day to get to their outcomes even quicker. So how do you do that? You kinda make it fun

SalesScreen Origins: Bootstrap Roots and First Fundraise in 2018

Nathan Latka

01:51and exciting, you engage them in competition, you visualize their data, and yada yada. Not important. The point is, we actually started out as a bootstrap company. So this is ingrained in my DNA, and it happened all the way back in 2011, while the salesscreen platform came out in 2014. And it wasn't until 2018 I raised money for the first time, and that's when I heard I was really terrible at spending money. So it took me a

02:18year before I actually started to to have the appetite to burn cash, But once we started to do, obviously, yeah, you know, growth becomes easier when you're burning money for sure. But now the market's turned again, and suddenly it's sexy to be efficient. We did as many others, a right sizing of the team, and we're back to our roots. And we've learned quite a lot on the way. So that's a little bit about us. So I'm

Top-Level Strategy and the Importance of Alignment

Nathan Latka

02:43just gonna start out with the most important topic, because we, as operators, as founders, and as CEOs, we really need to have a strategy. We need to have a plan. If you're gonna grow as a company and you're gonna grow efficiently, you need to have some sort of a vision on how that's gonna happen. So you have that top level plan. Great. Now, you know, we need to set their expectations. We need to communicate it in

03:08a way that everyone follows and really create transparency around it, and then make sure that progress is being checked in on regularly, not only for the CEO and exec team, but for everyone. So obviously, I would say that if you get people aligned and going down that path, that's really when you're gonna see the maximum impact. Some people might not, you know, do it at the same speed or or really nail this, but as long as

03:36they go in the same direction, that's when you're gonna move the needle as a company. An OKR framework is obviously one that's really utilized to make this happen, and we've done that as well for many years. This is a screenshot of our Notion implementation. The problem for me with OKR framework was the missing you know, there was something missing from it. We set high level objectives. We had the key results. There was stretching them. Everyone knew

OKR Framework and the Missing Piece: Monthly Initiatives

Nathan Latka

04:01about it. We talked about it. We checked in on progress. But it was still not really aligning everyone. And when people are not aligned, they're you know, you're gonna do many things that's not valuable to the company overall. So what practicode for us was actually implementing a concept of initiatives. And I've heard actually several speakers already talk to this. So if you're a founder or an operator in a smaller SaaS with a smaller team, you might

04:31not have felt the pain yet, but as you grow, it becomes more and more important to take those key results and break it into monthly initiatives with key deliverables. So for me this has been huge. When we actually implemented this concept of initiatives, then we made sure from a top level, I knew that every key result that we were working on actually had something concrete happening. And if there was no initiatives in the company on a

05:01key result, how are you gonna get to that one? You're not gonna get to that goal. You're not gonna get to that result unless something changes. Like that is the definition of insanity. So then you're gonna have to challenge the one that owns that key result because each should be owned by an executive. Why are we not doing any initiatives? What's going on? You need to gather more feedback from teams. You need to to promote your

05:27key result So that next month when we get together as an executive team, you bring me at least three initiatives that's gonna influence this key result. Because if not, we're never gonna reach it. And then you obviously, you cannot use that meeting amongst executives to align on your top priorities, and then you will see that you have coverage. And suddenly, then you can go back to the company and tell exactly, okay, you know, this is where

05:56we're at on the year long objective of the company. This is how we progress on the key results that we set, and this is the initiatives that we completed last month. This is what we're gonna do next month. So when you're talking to someone else, you know exactly what their key initiatives are, what they're working on, and what's important for that. So you can help them, but you can also much more easily say, no, I don't

Bite-Sizing Goals: Breaking Outcomes into Individual Actions

Nathan Latka

06:17have to pass you right now. These are the key initiatives that we're working on, and I have to complete them by the end of the month. If not, it's on you. And this is huge. So when you have that from the top, then you can start to be a bit more tactical on the manager level, on the VP level. So alright, we have monthly initiatives with deliverables, we have key results that we're aiming for, and often

06:40they are outcomes. So how do you break them down and distill it into something that the individual contributors can actually action on? This, I call it bite sizing goals, and it's really about like trading a funnel of activity that leads up to that outcome in the end. So I'm gonna give you an example. We work with tons of sales development teams and, you know, SDRs, what's building pipeline, especially in the SaaS industry. I thought that was

07:08relevant. So I gathered some data from some of our clients to figure out, you know, okay, obviously they wanna create five sales qualified leads every month. How do they do that? You know? That's the outcome that you wanna go for. Well, mostly you need to have some discovery calls. Alright. How do you do that? Well, okay. You have different touch points with them. You call them. You send emails to them. You link and connect with them.

07:34Alright. So, you know, how do you get that going? Where do you start? Well, you start by adding prospects to a sequence. So you need to figure out the context when you need accounts into prospecting, add them to a sequence that generates tasks, and you need to complete them regularly and build a good habit. So now we actually have actions that can be influenced on the IC level to get to that pipeline goal that we've been

Data from Enterprise SaaS Clients: Calls and Prospects per Meeting

Nathan Latka

07:58talking about. Actually, how many contacts do you need to add every day? How many calls do you need to make every day to get those meetings? We checked with, like, five different enterprise level SaaS teams. So keep in mind, these have a pretty strong brand, which makes it a bit simpler. I'm not gonna lie. But the solution or the answer here is 58. So 58 prospects added to the sequence was necessary to get a meeting and

08:25outreach. And also, we needed to do at least 33 cold call attempts to get a meeting. Actually, I think this number should be much higher, so I was a bit surprised that it was that low. We have tons of customers that are small start ups, and they have seventy, eighty, 90 calls to get a meeting. That's not normal. But now that you know the actions that you need to take to get to that goal, the outcome

08:47that we're driving towards, obviously it makes things a lot simpler. Because I've talked to people who's doing 10 cold calls

08:56a week or 50, like you're never gonna get to your target. You need to know what is the actions that we need to take in order to get there. And once you do that, we're starting to really recognize the fact that as a small team, like as an efficient team, we need to put in the work. This is not easy. And you're creating that benchmark and those goals, and it's becoming very transparent to our organization. Everyone

09:22sees what everyone's working on, and you bite sized the outcomes into key actions that you're gonna take, and then you're getting to the final point. Like, once you have the quantity unlocked, what about the quality? Like I hear this all the time. Like, well 70 calls, 33 calls, 20 calls, doesn't matter. Like one call is enough if excellent quality, right? Well, I would say you need a balance. So you need to have quantity and you need

09:51to have quality. It's not maintainable to give you 300 phone calls a day, like that's not gonna be good for you, so no, it's not only about quantity. But once you start to have that funnel of actions that then IC can influence, so you can see differences in the team and you can coach them if they're struggling. So if some someone is making a 100 cold calls and getting those meetings, great. If another person needs to

Motivation as the Final Piece of the Efficiency Puzzle

Nathan Latka

10:17take 200, there's something wrong in their way that you communicate with clients. So then you know what you need to coach them on. And ultimately, now that you kind of distill down the top level goals into key results and initiatives that you're working on, then you figured out in the manager or VP level what is the key actions that our team needs to take to to actually deliver on these initiatives, then it becomes all about motivation.

10:44That's the final piece. Because then it's more execution. Right? You've done all the heavy planning. You've set your goals. You have key results that you're working towards. There is initiatives being done every month, and people are working in the same direction. You're heading in the same direction. The individuals, know what actions they need to take on a recurring basis to influence them. Alright, it's gonna be tough. Some days you might not hit your fall minimums of

11:14just using that as an example because of x y z reason. Well, you know, that's probably not good enough. And when you're falling behind, you're gonna also have a problem. How do I like get my team to to catch up? And this is happening constantly. Right? Speed is a weapon. We've heard that several times today. So motivation actually is really important that you keep that center of your people strategy to be efficient in the team. So

11:42some things that you can do. I would always say that you need to think about the individuals that you have in the team. And it starts with visualization in the center. So I talked about the OKR framework and all of that, but really it's about visualizing the work that people are putting in. And once you do that, you create accountability. People know what everyone is working on, and they know if they deliver or they fail to

Visualization, Competitions, and Celebrating Small Wins

Nathan Latka

12:09deliver. So by just visualizing what people are doing, you create accountability and create a high performing type of environment. But if you're falling behind, you can stir up some competitions. You can have some spiffs. You can try to throw in something fun and get people to give that extra level of energy to get back on course. And once you do, make sure you reward them and celebrate them and talk about them Because it's not only about

12:37the money that you're pocketing, it's also about the pats on the back and being seen and being recognized and being feeling like you're a part of the team. And then finally I talked about coaching, but you also need to celebrate the small things. And I've heard several people talk about that too. And if not able to do that as a CEO today, it's probably because you don't have the tools that enables you to see the smaller

12:58wins. And there's multiple tools that can help you do that. I'm not gonna talk about the tools per se, but the fact is that individuals are motivated differently. Some people wanna climb on top of a leaderboard, other people wanna get that pat on the back. They wanna be seen by their colleagues because they're socialites. Or, you know, they wanna explore and build their careers. You need to figure out what is people's motivation, and you need to

13:24set that in a structure that actually makes them deliver on those key actions, delivers the initiatives that falls onto that key results, and ultimately makes you reach your objectives and overarching goal. So, know, in this claim is, I've talked about three concepts that really has helped us at this stage in growth of PR right now, to gain efficiency as a company. And that is, you know, nobody is surplus. Nobody's, you really need to deliver, and you

13:55need to deliver at high pace and multiple areas if you're gonna gain efficiency. So it starts with a top level strategy of the company, and you really need to make sure everyone is working in that direction. And if you're failing to deliver as a company then, well then the CEO's strategy has failed. Secondly, really break down your outcomes and objectives. It doesn't help to be constantly talking about we need to break $10,000,000 AR, or we need

Q&A: How SalesScreen Integrates with CRMs

Nathan Latka

14:26to deliver on this objective if people don't understand what that actually means in work for them. And finally, once they knew know what they're supposed to do all the time, then it's all about motivation. Motivation. Just keep them on their toes and fired up and rallied to execute and perform high level. So that's it for me. If there's any questions, I'm happy to answer. Thanks, Arun.

Sindre Haaland

14:51>> Cool, Sindre. We have a couple minutes. Any questions for Sindre?

Nathan Latka

14:58Great. Yeah. So does your application does SalesSpring integrate into a CRM to pull the data and do all that stuff? How do you integrate it to the sales teams to to pull the data and to motivate?

15:12Yes. An example that I showed, that was actually the data from Outreach. So we typically integrate the CRMs for engagement tools. And we're trying to capture the actions that individuals can take by themselves and really gamify that. Because once you're gamifying outcomes, like close to one deal, like that's recognition, that's not gamification. You need to gamify the actions that people need to take consistently to get to the outcome. That's where you can actually change people's behaviors.

15:44But yes, we do that.

Sindre Haaland

15:46>> Any other questions?

Nathan Latka

15:49Yeah. Well, I think we'll start off. What's your thoughts on how much you expose as far as sales data, you know, with other you know, if you have big sales teams and, like, leaderboards of these are the top reps in this region, region, you know, because some companies keep those blocked off. They don't wanna see that. Any thoughts on on exposing that data to all the sales teams so everyone can see how they're performing?

Q&A: Transparency, Leaderboards, and Engaging All Performers

Nathan Latka

16:14Yeah. I think Ray Dalio talked about radical transparency, and I wanna say heard about him and his work. It's spot on. You know, I'm I'm very big advocate and fan of transparency in an organization. And I've had so many customers being afraid to showcase like a full leader board because they don't wanna, you know, step up someone's motivation. There's ways you can work around that. You can show top 50% of the team. You know, then it's

16:41fine. You're motivating the killers, but let's not just focus on those top 2% performer. You also need to to, you know, have components that engage with the middle and core performers. So when you're running a competition, not only, you know, reward the top one, two, three performers, try to make it into a lottery for instance, so that every contribution counts. It gives you a ticket, and then you spin the wheel or you do a raffle. Suddenly,

17:07as long as you do something, can win, and that's gonna engage a much bigger portion of the team. So we kinda need to think a bit about the the psychological profiles in the company and what makes them tick as well.

Sindre Haaland

17:18>> That is the perfect transition to our next speaker because we're gonna be talking about inspiring versus embarrassing and creating psychological safety. So thank you, Sindre.

Nathan Latka

17:29Perfect. Thank you, all.