Ep # 166: Account-Based Execution Without the Enterprise Budget ft. Aleksa Mitrović (Founder, Dealmayker)

Aleksa Mitrović 00:02 What does it mean to do B2B sales in the last 10 years? Quite a lot of progress was made since then, but I still see a huge gap in the market. With the recent development of LLMs, semantic intelligence is becoming possible, where I firmly believe contextual and emotional intelligence is basically the future of B2B sales. Intro 00:30 Welcome to Across the Funnel, where we dig into concrete Go-To-Market moves across sales, customer success, and account management, so you can build revenue that lasts. Brought to you by Hyperengage and Dextego. Adil Saleh 00:44 Hey, greetings everybody. This is the Hyperengage Podcast. There are so many problems that we got thrown into, and people actually recommend topics. That way, we try to reach the best people to answer and talk about not-so-shiny stories, but also real people who have gotten into trenches and did all the dirty work that founders do and nobody talks about. Most founders, 80% of them, go about posting on LinkedIn and telling people, “Hey, we are at 15,000 MRR, we are 20,000 MRR in the first three months, we are a million in the first year.” I was more curious about how sales intelligence or prospecting can play a big part, and how this has changed over time, especially outbound and lead sourcing, data enrichment, qualifying the leads, and all of those. I know there are teams that are not relying on big platforms that are charging big bucks, and they’re still stuck trying to figure out what the best tool is that fits within their budget, and what the best technology is, even in this age of AI. So that’s why we have Aleksa, who’s the founder of DealMaker, a newly born product that is focused on sales intelligence, semantic sales intelligence, to help SMBs, mid-market, and smaller teams. They’re going to be talking about these topics around sales and prospecting. So thank you very much, Aleksa, for taking the time. Aleksa Mitrović 02:27 Thanks a lot for having me. As we were speaking before this, we have quite a lot of overlaps, so I’m looking forward to chat about them. Adil Saleh 02:37 Love it. Perfect. Now, Aleksa, building anything in AI has become a new norm. Anybody that wants to build something, be it an engineer, founder, entrepreneur, everybody wants to do something with AI, with platforms like Lovable, Replit, and Cursor. But what gave you the thought around why to build DealMaker? How did you live this problem? We’ve been facing this problem. Now with AI, we wanted to build something that solved this problem. What is your story going into DealMaker when you started, not so long ago? Aleksa Mitrović 03:21 For the previous 10 years, I was working in B2B sales as a full-cycle BDR at SaaS and FinTech companies, so I felt this pain all over the place. Afterwards, I was doing founder-led sales, so I felt it from different perspectives and different roles. I actually thought about this concept in 2020, where I was very frustrated with how B2B sales is done. Quite a lot of progress was made since then, but I still see a huge gap in the market. With the recent development of LLMs, semantic intelligence is becoming possible, where I firmly believe contextual and emotional intelligence is basically the future of B2B sales. There has never been more data out there, and people are overwhelmed by the amount of data, the tools, the possibilities, and everything. Until recently, the whole stigma was, “Let’s send a mass email to 10,000 people,” and then maybe get one reply. The majority of people would write, “I’m unsubscribing,” but we can report to our manager that we did something. So you get in a cycle where everything was oriented towards quantity. I firmly believe that now, the next five to 10 years will be all about quality. It will be all about semantic, contextual, and emotional intelligence in B2B sales. Adil Saleh 05:12 Aleksa, I love that you mentioned that, because any platform is talking about context, capabilities, and specialization, but at the end of the day, it’s outcomes. With sales, you’re thinking about emotional intelligence, you’re thinking about neuroscience. That is something that a lot of sales platforms built for SDRs, BDRs, and account executives are not thinking about, because it’s not easy. So how are you bringing these capabilities that incorporate emotional intelligence and neuroscience? Being a salesman for more than a decade, I know it’s about emotional intelligence. I want to mention this book, Never Split the Difference. That is all about understanding people at the human level, and connecting by making sure you’re emotionally connected. So could you explain more on this in what you’re building and what you’re going to build next? Aleksa Mitrović 06:20 This product embodies everything I am as a salesperson. I won’t be the most charismatic, I won’t be the funniest, and I won’t be the person you want to hang out with on a Friday night. But when it comes to who is the most prepared in the sales team, I would be one of the ones that is most prepared. I always try to bring high context to conversations with prospects or customers because everything else I find a waste of time. That helped me, even before AI, to be relevant and successful in sales, because I was always presenting to the right people, the right solution, at the right time. When I started my career, I was in back office roles first. In FinTech, I was doing risk and compliance. As I moved into sales, I used that knowledge in conversations with prospects, and there would be immediate trust. In regulated and complex industries like FinTech, customers often think salespeople are just the ones that do the talking, then it’s “I need to check with my team.” But I had situations where I could proactively suggest things from my risk and compliance background, and people would want to speak again, even after a first meeting. The call I had before this one was about bringing the right context. It’s related to Go-To-Market, sales, unit economics, and so on. Bringing the right context and knowledge has been my bread and butter. The product embodies that. It helps you find the right people at the right time with the right context. One customer used a sales agency using Instantly and LinkedIn outreach, sending thousands of messages, and got zero meetings in three months. Then they used my product, even with non-salespeople, and got around five meetings in two or three weeks because their outreach was high context. With automation, anyone can email everyone in the world in 24 hours. But will it be relevant or helpful? Probably not. That’s why it’s moving toward account-based marketing. I’ve been doing that all the time: focus on a smaller group of leads, be relevant, be helpful, meet them in meetings and events. With AI and automation, I believe this is the future. Adil Saleh 11:11 100%, agreement. Context is the real differentiator. You cannot build context at large scale. Segmenting, building the right context, and engaging meaningful touchpoints is the next game. Now, talking about DealMaker, could you explain what kind of customers you’re serving, what segment, and what kind of sales motion they have, so our audience can have better insight? Aleksa Mitrović 11:47 Predominantly B2B sales and fractional functions like a fractional CTO, fractional CMO, etc. To my surprise, 80% to 90% of my customers are non-salespeople. Three months ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have thought it would be salespeople. But it started being founders and other roles at early-stage B2B sales companies, and also fractional functions. That surprised me, and I’m proud of it. In 2020, I wanted to start a new sales product because the current ones were super complex. If you speak with salespeople, you won’t find one that loves their CRM or sales tool. Time to value is very lengthy. So I’m proud that non-salespeople find the product simple enough to use in their own workflows. Adil Saleh 13:33 Thinking about those segments, are those more FinTech? Could you explain some customer journeys, then we’ll talk about post-sales processes and a bit about the growth market? Aleksa Mitrović 14:00 What did you mean about the segment? You mean the industry of my customers? Adil Saleh 14:04 Yes, industry vertical. Could you tie in a story? The biggest challenge in prospecting is open rates and everything impacting conversion. How are you helping those verticals have a greater impact than other technologies they might use and pay three, four, or five times more for? Sales orgs often spray money without getting anything in return. So how did you play that part well, what verticals, and could you extend a bit of their workflow? Aleksa Mitrović 14:53 Three core pillars come to mind. One is consultants, as individuals or companies doing consultancy services, tech consultancy, and similar. Second is a wide group of B2B SaaS companies. Some are coming from green tech, like ESG things. Some are related to marketing. Some are around travel, and so on. There are too many to list, so I’d say B2B SaaS across many industries. Third is fractional functions. Individuals transitioning from their day jobs to become independent consultants. But close to 90% of my customers came from referrals from paying customers. I had a gap in the previous two months where I didn’t do B2B sales or growth. All paying customers came from existing customers introducing me to friends and colleagues. That happened because I’m building all of this solo. I got first recurring customers in August, and my goal was to retain them and expand the value so they upsell. I think I had around six expansions, revenue-wise. I also made a conscious decision not to go into outbound sales. This should be taken with a pinch of salt because I didn’t intentionally target industries, and it happened organically through referrals. Adil Saleh 17:54 That’s a blessing in disguise because it’s important to deliver value, so customers retain and expand. That is customer success. It’s important instead of going wide and grabbing customers, then getting feedback from everywhere. Early days, it can take you away from your product vision because recurring clients have requests, and that cost often pulls you away from the product vision. Aleksa Mitrović 18:33 I was doing this also for customers paying $29 a month. On paper, they’re unprofitable customers, but at this stage, your goal is to retain them and polish the product. I spoke with someone who led strategy at Amazon. She said you shouldn’t be doing sales for anybody below 50k ACV. She is right, but at our stage, even $29 a month customers matter. One customer I spent the most time with expanded several times, and more importantly, introduced me to an enterprise customer in the US with 20,000 employees. If I enter there, it could be a 50k to 100k a month deal. For founders listening, small customers are important. Make them happy, retain them, because it becomes a flywheel: better product leads to more revenue, more revenue leads to better product. Adil Saleh 20:38 Love it. Good luck with that. Trust matters. At the end of the day, value is how your product solves their problem. I have smaller customers too. Serving them helps me get feedback that will help me serve bigger customers later. Problems you solve for small customers are the same problems big customers have. That’s like training in your training room before going in the field. I think you’ve done a great job there. Aleksa Mitrović 21:45 Thanks a lot. Trust is the core. I made a video about getting the first 100 B2B customers, and it’s about trust. You might have a better product than the biggest competitor, but nobody knows you, nobody trusts you. My calculation was: if I retain one person paying 29 bucks a month and make them happy, later with organic traffic, referrals, affiliate, I can get at least 1,000 people like that. If I fix for this one person, and later I turn on the growth engine, it will pay for itself. For founders, it’s thinking of your time as investment in the product rather than a revenue calculator and unit economics. Adil Saleh 23:12 I met Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, in London. We were talking about when it’s the right time to raise capital. He said if you raise, raise to build the right product, like hiring a better CTO. Product first matters. Even with AI, there’s noise, but if you use AI well, you can go product first and everything else follows. Then it’s easier to build the funnel: growth, outreach, prospecting, relationship-based, founder-led, community-led. We’re also founder slash community led. Doing the product right matters. Market positioning for the right ICP matters. When you go upmarket, you need the sweet spot. Now, talking about your Go-To-Market, founders think about recurring revenue, but few invest back into customer success. When it comes to success, retention comes from adoption and seeing value weekly or monthly. Then expansion follows, especially with usage-based or seat-based pricing. How are you tracking success beyond vanity metrics like signups, feature metrics, engagement, support tickets? There’s a lot we can do together here as a Hyperengage. Aleksa Mitrović 25:13 Today, I mostly just see if people are using the product. Several times a week, I go into the database. I use Supabase. My product is credit-usage-based, so I check if credits are moving or not. Soon I’ll automate weekly Slack reports for myself. I can start sensing product-market fit. It’s still far away, but I can. I built a bad product before, so I know what that feels like. Now I feel what a good product is. My main metric is, are people actually using the product? Even for new signups, I check activation and usage. For paying customers, I check usage too. Profitability-wise, it would be easiest to have paying customers that don’t use it, but that’s not my focus. I want them to use the max from their credits and use it daily. I don’t differentiate much between paying and non-paying. I want everyone to use it. I get disappointed when paying customers don’t use it. I had one or two paying customers who didn’t use it at all last month. For low-usage customers, I check in at least monthly, sometimes more, depending on usage. I ask what their focus is and help them implement DealMaker in their workflow. For power users, I’m in touch almost daily. I have around five companies that are power users. With two companies, I’m in touch every single day, the whole day. My goal is constantly expanding value. I sit with them to understand their bigger workflow. For example, one company about to upgrade told me how they use the product behind the scenes day to day: they use my product, then they do something else, then they update their sales deck, then they do something. I collect this info to help them use the product to the maximum, reduce time, and be better with better context to customers. On the product side, there are gaps. I still don’t have product tours or onboarding sequences, not by email, not in the product. That will be my focus now: build onboarding inside the product for faster activation, then faster activation conversion. With the power users, how I keep them happy, except for serving them, they’re all piloting a new feature that will be absolutely insane. I can guarantee you there’s nothing similar to that level on the market. People pay McKinsey and Gartner more than 100k a year to get this kind of stuff. It’s static data. My customers are getting this dynamic data weekly. So you’re trying to get feedback, you’re trying to give them value, and also as a founder, you’re trying to make some money. Adil Saleh 29:41 Also, when you try to build the trust level with your customers and go into trenches with them, understanding your workflows, they will tell you their bigger problems. That’s how you get signal, and that’s how you get more ideas for your product. You’re talking about McKinsey and Gartner. These are the companies that are doing it for large customers. But if you get this opportunity with customers that are paying low, but they’re big enough, and once you get into their workflows, you sit with them and hear them out, you’ll see the same problems all over. That’s how you expand, and that’s how you actually drive growth with those customers. Aleksa Mitrović 30:23 I agree with you 100%. Being so close with your customers, nothing can be compared with that. You will learn so much faster and so much better. I’m sure you’re experiencing the same. When I speak with my customers, I can already start seeing the patterns where I should take the product. Customers might not always tell you exactly what they need, but if you understand their problem and their workflow, you will, as a founder, see what the best solution is across your customer base. I firmly believe that they will simply stay longer with you. To put it this way, if 6sense is the competitor of what I’m doing, any of these smaller, less than 10-people B2B SaaS companies wouldn’t be able to speak with the founder. It’s a question if they would be able to speak with anybody at that company. With me, they get recommendations on how to improve their sales process, how to improve their entire Go-To-Market. I think it’s a healthy relationship, like a symbiosis where both organisms are feeding off each other and improving constantly. That’s how I see it. To wrap up this and your previous question, I don’t have any sophisticated process or tools. I’m still early, but it’s being there for them. People appreciate that, they love it, they acknowledge that, they pay for that, and they stay with you. Adil Saleh 32:13 Yeah, start making your raving fans when you’re early, and it’s even more important than tracking. I’m not so fond of asking founders about their MRR and also what is your next thing going into 2026 in terms of growth? I know you just started a few quarters ago. Now thinking about growth as a founder in terms of team, in terms of revenue, in terms of customers, it’s equally good starting out to get customers that are not paying anything, but they’re still seeing value and they are growing. Evolving with them, growing with the customer, kind of similar to the Notion model when they started, like you have on a seat-based slash credit-based model. Aleksa Mitrović 33:01 Yeah. Adil Saleh 33:02 Where do you think you’re heading and what makes you excited to come here? Aleksa Mitrović 33:05 Right now, I came close to 3k MRR in October. I’m not sure if I crossed that mark in November. I had one plan go down, contraction, and I had a couple of new customers and a couple of expansions, so I might cross 3k in November. I’m still trying by the end of the year to cross 5k MRR. It’s going to be tricky. There are three more weeks left in the year, and then everyone goes for the holidays. In Q1 2026, I need to cross 10k MRR. That’s a must. My ambition is even higher than that, but that is a minimum acceptable thing. With the new feature that I’m preparing, that I told you, it’s going to be insanely good. If I play my cards right, I might even cross that mark in December. I already have some discussions. I don’t know how fast they’re going to go. There are so many different things, but that’s definitely the plan. For 2026, it’s fully focusing on Go-To-Market. That’s my plan. I even had the last couple of weeks a code freeze where nothing new is developed unless there is a bug or a small thing. It’s focusing on growth. That’s why I had a sales freeze for two months to focus on getting the product in the right shape and direction. Now I’ve had a code freeze for the product for the last couple of weeks. I’m tempted to go back with the new feature because the new feature, I’ll ping you when it’s live, but I can promise it’s insane. I get excited and then I say to myself, no more development, just selling, just marketing. Then I think, maybe if I do this. Adil Saleh 35:33 That’s the way to go. You cannot think so far out as a startup founder because there are so many moving parts in between, and you never know how you connect the dots three months down and six months down. So it’s good to stay focused in the moment and think a quarter at a time, and focus on the product. When it comes to product and vision, a longer-term view on what you want to build, what category, what industry vertical, closer to your ICP, you should be clear in the beginning. Even if you’re not, that’s okay to not have visibility into that. As long as you’re delivering value to customers, doubling down, and getting more customers over weeks and months, and you have a realistic goal in the next few months, I appreciate that and wish you the best on that. Aleksa Mitrović 36:28 Thanks a lot. This is what I’ve changed myself. The previous company I was running, HyperActive, we raised funds from VCs and it was all the time thinking about the big milestone that will result in the next funding round. Right now, as a solo bootstrapper, I think about what’s the current level where I’m at and what’s the next milestone. Right now I’m at 3k MRR. The next milestone is 5k. I find it more natural to go that way. Nothing against VC-backed startups, it just pushes you. It’s a different animal. It pushes you in a different mode, different direction, different level of thinking. If you’re at zero, you need to think about 100k MRR quickly. Where I am right now, I find it healthier because I can focus on retention and the right product. If I was focused only on growth, I wouldn’t have it at all. Adil Saleh 37:36 You can never have this freedom to build the right product in the way that you envisioned by only focusing on growth. Aleksa Mitrović 37:44 Unless you do it after you have a first or second venture, then you raise a bunch of money and you can do whatever you want. Adil Saleh 37:57 Absolutely. They already have their ICP and all of this. Aleksa Mitrović 37:59 Like OpenAI, I don’t know if you’re reading a backstory, and Sam Altman said, I was giving suggestions and recommendations to YC founders for years. Then with OpenAI, I’ve done everything against that, and in totally different directions. You can afford to do that when you’re already quite big. Adil Saleh 38:22 You got money to fail a lot of times. You got money to experiment. Imagine if you have 3 million pre-seed and you’re thinking about growth, sales, all of this. You can have a bigger team. You can run different experiments, run through different pivots, get closer to the customer, or invest more into marketing and Go-To-Market, customer acquisition, a lot of that. Sometimes it’s a privilege, but a lot of times it’s a pain. There are so many people that came on your side of the table for different views. I appreciate that you’ve been open and less rational about this funding thing. I wish you best, Aleksa. I’m looking forward to you bringing a lot of this content onto LinkedIn. The entire team will be engaged, and we’ll follow each other’s journey. Aleksa Mitrović 39:23 Sounds good. Thanks a lot for having me. I’m looking forward to what you guys do. As mentioned before this, I see quite a lot of overlaps between what I was doing before with HyperActive and what you’re doing right now with Hyperengage. I’m a firm believer in what you guys are doing and wish you all the best of luck. Adil Saleh 39:42 Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It means a lot. Outro 39:45 Thank you very much for listening to Across the Funnel. If you got one useful GTM idea out of this show today, please share this with a teammate and hit follow. Explore Hyperengage at hyper engage.io and Dextego at dextego.com.