A conversation with Jesse Dickert, Co-founder and CTO, Spotz
Tell us a little bit about your business and what it was like before you implemented SellX.
We’re the “Airbnb” for any space. Meaning we let customers take any physical space and put it up on our platform, making it for rent. Boardrooms, baseball diamonds, anything you can think of that’s a rentable space… even parking lot spaces for tailgates, that kind of stuff. And our platform handles it. As James our CEO would say, “we bought the assets of a facility management company that was focused on space, and we did it right before a global pandemic.”
So not exactly the best timing there. What we did was took that time to upgrade the Spotz platform and make it for any space. And then we went hard into our marketing, really trying to get hosts to sign up and claim their space through those efforts. They trickled in, and we found out really quick that it wasn’t really what we needed.
We then framed out how we wanted to go to market, and what we ended up agreeing to was selling it community by community. The rationale was, why not have Spotz communities instead of focusing nationwide? Let’s get groundswells in communities and build those up as Spotz communities. And once we get a groundswell there, it’ll naturally be like a DoorDash type of thing. So a very similar model to that.
We brought on some initial reps ourselves for a couple months, and it just didn’t work out. It was that ramp up time and effort, just getting them to not only understand what we do, but to get the sales process going. And it was a couple months’ process and we weren’t seeing results.
And that’s really where we went back to the drawing board and said, “what’s our solution here?” Bringing people on as employees didn’t work as fast as we wanted it to.
We were then introduced to SellX, and James and I did the scoping of the product. It’s been quite the experience since. There was a little bit of ramp up time, but it was two weeks versus two months. And now we’re really starting to go! It’s actually a great time to talk because it’s been the busiest week that we’ve had with SellX!
We’ve seen the leads coming in, and it’s fun to see Spotz continue to drive real value through the SellX platform.
Yeah. And what I forgot to mention is what we have the SellX reps creating those communities. We go out and basically build a customer’s profile for them. Then we have the SellX team reach out to basically contact all these spaces that we have up on our platform and say, “Hey, you’re already there. Claim it.” Once they claim their space, we then we get them onboarded and up and running and able to rent their space out. So it’s a really quick process with SellX as a key part of it.
That’s great. There are a lot of companies that run campaigns on the SellX platform using our rep marketplace and maybe are at a different stage or have a hypothesis about something that they really don’t know the answer to, yet. SellX is a driver to help solve exactly that.
For us, the SellX team closes it, meaning in our case, getting people to claim their space. It’s pretty cool to see the flexibility of the SellX rep marketplace to fit our specific needs at Spotz.
For Spotz specifically, what problem or opportunity were you trying to address as you were searching for a solution?
Really just creating those communities at scale. Everyone that we went to and explained the business to were like, “that is a great idea!” But the inability to get that kind of reaction to the masses was our big problem.
Especially coming out of the pandemic. And now going into a potential recession, our customers are really going to have to maximize their space and put it to work for them… finding out ways to rent out space to maximize potential revenue that they didn’t even know was there, because they have this asset that often sits there unused. And all you focus on as an owner and as a general manager is how you grow your core business. A physical space can be maximized as a complementary revenue-generating asset too.
You know, we went boots to ground to start. We went door-to-door and what we found was we could tell our story a lot of times, but we were telling our story to the wrong people too often. We weren’t getting to the owners. We weren’t getting to the managers because they weren’t there until later in the day. That sort of situation. It’s so inconsistent industry by industry.
Trying to find those people at the right time, boots to ground, it just wasn’t working. We were hitting some dead ends, but got a couple on board, obviously.
Needing to get our value in front of the right audience at the right time at scale was really the problem that SellX has helped us solve.
The campaigns on the platform have helped us get in touch with the people that we need to talk with, to actually claim their space… the people with the authority to make decisions for their businesses.
Spotz is smartly tapping into the marketplace of XDRs that SellX has available through the platform. What ultimately convinced you to adopt and commit to SellX as a key part of your GTM motion?
I think it was the flexibility of the platform. Being able to start (a campaign). Getting on the platform then selecting our reps. If it’s not working out, we can easily adjust.
So really what convinced us was that flexibility to monitor and decide if one rep is not working out for whatever reason, we have the ability to shift and choose new ones.
We have the ability to add, subtract, and change direction as it relates to campaigns and reps. We knew we needed something, and you know, we had to do something to learn what worked. And again, the SellX team’s willingness to work with us throughout the onboarding process.
Because we’re small, we don’t have the people and resources to go out to market with a field sales org. About half of our team is fractional. So along the same lines of what we were doing with SellX, we already had that lined out a little bit. That idea was there, but just we didn’t have anyone to execute it.
Having SellX understanding what we we’re trying to do and working with us to ultimately execute, it was a no-brainer.
We love hearing that, and especially the flexibility you’re realizing with the platform. We think that’s important because with any business model coming onto SellX, there’s going to be nuance and not everybody’s campaign is going be “out-of-the-box.”
Like I said, we’re small, so we wouldn’t have continued if it would’ve been something where we were stuck in for X-amount of time. You know, if we were stuck in a process that prevented us from testing. That wouldn’t have worked for us because we are very much a startup and we are very much in that mode of, let’s test as much as we can and see what works.
So when Spotz started with SellX, did you have a preconceived notion of what would work, and then after testing you decided to pivot while you were using the platform?
Well, we really we had the idea of what we wanted to do, right? And now we’re executing that idea through SellX. But we have adjusted throughout the process of executing our campaigns. Plus, we allowed the initial reps those first couple of weeks to give us some feedback on the market.
And then James and I, we had a nice conversation about three weeks in… maybe a month in, about what we were seeing. And then it was awesome to review the data on the SellX platform and actually validate what we were seeing and help direct us where we would like to go.
Once Spotz was on the platform, the marketplace reps obviously had some questions for us about common rebuttals and overcoming objections, that kind of stuff. So we adjusted the messaging a little bit. We adjusted the process a little bit to help them close.
It’s been successful ever since.
Awesome. Is there anything quantifiable you’d be willing to share? Any results you’ve seen because Spotz now doing this with SellX?
I know before we signed on with SellX, with our own efforts, we had some claims trickling in. Maybe two a month from just either word of mouth or from people that found us somehow.
So, and to be clear, when you say “claims,” that’s customers coming in to claim their spot?
Yes. The organization claiming on the Spotz platform. We have an organizational profile for them. They go on and actually see their buildings, and then they claim their profile on our platform.
So that’s what SellX has allowed us to do In comparison. This week alone, we have about 25 claims.
We went from qualifying a couple per month to 25 this week alone.
It’s been a little bit of a ramp up, but we saw, you know, with SellX, all of the sudden we went from a handful of claims in the early weeks, up to 25 this week and trending upward. We’re able to build as this pace of growth continues.
A lot of what you’re saying is based around having a test-and-learn mindset. Is there anything in your company’s culture that allows for SellX to truly be a successful platform for you?
Being a small startup and us really putting the trust in working on the SellX platform to go to market. So for us, this was quite the investment. But it was something that we had to do. We had to win. We had to trust going in and really I think that us having the initial idea of what we wanted to do to start was key.
We just didn’t quite know how to execute it on our own. Being able to learn what works, then drive that execution through SellX has really been successful for us.
If we came in and said, “do it this way,” and we on our end were set in stone and we didn’t learn from the initial results, I don’t think it would’ve been as successful. Being this way allowed Spotz to arrive at this success because we could have interrupted two weeks in and been like, “why aren’t we getting any sales?” No, we knew there would be a process. And the SellX team was really good at communicating with us along the way, being direct with us about a ramp up period. So I think Spotz not being set in our unproven ways, and really trusting the work we do on SellX to guide us, that sales wing for us has been very valuable.
We think it’s important for leaders like yourself be able to understand there is a validation part of the process. And, you know, we’re all impatient. We all want the sales right now.
Oh, I know. We had to remind ourselves a couple times. You know, those first couple of weeks, we were kind of nervous. And then as the campaigns continued, we started seeing the claims come in. And then ultimately, now we’re finding continued success, and we’re hitting the gas. It’s been really refreshing that, hey, we made the right choice.
What would be the main reason you would recommend SellX to somebody else?
Main reason? The expertise of sales…. and the flexibility. Those are two big things that, I know I’ve said it a couple times, but I can’t hammer those enough.
Also being able to trust the SellX rep marketplace with our message going outbound. It is starting to come to fruition. We’re seeing the process work.
At first our approach at Spotz was a square peg in a round hole. And then SellX found a way to accommodate and grow with us, which is what we were looking for.
About SellX
SellX is a new, modern sales platform for the on-demand economy connecting companies looking to scale faster and more efficiently with premium, remote sales talent. The SellX data-optimized platform comes complete with end-to-end integrated sales and marketing tools which track performance, automate workflows and manage payments. For more information, visit www.sellx.com and follow on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
(Text transcribed from conversation with Jesse Dickert, Spotz, November 18, 2022)
