What’s up PartnerUP?!
Today we have Braydan Young from Sendoso on the podcast to talk about the sending economy.
We all know that partnerships are built on trust, but finding ways to establish that trust is not always easy.
The mass-produced swag, auto-respond messages, and lack of personalization don’t do the trick when you want to establish deep trust.
You have to show people that they can trust you by doing more than they expected.
Read the Sendoso feature.
Never miss an episode by subscribing to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re a visual person, sub to our YouTube, and see the full recording of the episode.
Share the episode with your commentary on LinkedIn and hash #partnerup #partnerhacker. We love to hear your thoughts on each episode, and would love to comment and share back!
SUBSCRIBE & LISTEN ON:
- Apple
- Spotify
- Or literally, anywhere you get your podcasts. Seriously. Ask Alexa: “Alexa, play "PartnerUp the Partnerships Podcast” and magic…
Transcript:
Jared Fuller 00:11
partner up. We're live here with the PAL again, Isaac Morehouse versus me just kind of taking over last week. Supernote if you didn't catch that episode, lots of fun. And then we got our buddy here. Braden young for his second appearance. What's up? Braden, welcome to partner
Braydan Young 00:29
second appearance. Good to be
Isaac Morehouse 00:30
here. Yeah, Jared,
Braydan Young 00:32
you don't have a hat on
Isaac Morehouse 00:33
Jared, you accused me of being more prepared than you've ever seen me for the show. But the truth is, I usually I usually scratch out some bullet points of ideas of topics, questions. And I usually just don't share them with you. And I was like, Well, why don't I share with Jared? Because then we end up having we both repeat. And so I shared them and you're like, Whoa, look at all this preparation. So now I'm concerned about my reputation. Like prior to this, what did you think I was doing just showing up drunk, you know,
Braydan Young 01:08
just showing up and just talking for a while.
Isaac Morehouse 01:11
I mean, that works to Braden, the last time you were on the show, of course, I was not here at that time it was I looked at the date, it was like 10 months ago. And the time the title was about your your title. The title of the show was about your title of Chief partner officer. And you said you hope this started a trend you hoped would catch on? Well, it has at least in one place, because sitting before you is the chief ecosystem Officer of partner hacker in Jared fuller right here.
Braydan Young 01:42
I think ecosystems are way better term than just chief. I think that that just sounds better. You know, because he get like the CEO, as the acronym which is far, far superior to CPU.
Jared Fuller 01:53
This is how Isaac and I make decisions. We we have general guardrails of like how we operate like what would and what wouldn't be okay. It's like, it's great. And you get it working with Chris like being co founders, like that's, it's either works or it doesn't like if you really have to really work. It's like, there's commitments and stuff. But then there's like, the 90%, where it's like, that's just easy. This is one of those things where like, I just put it on a presentation, like my keynote is Supernote and Isaac's like, oh, I guess it's Jared Seidel. Now.
Braydan Young 02:22
There's like so in in Slack internally, it still says like Braden young, just I build desks and order laptops, because that's what I did for the first like, two or three years we were in business was I literally, I would order like 10 desks at a time from IKEA and build those. And then and on the first day of hire, be like we're walking to the Apple store and buy a laptop. So I just, it's still in there because I just haven't changed
Isaac Morehouse 02:45
desk assembly is like an underappreciated. I went through this with with myself to a smaller scale. But in I was helping my brother and his company, when they went from like 20 to 200 employees over a very short period. They had basically like this company, automatic at the time, I think it was just a Kickstarter, and now it's like a full blown company and have the sit to stand desks. And it was like, his chief of staff at one point, literally all he did was assembled. It was just desk desk assembly, getting rid of the cardboard from the shipping containers, you know, it's a underappreciated.
Braydan Young 03:19
I know, and you know, you have prime market fit when you're IKEA, and you ordered like 20 desks and like eight teams show up and you're like, Who do I go to? To tell them they're missing two desks? Like, call this number like no one answers ever. And you're like, What am I supposed to do? And then like a year goes by and you order more from IKEA. And you're like, I don't know where else to go to get these things. And so you just keep going back to the same place to pay 180 bucks for a desk and just, they're like, yeah, it's your only choice.
Jared Fuller 03:46
I feel like a great deal of discomfort. If part of your onboarding plan, the company that I'm asking your first day is not assembling your own desk. Like, I'm like, the company's gotten too big. If that's not in your first day task of like, I haven't felt comfortable since that's been the case where it's like, okay, there's new employees starting Alright, they're building their own desk, right? They're not. Who's Who Wait a second. Who are we trying to build that person's desk?
Braydan Young 04:12
Yeah. It's like, it's like once the onboarding moves on from like, oh, like so your first day, you're just gonna shadow all day? Because it sounds like Oh, is that mean? Basically just look at my calendar and jump on any call you see, and I'll just introduce you. And that's onboarding. And after that for a couple hours, you're off to the races. I like, totally. What
Isaac Morehouse 04:32
we you guys ended your last combo. So I figured we should follow up on this. And Jared said, Oh, we're gonna have to have you back on to to see how your partner operating model played out. So what can we get an update from from where things were left almost a year ago. You were kind of like, Hey, this is sort of experimental. Don't know what's going to happen. Give us the catch us up to speed.
Braydan Young 04:58
Yeah, so we grew Whoo, get out of law. So what we found was that we were having a lot of conversations with companies that were like, hey, like we can can we get your API or like, like, we have an API, can you build an integration towards us or vice versa? And our conversations with technical really fast. So we had this guy that were, I worked with him as Francoise and we ended up moving him over to the product team, because he understood the API side. And then he was spending his entire day chatting with a new integration. And we would build why it was important, why would it pull him more leads? Why this, like, why the sales team wanted it. And so it just made more sense to have him be like our Advocate on the product side to help influence the roadmap. So like that happened, which was new, we also hired someone new to help.
Jared Fuller 05:40
Real quick, I want to share the importance in like, you know, like an ecosystem maturity kind of model, like having that be a dedicated product function was that the first partnerships dedicated function in product? Or was that just specific to this,
Braydan Young 05:55
that was the first one dedicated impro. I mean, because like we had, it was all kind of mixed up. So you had like a product roadmap where you were working on an integration, you might be like, we're gonna plug into Salesforce. And Salesforce is like, that's cool, we don't care. But like, it's a little different. When you're like, Oh, we're gonna plug into a smaller company that we know, we can go and join sell together. And so like, that was an actual real partnership. And so it took a little more influence with the product team to like to convince them why this needed to be on the roadmap. And like we could have meetings in. But once we had like an advocate there, it was better than just like going to the product team every time and talking to the integration team being like, we really want to plug in the axe because it's gonna bring us a lot of deals are like, Well, I have Salesforce to do and dynamics to do and all those things. Like, I'll get those done, and then I'll move on to that one. So it was like, how can we make this just more fluid to make it easier for companies to plug into us and have somebody who's actually on the product team who could actually represent us on the roadmap and the meetings that partnerships can't be
Jared Fuller 06:51
in? Okay. I'm about to go off right here. First off, great job like everyone listening, let's give some dosa and Braden a round of applause. Because I love that story. I absolutely love that story. Because I was just going off earlier today on Adam Michalsky podcast about how if anyone hires like I had a partner right now, and like they're siloed, only into like the CRO, I can tell you for a fact that you've made the wrong hire. Why? Because that thing that you just talked about, that's never going to it's so hard to make sales have like a corollary, corollary dedicated headcount inside of product like No, but it's very common for partner. And I think that's something like where you're like, oh, man, I'm siloed in sales as a partner leader. That's why you really have to advocate to get out and get wider to be able to touch product as well.
Braydan Young 07:41
Yeah, I mean, I think in product, they're not in those conversations. And so like, if you're having a conversation with whoever it might be, and they're like, Hey, we have, we're asked about all the time, but how we can do gifting, and you guys would plug it in perfectly here, like you give that to product in production, like, Okay, I'm getting this ask and I'm getting asked to improve my Salesforce integration, like most of our customers, like it's, you get, you get on a tear list pretty fast. And like, you're not in those meetings that typically have the conversation there. And, yes, you have to barter and trade and figure out times and like make sure that that actually is because we build integrations that haven't gone anywhere. But I think that like you have to have to have somebody there, which we learned pretty quickly. Well,
Jared Fuller 08:18
I have the capacity companies, that's when I knew I'm like okay, you please fire me now please, please fire me was whenever there was fully dedicated product and integration teams and like, my work here is done. Yeah, work here is done. Like that's such an amazing milestone for any great SAS companies to like be able to have that you start to have a dedicated at least have that PM, that advocate that's kind of making sure there's more communal tacit knowledge amongst the rest of the org. And then boom, it becomes so much easier to forecast and stack resources behind as a like a team.
Braydan Young 08:49
I love it, man. Oh, yeah, man. And and also like that that team is much better at data than we were. So they can look at things like, Hey, we've lost X number of deals, because we don't have a dynamics integration. Like can we push that up on the roadmap to get that done? So that was one side of it. The other side of it was we brought a guy named Cory Schneider in who's just running our agency side because we we messed up with agencies the first round, like we thought to ourselves, like, we'll bring on as many as possible, and we'll ask for referrals. And then like, we'll walk everything back to him. And like that was like the model. And they didn't, they're like, cool. Like, you haven't brought me any deals like why would I bring you deals? And so the thought there now is like, how can we make it more of a two way street. So it was like, hey, like you're putting those two in place agencies are going to help do that. And they're going to be able to use billable hours to basically run the dose or for the company that working for like we didn't have good training there or enablement. Support isn't an amazing job to kind of build that out as a new motion for us because even he's have a ton of influence and power and we just
Jared Fuller 09:47
present fastconnect on how to do this quickly was awesome, good. Like watching it live and just kind of like, Hey, here's how to stand this up quickly. I thought, Cory in terms of like, here's the 90 day plan to stand up like something Quick Yeah, right, like get moving and like move that agency program. I thought that was one of the best examples I've seen. And so shout out, Cory.
Braydan Young 10:07
Yeah, I mean, like, there's I think that like, that's an and then we moved the entire team where I, we were under marketing, we moved it to now we're just under Chris, who's my co founder CEO. Because it made more sense,
Isaac Morehouse 10:20
Brandon. Yeah, Brandon Braden.
Braydan Young 10:24
It's a work
Jared Fuller 10:25
somehow I was about to give Isaac a kick this off was like in the last episode, here's exactly how you ended. And like, that was such a well researched question.
Isaac Morehouse 10:38
I also flubbed up by not wearing my son Dosso hat today,
Braydan Young 10:43
I wasn't gonna say anything, you
Isaac Morehouse 10:44
know, totally good dad hat. But so I want to zoom out and talk a little bit more about the category that send doses because I find this to be really interesting. So we have this Sunday story. And when this episode airs, I think your story about send Oso and the category you're playing in will have just dropped. So definitely go check that out on partner hacker.com. But the set the sending economy, and maybe that's nested in something broader, maybe that's like a subset of the attention economy, right. The the battle for attention in sending and gifting I think is maybe a subset of that I, I want to sort of just start from a very high level, like, why is sending so powerful? And how did you discover that?
Braydan Young 11:35
I think so there's, it's, it wouldn't, maybe you could put it under the umbrella of trying to get attention. But there's really, there's only a handful of ways you can get in front of a customer or a prospect or an employee. So there's email, which we've used since what the 70s, there's phone call, which is even older than that. And then there's every day when I walked my mailbox, and I grabbed something or when FedEx shows up and they drop something off on my front porch. And most companies have used the mail like throughout the years, like with postcards with things that weren't targeted. So like, I would get something and like, I'd be like, who sent me this? Or maybe you get a postcard and you're like, I don't even know what like my Windows cleaned. And so like, I think that mail has been around forever. But the two things that haven't been done with a mail is like when it hasn't been super, super personalized, it hasn't been tracked. So the big thing is like if I receive something, and I'm someone who's trying to sell me, do I go to the website after? Do I go and download a case study after so like, I think like that's where the epiphany went off, were like, always sent things out. I've never tracked this, how can we make it easy for companies who want to track physical mail. The other side of it would the sending world there's an ecosystem is trying to build a relationship with a prospect or with an employee or a vendor. And no matter what you say, I think gifting is insanely powerful. It brings a power of reciprocity into it. And it helps to build a relationship as you can't always see that person face to face, or he can watch them once a year. And I think like that, that alone helps companies really figured out like you know, who they're close with and who they want to sell with. I think especially right now, with the economy, we're in a lot of companies that are gonna make cuts, so they can like what software can I cut. And if I'm very close to a certain customer, it's a bit harder to cut me because I relationship there. And so I think that's an important thing, especially right now and the day and age where a
Isaac Morehouse 13:24
man i One of the things that I find so interesting about it is like, I always liked it. I think we've talked about this on this show before Jared, I always think in sort of like economic terms, the concept of costly signals, which is something also in nature, right, the idea of like a deer with huge antlers, it's really inefficient, but it's a way to signal how fit the deer is right? If he can, if he can survive lugging these things around, then he must be pretty strong. And you know, that's how they attract mates. And this, this happens in all kinds of areas of the economy, right, like back in the day is why banks would have marble floors to signal, hey, we're here to stay, we're not going to take your money and run. We've invested in this infrastructure, right? So like a costly signal, you've invested something upfront, which means I know if it was worth it for you to put in the time and energy to do this. There's more to backup what you're saying versus just telling me our products Great buy our product, right? That's easy. That's cheap. So like, I'm very fascinated in this in especially in this sort of like marriage of the benefits of the digital world where information can be proliferated. So, so cheap, right, it's almost free then. So that's great. It has all kinds of advantages digitization, optimization, massive scale and all kinds of efficiencies. But the value it's so cheap now that like you have to find a way to convey that you're in it for the long haul. You have to find costly signals. And I think this combination of like physical gifts, especially I know you guys do a lot of E gifts as well. And I want to ask you about kind of the relative effectiveness of knows but have like the old school physical gift combined with the trackability, the traceability, the systemization and scale of a CRM. There's just kind of like a little bit of magic there. I think of like the it's like the best of the human in the digital. It's like Iron Man, right? He's still a guy, but he's amplified by technology. It's not like the horrible story of technology, drowning us all out. And we're all getting tired and overwhelmed. This is like the combination in some way. Do you know what I mean?
Braydan Young 15:31
Yeah, I mean, like I Yes, I think a lot of the time. And before I typically hop on like a demo with a sales rep, I'll usually go to where that company is. And I'll request a demo, because I want to see like, what the experience is, with me just going in and like, I'll use like my gmail address, which a lot of executives do, and like, and so I'll just see, like, what that experience is, and so like that right away triggers, like when I begin to interact with that brand. So I want to say what the email is that I get, how long does it take to have someone follow up with me? Like, if I get an email saying, hey, like, pick a time use this calendar link? And I'm like, okay, like, I guess I can do that. But like, are they gonna send me like an E gift for coffee, like, while I'm doing it, like, hey, like, awesome, you pick the demo, it's next week on Wednesday. In the meantime, here's a case study, you should read, here's a coffee to Starbucks, you can enjoy why you essentially get ready for this demo, there's so many things you're trying to do when you're interacting with a brand that are digital, or and then like most of my life, most of our lives are posted on social like LinkedIn and Facebook, I have a very thin line between them now. So because I'm posting those things, you kind of get a sense around like, you know, hey, I just got back from Pat leave, I be into certain things. And so like, you can use that to begin to build a relationship right off the bat as an AE, or as an SDR, which I think is very important in the world that we live in. Because I don't want to buy from a robot. If I'm having a conversation with a demo, and it's a half an hour conversation, I want to have a relationship with that person, especially if I take a second phone call. So I think that kind of just takes it even further in terms of how you're interacting with the brand.
Isaac Morehouse 17:02
We you froze for just a second there at the end, I think it will probably come through. Okay. Okay, on the final recording, but do you? What do you see? I'm really curious about this. I know that physical is probably some of the impacts of the physical side, the physical gifts are harder to quantify and measure. But what do you see the difference? So like, each coffee gift cards that somebody gets emailed? Versus a hat, or some some muffins or something physical that shows up? Like what what are the what are the big differences there, and where is one more effective, and whereas the other more effective?
Braydan Young 17:43
I think it's all about timing. So if it's about the things you're sending, so like sending sporadic random things is not the best way to use a platform like ours or any of our competitors. Like the best way to use a platform like ours is there's a certain flow that you might be having with the customer. So if it's a demo plan, like I think it's a good spot for an E gift. If it's a contract sent. I think it's a really good spot for an E gift. If I talked about on a phone call How I love the 40 Niners are the best thing on the planet. I'm going to the game this Sunday. I know it's not football season, but like hey, like let's say like, that's what's going on. That's another that's a perfect idea for something physical, to be like, hey, like, have a good time with the game, etc. I just had a kid. Like that's something I like, if I'm a customer already, I can send something. So it has there has to be a good reason like why you send something I send hats, I send a lot of them because they're very simple things to send with a handwritten note. And typically I do them after phone calls, just so you kind of remember me like, hey, like I had a good time talking to Braden he gave me a hat, even if it's not worn as something that's a nice hat. Another thing to look at is like maybe this person is very into sustainability. And you probably want to do something that's a little more on the green side that could you send something in carbon, offset it? Could you do a charity type thing. So I think there's tons of different reasons why you want to send but doing things just to do things is not the best way to do it. It's it's good to keep it structured as to where you are in the flow of the customer. If it's an HR send, it's like hey, what's going on with that employee? So I think those are important things
Isaac Morehouse 19:13
to keep. I heard you talking smack about conference swag. Last Last time we chatted, tell me why conference swag is usually like what what works and what doesn't work there. Right. Like, is it? Is it usually just a waste? Yeah,
Braydan Young 19:29
I mean, I think that like it's your brand and your logo and putting that on something that's like a cheap plastic thing. Even though we did that for so long. I would say that today we're in a different time. And that's not something that you should do unless it matches your like, like putting a logo on a squeeze ball at a conference. I mean, like those just get thrown away. So like how can you do something that's a little more sustainable at a conference like why not have a swag store set up at your booth or someone wants something? You can collect their email address and then when they go home a week later a package throws up. Like that's a killer follow up. Or, you know, like if you're handing something out there, like if they're pens or things like that, like maybe. But I think the idea of giving out cheap plastic things at conferences need to go away. I just think it's unsustainable. And I and I'm not a fan of it when it comes to the world of people walking away with gigantic swag bags, and then going back to their hotel room and figuring out what they want and don't want the same. Something's making the suitcase some things down. So I just think
Isaac Morehouse 20:26
so the way the way it goes for me is I, I grab some random stuff, because when I get home, I know my kids are going to be like, How come you never take us on your trips? How can we have all this fun? I'm like, Okay, well, you wouldn't have had fun, trust me. Here's some chapstick. Here's some swag, right? And I and I get like a frisbee or whatever. And then within like, a couple of days, I'm, you know, sweeping it up off of their floor and throwing it in the garbage. Yeah, you know, something. But I love that idea. You mentioned of having a store that's so brilliant, the personalization of like, let's say you have your booth and you're like, hey, sign up and pick out pick out which, which coffee roast you want us to send you when you get home? Or something, you know, and that way you kind of have this ability and you feel like I mean, if I went to a booth and they had that I'm literally like shopping on like, on an iPad at their booth, I would feel like oh my gosh, if I'm going to like make them send me something, I at least owe them a conversation or my contact information, you know, versus just grabbing a handful of candy and run. Yeah,
Braydan Young 21:26
you know, it's funny, I when we we weren't good about this. In the past, we've seen it more and more in like big companies like Facebook did this forever ago when my wife was there as they used to not put their logo on swag. Or if they did, it was really small. And so like so they'd be like, hey, like, here's like a north face jacket, which I haven't been wearing where the massive logo but here's one of the logos like on the wrist and just says like, like FB right here. And I was when I used to see those I was like, that's weird. Like, why are they not want to have their logo all over it? It's because we're HR sense. And please don't really want that, like this one like and so I think that's kind of a cool thing we're seeing in the space where that happens more and more aware, in especially for internal type sense, which is kind of interesting, like the big branded shirts with a huge massive logo that no one knows what it is outside of the tech bubble we live in, is kind of going away, which I think is kind of a good thing, because I feel like a lot of those are wasted sometimes.
Isaac Morehouse 22:16
Well, it's funny, I know, Jared, you're chomping at the bit where you just I have to get in this quick story because because braided made me think of it. So long ago, I used to work in the state legislature in Michigan, I was like a legislative aide. And I was working for a guy who just happened to become the chairman of the Appropriations Committee when I was working for him. So now suddenly, you know, it's budget season. And so I was like, kind of like managing the schedules and stuff for everybody on the higher education subcommittee during the time of year when they're deciding how much money these public universities are going to get from the state that year. And so I'm basically like a, like just this this aid like schedule or whatever, just grunt grunt work stuff. And I had just started this job. And my wife was going to have our first child. And so I was out for like, a couple of weeks. When I came back on my desk, there was 15 gift bags, all little gift bags there from lobbyists representing each of the 15 public universities, I don't know if all 15 of them but almost like 12 or 13 of them. And they all had and I didn't even know any of these lobbyists. I didn't know that they knew me or knew my name, let alone that my wife was having a child, let alone that it was a boy. And somehow they figured all this out. And but here's here's where it went wrong. Right? They all had like little onesies from like, you know, Northern Michigan University, Eastern Michigan University, University, whatever. But this is this is college logos. I'm a big Michigan State Spartans fan. I'm not putting my kid in a Wolverine onesie, you know, like, this isn't gonna work on me. If anything, it felt it felt a little creepy. And it was like, well, we're not going to use that. Why would I want that? So it was like, they, on the one hand, I was flattered. I felt like I was a big deal. On the other hand, it was like the gift just missed the mark. So anyway, I thought, yeah,
Braydan Young 24:09
I mean, a way better send to be like, Hey, here's 50 bucks for that restaurant next to your house. Take your like, go out. Good goes to sleep. Right? I
Isaac Morehouse 24:18
had this bad kid. I think that was making $40,000 a year or something. 35 So yeah, I would have flipped out over a $5 gift card.
Jared Fuller 24:28
Not hitting the right place at the right time. It's particularly evident and I think it's, um, I was gonna jump in about some of the stuff we saw drift, you know, DC, and et over drift. They have the best wi game on the planet. Like every time DC would give a talk there would inevitably be like a dozen or dozens of people. I'm not kidding. After the talk talking to him about his attire. His his kicks, his sneaks like his jackets like that. Has he had these custom like drift jackets. That looks like they looked like I mean, two or $3,000 jackets, not like a Patagonia, but like these custom design things like like one offs, there was only for the founders. And it was like, What? What a weird approach, but then everyone was trying to get stuff like that. So like the one off special DC or et edition pieces of swag. I mean, driftwood announced, like, hey, we have 50 of these in there to immediately be 50 comments on the LinkedIn posts within four minutes.
Braydan Young 25:29
So you could approach I mean, it's kind of like the, the, what's that store called, like the one hundreds where there's like, 100, or something produced and like, that's, that's it. And like, we're like when like or people when they join companies and they have like the what like number employee, they were like those ones, I think that like, that's an interesting approach where it's like, hey, like, these are more exclusive, because I value you and like we're building a relationship there. I think that's important for internal and external.
Isaac Morehouse 25:49
And you can with that exclusivity, you can sort of, you can sort of, it's like a marketing hack to write where so with my previous company crash, when we first got started, we had we call them founding Crashers, we had gone out and recruited like 100 people to be beta testers of the product of the you know, thing and to do various things for us. And but we basically use that as like a hype machine, right? So we sent each of them a little box, like a custom box, and it had like, like, we were doing video resume, so I had a box of matches in there that said, burn your resume, we might have broken some laws sending natural by US Mail, but
Braydan Young 26:30
don't come at me to this worst things that he has.
Isaac Morehouse 26:33
But we also sent one of those boxes to each of our investors. And you know, how investors often are like, you know, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna do all this value, add stuff. And like most of the time, especially to very early stage company like ours, they, they're not doing very much. And at the very early stages that we were in, they're not out there even publicly bragging about you yet, because they're like, Okay, we just gave you a seed round, you have to prove something, I don't want to go out here and use my limited amount of tweets or LinkedIn or whatever, talking about a company that's so early, they haven't proven anything yet. But we sent this swag box. And what we did was we added detention slips, because our whole thing was like, break the rules, don't follow the guidelines, like, you know, pitch yourself into roles. And so we would add these detention slips that would say, like, you know, you're in detention for blah, blah, blah, you know, like breaking stuff. And we would customize them to like each person. So we did this for these investors. And, like three or four of them all did amazing tweets, or LinkedIn posts with a picture of this box, because they were like, Oh, my gosh, look, what I just received from our portfolio company crashed, and they hyped us up. And they would not have done that. If I just said, Well, you go hype us up, you know, they wouldn't do it. Like we couldn't ask them for it. So instead, we gave them something tailored and unique to them that was just, you know, created this kind of cascading effect of organic fan marketing, so to speak, you know? Yeah, I
Braydan Young 27:55
mean, like one of the best sends I think we've ever done. And it was actually internal. I've done it a couple of times, where like, we send things that someone can do with their family, because like you're almost it's like an interesting line there. Like you're not trying to sell them. You're just like, hey, like, this is a donut making kit. Like when you like this weekend, like if you get a chance to wake up early on Sunday morning, make donuts with your kids and your family. And like, we haven't take a picture. That's awesome. So I think that like like that, like that was one of those things where you're sort of like slowly influencing them and like you're having them where they want to spend time because you wouldn't want to spend time on virtual happy hours, you'd want to spend time on on virtual or whatever like the demo might be, I think they like when you're silly influencing that was we network really well. Companies that use us or use anybody that really know their brand. Well do the best. Like we've had, like companies that are that sell the advertising people are like ad agencies and like the sense that they do, there's no selling, it's just a really badass, and that like, looks amazing. They send to it arrives and the notes like just has their logo on it. It's like just a logo. It's like not not even like like, it's just like, Isn't this cool? And you're like, oh, what? Like I want to know more about this like that? Does that does the trick rather than any, like marketing email or follow up or what have you.
Isaac Morehouse 29:10
So this is something I'm curious your thoughts on because I I don't really like have an answer. There's there's two principles here that maybe on the surface seem contradictory, but I don't think they are. We've been talking about this an ecosystem approach a partner system partnership approach. One of the reasons that's so effective is it allows you to work within the patterns that people are already like engaging in in their daily lives. People have their patterns, their routines or habits. And if your product can seamlessly integrate with the existing patterns and not ask them to break their pattern and go do something new. It wins and I even heard you talking about this in your last episode Jared that hey, you you look how many people are using sin dozo through Salesforce and you want that to be a lot because they're living in Salesforce. It's a part of their pattern. It's a part of their every day. So Working with the natural patterns that people are in huge win. But on the on the flip side, there's something going on here, where like what send Dosso does sins and gifts, one of the reasons it works is because it disrupts the pattern, because it surprises someone it breaks from the norm that they're used to, they get, they get a donut making kit in the mail. And that kind of like, breaks the pattern of this is how you work with someone, this is what it's like to be a customer of someone or whatever. So I'm just there's something interesting in there where it's like this, this combination of understanding and working with patterns, not asking people to do more work than then they need to or than they're used to. But then breaking disrupting patterns. And maybe the difference is that the disruption doesn't ask anything of them, it gives them something to them. So maybe if you're making an ask of somebody you want that asked to work with their natural patterns. And if you're going to give somebody something give in such a way that breaks from it, like just sending an email, thank you is maybe not enough of a break from what they're used to. I don't know, I've just been something I've been I've been thinking about. Yeah, I think that well, there's
Braydan Young 31:06
the answer the first part of that question there, you see a new company every month, decide that they're going to be the new platform of record. And they're going to have everybody plug into them. And they're going to have every app is out there be like, it's not everyone can be a platform. And if everyone's trying to be a platform, I think that makes it a very hard thing, like who gets the most time and their systems. So our approach there is like, Hey, this is plug into it, we're just trying to be the platform of record. So we can just live there and make sending really, really easy. So like that's kind of the first part, the second part of your question is like to kind of disrupt it. I think that like the biggest thing and people look at sending is something that's only done on the sales side. And I would argue that it should be in it isn't a lot on the sales side. But I would argue more than it needs to be done post sale. So like once you've kind of established that relationship with that customer. Like, that's when you should start sending even more, because there's things that happen, there's every time you're interacting with that customer or with that partner, there should be a good excuse to send something super, super small, or as people go through life events. And so I think that's important to incorporate into like that post sending. And maybe it's not disturbing the pattern. But matrices is make it easy to send there's, I always relate this to like sending and I was bad about this, like sending your grandma like a handwritten note. Like I was like, or like a handwritten thank you note, like I was I was always really, really bad at it. But whenever I did it, she would get a phone call, like thanking me. And I'm like, Shit, I should do that more often. And like, those things were like, like, it was one of those things. Like if I did that all the time, like I would get a phone call every time. So I think it's important to keep that in mind that sometimes it's a pain in the ass to do the center walk out of the platform, but for living there, it's easy to send. It's our it's automated. I think I bet that's important to have that live in each platform, just making something really simple to help kind of elevate that relationship.
Isaac Morehouse 32:56
It's such a good point about the the retention or ongoing relationship component like you know, obviously, it's not it's not done once you've made the sale, but but also the effectiveness. There's probably like a discount I'm going to give if you send me a gift while you're trying to close me. I'm going to be like, Okay, that's nice, it's probably gonna it's gonna help but I'll also be like, I know what you're trying to do. Right? I know if you're trying to do but whereas if I'm already your customer and you just send me one for a holiday or a birthday, right? I'm gonna be like, Oh my gosh, they're not even getting anything from this. I'm already a customer. Wow, I love these guys.
Braydan Young 33:33
I'm so Jared, I think at three companies, I think but like but like the goal there is like it's a relationship versus like, hey, what you're actually buying, which I think is important to keep that in mind. Like it's not hey, I'm buying this and so it's like I just talked to Brad and we're gonna need to do some sending. Like that's that's the like, that's the point you want to get to and like I like Jared he might not like me but at least it's one of those points where it's where it's at least like like it's at least there were like it's it's important to have that in mind
Jared Fuller 33:56
I'll say that or there's a respect there because going all the way back to our the second phase of our history I don't we met each other when we're an HR tech but when whenever you had it was coffee senator was Alexander you and Chris at the same I was thing. Okay, so it was you and Chris had a coffee center and Brittany and I were about to build swag bought. Yeah. And then you guys pivoted to some dough so full time and that I actually read gift ology around that same time
Braydan Young 34:23
where the dude had knives and suits and stuff. Yeah, so
Jared Fuller 34:26
like, you know, like it's all it's all that for his funnel right to like book a strategy group. Right? You know, it's like he's trying to get his fortune 500 customers. So this is how we monetize the downstream like, you know, like this is the guy that like convinced the Chicago Cubs to send one of the seats from the stadium to their to season ticket holders. Right Like, they got a seat like you can bet your ass they are buying season tickets next year, like a guaranteed they have a piece of Chicago, you know, history right there. And like that's the centerpiece of the house and it gets referenced again and again. Then and again in the house by the kids by the wife. And then that's when I realized kind of tying together Isaac, when you know, Brandon, what you were saying was like, I think the best gifts are ones that both they pattern interrupt, but then they become a part of your culture. So the knife guy, right? Like if you bought, think about it, you can you can spend like on a solid knife set like 1000 bucks. I've never gone over like $100 You know, Pottery Barn version, right? or Walmart or Costco actually, to be honest, probably. Like, that's it. But if I had like, $1,000, knife set, man, I would use that all the time is I'm like cooking and whatever. And every time I do it, I'm thinking of that person. So like, his example is like, it's, it's almost like trite. But like, wow, if you can really hit, you know, so like for big partnerships, right? You're doing something big with another company. Like we're talking about alliances, like a million dollar thing, a multi million dollar thing. I wonder? Like, where are some of those examples?
Braydan Young 36:00
Like the very big sense.
Jared Fuller 36:02
Yeah, like the stuff that's the stuff that's like, helps us contextualize, like, Okay, here's, here's the, the, here's how to do everyday stuff better. And then here's how to, like know when to do something, oh, we need to go like that. This was like the drift experience, like whenever we would do something like we bought our CFO, like a sign photo photograph of like, the 18th hole of a famous course by like a famous golfer, it was like a $5,000 thing. Yeah. Right. Like, whoa, like, I'm talking about social media, like the small things, but there's also the big things that I feel like can have like a, you know, outsize impact?
Braydan Young 36:38
Absolutely. I think there's, well, there's a couple of things that like one like on the on the recruiting side, we've done things where we've sent kayaks, we've sent like surfboards, people, because because we knew that, like they would relate to that, where we put a logo on it, like it would be a really big Send to send to somebody. So we've we've done that. Absolutely. I think there's like we we really were pumped on this go belly integration, because like we sent like, long, long time ago, we're trying to get into SAP. And we sent this guy that was in like Kansas City, like, probably 1000 bucks worth of like barbecue out of like Austin. And like, it was just like this, like, man, like it was massive. Like they got the reaction and we want it and like all of a sudden now he was an advocate for us, because he was like, how do you guys know this? Like, oh, you told us at a conference that you're obsessed with barbecue? Like, we ended up sending him a barbecue also like, like a trigger grill and just things like that are like that exactly. Like, like, like those things. Like he's he's a massive advocate for us. I think like those, like, that's the sort of stuff that like, if you know, for a fact, like, this isn't gonna get the reaction that I want. And this is and this is like my exact person that I know, this needs to happen. And I think that like those big sends should 100% happen, like, whatever it might be. I mean, we think some of the random since we said tires, we we sort of like a whole new set of tires that somebody wants, which was which was kind of hilarious.
Jared Fuller 37:52
Actually, do you remember, two years ago, it was like there was that giant heatwave in the UK. You remember that? It was like it was bad. It was like in the 90s. And AC, we sent one of our biggest clients and air conditioner from drift, like legit and they were like, like the the fan of the change their their servers, their lives, like it was a big deal. And I was like, Wow, I can't I the fact that the CSM had that idea. It was like, we should send this customer an AC like I'm on the Zoom calls with them. Like they're trying to run a business from their house. Like, this is really bad situation. The fact that she escalated that and the VP of CES immediately was like done, let's do
Isaac Morehouse 38:31
it. It's like the cult like a sending culture. Right? Yeah, like
Jared Fuller 38:35
that mentality that good partnerships. I don't know, it feels related to me. Like, that's why I keep this is like it really does feel like a more genuine connection.
Braydan Young 38:42
What I like the most uniques over the funded ones we found a company that you can send snow through so like in like, like you could send snow from like Montana to like people in LA that were like it was it was one of those things where like, those are the fun ones. Like we might not always find them. But I think that like if a company is like hey, we want to do this super unique thing if it's possible if it's scalable I think it's something that like you should send a track I think that is the biggest caveat there's you want to make sure it gets the reaction you want is not way overboard. Where you're like, Why is this person sending me a Jerry Rice signed? Like we
Isaac Morehouse 39:15
could do a segment when sending goes south in?
Braydan Young 39:22
Well, like there's there's been like ones where like you send the wrong thing. I think like I think that like there's like alcohol is a good example. Like you sound like a super expensive bottle of something to somebody that like I don't drink. Like I think you got to like those three years. So
Isaac Morehouse 39:34
I would Yeah. So one time I was working at this organization and this guy applied to work there. And I mean, to his credit, he went above and beyond he came up with something clever. And you know, we all talked about it for sure. But he's after the interview. He sent. He sent to the first thing and interviewed with it was like this little box and she opened it I had a little shoe in it and it said, you know, I think we're a perfect fit or something like that, but it was like a baby shoe. And she's like, I have a box with one baby shoe in it. She was like, weirded out and creeped out because the note was like inside the shoe. And she's like, is this a threat? Why is someone sending me a single baby shoes? They just the whole he was trying to make an analogy about a good fit or something. But it just came off as like, sort of creepy or weird.
Braydan Young 40:29
Yeah, there's, there's those I mean, like, I think that like, there's times when it's probably easier, just $1 thing, but I think if it's the right partner and ecosystem, absolutely. I think it's someone who's who's bringing you in to like major deals, and they talk about how they're into something all the time that I think that it's a good excuse to send somebody something crazy. Okay, okay,
Isaac Morehouse 40:50
I'm sorry, I can't, I have to give this one more story, Jared, it just came to mind it because this one, it sounds like it went wrong. But it actually ended up being great. But uh, again, this in the career space because of where I worked for all these years. But a friend of mine owns a company. And he's always talking on social media about how he loves going to Chipotle and all this stuff. So somebody that is, somebody that wanted to work for him was like, I'm gonna have a burrito delivered to him. And in the burrito, it's gonna have a note that says, check your email I just sent you a proposal for I want to cut your 30 days what I'll do when I work for you. So she gets like DoorDash, or one of these. This guy shows up with the burrito. And my friend, he usually works from home. But he was he was working from somewhere else. And his wife was at home by herself. And she had they had just had like something stolen or something like that. And she was all on edge. And this kid wearing a black hoodie shows up with a paper bag knocking on the door. And she like freaks out and runs and hides and calls her husband, she's like someone's at the door. I don't know what they're doing. They won't go away. They keep looking in the windows, because the guy was instructed to make sure that he got the burrito. So he keeps knocking on the door. And she's freaking out. And she's like, he left he left it on the porch. I don't know if it's like a bomb or something. So like, he rushes home and he like, he's like, he's like I just approached it. I didn't know what was going to be in there if it's gonna be dog poop or what? And he opens it up and he gets it. And it all ended up working out great. She got the job, but it could have gone. It could have gone bad. I just it was a good story. That's
Braydan Young 42:25
it? Yeah, I think that there's there's definitely a lot of those stories that that we can tell to like kind of like the wrong things or standard, all that jazz. But I think no matter what it is, I think the goal is like you kind of have to especially the ecosystem to send it and make sure that relationship continues to be built is important.
Isaac Morehouse 42:42
For sure. Have you ever seen joint gifting between two partner,
Braydan Young 42:49
there's kind of two, like some of the bigger companies that do really, really well on the channel, they will actually give their channel partners as an associate. And they'll give them budget. So they'll be like, hey, like you get 500 bucks a month to send out like you know, our branded things or send an E gifts or what have you. That's typically where it works, the best we've done sends with partners, a ton of stuff where it's a kit, where there might be like two or three things in there some branded by us and run it by them for like pre conference or post conference, I think those are important. Those tend to work really well. Like maybe like posts and events or post a conference or so like I think that that's that's a good play, for sure. Especially
Isaac Morehouse 43:27
the idea of giving a partner at sea because there's something I found this with employees, right like saying, oh, yeah, you can go to that conference? Sure. Or yeah, sure, we'll buy a new laptop is often worth a lot more to them than the equivalent in salary increase, for example, feeling like they work for a company that's generous, that lets them you know, that gets them nice tools or sends them to conferences. And there's something similar, like if you're a partner, and they're like, Hey, you get a budget every month to send our swag out. Right? That just adds a feeling of like, oh, I kind of I feel kind of cool, right? I feel like I kind of have a Yeah, I got some I got some goodies to throw around. I'm like Santa Claus, right? There's something there that's better than just, you know, like, oh, equivalent in, let's say, discounts or something like that. Yeah.
Braydan Young 44:17
Well, I mean, I think like most most companies have a budget for that usually to say, Oh, we have like X amount of dollars every quarter for a partner to do something. And so they do that new budget form, and they will send stuff out, which was nice about as you can track it. So like that. I think that's an important that you can see who's had success there and who hasn't. So I think that's a, we've seen that work pretty well.
Jared Fuller 44:35
One. One thing that I've loved, which was we actually did it right back at Panda doc in the very beginning. We didn't realize how well we did it until like after the fact is, whenever we were doing our first big partnership with HubSpot, and we had our first big inbound like the big one. It was like the first one we were nobody trying to like take it over. And the second one was like, Oh no, we're the big leagues like we're a top partner. We're like the number one partner. What are we going to do? It's like, well, we gotta go bigger. So we've made these hub these panna doc plus HubSpot shirts with a joint tagline which was love your sales. And it was like all because everything that was around inbound sales and it was like love your sales panna doc give them headlock and HubSpot. And it was this joint branded, like, you can't really quite call it a joint value proposition, but it was like a joint marketing campaign like a true campaign. And that ended up being on landing pages and emails and the swag around it. And people that were both customers, they loved it, because it had both of their brands represented in a unique way. And one thing I've advised companies to do, and like I've seen partnerships work really well is trying to distill your joint value proposition into a catchphrase and if you can do that, and you can throw it on a bag or on a hat or on a shirt all of a sudden your swag game you just stood out times 10 And people love it because it's just that one little bit extra bit of creativity that little bit more of that same you know sweater or you know, coffee mug or whatever you are going to do you're able to bring something unique into that that's only one plus one equals
Braydan Young 46:05
we do is super super early on that as like Do you remember like early days of like not really not really long ago but like I think there was like New Relic did someone really well with like their teachers like if you were like an engineer you go to their site and request like a New Relic shirt and then like I think it was like someone did like the data nurtures they get rid of their brother and everyone had this it doesn't matter like you're like oh like data nerd and like I think it was like day to night or someone had those like everything said that and like it's one of those things where I don't know where those shirts are now but like like at the time like ever you would go to like the meetup event like SF new tech everyone have these shirts on you're like, that's kind of random and like that was it was the exact thing only 15 years ago. Like actual phrase.
Jared Fuller 46:47
Yeah, I mean, it's in the consumer world that's more popular. If you really think about it. I mean, the amount of jointly branded and jointly marketed things that exist in the world is it's tremendous amount and I feel like the mashup ads are more and more to actually I'm seeing more and more mashup ads like this company in this company bringing you this message Yep,
Isaac Morehouse 47:06
I'm waiting until we have like SAS branded Happy Meals you know McDonald's
Braydan Young 47:16
this changes like what yeah well items you get will change depending on the day oh my gosh, oh man.
Isaac Morehouse 47:24
A rated super super fun I love I mean I just I find this space that you're in so so interesting. If you guys want to dig in more check out the Sunday story but but also send doses in our marketplace on partner hacker.com And there's some some pretty sweet discounts there for people who are subscribers to the to the partner hacker daily so if you're like, Hey, we got to get the gifting culture going at our company or with our partners a better time to start so it also makes it easy.
Jared Fuller 47:55
This is the this is why don't feel guilty about doing like cools stuff like this and like highlighting stuff. It's where I've actually been a customer like Braden said three times, so
Braydan Young 48:05
I wanted to put that in there.
Jared Fuller 48:07
Yeah, he got there on purpose.
Braydan Young 48:12
Things guys wear me out again.
Jared Fuller 48:14
Absolutely. Absolutely. Partner up, peace out. We'll see you all next time.
