Jeremy Balius: Hi, welcome to this episode of the B2B Tech Marketing Talks podcast, where we engage with leading marketing and channel leaders to get fresh perspectives. Practical advice, effective strategies, and best practices for B2B tech marketing. I’m your host. Jeremy Bayless. Today’s theme is revenue growth strategy. I’m very excited because I’m joined by Bardia Khalilifar of from Conicio Advisory.

Bardia is a seasoned tech leader whose nearly 20 year career has spanned network engineering, BD, cybersecurity, cloud services,

he’s held key leadership roles at Cisco, Dicker Data, HPE, responsible for consistently driving revenue growth, market expansion. His international experience overseeing strategic partnerships and customer alliances has been across Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. And today, he’s the founder and managing partner of Can eat your advisory, where he’s helping technology companies from MSPs, CSPs, SIs, ISVs, disties, and vendors to develop growth strategies, refine their go to market plans and strengthen their partnerships.

This is such a fascinating conversation thinking deeply around how to approach revenue growth strategy, how to execute and implement and how to create sustainability. I hope you get as much value from this as I did. Let’s get into it.

Hey, Bardia, really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Bardia Khalilifar: No, thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate you having me.

Jeremy Balius: I’m really excited about, everything we’re going to be talking today, but before we get into today’s theme of revenue growth strategy, I really wanted to take a step back and hear about your origin story.

How did you get started? How did you come up through channel ecosystems and how did you get to where you are today?

Bardia Khalilifar: Uh, absolutely. No. Um, so a little bit of background, where do I begin? Now? So essentially my career spans over close to 20 years now. So 2025 will be 20 years on the door. Uh, started as a network engineer, uh, at, uh, sort of working at Telstra and then Datacom.

Uh, sort of, which was my first gig and then eventually moved into a more senior role as a solutions architect at Cisco. So basically one of the key aspects about my personality is, uh, I’m a, I’m an extrovert. I love to talk to people. I love to sort of, uh, I guess discuss around their challenges, their objectives, what does that look like?

So I thought, okay, Well, my knowledge around the products and this was network engineering. So this is when, you know, before sort of cloud and, uh, IOT, et cetera, IOT was sort of just picking up, but this is pure network, uh, sort of solution offering with Cisco itself and. I thought, how do I sort of engage the knowledge that I have around products and services with the customer discussion?

So, uh, eventually I moved into a more of a sales role, uh, post solutions architect, and the focus, uh, was for me to really engage with specific partners and customers. Uh, more so around the, the challenges that they were seeing in the market, uh, at the time. So eventually I, I guess, I guess I got, uh, pushed into the partner alliances side of things when I got, uh, Uh, hired by Dica Data, which is, uh, Australia’s, uh, sort of biggest local distributor, tech distributor.

And, uh, I started my role as a national BDM where for Cisco at Dicker, uh, cause of my knowledge with Cisco products and services itself specifically. And, uh, I basically ran that role for about, uh, two and a half, three years. And then eventually going into, uh, a senior role. But more of a leadership role with, uh, Cisco Meraki at Dicker Data.

So I was the, the business, uh, unit lead for Cisco Meraki then. And it was very interesting to sort of discuss the dynamics of what partners at the time we’re seeing MSPs, cloud solution providers, et cetera. So doing that sort of role within Dikar for a few years eventually led me to getting headhunted by an Australian cyber security company called First Wave Cloud Technology.

So First Wave was a very interesting business model. They had one customer, which is Telstra. 96 percent of their revenue was coming out of this one customer. So to go and, uh, I guess, uh, raise, uh, the, the next round of funding from, from their investors, they needed to showcase the revenue streams. So. Given my background with channel and sort of the leadership aspect of it, how we sort of develop business itself, they brought me on board to essentially brokered the relationships with other distributors, tech distributors within first wave, and then bring on board some managed service providers as well, because essentially first wave Was, uh, a company and is a company still today that, uh, sells a platform.

So it’s more of a past SaaS sort of offering. Uh, they have OEM agreements with other vendors, but the whole idea was around the value proposition that we were going out to market. So after, uh, initially building that, uh, that environment within Australia and New Zealand, uh, it eventuated into APAC and then, uh, they wanted me to sort of replicate the same strategy within the EMEA region.

So. That was when I was seconded up to London and Paris for about 18 months. building the international business because we were continuously looking at, uh, raising, uh, funds through the investors and continue to scale the business internally as, uh, in, and also externally as well. So following that secondment with first wave that finished up, this was probably about, uh, three, three years or so.

Uh, I moved back down to Australia and then I got headhunted by, uh, HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. So, uh, and full disclosure, this is HP. It would have been my last corporate gig, uh, before I started the company. So, uh, I, um, I became the, uh, the head of sales for, uh, HPE’s GreenLake business for, uh, for Asia Pacific.

And, uh, essentially the target audience or target market for my business unit was around the partners, channels, uh, ISPs, systems, integrators, uh, distribution, et cetera. So part of that was also through these partners to work with customers. But predominantly, uh, my, uh, my business unit was focused on focusing on the channel side of things.

So, um, basically following from that, uh, that stint, which was about close to four years at HPE, uh, I managed to lead, uh, some, some organizations and teams and, and managed to sort of build, formulize some strategies around that internally to drive revenue, drive profitability for the business because GreenLake at the time, um, when it was, uh, sort of relatively new in the market, it was a sort of, uh, a very profound technology, cloud technology model where we’re providing a hybrid cloud service offering with all the professional services wrapped around it, but also from a financial perspective, it was focused on the consumption offering.

So we always sort of articulated the value prop to. Technology partners that instead of utilising 100 percent of your capital expenditure up front to buy kit to buy services, we can model this out for your environment where you only commit to what you need right now and then gradually, as you continue to grow and scale the business.

Well, that will be sort of more of a reverse reserve capacity that it will be a consumption model. So, uh, as, as customers and their partners or tech tech providers, a group, uh, throughout that term itself, the whole idea was to add more and more, uh, scalability to that environment. Uh, so they’re not utilizing a hundred percent of their capital expenditure.

Now, so, so that’s sort of the, the overall, I guess, 10 year of, uh, My career and, uh, what I’ve done in the corporate gig now throughout my start to finish in the corporate technology world. I definitely noticed, uh, some, some challenges, uh, and this was something that wasn’t out of malice or deliberate by people internally or by management.

It was just how it was built. One of the key fundamentals, uh, or challenges that I saw within the market was the customer experience. Now with that, the, the dynamics of how we approach customers and how we approach partners, uh, it was fading away in terms of that experience level. And I saw a huge. Gap just opening up more and more and more.

And the whole idea was to say, okay, well, what can we come up with, uh, in terms of, uh, providing that outcome or that experience as part of my next gig, which is my company. Now, the second element, uh, by the way, it’s three elements here. The second element was around growth. One of my biggest passions is around scalability and growth.

How can I align my business? With other tech businesses to help them scale and grow based on the necessities that we see in the market today, based on the movements that the market is sort of going around as well. And the, the third element is around. Um, identifying awkward opportunities, but also challenges from a market intelligence perspective.

It’s about that trusted advisor. It’s about, uh, helping these businesses figure out new ways. And part of what I’ve learned in my tenure is around revenue optimization. It’s about revenue streams and working efficiently, but also understanding the dynamics of the market itself. And what does that entail?

So that was sort of predominantly the focus area. And today, um, which I can say that the company is just over a year old. Let’s say we started in first of October of 2023. Uh, and our service offering, the core of our offering is based on three main factors. One is go to market. The second piece is the revenue commercialisation, and the third piece is around strategic partnerships.

We are looking at adding, uh, future services down the track, and we’ve got that, uh, sort of as part of our roadmap. But it’s important to our organization and to our customers when we’re dealing with to provide these three services, uh, at 100 percent accuracy and not just do a half assed job. So that’s sort of, um, my, my, uh, I guess, uh, my background on, on, uh, what I’ve done, uh, from, from start to finish.

And we continue to scale and grow.

Jeremy Balius: It’s amazing. It’s really fascinating for me to hear about, you starting as an architect and evolving through the different BDM sales partnerships, and as you’re coming up. through the system to lead really big endeavors and driving strategic intent. It seems very organic along the way as you’re uncovering or discovering all these gaps and opportunities within large organisations that are complete blind spots to business leaders.

And it sounds to me like that is the impetus or the DNA.

Bardia Khalilifar: That’s absolutely yeah. For sure. And it’s, it’s important that we look at. What that DNA looks like. One of the, one of the main things for our organization is identifying, um, what, what are the challenges that we see in the market? Now, one thing I say is that we like change.

We like to be. Uncomfortable in terms of where we are. We like to keep moving at a pace that the market is moving as well, and the customers are moving and what we actually see in here. So innovation and evolution is part of our DNA, and it’s important that we demonstrate those Thanks. skills and capabilities that we’ve honed in our business, in our careers, in our, uh, experiences, our interactions to apply those findings and apply those capabilities into customer environments and, uh, customer partner environments as well.

So the DNA. Uh, I would say in general is that we constantly change our mission and vision is to proactively look out for the next thing, the next wave. And what does that mean for the customer?

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, that’s the golden question right there. What does it mean for the customer? Hey, it’s been a weird year. It’s been, there’s been a lot of change. I think a lot of hardship for some businesses, or entire, industries, others have done pretty well. From your point of view, what do you think?

Um, the challenges and opportunities for 2024 sort of uncovered for those businesses that are paying attention. And, um, and I also know that you’ve just come back from Canalys Forum in Bali and how, how is 2024 being discussed at that global analytical level as well?

Bardia Khalilifar: Absolutely. Um, all right. So here, this is my take on the challenges that we see. So one of the things is global market context, right? What does that entail?

And that’s around macro economic, economic uncertainty and also changing by preferences or personas. One of the things, uh, that, uh, I learned at Canalys, uh, funny enough, um, we had, uh, they had Steve Brazier, who was basically the originally the founder of Canalys and now. Uh, he’s one of the, uh, the key folks there as an advisor, and he always loves to open up with a political sort of, uh, narrative around it.

And he turned around and said that, uh, Trump and Elon Musk will not be friends by end of 2025. And, uh, they had, uh, they had Elon sitting on a chair and then Trump sitting on a chair facing away from each other. And they said that he won’t be, uh, they won’t be friends anymore. That sort of comes down to the macroeconomic side of things.

And, and one of the, well, to name a few of what that looks like, it’s around lingering supply chain disruptions, tighter capital markets that we see, geopolitical tensions, and more cautious buying behaviours. Uh, one of the things, uh, before we started, uh, talking about, uh, recording this podcast was around B2B behaviors.

This is one of the trends that we need to be on the lookout for as businesses. So because of these challenges that we see in the market, because of these, uh, persona based behaviors that are shifting, what does that behavior look like? What is it that, uh, We need to sort of, uh, I guess, ask from the customers and understand a little bit more about their objectives and what they see as well.

It’s important to continue having these dialogues with customers and understand what their perspectives are and what they see in order for them to share their experience with you as well. On the opportunity side, uh, one of the things that I see is around data and automation. Now, the biggest thing that I’m seeing in the market this year is around artificial intelligence, but also machine learning.

Now, uh, I’ll be honest with you. I’m tired of referencing AI, and I’m sure everyone else is tired of referencing AI as well. Uh, I call it AI washing, but reality is, reality is that we need to be very cautious on how we implement AI and what’s the best use cases around it as well. Now, uh, recent discussions I’ve had with artificial intelligence is how would that impact security?

So we need to, we need to help businesses understand the fundamentals of AI. Uh, but also looking at, um, uh, utilizing it to the best of your ability from a revenue perspective. So if you’re an organization and looking at generating new revenue, um, you know, predict revenue pipeline user to predict that, uh, in addition to that monitor churn risk as well.

We’re seeing a lot of churn in businesses today from a revenue perspective. How do you mitigate that, but also personalizing any customer engagement. So that’s sort of the opportunity that I see today. The, the second part, the second and final part in terms of the opportunity is around resilience and scenario planning, uh, because of these challenges, because of these shifts that we’re seeing leaders, Uh, investing in scenario based planning to adopt pricing, packaging and go to market motions quickly as well.

So it’s very, very important that these businesses rapidly change with the times and evolve and innovate their internal processes and infrastructure as well.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, that’s interesting. There’s so much complexity all coming together at the same time. It’s, going to be really difficult to navigate coming into this new year as business leaders are considering their revenue streams and growth and given today’s topic is. Revenue growth strategy in the context of your offer round go to market.

How, how are you advising tech business leaders with their go to market as we’re dealing with this volatility heading into the new year? What, what are you telling them to prioritize?

Bardia Khalilifar: So part of, uh, what we do at, uh, Conicio Advisory is around, so it’s, it’s, for us is about providing.

A fractional leadership and because there’s a lot of agility. Uh, and flexibility there in terms of what we provide. Now, the fractional leadership or, uh, head of revenue or chief revenue officer, we call it is, um, it’s a very broad term, but it’s about that’s one of the service offerings that we provide.

Uh, the fundamental piece of that is to provide a Holistic leadership without the full time overhead cost. So and what we do as part of that narrative is that we just don’t advise on what businesses and customers should be on the lookout for, but it’s about the execution consulting firms, I’d say 89 times out of 10, they write the strategy and they tell businesses what to do, but they don’t help them implement it.

So part of our job is to make sure that We help them navigate the complexities of their business and then help them, um, uh, do what is appropriate for that environment. So what we sort of advise them and help them, uh, execute and implement is around, uh, You know, diagnostic and assessment of the environment, you know, things like comprehensive revenue audits, uh, pipelines, conversion rates, uh, ICP definitions and, um, uh, and product market fit and channel strategy.

What does that look like overall holistically? In addition to that, uh, we look at the strategic framework. So once we collect the information and data, Our job is to provide a strategic framework and it’s not just one, it could be a various, various things. So, uh, you know, developing a revenue blueprint is the most fundamental things as part of that conversation today, you know, outlining the go to market strategy.

segmenting target markets, uh, product market fit, channel strategy and partner ecosystem health as well. So these are sort of various strategies that we sort of look into. Once we’ve built that framework, then it’s up to us and the business and, and some of these leaders to identify and set clear KPIs around, uh, you know, that’s tied to revenue targets, you know, monthly recurring revenue.

Annual reoccurring revenue, annual contract value growth, uh, you know, customer acquisition costs and lifetime value ratios. What does that look like? And then the most important piece to that is the execution implementation, right? So we want to be able to help them implement, um, and do some lead qualifications as part of that narrative, as part of that objective, the sales enablement programs.

What are some key initial verticals? That we need to sort of be on the mi uh, lookout for I, I’ll, I’ll give you a an example actually. Cool. So we’ve got a, a software client today, uh, that they, they provide a multi-tenancy overlay for, uh, for Prox Mox, which is a, a virtualization environment, one of the Mware V clouds sort of, uh, competitors.

And this multi-tenancy o uh, overlay. For this virtualization environment is brand new. Not seen in the market. Now what we’ve done is we’ve managed to formulate timeline strategies around this because one of the main things that the customer alluded to us was around. Okay, I have a three year runway.

That I need to get everything up and running and then in order to sort of decide what we want to do with the company down the track. So our objective to that is to understand, okay, what is it that you want to achieve? And then let’s formulate a strategy based on that narrative. So we created a, um, a six month, 12 month, an 18 month strategy for them across multiple revenue verticals that we can sort of go out to market.

And there were the things that I mentioned around, uh, ICP definitions, product market fit, channel strategy, ecosystem, et cetera. And we are basically now helping them implement it. So part of that was, okay, what does, what does the pre launch of the product look like? What does the post launch of the product look look like?

What do we foresee in the next three months? Are we going to look at bringing on board? 10 paid customers, five strategic partnerships. Uh, we want to expand into different regions and different markets. These are the conferences, or these are the seminars that we need to attend. Uh, this is how we sort of market it.

And part of that discussion is to help them navigate, uh, through the complexities, because one of the things we have found is that. Leaders have the difficulty to move in moving the needle, whereas they’re too focused on the business operations itself, as opposed to the innovation side of things. Our job is to help them push the pin forward.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, gosh, there’s so much to unpack there. The ability to advise as fractional CRO makes a lot of sense to me, particularly as it’s likely to be a skill set missing within either the founding team or the current leadership team. Is that true? Is that what you’re finding that you’re fulfilling a role that’s, it’s just clear that this, this revenue growth is not being owned.

Absolutely. And

Bardia Khalilifar: only because when I, when, when we, when we started the company, uh, it was a big gap that we saw where a lot of businesses because of those volatilities that we. Well, that businesses saw was around cost. How do we reduced our, uh, you know, operational expenditure on Dhe. The cost was a big, big factor because we were reading in the news that there are workforce reductions all the time and not just across vendors, but also the small businesses, the medium sized businesses.

So where we saw a huge opportunity is all right, let’s provide a fractional sort of, uh, CRO leadership role and mind you, I want to sort of, um, allude to the fact that it’s a fractional CRO or any fractional leadership whatsoever. Isn’t a temporary temporary band aid. It’s a transformative force and the roadmap is about instilling a revenue culture that persists long after the engagements end.

So it’s important to educate and showcase that as to what that looks like. Now, if I, uh, sort of back that up with, with some statistics and some numbers, because. We’re looking, you know, we’re at 2024 and salaries have increased. Uh, so workforce reduction happens for salaries do tend to increase as well from, from time to time.

And it is expected that companies pay north of 250, 000 just on base salary for a chief revenue officer or chief sales officer. Now, because. Decision makers, leaders, CEOs, owners of businesses, uh, or even CFOs as well. They need to balance that, uh, cost so they can reduce their overhead. Um, they are looking at sort of alternatives to hiring someone full time.

So part of the fractional leadership that we see today, and this is not just me, there are other businesses out there who provide similar services. There is a 30 to 40 percent overhead reduction, uh, from a salary perspective alone, yet alone, you know, commissions and other things that that can be, you know, be Um, distinguished as part of their conversation, but businesses see that as a huge, huge value where they can work with fractional leaders that will help them reduce their overhead costs because they’re only doing two or three days of work each week.

Um, but as long as they’re providing the value and they’re providing the tangible results, that’s all they care about.\

Jeremy Balius: You know, the concept of fractional leadership has been around for a long time, and I think that’s the first time I’ve heard someone articulate it in the way that you just did. And it makes me consider whether there’s misnomers around, is it just part time or is it just about, coming in and quickly fixing something and setting something up and then getting out?

You’re actually telling me, no, this is the. This is an actual leader within the organization. Who’s taking the responsibilities of that leadership. It’s just scoped slightly differently to somebody who’s.

Bardia Khalilifar: That’s right. If you, if you just did, uh, a random search on LinkedIn today, and let’s, let’s, uh, use some sort of statistics around this, uh, this year, because, and this is post COVID, right?

So we, we, we see a lot of, uh, individuals. Who basically said, okay, well, I have the option to go and do my own thing. Uh, I’m guilty of that as well, by the way. Um, where, okay, you know, it’s post COVID, uh, I can, I have a specific set of skills and experiences that I’m going to provide now, post COVID. You go on LinkedIn and you can just see an inundated amount of people, businesses who are providing these fractional leaderships, whether it’s CRO.

CFO, CMO, et cetera. And. It’s because they understand the market volatility and they understand that businesses can’t afford that FTE count anymore. So they’re looking, they’re resorting to, uh, other areas, uh, alternatives like the fractional side of things, as long as. Those businesses who provide fractional, uh, leadership, uh, and, and skills and experience where they can get the job done.

Businesses don’t care about how many days a week you do it. They, all they care about is the outcome. It’s about tangible results. And we, we live in a world now we live in a day and age now that it’s no longer the nine to five Monday to Friday sort of job type of thing where, um, you, you sort of clock in and going into the office and.

Um, and I’m talking as a sort of a CRO or a chief sales officer, as an example, where you have to do this full time, they care about the tangible results, the fundamental values, and what is it that this fractional leader can do to help me transform my environment. So this goes back to what I was saying originally.

It’s the behavior change. It’s the fact that leaders and business owners are shifting their mindset to something that, uh, that they’re more receptive to. And this is something that we see huge, huge opening, huge, um, uh, opportunity for other individuals to go and do, do what they’re doing today.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, I agree. I really appreciate how you’re talking about this. In a transparent and open way within cost structures as a motivation. But at the same time, I’m thinking about that in the context of how, how you have had such dramatic exposure across disciplines, as well as across. Hardware software, you’ve been cyber, you’ve been in networking, you’ve been at disties, you’ve, there’s all this experience and expertise that you’ve.

Bringing into this role when you’re , I’m thinking about when you’re stepping in to a new client or a new business, and you’re starting to talk about this revenue blueprint that you mentioned earlier, how are you starting that conversation as you audit and unpack? What is actually happening within the business and, and whether they are or aren’t growing, where are you starting then, as you’re talking about new opportunity identification within the data or within the market, tell me, tell me about process and methodology, what happens there?

Bardia Khalilifar: So part of the conversation that we, um, we have is around understanding and getting clarity of, uh, the customer’s objectives, right? So, uh, I always emphasize on this as part of my conversation. What are your challenges? What are your opportunities? So clarity on, um, the ideal customer profiles or ICP or market segmentation.

So it’s important to. To sort of come up with a set of priorities in terms of how that, that looks like. The other element is around value proposition and aligning with outcomes. So we, we talk about outcomes as opposed to a product or a service, because one thing that customers.

technology customers are looking for is what is it that you’re providing me? Can it, can it resolve my, my issue? Can it help me, uh, without having the headache of dealing with it? That’s sort of the number one thing. Now that’s sort of, it’s about the value proposition, aligning the outcome on that. So the met, what, what does that messaging look like?

And. Keep in mind. Uh, again, we’re talking about challenges and volatility and cost reductions. Customers need to understand, okay, what does that return on investment look like with the outcome and the value proposition that you’re selling me? The second, the third thing is around channel partner ecosystem.

So if we’re going out into market, um, and we’re building all these, uh, the partnerships, et cetera, How can I provide a stackable solution from start to finish to, again, goes back to the second point to align with those outcomes and the value proposition, uh, scenario is that, uh, following my, my recent meeting at, uh, or meetings, I should say plural, uh, at Canales, I had the pleasure of meeting, um, uh, very, very great guy who’s based in the U S does similar work to me.

But one thing that we identified. Certain there were certain areas that he wasn’t providing in terms of a service and an outcome where I was and vice versa. So now we’re looking at potential partnership right as part of that conversation as part of that narrative to see how can we align our efforts.

In a united front. So when we go and have conversations with customers, we are aligning those value propositions with the objectives and the outcome as opposed to a service or a product. So it’s important again to build, form those partnerships and form those alliances. The fourth thing is around data and feedback loops.

So it’s important. And, uh, I’ll give you another example here again, back to that software company that we’ve got when we haven’t gone to launch it with this, actually, we haven’t launched the product yet. We’re actually one week away from launching it, but because it’s a very Pivotal thing that this software business is doing in the markets.

We thought, okay, rather than us thinking what’s best for businesses, let’s put a Reddit community out there with the alpha and the beta version of the software. And let them download it and they can test it out and then provide data and feature set, uh, or feature suggestions themselves, the customers. So within the first week of 10 days of, uh, deploying it on Reddit, the software itself, that was an alpha beta version.

We had four or 500 downloads with inundated amount of suggestions and feedbacks that is crucial to a business in order to learn from the customer behavior and what they want to see. The mistake that I’m seeing today with a lot of businesses is around. They think they, they will deploy something, a product or a service. or they think it’s an outcome without the knowledge of the customer, without the understanding of what the actual customer wants or needs. So my suggestion to businesses in general is that, okay, if you have a new offering that you want to go to market, right, put yourself out there, provide, um, uh, freemiums as an example.

Uh, or a try and buy type of thing. And we, we, we’ve seen this more and more today, which is great. I love how, um, software, there are software companies or. Hardware companies that they’re providing these try and buys these trials, etc. But I think there is an opportunity there where not only you’re providing a try and buy or a free trial type of thing, but put a section there as well for suggestions and feedbacks because we as businesses Cannot assume what customers want.

So therefore, in order for us to be successful, we need to make sure we listen to what the customers need as part of their model that they’re having internally because everyone’s different. So that’s that’s sort of the approach that we take. Now, one of the things that we need to also, uh, the challenge perspective around that is.

You need to stop treating it as a sort of a go to market initiative or a rent revenue initiative because the best strategy Uh, dynamic ecosystems constantly evolving with the market signals, but also continuously responding by actual customer feedback.

Jeremy Balius: This is so good. Bardia. This is so good. There is.

Okay. Let me, let me let the goosebumps die down for a second. This is okay. There’s a couple of things. There’s a couple of things I want to deep dive on that. You just said one of which I have a firm belief on is, and while I hate this term, we work with a lot of what’s called legacy tech. I don’t like it being called that, but it’s, it’s generally what’s we’re being referred to, am seeing these guys.

Take a SAS model where they are deploying or going to market more quickly and iterating their service faster rather than try to take six months to perfect it. And then launch it and then be dismayed that it’s not being taken up immediately overnight because they’ve sent out an email blast. And so the way that you were just describing the feedback loop, I think is something that tech business leaders can start adopting across the board.

I think it’s so fundamentally critical. Because it also, and I’m going back to what you were talking about a moment ago, it breaks down the assumptions of, we, we believe that they need X, and that’s why we built Y, to, we believe they need X, we built Y, but we’re actually finding out through that process they need Z, and therefore we’re evolving Y.

Bardia Khalilifar: I, I agree. And it’s, it’s a pitfall, I would say. The thing is, um, you’re absolutely right. It’s because how quickly can we scale? Right. And I, I guess I love to take risks personally, but then I also, part of what the risk taking efforts, it’s about how do you take calculated risks? How do you mitigate things that, uh, it’s, you know, Not within your control or, uh, provide that boundary, that protectiveness for yourself and the decisions that you’re making as well.

So I’ll put it this way. So, um, funny you mentioned that. And this is one of the things that I wanted to sort of talk about, you know, what, what, what are some of the common pitfalls that we see with tech companies and in order to scale their revenue, right, because all they care about is the front end customer interaction, it’s about how can I quickly generate revenue.

And then showcase that, um, in terms of, uh, my efforts in the market, but then is it sustainable? That’s the, that’s the sort of the next thing. So the common pitfalls that, uh, I see, or we see, um, is around premature scale scaling, which is something that you briefly sort of alluded that to hiring to that.

And that could look like. A higher rate too many sales reps before achieving a repeatable sales process. Uh, the second thing is misaligned teams, you know, sales, marketing, uh, operations in, they operate in silos. It’s not, and this is the thing that I, I hated working in big corporate tech vendors where everyone was siloed.

I’ll give you an example. Um, I was one of the, uh, I was working at one of the tech vendors, uh, I won’t name who, uh, but if we were, if we were to go to a customer, uh, engagement or meeting, there’ll be like two or three people from the customer side. And I’m not even exaggerating here. Uh, 15 people from tech vendor side, because everyone had a quota that all they cared about was the quota, right?

As opposed to, okay. Justifying their reason of being in that room with the customer. So part of that, uh, sort of thought process is, is, okay, I’ve got 15 people from the tech vendor side. Why don’t we all communicate together as one in a united form? So we are not operating in silos and they only have the key individuals or key people in that room with the customer.

So they’re not overwhelmed by 15 people when there’s only three of them in the room. So. Coming back to what I was saying, the, we need to eliminate silos. We need to have a more of a United front and, um, build that ecosystem. We talk about building ecosystems externally. It’s as important, um, you know, even more important to build it internally as well.

The third thing is around. Ignoring customer success and retention. That’s a pitfall, right? We talk about attaining new customers. Retaining them, right? So the focus is around, you know, uh, fixating on, we, we fixate on acquisition while neglecting onboarding adoption and ongoing value delivery. It’s the, the post sales.

It’s the about, it’s about the fact that, okay, once I’ve basically you. Sold or delivered my outcome. I don’t like to use services or product. The outcome for the customer. How do I continue to satisfy my customer? How do I get them to come back? Right? So even though you have the idea of scaling in mind, you also need to be very, very careful and mindful of, okay, how do I retain these businesses or how do I retain these Uh, customers, the fourth element, and it’s my final sort of thought on this is around lack of data hygiene, you know, CRM maintenance, uh, uh, you know, inaccurate forecasts, uh, misunderstanding customer segmentations, you know, which lead to misguided strategies.

I’ll give you a, give you a, an example. I’m full of examples today. Actually, there is a company that it’s outside of tech, and, uh, this is based on. Uh, some feedback that I received and the company is in the networking space. They provide a networking service for businesses to sort of, um, come on board and, um, sort of help to sort of provide that platform essentially or that, that ground, uh, the business model is great.

The challenge though, is I’m part of a coworking space, uh, here in Sydney that I know the owner of, of that coworking and, uh, him and I had a coffee conversation one time and they are essentially the competition of this networking company because they, they, uh, fundamentally provide a similar business model.

The networking company that I was, uh, that I’m mentioning. Reached out to my friend, the owner, the guy I know and basically said, you should come along to our opening events and, uh, you’ll benefit from this, et cetera. Now, he turned around and said to me that, well, I have, they, they, they have no idea that I’m doing this.

So first, that’s a big red flag right there in terms of not doing a research, not doing your homework. Not having the adequate data in order to, you know, before you call someone, do your research first. Second of all, which is kind of a very, very interesting, uh, sort of mindset is that apparently they, this networking company have called the owner of this coworking space about 15 times.

Throughout the entire 18, uh, 18 months, uh, timeframe. Now the right thing to do is go into CRM if you’ve got A-C-R-M-A customer relationship platform, right? You generally, your sales folks, your internal salespeople will update with notes. Yeah, I’ve already contacted. They’re not interested. They’re a competition.

But the fact that you do it 15 times is a huge, huge red flag in my eyes. And. From that, if you’re looking at scaling your business, this is not the way to do it because you basically just ruined your own reputation as a business, right? And you can ruin your reputation in five minutes, just like that, but it takes you five years to build it.

So it’s very, very important as part of that pitfall to not think that you’re scaling rapidly and it’s all, um, great news. It’s about putting in measurements and. And processes in place in order to do the right things and do it consistently, uh, every day.

Yeah. That’s

Jeremy Balius: a really good example. I think a really good reminder of the rigor and a tenacity required to make sure that data stays hygienic because there’s such huge implications by letting it go. As a fractional CRO working with businesses , as you’re having discussions or as you’re coming into businesses, what would you say is one of the most overlooked aspects in their revenue strategy?

Bardia Khalilifar: To, to, to sort of give you a, I guess, a level of understanding, this sort of ties back to what we talked about in the, in the last, uh, on the last subject. The overlooked aspect, in my opinion, is around holistic revenue operations framework or rev ops.

Jeremy Balius: Wow, right.

Bardia Khalilifar: Okay. That’s probably the most fundamental thing that I can think of right now.

Because. Again, we are so focused, or customers can be so focused on the front end sales, right? That they, they, they implement, uh, so they, they put in place salespeople, marketing people, marketing campaigns. They, um, they have allocated market development funds or business development funds. They focus on the front end of it.

But what’s important is, is that it’s the revenue operations, right? It’s the life cycle from start to finish. That’s very, very important. You can nail it for the first half of the cycle, but if you can’t execute on the second half of that cycle operationally, then you’re going to struggle, right? So many, uh, you know, integrating sales and marketing and customer and having clean data is important, right?

Uh, and, and choosing your tools and your processes, uh, you know, ensures that scalability, why rev ops or revenue operations matter. It’s based on long term scalability and informed decision making, right? It needs to be sustainable. It needs to be healthy, um, based on the feedback and the work and the efforts that you put in the front end cells.

But how do you maintain that at the very end as well? A lot of customers, when they sign up to a solution, right. Or an outcome, uh, whether it’s tech or non tech, right. The, and I’ve got, I’ve got plenty of examples. I’m, I’m actually, uh, part of that myself. I was in like, I’ve signed up to platforms, uh, that at face value was amazing.

But then the support system was. I’m sorry for using that word, but, uh, it was, it was terrible. Like, you know, the, the post sales effort, what does that look like? I like to provide my feedback. I like for someone to. With me around. Okay. What are your, what are your thoughts around this? How can we improve our platform a little bit more?

Uh, I know some businesses do that and I, that’s, that’s a testament to the strategic thinking as well, but then, you know, from a, uh, from an operational point of view, What is it that we can do differently? You know, how can we service our customers a little bit better? And, you know, the challenging perspective around that is that revenue growth is not a one department show.

It’s a cross functional sport that most significantly missed. It’s a missed opportunity is treating revenue as a series of disconnected functions. Rather than the unified, the strategic system powered by remote, that’s sort of my, my challenge perspective around that. It’s not a one, uh, it’s not a one department show it’s across the board.

So from a revenue organization is that you’re doing, you’re putting all these efforts in to go out to market and expand, but if you can’t sort of close that loop at the back end of it. Then you’re going to have some problems because you’re executing and attaining customers, but you can’t retain them.

And the most important thing is customer retention. The other element that I want to add as well, from a cost perspective to the business, it costs the fraction, a fraction amount to retain a customer, then go and going out and acquiring a new customer. Right, right. The, the ratio of that, I would say it’s.

Probably 10 to three. So three being to, um, the cost in order to retain one customer and tend to going and attaining new customers. So it’s great that we do all this and businesses do all this, uh, at the sort of the front end of it, but at the sort of the back end of it. If you can’t optimize your cost, optimize your, your efforts in the, uh, in the revenue operation side of things, then you’re going to struggle to even scale to begin with.

Jeremy Balius: Think this is such valuable advice. And I think that’s such a hero statement I think that it’s very elegant. Bow tied on this conversation, uh, so much value throughout it. But I think, um, that last part is, is so critical the way you’re describing the comprehensive approach across the business to revenue strategy.

Bardia, I’ve taken away so much from this myself. I’m sure listeners will as well. Thank you so much for coming on. What’s the best way for anyone to get in touch if they want to talk about, fractional CRO.

Bardia Khalilifar: Uh, so first of all, Jeremy, thank you so much for having me. I always happy to share my, my thoughts and I’m always open to learning as well.

Uh, so I like to sort of go in with an open mind and learn from others as much as I can. So part of what I’ve shared today is based on my learnings from others. So there are a whole bunch of smart people out there. Uh, they’re very, very good at their job. Uh, and the whole idea is for me to share that knowledge with, with others as well on your audience, uh, in terms of getting in touch.

Uh, so, uh, so can, can each show it’s spoke, it’s pronounced can each show, but it’s spelled can ECO. Uh, it’s, uh, it’s a Latin word. So. They can go on to, uh, cio.com au, which is our website. It provides all the, um, the necessary information there on the website to sort of give you a bit of a, an understanding of what we do and how we do it.

Uh, alternatively, um, if anyone’s interested, they can actually reach out to me personally, uh, on, bardia@conicio.com.au as well.