Ep. 177 - Why “Book a Demo” Is Killing SaaS Growth

Guest: Braydan Young, Co-Founder and CEO at SlashExperts

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Buyers don’t want another “book a demo” button—they want proof from people like them.

In this episode, Braydan Young, Co-Founder and CEO of SlashExperts (and previously co-founder of Sendoso), joins host Ken Lempit to share how buyer-led growth is reshaping SaaS sales and why the old way of running references at the end of the deal cycle is broken.

Key insights from this episode:

• Why moving customer references earlier can shorten sales cycles by 4–6 weeks
• How authentic peer conversations double conversion rates compared to demos
• What CROs can learn from Sendoso’s hypergrowth—and its “we grew too fast” moment
• Why handwritten notes and simple gifts outperform flashy, expensive ones
• How to turn the “dark funnel” into a competitive advantage

If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO or CRO looking to accelerate pipeline, increase deal size, and close faster with fewer wasted demos, this episode is a must-listen.

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Transcript

[00:00:09] Ken: Welcome to SaaS backwards, a podcast that helps SaaS and AI CEOs and go to market leaders accelerate growth and enhance profitability. Our guest today is Braydan Young,

co founder and CEO at SlashExperts, a buyer led growth platform that connects prospects directly with successful customers, creating authentic conversations

that drive faster, more confident buying decisions. Hey, before we jump into the episode, Braydan could you tell us a little bit more about yourself? And your company. 

[00:00:42] Braydan: Yeah. Ken, good to be here. you really turned on that vocal fry there. Alright! I dug that. That was awesome.

It's good. 

[00:00:48] Ken: Well, I've got a face for radio, man. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta make it up somehow. 

[00:00:53] Braydan: Ah, know, it's good to be here. I'm Braydan, I am the CEO of SlashExperts. The concept there is we help your prospects, the folks you typically wouldn't see because you're doing research, we help them connect with a customer and that becomes your first or second step in the sales cycle.

So kind of a new way to do sales, using your customer base to help convert those prospects to more closed deals, which is great. We've been building it for close to a year now. The company before that one was one called Sendoso, which was a gifting platform. So any sort of gift you might want to send to a customer or prospect.

So I would say my entire career has been in taking methods that have been around forever in the business world. And just putting a new spin on them is probably the best way to describe me. I live out in San Francisco. Marin, actually, like once they, once you have kids, they throw you out of San Francisco.

So I'm in the suburbs. I've been Marin for those of you who are listening, like school spot, like close by the city for sure. 

[00:01:52] Ken: Yeah, well, I've always said, you know, you lose your cool when you're pushing a stroller. It's pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Get out of here. 

[00:02:00] Braydan: And they go, it's time to go to the suburbs where, you know, restaurants open at five and close at seven.

[00:02:05] Ken: So, I think we should dig in a little deeper on how you founded Sendoso and SlashExperts. And maybe we should start with what inspired you to take the leap into entrepreneurship. That's a big leap.

And especially how old are your kid or kids? Four. Four years old. So you're doing this into the environment of also, you know, having a family. So, yeah, 

[00:02:28] Braydan: which, which has its good days and it's bad days where you're like, you're like, why!, I think the reason I went into the entrepreneurship world or journey is I grew up in a house where both my parents were entrepreneurs.

Like my dad started a landscape company. He was corporate life forever. Then he was like, I don't want to be in an office. I want to be outside. So I started a landscape company, which was successful, put me through school. And then my mom started. Flower shops. So she was a florist and did weddings and events.

Like one of the, one of the fun facts I always use for when someone asks like a fun fact, I'm a very good flower designer, which is one of those like random things when like, I'll go to like Trader Joe's and get like four bouquets and I'll do the flower arrange for the house. And like whenever guests go, or they're always like to my wife, like, Oh, those look beautiful.

Nicely done, Ashley. I'm like, no, it was me. I did it. Like they were both entrepreneurs. And so I knew the bug would hit me at some point. And then like, when I was with companies coming out of college, I sucked at following process. I was not good at it. I got in trouble for it a lot. And like, they were like, we have this process for us to follow it.

I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't make any sense. It's just what's all this red tape and bureaucracy for. So I was like, I got to go build my own thing. And so after jumping around for a while, I started Sendoso. It was like my first real entrepreneurship journey. 

[00:03:43] Ken: And what was the founding idea on Sendoso?

Like what sparked that? I mean, I understand how you got the itch, but what really sparked this idea? 

[00:03:54] Braydan: It's a, it's a good story. So we, a buddy of mine, we started, we originally called it Coffee Sender. And the concept was to send out Starbucks gift cards attached to your email. And it was this a way to stand out and all the noise that we, like, it was like in the time when all these companies were coming out, like, Sales Loft and Outreach, making it easier to send mass emails.

And the response it sucks. So we're like, what if we attach coffee gift cards to Starbucks, to these emails, and maybe that'll help us get more meetings. So we built that and then we launched it. And like the very first month made like 60 grand and we're like, Oh man, this actually might be a concept that will work.

And like, we attached a little button into Salesforce where you could add like basically Starbucks gift cards. This is a side project and we quickly were buying too many gift cards because Starbucks was like, who are you guys? And like, why are you buying 60 grand worth of Starbucks gift cards on your online site?

Cause we had no relationship there. So they sent us a cease and desist letter like, Hey, you can't use our logo. You can't buy gift cards. So we framed it, put it on the wall, kind of like our motivation. we ended up like basically emailing every person at Starbucks who would respond, like Howard Schultz, being like, Hey, like, you got to talk to us.

And so they got back to us, which was surprising. And we went up there and pitched them on the idea. And they were like, yeah, we're in! They were like we got to figure out a way to sell more gift cards anyways. And so that was kind of like our, like, all right, like, let's quit our jobs and like, make this an actual thing.

And we did. And like, so we. Went in like to Coffee Sender and then we rebranded to Sendoso because we were like, we should send more than just coffee gift cards. We should send physical things too. Figured out warehousing, figured out like how to add like different APIs of the product. I was cool. It was, it was very quick.

Like if it happened, like the product was needed in the world and we hit the market at the right time and we were expanding really fast and then COVID hit. And that was awesome for us. I mean, like if there was a silver lining. Everyone was stuck at home and people wanted to send packages out to their employees, to the prospects, because conferences weren't happening.

And so we went from 50 of us to like 700 of us over the period of COVID. And we expanded from one warehouse to six and it was cool. It was, it was a fun ride. It was, I learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes and you know, hopefully we won't make those same mistakes this time around as a building SlashExperts.

[00:06:17] Ken: you know, I only make the same mistake three or four times. Yeah, yeah, I think it takes, yeah, right. Takes me a little while to learn. But I, I think one of the, sort of the things you uncovered in the, that anecdote about reaching out to people at Starbucks is, as a young company, You have to have some audacity, right?

Yeah. I mean, we're way 

[00:06:37] Braydan: over our skis or like, we're just sending LinkedIn messages and like, you got to like connect. And then we messaged everybody there. And like, I mean, me and my co founder, we were both salespeople. So we were like, we knew how to do that LinkedIn. So we just hit them up, hit them up.

And like, they actually were like, all right, fly up and pitch us on it. We were like, no way. Like, so like, yeah, I think that that was a big jump and they ended up responding, which was pretty cool. Yeah. 

[00:06:59] Ken: and it's interesting that you were able to get such a big organization to move, what sounds like relatively quickly, sometimes the danger in partnering with these big companies is they take you down a road for months and months and months, and then don't do anything so good for you.

[00:07:13] Braydan: I think it was, I think a lot of it was luck too. I mean, we were, they knew they needed to grow in like the B2B space. And they knew that like. Like we used bit like we, we had the right buzzwords. We were like, Hey, we wanna plug in Starbucks gift cards into Salesforce. And they had just moved to Salesforce.

And so I think it was like, it was the right connection of words and the right timing where the B2B team, which gets comped on how many, what the volume looks like, and B2B sales was like, Hey, like yes, like this might be a new pipeline for us. The cool part was after they agreed to work with us, I could reach out to other big companies and I was like, Hey, like I'm going to bring Starbucks with me to this meeting.

And so like I could get meetings with anybody at that point. I remember like I reached, cause it was like, people were wanting to sell Starbucks, of course, as like a customer. And I had Starbucks corporate with me to go and sell this new solution. It was awesome. Like that works really well in the beginning to get more and more people using the system.

[00:08:07] Ken: So if I understand correctly, they were going on your calls to your prospects to help get the solution in place so that they could sell more cards. Exactly. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So you, I guess, did you exit Sendoso? Is that correct? 

[00:08:24] Braydan: I did. So we, I mean, I, I'm still very much involved like as a advisor and on, I'm still on the board helping things there too, but I, I, I exited all my day to day responsibilities.

Which 10 years or so being there, I, I had this new idea basically a year ago where we were trying to figure out how to convert prospects to take a meeting. And the book, a demo button was not working like it used to. People were doing research on the backend and you weren't seeing this pipeline of people that were doing research that you wouldn't see them until they came in and they wanted a demo and like all of these conversations were happening on all these different communities about us, but we weren't involved in those conversations.

We were like, we got to figure out a way to encourage people to be able to have a conversation with our customers that we can guide a little bit. So I had that kind of idea and then built it there, then spun it out into its own company. 

[00:09:16] Ken: So it's sort of the uh, child of Sendoso. 

[00:09:20] Braydan: Yeah. I mean, I, I think that like, we definitely saw the need there first.

I, I think most companies, like when you say spin out, meaning like I saw the need at Sendoso and it was like, this is something I could probably go build. And Sendoso was very much strategy and process, which was all the things I was ever good at, at the bigger companies. And so I was like, I'd like the 0 to 10

I enjoyed the most in terms of growth. 

[00:09:44] Ken: think we actually have to talk a little bit more about part of the life of Sendoso where you took a giant investment from SoftBank and there were some lessons learned taking that kind of money. Was that one of their a hundred million dollar investments?

Yeah. Cool day 

[00:10:01] Braydan: to get that transferred to the bank account. It's pretty awesome. 

[00:10:04] Ken: I mean, that is a ton of money, you know? Yeah. 

[00:10:06] Braydan: That's a lot. 

[00:10:07] Ken: So once, once the hangover cleared, what did you do and what did you learn from having such a gigantic investment?

I mean, that's a life changing event for a company, right? 

[00:10:17] Braydan: It was, and like, we were growing at a really fast rate. Like we, we had really strong product market fit and we were, we had the thought of like, all right, like, because we're growing so fast, let's take a bigger round. And like the marching orders were like hire and grow as fast as you can.

So burn it. We opened an office in Ireland, we opened a bigger office in Pakistan and we were hiring probably 60 to 80 people a month. So it was like, it was wild. Like it was insane growth. I think the biggest thing I learned was when we were burning the money, the VC funds were all like, Hey, if you need more, like, just let us know.

And so like, that was a pretty crazy marching orders was like, grow as fast as you can, and we had this massive sales team, this massive marketing team. We had this whole like, like ad team too, but the pipeline wasn't keeping pace with the amount of growth, which was one problem. The other problem was we were approaching at the end of 2021, 2022.

And like the direction from like, Hey, grow as fast as you can and buy the market, which was always SoftBank's direction, it was more like now become profitable. And so like overnight that's switched and like that became like, okay, now we got to cut. So we had hired all these people that were great and put their trust in us.

And then it was like, Hey, we got to get rid of a lot of them. So like, we did a couple rounds of layoffs, learned a ton around like what you shouldn't do. We just grew too fast. I mean, if I could do it all over again, I think it would take a lesser amount of money and spend more time around like, let's develop our plan and our strategy on how we're going to keep pipeline outpacing the amount of people we have.

And I think that the VC route is typically like just buy the market as quickly as you can. So learned a lot for sure. 

[00:11:59] Ken: Yeah. I mean, that was a point in time too, right? Where you know, the VC community saw SaaS accelerating through the pandemic. Right. If anything, SaaS was doing really well because everybody was sitting at home.

That was kind of a strange time. But I think that idea of buying. Buying the business effectively and running ahead of your pipeline, you know, is a, it's a symptom of success in a way, right? Absolutely. Because these guys have sort of three, three flavors of investments. The ones that are really successful, the ones that could be, and the zombies, right?

And if you're at the top of that, they want to throw money at you. 

[00:12:40] Braydan: I mean, I, I think that I'm a true believer at SlashExperts. We took a round of venture capital money too. I, I think bootstrapping is amazing for people that have, that want to do that. I think it's great. I think the VC money, it just, it makes it easier for me.

Cause I don't have to worry about certain things, but the. You have to raise money from the right people, which I've learned a lot. And like you, you have a lot of VCs that are, the Ivy league schools, McKenzie, and then they go and become VCs. So those are great people on spreadsheets. And like, they know the strategy and they know, like, this works on a spreadsheet, social work in real life, and then you have the operators who then go and become VCs.

Those people are better in the earlier days and better when it, cause like, if they've done it a couple of times and they can give you all the things that the textbooks and that the McKenzie's don't talk about. And so I think you have to have a mix of both. And like, we had the mix of both at Sendoso I think we probably leaned in a little too heavier to like the McKenzie folks for a while there, because it was like grow as fast as you can.

[00:13:37] Ken: Yeah. Interesting. We've actually had. A few VCs on the podcast and most recently they're operators first. And I thought that was really a very interesting perspective and totally agree with it. 

[00:13:50] Braydan: I think the operator one, I mean, early stage, like a seed and an A, and like to have an operator VC they're only going to help like if it's the right.

VC and they did they'll tell you, what you need. But like 2021, there were so many VC funds that were like, Hey, like you should take your valuation to a billion dollars and like, you know, on like what, a 30, 40 X in revenue, that's crazy. Like basically that's where AI is right now, which, so we'll see how that goes.

[00:14:13] Ken: Well, I'm not really in the prediction business anymore, since I, very early in my career told my boss that email wasn't going to be a thing. 

[00:14:23] Braydan: Yeah, I, I got offered a job at a company that was, they were trying to like revolutionize like the cab industry. And I was, I would have been like their second, third hire.

And I was like, I don't see it and I didn't take it. So. 

[00:14:35] Ken: Oops. Yeah, so, so we should we share that history. So I want to kind of get on to another topic we prepped on, which is you're really non technical founder, right? Yep. So, I want to have you sort of talk through some of the, ways you've approached building and scaling out a business that's technology based and dependent when you're not a tech guy.

And, you know, what advice would you give somebody about to climb this same mountain? 

[00:15:06] Braydan: Yeah, I mean, it's not just, I'm just not technical. My co founder has always been not technical as well. So we, so both of us are not engineers. So I, I think there's two kind of paths that you take one, even when not being technical, it doesn't mean you can't know enough about like how you wireframe and like, you know, the foundational stuff.

Like, so we watched a ton of videos trying to understand that. And then if you need someone who's. technical and you're starting out, like there's a million amazing engineers that are abroad that are much cheaper than the U S, but you have to find the right person there. And once you find them, you have to take care of them.

Cause I think we've, this company SlashExperts, we have the exact same engineers that worked on Coffee Sender. And so I worked with them for 13, 14 years and like they're in Pakistan. They're amazing. I've seen those guys get married, have kids, send them gifts for all those things. So once you find the folks that are abroad, who can help you do it, and I think you have to hang on to them, but it takes a while to find those folks.

And I think as a non technical co founder, you have to understand at least the foundational stuff and like how to wireframe, how UI works and you can learn that easily as I like watching YouTube videos and absorbing that. If you're raising money as a non technical person, like that's a bit different because I think we waited with Sendoso until we had some revenue, I remember like the meetings we'd go in and be like, Hey, like we're trying to raise funds.

And the question was always like, Oh, which one of you is technical? And we're like, neither. Those guys are in Pakistan. They were like, I don't know about that. But we're like, we also have 3 million in sales. And they were like, okay. It's like, I'll have a conversation. So like we had, the growth to prove that it was something.

But not having the founder, the technical founder, we also like didn't get to talk to the big VC funds, like, like Andreessen didn't want to have a conversation with us until way, way later. 

[00:16:54] Ken: Well, I mean, I think it's interesting, I've heard people disparage, you know, learn by YouTube. So I'm really happy to hear that actually worked for you.

[00:17:04] Braydan: Yeah. I mean, like they learn enough, right? I mean, like you can read books on it too, but I think watching. I'm very, I'm visual. So I watch any, but wireframes together from YouTube videos. So at least, you know, the foundation.

[00:17:13] Ken: So your 

advice to folks who are non technical, especially if their partner is like yours, also not a programmer is build your skills the best you can so that you can manage a team that you find in a lower cost geography early on, right? 

[00:17:28] Braydan: Yeah. I also think you need to know enough to at least keep that team in line.

So you should have an idea as to how long it would take to do a sprint or how I, and like when you go and find folks or that are abroad that you don't meet in person, you just need to keep. I wouldn't call an eye on them, but you need to know enough that if someone's like, Oh, it'll take me a month to do that, but it should take a day.

So like, just like have like those awareness things. I think most of us have friends that are technical, bring them on as advisors, ask them questions like, Hey, how long should this take? And I think after a couple of months, you'll sort of get the hang of it. You'll know if the person you've selected is, is good and is helping.

It is a different way to manage because they're typically in a different time zone than you. And so like they're building at night when you're working during the day. If the site goes down in the daytime and those folks are asleep, you just kind of deal with it. Like we had many days at Sendoso where like the site would go down like two o'clock in the afternoon.

We were like, well, I guess we're here until they wake up. And so like you really good at learning how to work on folks that are, you know, 12 hour difference. And I would recommend knowing at least the basics when you get to that. I love 

[00:18:43] Ken: that suggestion of having the advisor who's the technical person.

That's a great idea. And it's for, people at the right point in their career, it might actually be a great thing on their LinkedIn, right? If you can't pay them to be an advisor to a startup, a technical advisor to a startup, that sounds like a great, a great reward in and of itself. 

[00:19:06] Braydan: I think that the biggest thing about building a company is most people that have done it or in the middle of it are very willing to help.

And so I think that by sending messages to folks on, on LinkedIn that like, you're like, Hey, this person knows the. Like, I want to get to know them and like sending the right message, you know, that's authentic. Like I get them all the time. The ones that are authentic, I respond to. I'm like, yeah, like I enjoy that.

If I can help with people for sure. 

[00:19:32] Ken: So I think just to put a bow on that, finding help wherever you can, whether it's self education or surrounding yourself with some people in formal or informal roles to fill out holes in your team, skill set in your team might be a great way to go. So I want to turn to gifting because that's been really central to you know, your approach to sales and customer engagement.

How did you develop your philosophy around gifting? And what impact have you seen it make? Cause I think this is a still not a fully understood and very valuable tool for sales people are trying to break through. 

[00:20:14] Braydan: Yeah. And I, I think that like, there's, there's a lot of mistakes that are made in gifting.

The two most common mistakes in gifting are people thinking they need to send something that's extremely expensive. And like, I don't think that needs to be done at all. And the second one is if you send something that, you know, you send stuff to the one who's signing the contract and not to your users.

Those are the two common errors I see a lot happening in like the gifting space. So like what you're aiming for is just the power of reciprocity. Like you're just trying to thank somebody. I like saying, Hey, like, thanks for doing that reference call for me. Or, Hey, we'd love to jump on the phone with you.

Thanks for giving me some time. Like here's X. And I think a $10 Starbucks gift card works the best. Like it doesn't need to be a thousand dollar Airbnb gift card. A very simple, thanks so much works just as well. Cause you have that same chemical reaction you're going for in someone's head, which is like the, Oh, this person seems like a nice person.

Like this, the reciprocity thing.. My favorite use case, if you've never done gifting before, or if you don't believe in it, the send of a book with a handwritten note, or just a handwritten note, thanking someone for their time, is incredibly powerful. Like, I can't tell you how many people I talk to that just, I mean, no one gets handwritten notes, like, unless it's your Grandma.

And so, like, I think that's so cool to send a handwritten note, thanking someone for their time. Cause like, the response rate on that's going to be in the high nineties. It's just a simple thing to do and it takes you three seconds. 

[00:21:48] Ken: It's a lost art. Some people can't even write script anymore. So, yeah, 

[00:21:52] Braydan: yeah,

right. Or I mean, like, just like something that's like not actionable. Like, it's always like, Hey, do you have any questions? Hey, like, can I send you a contract? That's sort of a sales point of view. And so we just sound like, Hey, thanks. Like, you know, it's a simple thing. And like, you're, there's not like an action that person needs to do.

You typically get a response. 

[00:22:11] Ken: That's really interesting. I want to kind of tie it to the, the business that you're doing now, which we really didn't prep on, but you mentioned something that I think is really important, that the prospects are doing their research well in advance of trying to have a sales conversation, right?

They're doing everything they can to avoid sales conversations, realistically. And It almost seems like you're pulling the research away from the dark social, as it's been come, you know, to be called. 

[00:22:41] Braydan: Yeah. The dark funnel. 

[00:22:43] Ken: Yeah. The dark funnel. The dark pipeline. Yeah. The dark pipeline.

All of those things. Very dark. 

[00:22:49] Braydan: Very dark. 

[00:22:50] Ken: Yeah. It is. But I, I think this is a really interesting part of the business idea and that's what I think is sort of consistent with Sendoso, right? Is this idea of thinking about the sales process. This wasn't just like, how do we monetize. Referrals, right?

This was, what's not working in the sales process. And can you sort of give some insight into, you know, so the early learnings, I mean, it's been about a year. How is it actually impacting the buyer behavior? And, you know, what do you see as the, kind of the limit for this? 

[00:23:22] Braydan: What we saw on the market was a lot of people, you're right.

Like they're doing most of their research before they ever talked to sales. And like the directions they get to go are online reviews that are kind of okay, or they can maybe go and read case studies, but those are all very curated. Those are all very like, Hey, like, These things are pretty and gorgeous.

And you can have a conversation, like they don't help. And then, so what most folks do is they end up in a community or they end up in like a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group. And they're asking questions like, Hey, I'm trying to solve this problem. And like the advice they get there is the most beneficial.

So, our solve to that was why don't we allow these people to talk to our customers, people that had a similar problem and can have a conversation with the customer asking those exact same questions. So, what we see is like, as the market grows, the folks are doing research, the company that they're researching should encourage that.

It's like, Hey, you should go have conversations with people that are using us. So here's an entire list of people that use us. Not just logos on a logo carousel everybody has, but like buttons, you can click and you can book a time somebody, because you might be at a different point of your buying cycle than somebody else.

And like, so that's okay. And so I think that like, you're encouraging these conversations. You might have a conversation and do a demo and after a demo, you're like, I was pretty cool, but I wonder what my next move is. And so you can actually connect that, that person with a really good customer then.

So after a demo, you can use that exact same model to like go and talk to a customer. So taking the reference rather than the end, which is more just like a check box and putting it towards the beginning, it has just been really cool to see grow and scale. 

[00:25:04] Ken: Yeah. I think also, people have been whining about the dark funnel and dark social without a solution.

So this really is kind of the answer. or an answer to the loss of control, right? Now we're aiming people at real users instead of them finding them on their own. What's in it for the people that do these referrals? 

[00:25:26] Braydan: Ah, yeah. so there's, Of course we've talked about the gift. So there's a thank you.

So a thank you sent to them saying, you know, it could be, it's what the company decides. It could be an e gift, it could be a physical thing. You've, you know, plenty of options there to say thanks. The second one is they also control their calendar. So they decide when they take these calls. So it could be one time a week, one time a month, one time a quarter.

Because all of us get asked for references all the time. And by giving them control, they are more willing to sign up. Because they're like, yeah, I'll do references. I like this tool. It's helped me. And I'll be an advocate for them. But I don't want to do calls every day, or every week. And so, by being able to control their calendar, they satisfy that company.

So they can keep, let's say they got a discount or let's say they're an advocate, they can keep that. And then also the company's happy because, you know, they have this great person they can point to. But a lot of the time, which is like a crazy learning, just about learnings was, a page you go to, you have all these experts that are on there and like the prospect won't even book a time.

They'll just be like, Oh, like I have all these people, this page is always live. Like I feel okay that I can talk to these people if I need to. And so they'll sign a deal and they'll always have that page as a backup, which has been kind of interesting to see that use case grow. It's almost like, Hey, like our customers love us enough to have a conversation with you.

So you should join them and if you need them, they're there. So that was a learning for sure that we didn't expect. 

[00:26:45] Ken: Yes, very powerful social proof, right? That's really what you're talking about. this really is a variation on a theme or a central business idea for you, right?

Like trying to take friction out of the sales process. Is that something you recommend to other founders that they should take their expertise, yours was in sales, and that's where they should launch into their first entrepreneurial venture. 

[00:27:08] Braydan: I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think it's typically, it's whatever motions you go through throughout the day.

If you see one, that's incredibly painful, how you can just fix that. Like how you would fix that. Like most ideas come from that. Like, we were just like, why the hell am I doing this process? Or why isn't like, they're an easier way to do X. Like that's where, or take a very old school process and just make it better.

Like, There's like, we had so many of those growing Sendoso. Like, I mean, like one of the biggest ones is like red lines of a contract. Like, how is that not easier yet? It's like, it's always like, I have to go to a lawyer and ask if the red lines are okay. And it's like the same exact motion. And those should just be simple.

And so like, it's like finding like those sorts of very overly complicated and they should be a, an AI, or it should be a company that can do that for me is what we see grow a lot. 

[00:27:59] Ken: I want to kind of land on expectations for a program with a firm like SlashExperts.

So, can you sort of frame what a CRO should expect if they decide they want to adopt you know, a customer referral program, maybe referral and gifting? What is the lift in terms of engagement outcomes? What's the benefit to your clients for doing this?

[00:28:24] Braydan: Yeah, I mean, like typically what we see is a deal will close faster. So if you're a CRO if a deal comes in via an expert conversation, we usually see about four to six weeks shaved off a deal cycle just because that's how long it usually takes to have a reference involved and a deal to close.

We see deal size being bigger right now too. If you have the right experts in there that are paying you the right amount, typically that's a discussion that happens on these calls is, Hey, like what's typical ACV, what can I expect? So we see deals being about 15 percent bigger which is great. And then the biggest one we're tracking right now is like, if an expert's on a phone call, like, is the deal like converting?

More than take a demo. And right now we're thinking about 2x, where if it comes to be an expert channel versus a demo channel it's, it's quicker and it's converting faster if I'm an expert, but the challenging thing about that metric is we see sales reps connecting experts to those deals that also come to book a demo.

So it's kind of like the ROI is a bit messy there, but uh, we'll get we'll get better at that for sure. 

[00:29:27] Ken: Yeah, I think it's interesting, the idea that the deal size would be larger, you know, there's like research from Edelman and LinkedIn on corporate reputation, brand built, you know, brand reputation on deal size, you know, and exclusivity in a sales process.

So it's almost like making that brand come alive through these experts right there. 

[00:29:49] Braydan: Yeah, and I think you're using like the power of like FOMO too, which is like the simplest thing where they're talking to somebody who's already using the tool and they're like, crap, I need to have the same problem. And this person's already solved it.

And so it almost becomes like one, it accelerates it into, you don't have to negotiate on price as much because that person wants it. And so I think that like, it's, it's almost like the dynamic of like, all right, like I got this person excited enough now I can charge closer to lists. Like I don't need to discount as much.

[00:30:15] Ken: Yeah and the other thing is people are a lot more willing to waste a salesperson's time on the book a demo than they are on the peer, right? if I know that I'm reaching out to an executive, that's my equal to get their opinion, you know, I'm, I don't do that. I won't waste their time or mine on that.

[00:30:34] Braydan: Yeah. 

[00:30:34] Ken: So that might be also why they're more qualified. 

[00:30:37] Braydan: Yeah. That's a great point. 

[00:30:38] Ken: Well, it's been really great having the conversation. You're obviously onto something here with SlashExperts and we'll 

[00:30:44] Braydan: find out, you know, it's been, it's been fun to build for sure. 

[00:30:48] Ken: If people want to learn more about your company or get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:30:53] Braydan: Yeah. So please check out SlashExperts. Secondly, I am the only Braydan Young on all of LinkedIn. My name is spelt strangely B R A Y D A N. So my parents entered it in D A N just in case I wanted to go by Dan. So because of that, I'm the only Braydan Young on all of LinkedIn. So connect with me. I love

people reaching out there. I think that especially if you're starting an entrepreneurship journey, or if you're looking to solve a certain problem that we're helping fix with SlashExperts, please ping me for the convo, 

[00:31:20] Ken: But make sure to do it authentically. Otherwise 

[00:31:22] Braydan: authentically, yeah. Or send me a handwritten note, even better.

[00:31:27] Ken: If people want to reach me i'm on Linkedin/in/kenlempit, and I think I'm the only one there as well. And my advertising and demand generation agency for SaaS companies is Austin Lawrence Group @austinlawrence.com If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, please subscribe to SaaS backwards wherever podcasts are distributed.

Braydan, I'm sure we'll get some new signups on the back of this episode. Thanks so very much for being here. 

[00:31:56] Braydan: Thanks, Ken.