Ep # 150: AI is Changing Sales – Here’s What You Don’t Know ft. Ioanna Onasi (CEO & Founder, Dextego)

[00:00:02] Ioanna Onasi: Be able to lead better, lead with empathy, build trust with their team. On a day to day, you're one person, but with that one choice, you're impacting the entire organization. [00:00:13] Taylor Kenerson: Welcome to the Hyperengage Podcast. We are so happy to have you along our journey. Here, we uncover bits of knowledge from some of the greatest minds in tech. We unearthed the hows, whys, and whats that drive the tech of today. Welcome to the movement. [00:00:33] Adil Saleh: Hey, greetings everybody. This is Hyperengage podcast and you know, I'm so, you know, excited to, you know, get these podcasts at least 10 or 15 a month. Now we are rolling out because we're not chasing big logos anymore because we wanted to, in the first two years. We wanted to see like how. Things are happening at scale in terms of go to market customer success, including sales, marketing and all. And now we're trying to sit down deep into the, into the products that are emerging and that are emerging really, really fast. And they're bringing on some with, with this evolution. And we are bringing on this you know, very really you know, I would say smart use cases into the industry and automating a lot of workflows intelligently. And today we, we, we talk, we'll talk about. Coaching is done. You know, with, with, with all the human psychology, all the you know, human pattern understanding and how it can drive outcomes for people or organization for, for, for different internal teams across not just only tech, but you know, there's a big category of consulting business and, you know, you talk about enterprise segment where you have like teams globally divided, all patients globally divided. So. We are talking about Dextego. It's and, and, and the father, founder, and and the CEO of Dextego, Iona who has joined us today. Thank you very much for taking the time, Maria. [00:01:47] Ioanna Onasi: Absolutely. Thank you. Maybe we should say mother, founder instead of founder, [00:01:54] Adil Saleh: mother, founder. Yeah, mother founder. And another thing you know, like we had only three, like I have a distant three you know, female founders that are doing Core B2B Tech, a lot of service providers. They come on land. So it is my pleasure to have someone woman led leadership you know, talk about more about women in the space especially in New York. It's growing very, really fast. I like, we also have our co-founder, Taylor Kenon you know, doing pretty cool with with all the products that we have and some of the, some of the really good relationship we have in the New York City. So, first off, thank you very much for coming on. I've, I've seen that you have come across a similar background that actually made you prepared for, for this sort of inception. I'm gonna talk about the Dextego. Could you walk us through like how this disappeared prior experience as contributed towards what the Xig is today? [00:02:39] Ioanna Onasi: Absolutely. Yeah. So my background has been very much around talent development, hr psychology. I was always fascinated about, you know, how the human mind works. Why we get motivated, how can we develop others? And prior to founding Dextego, I actually worked for another AI sales startup that focus on lead generation, where I worked as a VP of. People and c of staff, which means I did a little bit of everything from hiring to developing talent strategies to doing sales. And I was very close with the team. So I was able to see, you know, that although we had very good learning opportunities in terms of online courses and playbooks and things like that, the results were not there. Not because they were not saying the right thing, but because they didn't have those soft skills that truly move the needle, especially today, right? Everything sounds the same. People are confused in the market. The one KPI that is missing because it's hard to be measured and developed is influenced. So I've been, you know, working the last, I would say, six years on the topic of, of the soft skills and trying to be able to understand which are the ones that are transferable across different industries and roles, how we can develop them. And I was pursuing, you know, my academic background too, was on that topic in iOS. But I dropped out of my PhD to, to focus on Dextego so that we can have impact at scale. As you know, AI now, I mean, gen AI in particular is that game changer that allows for this personalization at scale. So I'm super excited about what we're building, and it's been almost three years now in the making. We got some very good, positive, exciting feedback on the platform since day one and we're just developing it better and better every day. [00:04:35] Adil Saleh: Yeah, I mean, this, this actually made me very, really curious in the beginning when, when I started studying about your, your product. Previously people were so big about transferring data and data into actions and understanding and analyzing data, customer data, for example, you know, data from different data sources coming up when they talk about human. The biggest concern is like, because when they talk about data, they, they always keep human in the loop. They say that, Hey, we are absolutely app powered, but we have a customer support agent that can help you with technical support, the absolutely app powered sales platform or revenue platform. But we do have account manager or account executive taking care of some of the problems. It's not completely. Human replacement. And when you talk about poaching for people you know, there's so much of human psychology, neuroscience coming in, people playing around, like investing so much into big data and to understanding the human pattern. So how you guys are have, have, have seen this this like how this has impacted by AI first. Secondly, when it comes to efficiency, when it comes to you know, making a real impact, real outcomes out of these these poaching experiences compared to a real human. What's the difference? Like what was the challenge? Could you walk us all through this, this entire process? [00:05:46] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how it works first. So our AI model is actually trained by human sales experts, and it's tailored for each company's go to market, which means they can put their playbooks, you know, objection handling, product information, connect to CRM, recording tools, all of that. So it becomes very personalized now, for the most part, talking about replacement or not. The impact Dextego has is basically filling in a gap because a sales leader doesn't have time to be everywhere, all at once. A people leader the same, it's usually one for like hundreds of employees. So in short, there was never a place where they could go to to ask questions at any point in time and get feedback and at the right time. Because what we see a lot, by the way, is people think recording. And seeing it and reviewing a call after the fact is coaching, which is not, that's the worst thing you can do after the fact. It's like we go and watch a recorded the you know, game and I tell you, Hey deal, you know, you should have passed the ball there. Okay, well it's too late, the game is done. So we lost, you know, we are very much focused on proactive coaching. Having said that what I had noticed is that a lot of early, like first time managers earlier in their careers have never had a good coach, because usually in enterprise, at least money's being invested only on the C-suite side for executive coaching and, you know, executive retreats, workshops, things like that. So there's no replacement, is what I'm trying to say, because there was never that person there to begin with. Like, you have that sales leader, for instance, after six months in your role talking about quota attainment pipeline. But that's not coaching. It's just performance management. It's not how can I develop you so that you hit that quota before it's today. So for us, the human in the loop side happens actually. After the fact when we get the the data from the AI coach and we can now become a strategic tool and tell that sales leader. Hey, when you do have that one-on-one time, finally with your employee, focus on this in this area. This is what they did great. This is how they can improve. And now holistically in the team, these are the trends we see. So it sounds like, let's say your SDRs in that location are struggling with objection handling. It sounds like the A's in this area are very technical, like the. They say the right thing in terms of the product, but they don't go for the closing. That's why your forecast is not really accurate. So we have enough data points to be able to come up with a strategy. The issue today, you might know CROs have a life expectancy of like 18 months in a company, something like that. Which means it's super stressful because they have to go in, understand what's wrong, what's happening, create a strategy and see the strategy being implemented and yielding results in 18 months. This is insane to do it without a technology, without an AI tool that can be there to help them. So at the end of the day it's a constant, you know, give and take where the employees have that access and can go to the managers. When they get the feedback from the, they, they still have a question. The, the employer can go to them with the data and, and help them. And to me, the strategic part where, let's say we recommend now an improvement in your playbook or in your strategy requires again, a human in the loop because that human knows better. From other examples, other clients they had. Things that have been happening in the market, what works and what doesn't, because I'm sure you also know that there's no playbook you can cope with past and your company from another one that will yield the, the same results, right? It's so nuanced. There's no one size fits all in today's good to market. So we, we really need to be able to combine kind of like the, the AI's output with that human instinct and knowledges to, to get the best result. But that's, that's fundamentally, you know, on the sales side. And now more recently that we got into leadership for overall like people, managers, talking to VPs of people like CHROs. What we see is very interesting. So, fun fact when someone leaves the company. 80%, eight zero, 80% of the reason why they left has to do with their relationship with a manager. But a lot of times, you know, we hire someone, we make them a manager 'cause they were good at their job. That doesn't mean they are good managers. As a seller, for instance, that might be hitting quota for 10 years. You make me a VP of sales, I might be a terrible VP of sales 'cause I don't know how to manage my team. People, problems, conflicts, you know, time management, all these things. So what happens today? Taken also the the politics, these con the economy, all the problems we're experiencing. You have people that are afraid of living their jobs. Because they might not find another one that they're stuck with a bad manager and they're dissatisfied, disengaged in their job. So productivity goes down and it all starts because we are liking good managers. So if AIDS R can provide AI coaching to these managers to help them. Be able to lead better, lead with empathy, build trust with their team. On a day to day, you're one person, but with that one choice, you're impacting the entire organization. And so again, it's not that we're replacing anyone, but we're amplifying the impact they can have so that productivity and engagement goes up. And I hope I answered your question. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, [00:11:48] Adil Saleh: I think what, what makes it more even interesting down the road when the AI from the human understanding, like, in simple words how AI can replace at least 60, 70% of the, of the traits of the brain. Like Schumann grid. So the biggest challenge would be to you know, train AI on different data sets. Maybe from coming from directly from the schumanns to have some sort of specialized capabilities. You're talking about people's, people's team. You talk, they have different problems. You talk about, you know, pre-sales, you talk about post-sales success you know, revenue. All of these have different problems because they have different KPIs. So, because of that, they need like, specialized outcomes. Um mm-hmm. So how you guys are you know, the, the, the backstage, how you guys are working towards making this AI efficient. And, and I know that you, you have plans that are pretty much self-served. Premium models. So that also demands your product to be highly efficient when it comes to you know, data for, for the people team and, and, and the sales or revenue teams. So what kind of efforts are you, are you guys taking, what kind of initiatives? I know we are six months down in this year, so what makes Excited run? [00:12:56] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. So in fact, what you said is so true. We need those specialized AI agents and in the front end it's AI coaches for us. But that's what we've been doing. So for example, we have Esther who is focused on motivation. Esther is part by positive psychology. And understands that let's say the employee might come being demotivated or feeling like they wanna give up, they want to leave and we'll try to reframe first their mindset with some positivity. Then we'll ask deeper questions to understand what's going on and codes them from that. And we have tego that is the role play for either sales or an interview prep or anything like that, that understands the scope of the call first. Then you do. Answer basically either through video, audio, it's easier, nonverbals, it gives you feedback. You know, every coach has its own purpose basically. And to your point, assesses different skills. So let's say on the side of the role play, we'll assess your delivery. How do you engage with that buyer? The person you're speaking to, your comprehensibility, there are structure. Are you too salesy or. Do you have a consulted consultative approach, but no matter what the case is, what we assess behind the scenes are two things, coachability and influence. Coachability basically tells us that an employee's improving over time because now we can see that the skills in their scorecard. Yesterday have been improved today, or if they're not, why is that? We, we need to understand what blocks that learning. I truly believe anyone can develop skills no matter their age, no matter their background. Neuroplasticity is there to tell us that we can indeed change the way we're wired, so there's no doubt about that. We need to understand if someone is not coachable, doesn't necessarily mean that they'll never learn. What it means is maybe they, they don't want to learn that topic. Maybe they don't learn through let's say role plays or through computers. They need to go out and learn in person. But it gives us an alert mechanism to know and say, okay, something is up here. Let me focus my intentions today on that person in my team. It kind of creates a, if you will, like a leaderboard of people. Not to say this person sucks, this person is great, but to help that leader focus better, their limited time. On the other hand, with influence, especially in sales. But I would say for any role in the company, it's so important because if I can say everything right. But I don't have influence. I'll never persuade you as a champion to go and sell internally on my behalf. The sales, especially B2B sales are so complex nowadays. Many stakeholders are involved. Even if, you know we do one-on-one and you like me, that doesn't mean you're gonna sign today. So it really is very strategic and I think there is a huge how should I say misconception out there that. You know, sellers say, you know, I can sell ice to an Eskimo and all that it, you can do all these things when it's a transactional sale. When it's a complex sale, you might do everything right and still the deal doesn't close because something happened last minute. Someone that was not the economic buyer that you didn't even know derailed the deal. All these things you can not necessarily prevent, but you can deal with if you have the right influence and are able to really have an impact on the person you're speaking to. So. To our knowledge, we are the only ones that can measure this. And we've built an influence intelligence method that is basically behind all the coaching efforts we, we have on Dextego to maximize for that. And that's basically how we've been approaching it, always with specialized AI coaches, fitting them a lot of knowledge base from experts from the companies that we work with too. To make sure they're accurate, but they have also that goal of measuring something specific based on the function. [00:17:14] Adil Saleh: Right. Interesting. And also, like, I've got some notes from the team as well. They have some questions related to, you know, workflow integrations that, you know, I know when it comes to sales organization, they, they depend heavily on on data. They depend. Heavily on customer patterns, interaction on the website or qualify leads, like these are like some fancy terms, but you know, just to understand the prospect better. They use like different data sources, so. Mm-hmm. How does EDO integrates within their workflow? Yes. To give them the a right. You know, I would say specialized coaching, as you mentioned. You know how this is absolutely real time sync within their workflow, be it C rm, be it any prospecting and outreach tool that they're using. Could you tell, tell us. Yeah. [00:17:55] Ioanna Onasi: Hundred percent. So let's say connected to my calendar in Dextego and I have an upcoming call. It will tell me 'cause it will analyze from both public data, but also my CRM and past conversations, what it knows about that buyer. So what this means is it will look for, you know, LinkedIn blog posts, anything out there we can find and we'll analyze this person's disco ocean profile. So biopsy psychographic data, it will then compare that metric with mine as an end user. This can ocean to give me a compatibility ratio. So that's the first level. Meaning if let's say we compare each other and we're at 89% compatible, that means I will not need to change my communication style. We are in the same wavelength, the way we speak, et cetera. You will understand what I'm trying to tell you. If, let's say we had 30 or 40% compatibility. That might mean maybe you're super technical buyer and all you need is the facts and the data, and I'm talking here big picture and how the product will make you feel. We are not now on the same wavelength at all. What I'm saying goes on top of your head, you're never gonna buy. So I need to know that before 'cause it's too late to figure that out during the call when you're probably speaking to five other vendors. Right, so we're doing some discovery and give you this better insights. And then after this compatibility, we tell you potential objections and key motivators. This person might have. So yes, every sales enablement person gives you, let's say, the list of five 10 objections you might have. But what if I know you're more likely to bring up the ROI or the pricing, let's say objection. Now I can practice in context of that in two minute, you know, five minute role play prior to the call, and I will already have a good idea of what I can improve. Honestly, even if you take away one thing, it's still a huge win. It can be something you knew you forgot or you didn't think of. It gives different perspective and mm-hmm. That is basically kind of how it works. Now, if you are, let's say, new seller, but this account existed in your CRM before and others in your team talked to that buyer before, we also have insights on that. What did they say before? Yeah, qualitative [00:20:23] Adil Saleh: data, all the qualitative. Interesting and thinking about some, some of the infractions on the website. And then correlation, you, you mentioned about external data sources that might like LinkedIn, Crunchbase, all of this on top of all the social socially, publicly available data. Are you also sourcing any other data like inside Labs, data from people, data. All these you know, clear bit all these [00:20:47] Ioanna Onasi: so we are not, like, this should be more like a legion thing. Like we, we will not give you like their email or phone number or anything like that. No. We're not focused on that side of things at all. [00:20:58] Adil Saleh: Okay. Okay. Interesting. That makes sense. Like, it's, it's not like, it's, it's, this platform is to coach you. It's not. A platform that will help you better prospect or better sell it. It is just going to motivate you or give you maybe some data that that can actually get you prepared better. And then you an account executive you know, using D cgo can, you know, do the research of their own maybe prepare their deck and all that this can be very important because thinking about, well. I'm sorry. [00:21:27] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. It, it is two different things, right? You're talking about more how you reach out, sequences, things like that. This, yeah. Is messaging is, we're not gonna tell you [00:21:38] Adil Saleh: Go ahead. I'm not talking about a polo, I'm not talking about like all these outfit shoot. I'm talking about when, when a sales guy. Is you know, is triggered with some sort of potential prospect, as you mentioned, that the LinkedIn sources, some of the key motivators regarding price that you get. Like they, they should prepare before they go into a meeting. It's, it's not a kickoff call assist, a first ever interaction with the customer. What kind of data access or I would say access to the sources of information that that individual is going to have for that prospect. [00:22:10] Ioanna Onasi: So it, it, it depends first of all on how much public data exists about that person, right? But again, it will be mostly on how compatible are you, potential objections, things like that. How to approach them based on their communication style. But then because we have your company information, we know what you sell. We know your sales playbook and all that. In short, what we're trying to make sure when you practice in Dextego is that. You don't just say the right thing, you say the right thing for that specific buyer to motivate them and move them forward. And then let's say you do meet with them and you have a question after the fact you can still come to Dextego and say, Hey, how do you think escorting this call? Or What did they do wrong? Or How can improve that for the next time you're meeting with them? But we we're not like helping you. Let's say create a deck, but if you wanna review an email you're about to send, you can, or like you wanna leave a voicemail. Mm-hmm. Things like that. Like you can help throughout the sales cycle. [00:23:09] Adil Saleh: That makes sense. That makes sense. And also now this is, this segment is purely dedicated towards how you're measuring success for your customers. How you are trying to be data first. Is that like more like, I, I see that you have a treatment plan so that I actually demands you of like, have some sort of self sort more or less. So is that completed digital or is it hybrid? Or some of the enterprise customers that you have might be account manager that are, you know, doing like. Bit of like white glove services that goes like pretty high touch. So, how do you see your post sales journeys? You start with with onboarding being like is that like standardized to limit it to like 4, 4 4 or five steps that a customer makes? Makes, is there any way you are actually measuring that success in the onboarding stage? And then we can talk about the rest. [00:23:55] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah, so first of all, the freemium is limited in terms of number of tokens you have access to. So although it's free forever, like every month you get a limited amount of tokens. Just just so you understand the platform, you understand what to expect, but it's minus percent integrations to CRM or like company data. So to your point, it could be an SDRA, let's say account manager that logs in and then we sell to their company. Where they will go through the onboarding. And onboarding means we need to understand a few things about your company. So it's five questions like your go to market sales methodology, sales process objections, things like that. Then you add your knowledge base and you invite your users. It's pretty quick. Like within minutes, if you have the material, you can get ready. [00:24:43] Adil Saleh: We get the knowledge, get the product services and their usps. A lot of that is pretty much listed on their website. So, just to double check with the customer that five steps in less than two minutes, so your, your, your agent would know exactly about who they're selling to, what they're selling what are their product technical support like documentation, knowledge base and then key objections you mentioned now, next. [00:25:06] Ioanna Onasi: Yes. And that's then they invite their users, and then when the users come in, they connect their calendar so they can practice for their specific upcoming call, which means everyone will have a different experience based on also the stage of the deal, right? Is it the demo, is it the renewal? What is it? And then the, the manager in the admin side can quickly see kind of graphs and the efforts of the skills of the team and where they can focus on helping them improve. So. After that, they get also daily alerts, again, personalized to its user. Based on your interactions, what you need to work on, [00:25:41] Adil Saleh: is that within their workflow, like email or Slack, or is it within Yes, within Dextego dashboard? No. [00:25:45] Ioanna Onasi: Email. Email. Okay. They, they, they, they get an daily email like, okay, your upcoming calls are these five. This is what you need to know about these buyers. Remember to not do this that you did in practice, and you get a low score. You know, come back to Dextego, they go to practice. Similarly, for the admin, they do that, the same thing, but for everybody altogether, like aggregate data. So, if I'm a bit of sales and I know my, my, I don't know, ae Sarah is struggling with the deal, I get alerted before to join that call and help her close, not again, find that out after the fact. So that's kind of it. And then there is a continuation of feedback. Look where, where based on the feedback, they can also say, okay, I like this response or don't like this. This is why directly with the AI code. So it keeps improving basically the output. And in terms of more like the customer success side, we do basically a kickoff call. They're in, after a week we get feedback, so we meet with the client and then it's quarterly review. That's, that's kind of how it goes. Okay. [00:26:53] Adil Saleh: Okay. So how long does it take normally? Like what is your success matter to make sure that. They need to follow up this with these five steps and they need to to be able to successfully onboard, they need to do these kind of steps even after getting inside the platform to be marked as a hundred percent onboarded. And then, you know, I know this is a kind of a success matter that every process team need to ensure that they're onboarding and then it follows through the. Product adoption, platform adoption, and then retention. And then once it's retain, you can expand. So it is tied pretty much as you know. [00:27:27] Ioanna Onasi: O obviously we want before the kickoff to have the platform ready for them. So the moment, you know, the client agrees and they, they upload all their documents, then we, we schedule that kickoff. So when the, the end users come in, the platform is already trained on their company's information. And again, that just depends on how much material they have, how many integrations, you know, but we're talking about like. Me needs on, on their behalf to, to get it all in the platform. [00:27:55] Adil Saleh: Yeah. So, but it's, it's, it's going to be, you know, super important to have at least basic level of workflow integration. Let's say they need to integrate their support channel like Intercom or CRM, like HubSpot, Salesforce, or product analytics like Mixpanel segment, all of this sorry, mixed better. Shoot all of this. So what is a basic level of integration? You need to meet with the customer before. To call them as, as onboarded and conduct. We do, [00:28:19] Ioanna Onasi: we do need the, the CRM and maybe a recording tool like Gong. That's it for us. Mm-hmm. But even without it, I mean, we wouldn't push it too much because what we care for the most part is, then we know who they're meeting. So their calendar integration is the most important. That's on the user level too. The, the other thing is just if we have enough information on the company itself, 'cause you are right, the information could be on their website, but sometimes websites information is not enough for sales. Like, on your website, you won't talk about your competitor, right? You're not gonna talk about who you, who's your ICP necessarily. You'll give a general like. Title maybe for sales or, so there's a lot more information that we need to give very personalized coaching. And so after that, I mean kickoff is just half an hour. We add the users to a Slack group in case they have questions, they need advice, but it's also self-service. 'cause we send them videos and they can go through the platform. There is onboarding in the platform itself too. Where it goes over, you know, all the features and examples of how they can use it. [00:29:29] Adil Saleh: Mm-hmm. [00:29:30] Ioanna Onasi: Yep. And then they can have access to us if they do want, for whatever reason, a one-on-one. Okay. Practice. [00:29:35] Adil Saleh: Mm-hmm. Okay. So talking, I'm, I'm only going to be focusing on the sales organization, like, people that are using TGO for sales. Mm-hmm. So you talked about integrating to their data sources. Minimum, bare minimum is their meeting calendar. And go go. A lot of people that gong is pretty expensive, you know, like it's a lot of SMBs. Even mid-market companies, they're not preferring gong, especially in the last one year when there are so many of competitors. All these enterprise, they are so much focused on sales intelligence. Which is their, their core offering. And now loads of agents they prefer gong, but you know, that it's, it's, it's not you, you won't find a lot of your customers in the s and b or mid-market that are using Gong. So what is an alternative? Is there any kind of go you know, zoom or you know, Microsoft integration or some sort of even meeting assistance like fireflies or these kind of integration that, that gets you access to the qualitative data. [00:30:24] Ioanna Onasi: Exactly all of the ones you mentioned right now. There is way too many, to be honest, even count, right? Mm-hmm. To your point, after gong there, there was a plethora of new tools out there that do the same in like a fraction of the cost. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I also cannot really excuse that pricing at this stage when there's so many other alternatives. But it depends. Other companies have created also their own. I've seen like read ai. There's so, so many. [00:30:49] Adil Saleh: Read AI is good. [00:30:50] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. Teams now has recording Google. Google now has Google recording everyone. Yeah, and that's why this is not a space we wanna be in at all. Like I get questions all the time, like, is this live on a call? Why would I wanna make this when everybody does this? [00:31:07] Adil Saleh: Yeah, absolutely. You gotta make sure it is even now harder than before to, you know, stand out and have, find a unique proposition or maybe serve the same team differently. Like, like you mentioned, it is about understanding their, their use cases, understanding the industry. You cannot sell a coaching platform to a lot of, let's say, healthcare. So you gotta make sure that you have your ICB pretty much defined. So now thinking about these data, so why I'm talking about data sources log, because AI is all about data. You know, I hope you agree. The more the data and understand which is what you're collecting in the first place. So, your, your customer that is giving you only the, throwing the website and throwing some random information versus a, a platform that is, has the knowledge base as the, you know, pretty much defined their meeting or sales process, workflow you know, deck sort of thing. So you, you'll be better, you'll be, it's will be more easier, easier for your platform to serve them you know, specialized outcomes. Mm-hmm. So now. Talking about CRMs which is the biggest concern like how you're like integrating with the CRM in terms of why we're talking about, there's a lot of these you know, founders are listening and every founder is thinking about optimizing the cost and having a tool that can replace a couple of their tools the tool set. And they say because everybody's trying to do more with less. Hope you agree. So thinking about CRM, like, you talked about HubSpot, Salesforce five drive. A TO is becoming a big, so how does do you guys manage all of these integrations at a deeper level that gives this buy sync to the customer? So they have like, data updates and the CRM back into the platform? Or maybe notifications as you're doing the triggers as well? [00:32:37] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. On the how we do it and all that. That's for my CTO to answer, but why we do it, I can answer and what data we collect. So firstly, you know, every company. I think wants their CRM to be updated. And I'm gonna say that everyone does a good job in keeping it updated, but why it's important for us, when you put information like say, I am speaking to you D ago, help me coach me. If as a deal in your CRM, let's say we are in stage two, let's say we're in discovery, but in your calendar, it's a demo call. There is a mismatch. We need to know that and confirm what sits in or else we'll give you feedback that might not help you, and then you'll come and blame D to go. Right. So it's also a way for us to protect ourselves, but fundamentally to help the user really in real time based on where the deal is in the, the pipeline and. Also we need to understand a few things. You said earlier ICP. There is companies that sell many products that cater to different personas, and you might be, you know, selling in the morning to a technical buyer and then to a business buyer. We also need to know those nuances to help you, right? The, the one use case might require you sharing all the case studies and Dextego can quickly find out which case study is more relevant for that industry. And the other might require you to do an ROI calculation so we can be proactive and give you what you need to succeed by knowing the details of who is in each of these deals. What are the past conversations and what's the, the likelihood of this deal to close based on data of your closed loan deals. So we can do some pattern recognition there. And because the extra layer of us is understanding the compatibility, we can tell you, Hey, five out of six of your deals today, so that you have very low compatibility, maybe there should be a restructuring and you get other deals, you give these deals so that you actually can hit quota. Without connecting CRM we wouldn't know that because we won't be able to know who, who in the, the companies basically on which accounts and, and vice versa. Like, it will be very hard to make the coaching proactive. It will just be basically something where you have to come in, give us all Yes, yes. [00:35:04] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Just like many other platforms, they're just AI reps. They're trying to you know, analyze the con like, you know, text and give you summaries. Those days are gone. As you mentioned, it's more about like, specialize and make sure you are proactive as a platform. And you have a 360 of all the things around those teams, around those convers. To make a better contracts to, to the, to the, actually the seller. So now thinking about one last question and then we, we will just move more about your culture team. What keeps you guys motivated? So why you guys are not doing for customer success? Because I know that data has more to do with customer success, that it as to sales, because sales are, even today in 2025, sales guys are s. Digital to a point where they understand the, the interaction on the website maybe manually they can check from the LinkedIn, their business profile cus company profiles, their teams growth acquisitions or funding and all that. These kind of data metrics and that's it. When it comes to customer success, it's more about product usage interactions, growth metrics, success metrics, feature retention usage of each feature, like user level metrics, account level metrics. Then it's about renewals, building all of that and support, you know, CRM, integrations sorry, interactions with, with other team members. There's so much of data that you guys that, that you guys have, on, on, on, on Grant, you know, to make sure you be proactive and help them with retention and which is even now a bigger problem than acquisition. [00:36:30] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah, I, I think you're so spot on on that actually. But I, I think the problem does start on the sales side. So we do wanna get into cs a hundred percent agree. There is a lot of work to be done there 'cause there's indeed a lot of integrations we need to develop. So we need to be ready for it. But. If sales cannot align on the messaging first, then sales and technical support, right? 'cause you have, so some solution engineers that go in with the seller on the call and they talk about two different things. The client gets confused. Like CS is an afterthought at that stage. We're still early. We're trying to make sure they say the right thing, they close the deal. And then once we have enough. Data and it's time, let's say for a quarterly business review where the CS person comes in, now they can align. This is something actually the seller can practice now with in Dextego, the quarterly business review. But on the CS side, you know, there's a little different process. We need to understand how they're being measured. There's difference also in the psychology of it, right? 'cause the seller gets quota, they get incentivized. Seller job is [00:37:38] Adil Saleh: to sell the value. And CS job is to deliver the value. Exactly. Exactly. And when there's a gap, people churn. Customers churn. And you had to hit on the on the can. [00:37:47] Ioanna Onasi: So it is, you know, although theoretically someone listening might think, okay, it's very easy to do the same for cs. There is a lot more I think that you need to take into account and especially for a platform like ours, which is gamified and you know, it speaks to the personality of the, the buyer and the end user. We need to understand. The persona of the CSM, right? Who, who becomes a customer success? Why? What is frustrating in their organization, what's their process? All of these things. Anyway, so my point is we wouldn't take it slightly, like it's something we do want to get into for sure, but it's kind of a new sub product basically we need to develop and because we're recently focused on the leadership side. Selling to hr. We don't want to do, you know, everything all at once. But our vision is to be that end-to-end coaching platform for the enterprise. So it can be cs, it can be marketing product. So at the end of the day to day, unless every department is aligned on the mission and has the skills to succeed, the company cannot be sustainable. [00:38:52] Adil Saleh: Yes, you gotta make sure you nail first thing. You nail, you nail you know, in, in some segments. And then you go up market and then you go for scale. Now doing very early about two years, I mean, I know like I hate to call like a lot of platforms very early in two years because like there's so much AI and there's so much that you can do in terms of even marketing, not just like building products or so many things or tools or integration inside the panel. You can try and experiment a lot of markets, you can tap a lot of markets with this AI and experiment a lot at scale. So now thinking since you have called I've called you like very early two years what, what is it that makes excited product wise as chief executive thinking about these new markets evolving, new categories coming in, new competitors, jumping in, people getting fans, so much of noise. Do you take it positive or negatively? What makes you excited at the end of the day? [00:39:44] Ioanna Onasi: Oh, I, I think the competition is great. I think it validates the market a lot. And if, if anything, it allows us to not have to educate the market and make that sales cycle shorter and win based on product quality and user experience. You know, we were one of the very early companies before the huge boom of Gene ai that saw the opportunity for hr. Hr, you know, was bombarded with COVID with all these things. So we shifted their focused sales enablement. And now being able to expand back, I mean, it's very. Satisfying because it validates that, hey, we were a little ahead. Like, but we saw the opportunity, but we did that work. Like, we're ready now. So I think that's a benefit instead of, you know, someone that just started yesterday, for instance. We have the infrastructure and we keep building on it. And to me what's very exciting is just the fact that. With basically what we were saying earlier with more data, the model will keep getting better and better exponentially. And I cannot wait to see what it will be like in a year from now. 'Cause we do work with all the sales experts and people that give us their data too. And it, it's becoming so much better every day. I'm always in awe, like I try new things, you know, new prompts. I'm like, I start helping with this, Finn help me with that. And the feedback I get back, I'm like, I can't believe. Sellers had, didn't have this, you know, like 10 years ago. How did people do it? Like, it must have been so hard. And it's kinda like they saying, you know, like for a blind person, they say once you see, you know, you can see and all these things like you, you feel like it's a whole new world and. What I, I love is that because we have those specialized agents, we can make them collaborate so well that it's a continuous flow. Meaning if I go in and do a practice and my score is terrible, then I can get my motivation coach coming to hype me up and then I can get the other one that will connect me to a human. Let's say for peer to peer mentorship, like it, it can. Not be a, a limited thing, like tools used to be like an LMS, you go in, you do a course, that's it. Something very lively. And I do think, you know, moving forward that kind of like Siri, like will have these sorts of agents with us everywhere that can help us. And the more they know us, the better. So for us to be early in the game. Keep growing. Hopefully we can make that connection with the end user be so, so authentic and something that they do enjoy going back to every day. Because that's, to me, that's the metric. It's daily active use. If you don't use something on a daily basis that means you don't really see the, the value being so high. Right. [00:42:38] Adil Saleh: Yeah. [00:42:39] Ioanna Onasi: Especially [00:42:39] Adil Saleh: with this different models that are you know, operating at different scale cost. As a founder, you think about the cost as well as scale. So, and that also makes me excited, like how other competitors in outside us, outside North America are doing it at scale and doing it right. Silent Korea. Another a really, very, really significant fraction of a cheaper cost. You know, you can do a lot, you can achieve a lot, but previously it was just like one platform leading the category. Then there two coming in. But the cost for, for finance to build something on top of those, just their APIs was pretty expensive. Now the things, things are different. Talk about like ing the, you know, deep Sea, all these platforms Yeah. That are doing really cool. Perfect. It was great touching you on this or this part as you know, I'm myself, I'm a founder of A B2B SaaS. We are also early stage thinking, experimenting you know, working with customers, growing with customers. So it's just, just like a similar journey. You, you wait for a lot of things to get better at the same time that makes you excited. So. Perfect. Now I'm thinking about you and your team. I know you guys are little over 20 people on the team. So, what kind of culture you guys have any operating principles, any any sort of like DNA sort of vision written on the wall sort of thing that you have? And, and also any, any new hiring that you're, you're, you guys are open to hiring for any roles you can expand what kind of team member you guys need. So. People that are, that want to switch companies or switch roles would definitely listen to this. [00:44:10] Ioanna Onasi: Yeah. So the, the core team is very small. We have a, a lot of advisors and people who help save the product. And I think the number one value, if you will, has always been human centric. Whether this is the ai, the learning, it's putting the human in the center. When I provide feedback when. When we do anything, we're really trying to, to be empathetic human beings. You know, like my services artificial intelligent but at least I'm not artificial. That's my motto. Like I try to be truly like a human. I have very high standards for myself and for the team and everyone. Knows this, but they know that it comes from a good you know, perspective of, Hey, I just wanna add value to this world. I want us to help people. I truly believe the soft skills are what separates the average from the best, no matter what's the industry and what's the department we're talking about. So, I, I would say whoever is on the team understands that, like that's a core understanding that we all share and. At the end of the day, you know, a startup requires so much work. Day night, we're all working very hard. And I, I, I think. What I love about the team is we're very diverse. Like we all speak different languages. We're from different countries, different age groups, you know, young, old, everything. We have all generations. And the other part I like is how we have people that are very good in go to market and others that are academic and others that are more products. So you really get. All parts of the brain activated in a team. And you're continuously, you know, staying sharp and you're learning new things. It's, I always say that startups is the best way to learn. Like literally you might be in corporate for 20 years, join a startup for one and learn more in the startup than in corporate. So, [00:46:08] Adil Saleh: yeah, that's a hundred percent agree. A hundred percent agree. Like I did, I did I, I did work at different you know, large scale companies for the first seven, eight years of my career. And ever since 27, I would say 2016 to 20 19, 3 years in a startup that was a social media marketing SaaS as like more than 30,000 customers now helping them start and build their customer success team from scratch. Gave me the most amount of learning than you know, ever before in those companies that I've been looking at like very big teams and all. So yeah, I mean, a hundred percent agree. Any, any job openings that you have it's not even fun. Your career. Yeah. Anything that that you want to say for any individual, be it like in the go to market team, sales product or engineering team that that you want to tell them, Hey, this is the team, this is what, who we are, and this is what you're gonna get after you join. [00:46:57] Ioanna Onasi: So right now we're not looking for full-time opportunities, but we have an opening for an intern in marketing. So if someone knows of anyone that is interested in creating content, blog, social media work, reach out. I think that the fact that we are a remote team also is very appealing to today's, you know, full of applicants. I'm, I'm a huge fan of it. I, we have a coworking space, you know, in the city we go sometimes, but generally, the flexibility of remote to me is is gold. [00:47:29] Adil Saleh: The, the biggest thing is that you, you have access to a global talent. They talk about countries like Asian countries like in, in, in Turkey and, and Pakistan, India. There's like so much skilled people enabled with ai, like young people that have gone out of their universities. Graduating their bachelor's degree in marketing school and then they already know like what all of this is. I think the gap has changed. Now, back in our days, back in 2009, 2010 the people coming from these universities in, in countries like Asia, they were not well equipped with tech. They were not so much technically you had to teach them digital marketing. You had to teach them keyword search or SEO now because the gap is limited and they're a part of this big movement of ai. That gap is like, I think 60 or 70% has been has, has been now cut down. And this is a big news for a lot of startups that they're hiring for, you know, remote roles and that, that can access these people really, really smart and skilled people. I personally try to have a pretty big team and, and Pakistan really skilled people. Some people I'm working in Europe some I'm working, you know, here in in, in the states like an internship role. They started us and then let them. Do a job. So it's just, it's, it's quite surprising what it's, [00:48:40] Ioanna Onasi: yeah, and I mean, I had started as an intern and then grew within the company. Like I think it's the best way to. See, first of all, if this is something you like, like a head interns that decided startups are not for them, that's super fine too. Like, it's okay. You can't expect someone right out of college that they will know what they wanna do for the rest of their life. That's okay. But you know, it's super labor. You learn. They learn. It, it makes sense I think for an early state startup. And then to your point, if they like it and they're good at it, there's huge career opportunity for growth. If you go to big company, they'll probably just give you an excel and ask you to do basic things. You won't even feel like you're adding value, so. It is all a choice, you know, and we're not all built for the same things and for the same tolerance level and resilience. And, and that's okay. But it, it's something I always tell them like, Hey, it's high risk, high reward. Like it's not easy because you're an intern doesn't mean you're gonna work necessarily less than the average person on the team, but. You might not be speaking with clients, but still everything you do as a startup is impactful, right? Like the small can have the biggest impact. And in fact, I wanna give a shout out to one of our current interns, Ryan. He, in the first week, gave us some huge insight on positioning and messaging, and we already implemented it. And you know, I didn't have that expectation when I was hiring him that he would have that impact, but I was happily surprised. [00:50:08] Adil Saleh: Yeah, yeah. These people that are passionate about, they actually see things from a al answer. They have different energy. And as a founder, you're not like, of course, you're sitting on a top having a bird eye view on all of things like product engineering, sales, go to market and, and partnerships and investments and all. But when someone is really very passionate and they want to really make an impact. This, this, this is this is absolutely on the cards. So, yeah, I wish you good. You guys. Good luck with all of your small team and making a big impact. And you know, I'll keep on following you guys journey you know, in the coming months and definitely let's keep in touch on it. Thank you very much for your time. [00:50:42] Ioanna Onasi: Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Bye [00:50:46] Adil Saleh: bye-Bye. Thank you so very much for staying with us on the episode. Please share your feedback at adil@hyperengage.io. We definitely need it. we will see you next time and another guest on the stage with some concrete tips on how to operate better as a customer success leader and how you can empower. Engagements with some building, some meaningful relationships. We qualify people for the episode just to make sure we bring value to the listeners. Do reach us out if you want to refer any CS leader. Until next time, goodbye and have a good rest of your day.