Turn Follow Ups Into Buyer Momentum In Minutes (Method) with Kim Hacker

The period immediately following a demo is often a "black box" where sellers lose visibility and control over the deal. Kim Hacker explains that over 90% of buying conversations happen without the seller present, usually in internal Slack channels. By using dedicated sales rooms, reps can equip their champions with targeted resources to share internally, significantly reducing friction in complex purchasing cycles involving legal, security, and finance. Instead of sending a generic "checking the box" email 24 hours later, sellers should send tailored, comprehensive resources within five minutes of the call. This strikes while the buyer is still discussing the tool with their team. Furthermore, Hacker advocates for replacing arbitrary CRM pipeline probabilities with a required "Confidence Level" field—confident, neutral, or skeptical—to foster honest forecasting and active deal management. Finally, bridging the gap between sales and onboarding is critical for preventing early churn. Introducing an onboarding plan during the final agreement stage capitalizes on the buyer's momentum and anxiety about their purchase decision. Ensuring a dedicated team member is tracking activation milestones turns closed-won deals into retained and expanded accounts.

Discussed in this episode

• Over 90% of buying conversations happen in internal communication channels without the seller present.
• Sending follow-ups within 5 to 10 minutes equips buyers while the demo is fresh in their minds.
• Generic follow-up emails add zero value to the buying committee and just serve to check a box.
• Sales rooms act as a single source of truth for complex legal, security, and finance approvals.
• Deal rooms should always be positioned as a benefit to the buyer's organization, not a tool for the seller.
• Automated CRM probability percentages should be replaced with rep-driven "Confidence Level" scoring.
• Onboarding plans should be introduced during the agreement signing stage to maintain post-demo momentum.
• Call recording tools are the absolute foundational step before investing in advanced AI note-takers.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — The post-demo black box
2. 2:15 — Experiencing poor follow-ups as a buyer
3. 6:45 — The five-minute follow-up strategy
4. 9:30 — Navigating internal buying committees
5. 12:15 — Positioning deal rooms to the buyer
6. 15:20 — CRM visibility and confidence scoring
7. 19:00 — Introducing onboarding at the agreement stage
8. 23:45 — Conversational intelligence teardown insights
9. 27:10 — Rapid fire questions

Key takeaways

• 90% of buying conversations happen when you aren't there.
• Send comprehensive follow-up resources within 5 minutes of demos.
• Create a single source of truth for the buying committee.
• Use Confidence Level scoring to filter out happy ears.
• Introduce onboarding plans during the final agreement signing phase.

Transcript

Sending a follow-up five minutes after a demo but it's just like a generic like, hey, great great to meet you. Like that doesn't do anything, that doesn't help me as a buyer at all. Um, that's just like you checking the box of following up. 90% plus of the conversation about what you're buying happens outside of you being present in that conversation.

Because the worst thing is like you get a turn six months after they buy and then you look back at their usage and they never even got activated. It's just the worst feeling of like, we didn't even have a shot here. Welcome back to another episode of The Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue reimagined. We are debating whether it's Jamie Dimon or Jamie Diamond.

Dale likes to correct me, but that is not why we're here. We are here because today's guest is Kim Hacker, who is the COO at Arrows, a platform that is near and dear to my heart. It's a platform for sales rooms and onboarding plans that actually lives inside your CRM. No more going out, no more reps having to have the login number 37.

Kim's work focuses on eliminating the post demo black box by giving every single buyer a personalized page with crystal clear next steps and syncing everything back to HubSpot and now Salesforce. Think mutual action plans, which is Dale's favorite word, but for more than sales. We're going to dig into what actually happens when the seller isn't in the room, how buyer hub speed deals, and how connected onboarding turns closed one into retained and more importantly, expanded. Kim, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. What what an intro. I love it. Yeah.

It's the only reason I'm here. I'm gonna go mute. No, I'm not gonna go mute because then you're stuck talking. No, he never goes on mute.

He never goes on mute. Kim, welcome to the show. It was great to uh meet in person. We've done a lot of We've done a lot of slack uh interactions with some, you know, some of our clients using the arrows uh platform.

Um, bouncing up what Adam said, what buyers do when you're not there. You've written a lot about the buying process. Now what happens when sellers aren't in the room? What are buyers actually doing in that gap and what evidence have you seen of that?

Yeah, I think um, so I am often on our own buying committee at Arrows. And so I think since we started building a product, actually just a little over a year ago is when we started building sales rooms. And since then, um, or I guess when we launched sales rooms. And since then, I've been more aware of the buying process as a buyer because we're selling to sellers who are using this to to send to their buyers.

And I think we're actually in a buying process right now. And I think every time I'm just like, oh, wow, it's it's just kind of crazy how what we are doing is completely um invisible. Like our our internal buying process is completely invisible to the sales rep. They actually have no idea like, I mean, I am I'm very transparent as a buyer, so I'm telling people like here's what we're thinking, here's what we're prioritizing, here's the other competitors we're looking at.

And still there's so much conversation happening in our Slack uh between me and in this example, it's our head of customer success who's looking at this tool. And it's just been really eye-opening like in this example, we um our first follow-up that we got after the first demos for these tools was at 10:30 p.m. the night after or the night of our first demo.

That and we had So we had three demos. Our first follow-up was at 10:30 p.m. The next one was over 24 hours later, and then the third demo never sent a follow-up.

And so for us on the buying side, I'm I'm in Chat GPT saying like, okay, here are the things I care about for these tools. We're comparing these three. Um, I've used this tool before, a different one. How does it compare?

Like how should I be thinking about the gaps between them? And honestly, Chat GPT's not super great at that because it's just reading what's on their website and that's kind of what I was reading and not able to fill the gaps with. And so I just thought it was really interesting where like, I just gave you so much information on a 30-minute demo. Like you know everything like you know the features that I care about most.

You know our use case. You know the competitors I'm evaluating. And you're not supporting me through this like this part of the process because I'm not getting any kind of follow-up resources. And so we're just kind of like left to guess.

And honestly, like I we ended up booking a a demo with another competitor because we were like, I feel like these aren't quite doing it for us. So I just think it's like being a part of the buying process while you are selling a sales tool is just a lot more eye-opening, especially when I'm thinking about like marketing messaging and I'm like, oh, it's actually like a The things that we say in marketing are so true and actually like even more true than we maybe even realized. It's it's got to be so hard for you to buy knowing that you're you're a good portion of your platform is to help sellers navigate that sales process. So when you're solving that for people all day, I I would imagine it's got to be incredibly painful to sit through a process where like, listen, they're not using Arrows.

Fine. But like nothing. Zero. No follow-up.

Like that that's got to be more painful than than the average bear because not only do you expect it, but you guys have, you know, arguably perfected what it should look like. Yeah, it's painful, but it's also honestly validating. Like I shared in our own Slack channel like God like this is why people need Arrows. And like we say it and we hear it from people but to experience it first-hand, just like I think makes us even more uh confident in like this is like this actually would have been such a great use case for Arrows.

And like even when we did eventually receive the follow-ups, I was like, oh, like this took a long time because actually they were good. Both of them were great follow-ups. I will say. They they just came late.

But also like that would have been perfect in an Arrows sales room giving us the content that we need, given us giving us the competitor analysis, like all of that kind of stuff just came way too late. And then it was just like in a really long email that was like hard to read. So So you're gonna turn you're gonna turn around and try to sell them Arrows now, whether you buy from them or not. Actually, one of them already like came in and was like, hey, uh before the demo, he's like, hey, we need your product.

And I was like, great. Let's let's talk about it. So I have I have two questions. One is like, what if they use a competitive product of yours and then they sent you like the collab the the deal room like in that space.

Would would you still have like a perspective of, okay, at least they're using something. I think so. Like I I've never received I'm in I mean, we don't buy a ton of tools, but like I'm in several buying processes per year, I would say, and I've never received actually I received one a few years ago when we were buying like our our benefits and uh payroll platform. And that was my first experience of a sales room and I loved it.

And this was before like we were kind of like, oh eventually we might build sales rooms, but we hadn't even gotten around to it or or really had set any kind of timeline around it. And I loved it because uh at the time we were we It was um, I think it was Rippling that sent it to us. We were using Gusto. And so I was trying to understand that difference and I had told them, I'm also evaluating Justworks.

And they gave me like the perfect relevant information. And I was like, this actually really does help me evaluate this. And I want to send it to my my co-workers to be like, hey, did you know that this part is different, this is how it'll compare to Gusto. And I felt like it was really honest.

So it's the only time though I've ever received uh a sales room. So I do think there are certain um spaces where they're popular and they're becoming more and more popular, but there's still so many sales teams that are kind of watching the like post-demo work. So the second I have another question follow-up. I don't care.

No, go ahead. So the the the the other question I had for you is like, what's the optimal response time or recap time. Like, I have a perspective in my head, but what's your optimal like, you know, recap time. I honestly think optimal So uh, I I would optimize for giving people great resources and like actually having a great follow-up um ahead of time I I would say in a way, like sending a follow-up five minutes after a demo, but it's just like a generic like, hey, great great to meet you.

Like that doesn't do anything, that doesn't help me as a buyer at all. Um, that's just like you checking the box of following up. And honestly, like I have to say I've been in sales a lot of my career and I've done that a lot. So like, I I Dale does it all the time.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, because then like I have to send the follow-up, so I'll just send one quick and um, but that's not really that valuable either. We uh now that we have sales rooms and are our uh drinking our own Kool-Aid, I guess, we send our follow-ups within five minutes of a call ending.

And so we'll generate the sales room and actually send them that quickly. So if you are able to have a personalized tailored follow-up with the right resources, I think, you know, five to ten minutes after the demo is ideal because for me as a buyer, that's when I'm in Slack saying, hey, I just did this demo. I really liked it. And then people are asking me questions and I'm like, oh, crap, I forgot the answer to that.

And I wish I had like a resource or like my call recap or something like that so that I can re-research or reference that and then sound confident when I'm pitching that internally to my team. Yeah, that's that's super interesting. Uh we well, I've always thought within 24 hours is like at least like the minimum. Like you you you have to do it within 24 hours because then you just get out of sight out of mind.

Five minutes is crazy time, but um, cuz I mean I I I have a hard time getting sales people to do it within 24 hours. I'm like, why is this three days later and I haven't seen anything? Yeah, I mean, Dale's done with a demo and five minutes later, he's going to like go out on the boat or something. He's like, I did my work for the day, so like I'm done.

I will say it takes discipline for me, like so I'm I'm um doing some demos well, we have one of our account executives on uh parental leave and it takes discipline for me because when I get off of a call, I really want to check Slack or like send someone a message about something. And so it does take some discipline for me to be like, nope, I'm going right to the deal. We use HubSpot. I go right to the deal, create my sales room, send my follow-up and it's like, I don't do anything until that's out.

Um, and it feels really good. Honestly, like I feel behind on so many things in my day-to-day. And that is one thing that I'm like, I feel really confident that I'm actually able to follow up and send great resources very quickly and kind of, you know, prove out, you know, how Arrows works, but also feel like that's a thing that I did check off a box and I feel great about what's what's in there. Sure.

Sure. So let's let's shift gears a little but stay somewhat similar. So there's sales rooms, you have your CRM and what I kind of call like the the the next step chaos, right? So we, you know, Dale asking when we should send a follow-up email.

Dale thinks 24 hours. I I love five minutes. I don't know if you don't have something that does There's no way you could ever do five minutes. You can do five minutes.

No way. Uh, I could if I had a tool. I could if I had a tool like like Arrows. Um, and and it's and it makes it very quick.

Um, I I do for the record Dale. I do send my Arrows rooms within probably 10 minutes. I won't say five. Um, but one of the things that I think trips up sellers is to your point, Kim, it's this, do I send this quick, you know, email right after that is super short, that's like, hey Kim, thanks blah blah blah blah blah and adds zero value, um, and then send a second email.

Do I wait and hope that I don't forget? You know, you guys have taken this approach of kind of this personalized page, right? for every prospect. How does that help not just like getting the follow-up out but practically reducing the actual deal risk and more importantly speeding up what are these ridiculously long approval paths that we're seeing these days?

Mhm. Yeah. I think in several ways. Um, one is just like outlining the next steps.

I think a big thing that we think about for ourselves like we have a lot of our customers are people that are are buyers of software, I guess, like they're not It's not their first time, but there's a lot of people who are are not don't know how to buy software. And I that sounds I think I think people underestimate that they don't know a lot of people don't know that they have to go to through a security review and go to finance and do a legal review. Like there are so many parts of buying software or or anything. But there are so many parts that I think people just think, okay, I'll do a demo and then the buyer actually doesn't even know what their next step is.

And so I do think that there's a lot of value in outlining like, hey, here's what we typically see. Does this process align with what your team needs? If not, you need to actually go probably talk to someone in your team and see what do I actually need to do to purchase this software. And then kind of um preempting those post demo questions that might come up where again, like you know, you end a demo and then you're like, oh, I forgot to ask this um or like in in our case uh for these demos that we were recently doing, there was one feature that I was like particularly interested in one of the tools.

There's not a lot of information on their website. I couldn't find much. So like sending me like a deeper dive, um a loom video showing that kind of stuff. So I think anything to like answer the questions and kind of solidify like, you know, I was interested in that one specific thing, give me more information as much as I can because that's probably is going to be the thing that that makes us uh decide.

So I do think it's like being smart, listening to the buyer, understanding what is the thing that's unique that would make them buy this solution and then putting that into a place where that champion that you're initially talking to or the the couple of people that you're talking to on the demo can access that, share it around. But then also, I think the the big piece is being able to share those common resources with everyone in the larger buying committee that might not be on the calls. So I think we see that a lot. You can see the Arrows um engagement activity.

So like yesterday I sent out a sales room like five again five minutes sometimes sooner, um after a demo and it's like within I actually showed it to our team afterwards, but I was like within 30 minutes, there was 30 minutes of view time in the sales room because they had sent it around to three different stakeholders already. I could see that it was three different people that were viewing it. I could see that they were watching the call recording, that they were viewing the case studies. And so, um, it's just like kind of getting everyone on the buyer side who are already having those discussions on the same page with the same resources.

So you can kind of tailor what are they talking about, what are they looking into. I I think that's one of the things that most people when they think sales rooms don't realize is and and you talk about this a lot, like 90% plus of the conversation about what you're buying happens outside of you being present in that conversation. And nine times out of ten, you don't know who's in that buying committee. You you you you know a couple people that you're talking to, but you don't really know because most people aren't gonna tell you, oh I really have to talk to John, Mike, Sally and Sam.

But what you do know with Arrows is John, Mike, Sally and Sam have to enter their email to see the Arrows room. They now get an I'll I'll do a little sales pitch for you here, but they now get automatically added to HubSpot as contacts. You see exactly what they're looking at. And now you can tailor that messaging.

This is how you drive sales in my opinion in today's selling climate where historically you are blind to all of this. Now if we could just teach Dale to go look at that and actually work on this stuff, we we'd make process. But I I think everything you're saying is right and the fact that I I love that right after you sent it, you were able to see all of that engagement. Um, and it's also a really good way of knowing every rep has happy ears, right?

Oh, they love the demo, it's great, it's gonna move forward. Well, if you send the sales room and no one opens it and it doesn't get passed anyone, the happy ears probably didn't exist. I I I would not put that in commit. So, so I want to jump off of that a minute, um as well because, you know, there's some clients and and I've used deal rooms, you know, even before even before Arrows, um, but there is a there is a sense that they may not open it, they don't know what it is.

Like there's some confusion around it. So if you if there is a lot of value in there, but they're not opening the room. What can sellers do or or what's the what's the step to make sure the person understands what that deal room is or collab I call it collaboration room because I think it goes beyond the deal. Um, and ensuring like we have a client that uses Arrows now, but it's traditional like it it's not software, like the buyers like kind of a different buyer.

And we're putting proposals in there and they're not used to getting proposals in a collaboration type room. You know, what are some what are some, um, things that buyers can, I mean, sellers can think about in that in that motion? Yeah, I I definitely recommend introducing it on the first call. So, um, saying like, for example, a lot of sellers will at the end of the call say, okay, so great meeting you, here's what we discussed, here's what I'm gonna send you afterward.

I'm actually gonna put those all together inside one uh shared room. So I'm gonna send you that link and you'll get that in the email. It'll have everything in there. And it'll keep updated.

So as you need more information, you'll be able to have it in there and share it with your team. So I think like you don't need to don't say Arrows, like anything like that, but I think just saying like, FYI, we're gonna send you this link. You don't even need to say room, but like we're gonna send you a link, it's gonna contain everything that you need and then anything that you need moving forward will still go in there. So that'll be like our our place.

And honestly, the same thing happens with um, with onboarding plans. I would say most of our customers customers are not super tech savvy. Like we see very commonly people are um, like we sell to a lot of SaaS customers, but they're selling to like restaurant managers or um, roofing companies or like I think that's super common where they're they're definitely concerned about that. But it I I think it's all in like how you say it's going to help the buyer.

I like the idea of link. Yeah, one link is is so much better because everyone kind of knows what that is. Um, but I think the thing to think about is like the sales rooms should help the seller for sure, but like ultimately, they're there for the buyer. They're there to help the buyer make a have a better um buying experience.

And and I think pitching it that way to the buyer and saying like, this is gonna help you and all of your proposals. Everything is going to be in here for you to access is is best. Yeah, and I I I often position it as something like, listen, like we we all get a million emails a day and I don't want anything to get buried. I want you to have a single source of truth for anything that you might need to refer back to or share with your team.

Um, and this is gonna allow us to do that. So I I I think you what you just said is probably the most important thing. You know, a lot of companies, certainly that we work with, whether it be Arrows or competitors of Arrows, it's, you know, oh, we need this to make our sellers lives easier. No.

I I mean, yes, that's a by-product. But at the end of the day, this is to improve the buying process for your buyers, not the sales process for your sellers. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win.

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If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit sendoso.com. Um, so I love that you you spoke about that. Kim, whether it's sales rooms, deal rooms, onboarding plans, you know, you probably have more exposure to CRM than the average bear.

Um, you know, I think you guys very purposely built out your product to link in with, you know, HubSpot initially and now Salesforce now. When you're looking as a as a leader, as a as a revenue leader or an ops leader, when you're looking at, you know, the CRM, what are three or four, like what are the top three or four fields or milestones that you immediately look for to know whether this is a real deal or whether this is a I have happy ears deal and I'm just going to keep it in my pipeline for the next six months and it's never gonna close. I will say we have um one of the perks about being like an early stage startup is we have uh a small team that we trust a lot. And so we only have a couple of sales reps and um and we are also not as an organization people that uh like I think we have a lot of trust and they like use that trust and keep their pipeline really well up to date.

Actually, I I told them like, it's wild to me how well you guys update the CRM without us ever like asking them to. Like, I feel like that's so rare for That is wild. account executives. And they're so good.

Like the CRM is always up to date and I think they're just like organized people, so they need it to be up to date so that they and they they, you know, use HubSpot tasks to tell them when to follow up. Like they are just kind of meticulous about making sure they're doing the right things. So, that is a huge thing. I don't honestly have to worry about it that much.

But we do two things, um, we do have the sales room engagement showing on the pipeline view. So that's a really good way, like I just go to our sales dashboard a lot, um, and kind of just see where are the deals. I'll often filter to like closing this month or um, look at specific reps deals. So we have those tags showing if they're engaged, Um, so that's really helpful to kind of get a sense like, oh, this is one is moving or it'll say that they're stalled.

And then you're like, all right, something's happening here. Um, and then the other thing is we actually have a property in HubSpot called uh confidence level. And so that's a required property. I I stole that from you.

I use that with all of my clients now. Yes, I love it. Um, and it's actually it's actually just like a helpful exercise as a rep. Like now that I'm kind of back in in doing some stuff in HubSpot.

Um, so after anytime we move our deals out of the meeting scheduled stage, it's a required property. And so as a rep, you have to say what is your confidence level that it's going to close? So it's confident, neutral or skeptical. Um, and so you say that and it's actually just a good thing to be like, yeah, actually feel like I would be really shocked if we lost this deal, would be confident.

Neutral is and and we have no um no one's judging what anyone puts there, but I think it's really helpful for us as a team to be like, okay, this one's confident to close, like we still need to like we need to do a lot to work it. But also like that's our failure if they don't close at this point because basically everything they told us on the demo sounds like they should be moving forward versus skeptical. Honestly, for me, if I put something skeptical, I'm probably going to be less active with that deal because it doesn't seem like it's the best fit or they don't have some kind of uh need for it or it doesn't feel like the perfect use case. And so I'll kind of like let that one sit there and be a little bit more passive with it versus the confident ones working working more.

So I'd say like those are the two things that we really pay attention to to um understand, you know, what's what's actually gonna close like this month or this quarter. I I love the confidence scoring. I think Dale and I have long said that like both HubSpot and Salesforce, you know, with their um pipeline waiting or pipeline forecasting because a deal is in, you know, stage three means it has a 62% Bullshit. That is not true.

Um, I actually have gone so far with all of our clients, I hide the automated fields and I only rely um on the confidence scoring. Um, so love it. 100% aligned on that. Yeah, and we we filter out the skeptical um deals from our forecast as well.

So all of our forecasting reports just filter those out um by default. Nice. Let's um, let's transition a little bit onto the on part onboarding part of sales and I think this is very like, I think this is where most organizations fail when they're actually going to execute on things. Um, because they they're like, oh, salesperson done.

Like you're all set and you're moving on. Um, you've led onboarding teams. How early should onboarding plans show up in sales cycles? How detailed should they be?

And um, yeah, I'll I'll start there. I I have a couple of follow-up thoughts on around this, but would love your perspective on. I think it really depends on the process. I feel like we're seeing more and more people that that actually need the onboarding plans to be introduced pretty early in the sales process.

And the a lot of times when we see that it's because they they're collecting some sort of information in sales that uh that factors into what happens post sales. So like they are getting um information about what kind of uh integrations they need or uh their existing tech stack or things like that. So collecting that information, you can collect it in sales rooms as well. But if it's something that is like a must-have in order for them to move forward in the sales process that also ties to the onboarding process, a lot of times people are bringing that in in like the final stages of sales, getting that information and then transitioning that into onboarding.

I think that works really well. We start our own onboarding plans at the tail end of the sales process. So when we're getting into like the agreement signing, um, we send them a sales room or sorry, we we have a sales room basically for all of the buying process until they get to um needing an agreement. Um, and then we will add the onboarding plan to the sales room and then that's when we kick off onboarding.

So like they're their next steps in the onboarding plan are sign an agreement, pay for Arrows, and then that unlocks a gate to schedule your kickoff call and then that kind of kicks off the onboarding process. But I think it works best. Not everyone needs to do this cuz sometimes people get overwhelmed when we tell them this and like they don't a lot of times people are you all know. People are so worried about impacting their sales process that like sometimes they don't want onboarding teams getting involved.

Um, but I do think it works so well when you can introduce that at the end of the sales process because it just keeps that momentum going from sales into onboarding. When people are paying or signing an agreement, they're the most excited and anxious. Like and nervous about, okay, like we I and honestly like they're feeling that way because they want to make sure that they made the right decision and they're gonna look good in front of their boss. And their boss is gonna be like, oh, wow, that was a great decision that you made.

So they're feeling anxious. So give them next steps that they can follow so that they feel confident that this is gonna get them to the outcomes that they wanted. And I think um introducing it at that time is is so powerful. Yeah.

Yeah. I I'm a big proponent of bringing operations or delivery or CS at least at the proposal stage because my experience in sales is that we as sales people just call it a an enterprise type sale or even a mid-market sale. You may be selling this thing for three, four, six, 12 months and there's a lot of conversations that happen. And this is why I also like the Arrows room as a deal room because you're you're consolidating, you're grabbing all of this information and you're kind of putting it in a place that's easy to digest when you're actually pushing it over to the onboarding process.

So, um I love that. Yeah, I think onboarding is so overlooked. Um, we go through this whole process of a great sales process and making sure the customer, you know, loves what they're buying and everything's wonderful and then the onboarding is, hi Kim, please meet Dale, blah blah blah and we wash our hands of it. Um, and then we wonder why time to value is, you know, not what it needs to be, why customers are unhappy.

And then we create this back and forth of, well, sales didn't sell it properly. Well, you didn't onboard it properly. Well, it's the wrong ICP. Like whatever the reason is.

Um, and that could be solved with a proper onboarding process. When you look at onboarding, what are like the top two or three pitfalls that you think create that churn risk in the first 90 days that a tool for proper onboarding, whether it be an onboarding room or not. Any proper onboarding tool. Um, can help solve solve.

Yeah, actually I can't speak today. I have like marbles in my mouth today. Um, what came to mind when you were saying that, which I've never specifically thought about before, but I feel like is probably happens more often is than I than I realize is you know, you do have that often there's some kind of handoff email between sales and onboarding. There's a lot of companies that don't have a specific dedicated onboarding team or or onboarding function.

And so I do think sometimes even uh, there's just like, okay, the the action happened again. It's like check the box. Okay, I sent the handoff email. And then and then what happens if the person doesn't take action?

What happens if the person doesn't book the kickoff call? Is there anyone that's tracking like this customer is not making any progress in onboarding? I think a lot of times those customers just kind of sit there. And um, we even see this ourselves.

Like everyone every company has um some customers that are self-motivated and are going to proactively reach out to you for help with onboarding. And then you're also going to have people that you need to chase down. And that is just the reality of any business. You're never gonna have a like every single customer is going to be super self-motivated, getting themselves live, and asking you the right kind of question.

And so I do think like the number one thing is have a person who is dedicated to to making sure customers hit whatever milestones you have on onboarding. Because the worst thing is like you get a churn six months after they buy and then you look back at their usage and they never even got activated. It's just the worst feeling of like, we didn't even have a shot here. And so I think that's step number one that I would recommend is like, make sure there's a person who is responsible for checking off and making sure they have those milestones.

And then I do think that's where Arrows onboarding plans or, you know, any kind of onboarding plan helps is you can actually track those milestones and have a person that is dedicated to saying, okay, here are the things that we need this this customer to do. You can give them those tasks. You can enable them to complete work on their own. And then you can also see if they're falling behind or if they're they're uh constantly having overdue tasks.

Like there's some kind of intervention that needs to happen and I think just getting that kind of visibility is is super helpful. Yeah. I and I think that that's the word of the day, right? Whether it's a sales room, whether it's an onboarding room, it's the visibility.

You don't know what's happening when you're not there. And having tools like this that allow you to have visibility into what happens when you're not in the room is ultimately what's going to help drive deals forward. Um, I've been a huge fan of all of these type of tools for a long time. Um, some people do it well.

I think some try to do it well. Um, we could save that for another time and we won't call people out by names. Um, I I I I I have one that I want to one more thing I want to go to before we go to rapid fire. We're going to go a little bit over.

Um, it was probably a couple months ago, Kim, you were doing a conversational intelligence teardown um for lack of better terms on LinkedIn. Um, I think it's the first and only time I I I disagreed with you on anything. Um, but you you looked at almost every tool out almost every tool out there. Like I was blown away.

Like I can't imagine the time that you spent to actually research this. And I think conversational intelligence is one of those areas of sales now that are absolutely necessary, but so commoditized that like we're going to assume everyone can record a call and give you a summary of it. That is table stakes. If that's just what you're doing, please everyone don't buy a tool just do it in Zoom and be fine.

Um, but there's so much more. And every call that we're on these days, there's obviously more AI note takers, um, than there are people. Um, we joke about it a lot. What did you learn from that teardown specifically when it comes to accuracy, accountability and risk because the space like it's craziness and you've dug into it arguably more than anyone unless you're a CEO or an employee of one of these CI tools.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I will first say like I'm kind of shocked how many demos that we get uh that are evaluating Arrows sales rooms and don't use a call recording tool yet. So I do think Really?

Yes. And so I think that we are and like and like I think that we like everyone like so many of our partners and a lot of our customers are actively using them, but there were so many people even I think it was like March-ish when I when I launched that. And so many people were like, hey, I we need one of these and like I I've honestly done like a lot of calls with like, you know, even our own customers who are like, can you help me pick like which one to use? And so I do think there are still a lot of teams who are reaching for more advanced tools when I still believe very strongly and in fact, I will tell people on a demo if they if they are not using a call recording tool, I'm like, you should start there.

That's where you that's what you should do first. Um, also Arrows is is incredibly tied to call recording. So like that's how we generate content in the sales room is by telling seeing what happened in the call recording. So it's kind of a a core piece.

You can use it without. But I will always push people to like, if you are trying to do anything in sales and you're not using a call recorder, that's your first stop. So, that is where our uh slight argument happened, Adam, is that I think I was saying like getting the basic notes and getting just being able to to purchase a call recording tool, turn those on and get insights and and reminders about what you said and and your next steps. I think is is sometimes overlooked because we can get so excited about all of the advanced stuff that these tools can do.

And so and I think honestly like that was the the biggest criticism, not just from you, from across the board about my kind of teardown because what I did was I just looked at the quality of the out of the box notes for all of the note takers. And there's so much more you can do and I know, you know, the tools that you all like to use are are so much more powerful and I hear about those all the time. Um, and a lot of teams will never set that kind of stuff up because they're not even using anything right now and they just need to be able to like turn something on and and honestly, like for a lot of these teams, just getting it connected to the CRM. Like there's still a lot of teams that even if they are using a call recording tool, they're not syncing it to the CRM.

Like there's so many which blows my so I am 100% aligned with you on it. It it at at at bare minimum. You need a tool that records that can link to your CRM in some way, even if it's just the recording link. Like if you if you don't have the skill set or the time or the money to map the fields, at least map the recording link and then be able to map that to your sales room.

We're 100% aligned on that. Yeah. Um, I I would love to do a whole show with you on conversational intelligence. Um, a whole separate thing cuz I think there's so much that's changing in that space regardless of who anyone's preferred vendor is, like to your point, the basics are important.

I am still blown away. Like we we did have a customer who's been around for God, 10 plus years, Dale, um, that doesn't record a single call still to this day. Um, forget putting it in the sales room. My first question on that is always, how how do you coach your team?

Um, because you can't sit on every call all day every day. Like how do you make sure people are getting better? Um, it it blows my mind. Yeah, but even even even with call recording, I mean like it's a well-known fact that people still aren't coaching.

Like that's another whole topic. Like people just are not coaching their teams and you can have but like one of our clients has Arrows and uh call recording and a bunch of stuff and they get still the the deals are still stale, the the CRMs up updated properly, they're not coaching properly. Like and we're mapping like splice right into the right into the CRM. Like Yeah, the problem is, and it's with any tool, right?

Any tool you have is only as good as if you use it. Recording the calls is great. How are you acting on it? Using sales rooms is great.

What are you doing with it besides just sending a link? Using an onboarding plan is fantastic. How are you using that data? We're we're getting in a culture in my opinion that is just tool overload and it's like every everything has a tool that can solve a problem.

Well, awesome. How are you using it? And for every tool you buy you're buying, what are you deprecating? Um, I I I fun no little known fact.

I so I'm a Salesforce and a HubSpot admin. Um, and I do a lot of our admin work for our clients. And whenever someone wants to add a field, my first question is, great, what two fields do you want me to remove? Um, because we're not just gonna have, you know, a gazillion fields.

It's the same with tools. You have to use them. Um, and actually drive them to coach. Coaching is a whole another conversation, um, that we could do a whole separate show on as well.

I don't think I've run across one org yet that does it really well um and really consistently. With that, we are at time, but we have to do some rapid fire first. Um, and the rules here that we try to stick to, Kim, are ten words or less. Um, go a little more, but what we don't want to do is give Dale the opportunity to get involved in a back-and-forth conversation with you during rapid fire.

Um, so question number one. What is one next steps mistake that you see in 80% of deal rooms? Not thinking about who else is involved and just doing next steps for your one champion. I love it.

Yep. What's the single CRM field you wish every AE would update religiously? Next steps come to mind just like an accurate next step of what and actually a buyer next steps. What is next for the buyer to actually do and take action on.

That is the key for everyone listening. Next steps. Buyer next steps. Next step is not send follow-up email.

That is not a next step. Um, Kim, what's your favorite onboarding milestone to celebrate publicly? Like what what triggers that Slack alert? For us, it's our activation metric.

So we have a for us it's sending uh getting five plans or rooms viewed. So that is our activation metric right now and that we do have a Slack alert when that happens for our customers and we send a like, congrats, you made it to this milestone to our customers to celebrate that for them too. Nice. Awesome.

What should absolutely not live in a buying facing room? Hmm. Probably Adam's picture, but we won't go there. Definitely, you don't want I have a face for radio.

I would say I I don't know about something specifically, but I do think sometimes people get excited about all the different things you can add and then people just add things to add things. And I think being really conscious of what are the things that are actually gonna help your buyer move forward and get rid of anything else. It's like CRM fields. Go figure.

Um, Kim, you can't be in any type of Rev Ops, system admin, COO, tech sales work. What are you gonna go do? If all that's taken away from you and you're not allowed to work in any of the fields we work in now. What what what what are you gonna go do for the next next round?

Oh gosh. Um, I uh, I originally went to school for design and was initially a designer in my career and I like actually I think I kind of shut off the creative part of myself for a long time and I feel I've been able to do that more at Arrows. Um, be creative in in lots of different ways. So I don't know I could see myself doing something like that, maybe not being an actual designer, but doing something that is more creative and and design-oriented.

Cool. As we wrap this thing up, dream vacation destination. Destination. Okay.

I have been wanting I've had the Rick Steves um Scandinavia book for like the last year and a half. I've never been. I've traveled a lot actually did like a year and a half full-time travel. But I've never been up there and that is the thing that I want to do but I feel like I have to like make a good plan to hit a bunch of spots.

So that's I wouldn't say it's like a dream, but that's like my next next spot on my list. Awesome. Super cool. Good place.

Kim Hacker, COO of Arrows, thank you for joining the show, for sharing all your knowledge. Sales rooms, onboarding plans, conversational intelligence, and overall just how you get better visibility into the buying process. Thanks so much for having me. This is really fun.