Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to b two B revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping software executives stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing in their industry. Let's get into the show.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hi, welcome to b two B revenue acceleration. My name is Katrina Ho and I'm here today with Andy Binkley. He is the co founder of Turio. How are you doing today, Andy?
[00:00:23] Speaker C: I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for having me, Kat, and I really appreciate it. I'm excited to chat.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Very interesting topic that we've got to discuss today. So we are going to be talking about educating top of funnel buyers in the b two b landscape, which is something I'm quite passionate about because we've seen a lot of changes going on recently on that. So before we actually dive in and get started, I just wanted to ask you to introduce yourself to our audience and just talk us a little bit more about yourself and your company. Torio.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. So yes, I'm Andy Binkley. I'm founder of CMO at Torio Live in Atlanta, Georgia, with my wife Taylor. We were just chatting earlier about this, but we're also expecting another addition here very soon to the family. So really excited for that. And then, yeah, torial also kind of a baby in and of itself. It's only been around for a few years. So, torial, we're an interactive demo platform. So we specialize basically in two products. One is interactive demos, obviously, and the other product pretty new. It's called demo centers. So interactive demos are a way for your companies to let their buyers, site, visitors, prospects, anything like that, interact with their product and try their product without having to build like a self serve motion. Right. Which is very resource intensive, not always the right strategy. And then our new product, demo centers, those are basically personalized, more personalized demos where buyers can actually build them themselves based on questions and topics you provide them. And it's a way for buyers to go deeper into specific features, personas, use cases, anything, all in one place. And that level of personalization is what drives much higher intent and reveals a deeper layer of insights, such as what they're interested in, what they care about, things like that. So that's me and that's torial.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Cool. No, that makes sense. I think there is a lot of change we've seen in terms of buyer education. Right? Like back in the days, everybody that wanted to learn more about a product, they had to jump on a call with the sales team. There was a long discovery call and then only, I don't know, after two, three calls, somebody would get access to a demo. Right. And I think also the way people were going through the buyer's journey was very different. And I think nowadays we see a lot of buyers that are just much more educated when they actually inquire to speak to salesperson. They know everything about your product. So they've spoken to peers, they've asked colleagues, they've gone on your website, they've gone on your g two, whatever. All of those profiles, once they jump on a call with a salesperson, it's almost just down to knowing how much it costs. Right. So what sort of changes have you seen in that landscape? And I guess obviously your product must have been built based on that trend of changing and buyers being much more self sufficient. I'd love to understand from you what were the key drivers of this change.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: One thing that stands out that I think a lot of people forget is how much more software and tech is out there now. It's become like an attention circus.
Everyone online is battling for attention more than ever. And getting attention online is really hard.
So your message, your brand, your positioning, everything has to be so good and on the nose. Otherwise people are just, they're going to ignore you. Right? They're going to ignore you and you're not going to get an opportunity to sell your product. Like outbound responses dropping like crazy. Inbound is getting really expensive. People are cutting software.
We aren't buying left and right like we were a few years ago during the golden age of SaaS. It's gotten really hard to convey value in such a distracting world. And what I think is driving this are two things. What I just mentioned, which was like, there's just so much tech out there and the barrier to entry is so low for technology, right. It's not like you're building a product and you have to be, you can ship something and test it and ship again. So software has just become everywhere. Right. The other thing that I think is honestly probably the biggest thing is that a lot of that tech, probably now more of that tech is self serve is PLG. Right. Because when PLG happened, anyone that had been exposed to it immediately changed their perspective about b two b, buying about software. Right. Like what you were just saying.
You mean I don't have to talk to sales, I don't have to get a demo, I don't have to sit on a call for 60 minutes for you to just ask me questions and me to dig in. I can pay you directly from your website.
That's like that. Holy cow. Moment when openview started making PLG, like it proliferated it across the space. That just made things ten times easier. And knowing that I don't have to go through an evaluation process with dozens of vendors, I can just see if this one works. That PLG movement has just shaped so much of the buying trends that we've seen unfold over the past few years. Right. That and the fact that everything's gone pretty much digital and remote. So the problem that I feel like this is introduced is that so many industries, products, companies actually don't make sense for PLG, or at least they don't yet. Right. Their audience might be really low tech, they might not have the resources to build it. It might be too big of a lift for the risk. Right. And so a lot of companies that aren't product led are actually kind of struggling to figure out what is the right formula for taking their product to market in this new, almost 100% digital world. So I think the PLG landscape, even though people talk about how you need to do it, you need to do it, you need to do it. But all of that talk is causing these buyers, the b two b world, to really kind of change their perception around how they want to buy software and how we need to take our software to market.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Do you feel there's still resistance from some companies? We always have a debate about having or not having pricing on our website, for example, and often the sales folks are very resistant to that because like, oh, no, we have to prove the value first, and then we can tell you how much it costs and stuff. And I fully get that. But when I put myself in the buyer's shoes, and I think that's why PlG has always been so successful, is because people just feel more self sufficient around it, right. And they can get the answers at the time that they want. So what's your thought about displaying pricing? I guess that kind of ties in with it.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: Yeah, honestly, full transparency. We don't have pricing on our website. We've got our plans, we've got our different modules that we offer, and we don't have a price tacked onto it. We're getting there, and I will say it's like, call it an excuse, call it whatever. In technology, it's a blessing and it's a curse. At the same time is that pricing in SaaS can be whatever you want it to be.
It can be $5,000 a month, one month. And then all of a sudden, if you're an early stage company, you can change it to $10,000 a month or $200 a month the next month. I'll be honest, it's not great for the consumer, it's not super fair. But the SaaS industry is able to get away with such flexible, fluid, dynamic pricing that half the time people don't put it on their website because it's like, well, our pricing is going to change in a month or it's going to change in two months. And it creates all these operational headaches when you have to go back and update other people's pricing. So it's better to just keep it locked down. And that's a bad excuse, but I think that is actually the truth. When it comes to SaaS pricing, the smaller, and you don't see that as much with smaller companies that are doing more month to month, maybe 1020, $30 a month or per user pricing, it's easier because that price often stays very close, it stays very static, and the fluctuations don't make that big of a difference. So it's a lot easier for those PLG, more self served companies to offer that sort of model. But you just don't see it in mid market enterprise companies because the pricing is just so custom, it's so all over the place, it's dynamic, it fluctuates pretty frequently. And so that's my hypothesis for why a lot of the more mid market enterprise companies with higher acvs aren't as proactive about putting their price on their website. But I think it's getting there. I've seen a few, I haven't seen many. I've seen a few high ASP companies start to put their pricing on their website in more of a modular fashion. I think it's getting there. But again, I don't know. Time will tell when it actually happens. I think people are just going to be able to figure out how much price is through AI and community, and the pricing pitch is kind of going to be like, whatever, because it's SaaS, everything's negotiable, right? You could put $10,000 on your website, but a sales rep is like, yeah, but I know that I can get it down to 8000, so I don't want to scare them away with price. And there's just so much psychology into it and it's kind of annoying. But again, it's a blessing and a curse of the SaaS industry.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, fair enough. And I guess what you mentioned there with mid market and enterprise, where things are very customizable and they have to be tailored and stuff. So I get that.
But I agree, it's a bit of a debate, because sometimes I don't know, if you're buying a house, you want to know if you can afford it, right? So instead of speaking to somebody, sometimes it would be so much easier to actually filter out leads that wouldn't be able to afford you. So it would kind of save people's time. But anyway, I guess that's a different discussion here.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: It's funny you say that though, because I almost wish there was a way to compare a piece of software from an analogy perspective to a house. Because if I look at a house, I know how expensive it's going to be, right, based on where it's located, how big it is, a couple of other factors I can say, okay, this is a $500,000 house, it's out of my range, I'm going to move on versus software.
You can't get a clue as to how much a piece of software is.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: Going to cost, right?
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Because there may be so many add ons, it may be actually more enterprise or more SMB or than you think. There's so much unknown. I can't go to a website and make that comparison and say, this looks like a $50,000 software. It's out of my budget, I should move on. I don't know. You have to back channel.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: No, exactly.
[00:10:59] Speaker C: Network.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: And sometimes it can go the other way around. I remember it was an advice cycle within an agency, and I thought they were like crazy expensive. And then when I spoke to them, I was like, oh, this is actually quite affordable. But I think in a way it's a good thing that sometimes it's better for you to look expensive from the outside and then people to think, oh, actually we can work with them. But on the other hand, they probably should charge more than. Because if that's the perception that people.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Have, then yes, pricing, the psychology of pricing is just one of the more fascinating things too, because you could have the exact same product and charge twice as much. If you have two different companies that give the exact same thing. One's $1,000 a month, the other one's $10,000 a month. The $10,000 a month customers might see tremendously more value from it because they're spending $10,000 a month. So they're investing so much more time into it, and they think there's the perception of it versus something that's maybe a few hundred dollars a month or something like that. It's like kind of sits on the shelf.
It's a low value product for us because it's so cheap. Right?
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, coming back to our top of funnel education conversation, then, what advice would you give businesses that are looking to enhance that b to b buyer journey through education and really closing that gap at the top of the funnel? Like what are the strategies that companies should work on to make sure they educate the customers enough so that they feel compelled to buy the solution or get in touch with them?
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of things, but honestly, I'll talk about this one thing, and this one thing is a big thing and that is the website. I feel like people need to invest more in their website. For example, this is just a ballpark, but if you're generating, say, 30% or more of your business from inbound, from your website, then I think that you should invest more in your website. You should be very focused and dedicated to your website because you think about, okay, if 30% is coming from inbound, then take into account all the additional website touch points that are happening throughout the sales cycle from other channels. Right, events outbound, like people don't send outbound and then respond to your outbound and then never go to your website. Right. The website is just the most critical touch point that happens at the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom. People are constantly coming to your website to learn, to relearn, to learn some more. When new stakeholders come into the deal, they go to the website.
It's unavoidable and we're in the b to b space and a lot of people don't put a lot of love into their website, to be completely honest. But the website is like, it really is your number one marketing asset. But I think it's also your number one sales asset too. It's where demand is captured, but I really think it's where it's created. Right. Like bringing someone to your website is pretty easy. I can pay, I can spend money. I can build up a nice niche of SEO content. I can post across communities. If you want to get out there and bring people to your website, you can do that. I mean, we're a small company at Torio. We do very little marketing, but we still generate several thousand hits a month just from referral traffic and a little bit of paid and being on LinkedIn and all that stuff. So it's pretty easy to bring traffic to your website. But most marketers and sales teams, they hate their website. They're either redoing it, they're getting ready to redo it. They're thinking about redoing it because it's been twelve months and it's time for new messaging or whatever. So when I say invest in the website, I don't mean like really tiny little conversion optimization tactics, right? That's fine. Those should be happening in the background. Things like button color, CTA, copy hero images, all that stuff is fine. It's important to test that rapidly. But like in the background, right. It shouldn't necessarily be a core focus. I think people need to really invest in the bigger things, right, videos, but short form and long form videos, right? Like little snippets here and there. But also, if people are really interested in your product, give them the opportunity to watch 510 15 minutes videos if they're going to, right. If they're going to do that, that's a high expression of intent and it's important to be able to cater to those super interested individuals. Right. Video is a huge thing and you can do it, you can do pretty easily. But also expanding on your core pages and your product pages. You don't have to link to everything, you don't have to create this massive mega navigation that you link to everything. But make sure that all your product pages, and if there's a way to go deeper into your product pages, create sub pages, but create as many pages. Again, this is my opinion, but create as many pages as you can. Break them out into very niche topics, categories. A page for every Persona, for every use case, for every industry. If there's a way to create another page for something, do it right. And again, don't necessarily link to everything from your main nav. Put it within the flow of how people are consuming content within your page because you don't know what's going to be the best driver of performance you might think it is, but then all of a sudden you've got all these pages and you notice that they're all gravitating towards this one singular page. And then all of a sudden there's a bunch of SEO organic traffic coming to it. You may rediscover a new product opportunity, a new niche, a new ICP, something, right? There's good things can happen when you just have more opportunities to capture an audience. And the pushback that I tend to get is like, well, that sounds great, but that sounds going to take forever, right? And for me, it's always been being worried about design resources.
I don't know if you're familiar, but there's a few tools out there now we use tool called Pickle, which is basically. It's called design pickle. Yeah, design pickle. And they're basically, you outsource them. They're a bunch of designers, and you get unlimited designs and you just tell them what you're looking for, right. And it's kind of a platform, so as opposed to going like the freelance route, and it's usually a little bit more expensive, I'll be honest. This is $1,000 a month for unlimited designs. And I'm like, hell yeah. So I use it all the time for just one off design stuff. So if design resources are an issue, there's tools and there's companies out there like that that will definitely help. And it's worked pretty well for us. So, yeah, whenever it comes to the b to b tech world, I feel like you should do three things, and that's show your product as much as possible, right? With videos and interactive demos. Be direct about features and value props.
Cut all the fluffy bs that we marketers love to add to our website and just be direct. And, I mean, I talked to this product marketer. You've probably heard him. He's really, well, Anthony Pierre on LinkedIn, and he talks about features over benefits, right? And it's just like, whoa. That's just completely the opposite of what everyone in this world thinks about, right? But at the same time, most people don't know how to communicate benefits or they get way too high level. They're like, drive more revenue or increase your conversions, and everyone's like, great. Everyone in the world is saying the same thing. So niche down and be really direct and specific about your features and your value props, don't neglect your benefits, but be very specific about what it is that you offer. And if something can be drilled down even more within your messaging, do it. Try to get as granular as possible. And if you're like, okay, well, but we do multiple things, then I go back to what I previously talked about, and it's like, create different pages on your website for those different things, right? Don't try to bucket everything into one. And that's the second thing. And then third thing is, like I said, just get as niche as you possibly can, right? Use cases, features, personas, industries. Get as niche as you possibly can with the website. And I think from there, you'll start to see a lot of positive things happen because of how well that will educate your buyers.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. It's very interesting what you say about going rich, because I think that's also a way to break it down for the buyers, what's the value and what's in it for them. Right. And I agree with you as well. Lots of times you see a lot of fluff and just people taking it too high level to the benefits. And we actually went through a similar challenge here because you were always saying, like, we help companies accelerate pipeline and revenue, but what do you actually do? And I go, we're an outsourced SDR company, which doesn't sound any glamorous, right? But once we say that, I'm like, okay, I get you now I know where to fit you in.
And then it's almost like people need to be able to put you in a box or in a category or something. And I think with tools like G two and Gartner clearance sites and all of those directories, which, by the way, are great also for generate leads and also for, obviously, customer advocacy and things like that, I think there is so much of that culture of customer proof when people go into these tools to kind of figure out what's out there and validate the business that really putting you into a box and putting in a category is so important. So, yeah, that's why I like what you said about being quite natured about, because you will be able to then address the pain points that they're trying to solve within their industry, within their Persona.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Very interesting category. And categorization of products is a whole nother thing, right? Like you entering a category, are you creating your own category? Are you piggybacking off of another category that creates sort of adjacent category? How expensive is that category? Right? Like, are you don't want to get into a category that's super PLG and seen as a cheaper category versus vice versa. It's tough to do. And in our case, the category kind of just unfolded, right? Because it was very direct, it was very obvious. Like, these are automated demos. These are interactive demos. And so that category just kind of unfolded, and there's a lot of players in the space, and it was just like everything was interactive demo. And so the category just kind of created itself, right? It was very obvious. And we've gone back and forth between, should we try and go into this category? It's a whole thing, but it is important to, even if you are creating a category, still tie yourself to some adjacent category, because like you're saying people, even with interactive demos, a lot of people didn't get it. We went through a phase where people thought, oh, this is like Pendo, this is like Walkme, the inapp adoption platforms, where they do little guided tours inside the application. So the first year we struggled with people thinking we were in that category because interactive demos weren't a thing yet. Right. No one really knew what they were, how they worked. So we were getting kind of pinned into that category, and it took probably at least a year or so before the actual interactive demo category kind of went off on its own. And there were enough players to justify G two and Gartner creating a category. So it takes time. And if you're going to create an actual category and be the leader, and if it's only going to be like a few players, then you got to spend a lot of money. You got to spend a lot of money building that movement, building that category, because otherwise the market is going to put you in a category that you probably don't want to be in. And that category is just going to crush your positioning and your messaging and your pricing and packaging. So if you're very dead set on creating a category and that's a new category, then yeah, you want to kind of anchor to a category, but you got to spend a lot of money just pushing that category and that movement out to the wild. And I think ABM, the terminus $0.06 demand bases of the world are a good example of ABM was not a thing. And then they just spent a ton of money in the early days building that category and that movement, and now it is a thing. Right. But through the process, yeah, but also.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: ABM isn't just a tech platform. Isn't it? That's the thing. Sometimes the vendors end up kind of taking over as if, like, okay, if you want to do ABM, you need a platform.
No, ABM is much more than that, isn't that? Anyway, Andy, that will take us to other conversation. So when we talk about bio education, what sort of KPIs and metrics should marketers be looking for to understand how well they are educating their buyers and how can they measure it?
[00:23:37] Speaker C: I mean, buyer education is very broad, right? There's not a good metric out there when it comes to measuring buyer education. But honestly, for me, it's a pretty easy answer because the biggest metrics that are impacted by poor education are website conversion rates and deal cycles. Honestly, everything's going to be impacted by good buyer education or bad buyer education. You're going to feel that. I see the biggest impact happening with website conversion rates and deal cycles, especially again in the digital world. Right? Conversion rates, they're obviously easier to measure. Like with a b testing, you can get away with measuring how well you're converting on your website with a b testing, assuming you're driving enough traffic. Otherwise you may need to do more qualitative looks with tools like pop jar or things like that. They're easier to measure on a b testing and then deal cycles. Deal cycles can be a little trickier. I haven't cracked the code. I don't know who's cracked the code on being able to measure the impact of deal cycles in a more controlled ab style, but we send out interactive demos and demo centers all the time and we track the activity within them. Right. So if you're actually sending out things that people are engaging with and are important, and you're able to track that engagement, the fact that people are engaging with ours, to us, tells me that it's doing a good job of educating. Now, will it impact the sales cycle? We think that it will. We'll measure it over time. But there's so many things that impact sell cycle, right? There's so many things that impact it. But when we see people engaging with the content that we're sending out, we believe that it's doing a good job of educating. Right. And again, I haven't cracked the code on figuring out what the best metrics are to determine if the content stuff we're sending out is doing a great job of educating. I do feel like conversion rates are a really strong one to measure against. But again, deal cycles are so important to shave down in today's world where if we're sending out a bunch of content, in our case interactive demos and demo centers, if people are engaging with them and going through them, and we can see that, then we believe that it's doing a good job, at least from an education perspective.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about that is, I mean, we are a service business, so there isn't something like a demo that we could demonstrate. But I'm sure for tech vendors, that's an interesting one. And one thing I was thinking as well that could be interesting is I think the sales cycles are just becoming more complex in the sense of having more people involved. Right. So often you've got the person you're speaking to, but they also need to sell internally what it is that they're trying to buy. And I guess having something like an interactive demo is interesting for you to then go and demonstrate to the wider team, because there's normally, I don't know, they say it's about eleven people on average involved in larger deals and stuff, which is a whole lot of so many people, isn't it? So I guess it kind of makes it a bit easier for your champion to also help yourself.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a big one.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. It's good for top of funnel because you need to make sure that people actually have enough interest to go and want to talk to you more. But I guess it also have influence on the more bottom or middle of the bottom of the funnel when it comes to actually convincing peers and getting everybody in the kind of buyer committee, shall we say.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you only get about 5% of a buyer's time throughout the entire deal cycle. And if you've got a bunch of people on the committee, then it goes without saying that they are pitching on your behalf. They are the internal account executive at their company, right? So they need to be enabled, they need to be empowered and giving them their own demos to demo. The greater team is a lot more efficient than figuring out how to run another two or three demos for the next three people that enter the deal and the next three people that enter the deal. So, yeah, it creates a lot of efficiencies there.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Talking a bit about the future, what do you think would be the big trends in this b two b buyer education space there, and what it is that businesses should prepare for?
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, the obvious one is AI. Right?
That one's a little bit more of an easy answer there, I think, because I think people are going to get to the point, even websites where you just input your questions, have a conversation with an interface, and then the interface is going to give you the answers that you want. Right. Just like chat GBT does now, that's going to continue to extend into other platforms, into the website even. It already kind of is. So in terms of getting educated, AI is going to be a huge factor in that. From a less AI, more of a conversation human. I think a lot of the conversations are going to continue, but even more so take place digitally as well. So I know sellers aren't going to like it as much because they're not going to be able to do the face to face or the zoom to zoom. But I think it will definitely increase their volume and they'll close deals faster knowing that they have the infrastructure in place to run communication and conversations through digital channels, versus having to get on demos every once a week for 30 minutes to an hour for those longer deal cycles, for things to run more synchronously through digital platform. And there's tools out there that are at the cutting edge of helping with that. But I would not be surprised if in the future, almost 95% of an entire deal cycle and communication is done through some sort of human conversation digitally, not live and then AI at the same time. Right. We're going to figure out ways to run demos, like through the website, through an AI bot. Live but not live. I think the whole schedule a demo and it's a week out, that sort of thing. It's going to be a little bit more on the fly ad hoc, like, oh, I'm ready for a demo now. So I'm going to be able to get a demo now. And that may be live, that may be somewhat with a wrapper. I don't know, there's something there where it's just going to be more and more and more digital and yeah, I think we're doing a pretty good job of preparing for it, but I think it's just going to continue to become more rampant in the coming years.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah, we use a tool on our website called Chilipipe. I don't know if you're familiar with them. Yeah, it's an inbound router and they actually have a feature now that you can request to speak to a salesperson there and then. And it's pretty cool. I mean, we haven't been using it yet because I think sometimes sales folks are a bit resistant. Oh, I need to prepare for the call and things like that. But I reckon companies that adopt that will have pretty interesting results because it's kind of, you've got the person there, don't lose them.
But definitely there will be elements of AI and automation coming through.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Yeah, we're going to figure it out.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Right, Andy, we are coming to the end of our episode today, so thank you so much for coming on. If anybody wants to learn more about Turio or wants to learn more about b two b bio education, what's the best way to connect with you and get in touch?
[00:31:07] Speaker C: Yeah, head over to the website torial.com tourial and then hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm on there pretty frequently, so if you want to check out torial, let me know. If you just want to talk b to b business like Kat and I are doing today. Happy to connect.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Brilliant. All right, well, we're going to make all the links available as well.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much, Andy. That was good fun. Thank you for your insights and the conversation and appreciate you being on the show.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you. It was awesome. We unpacked a lot of things, so I appreciate it.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: You've listening to b two b revenue acceleration. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until.
