Yoav Vilner on Don’t Forget About the Sales Experience in the Journey

Be Customer Led – Yoav Vilner

[00:00:00] Yoav Vilner: Welcome to be customer led where we’ll explore, help leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors, employees, and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host bill stagos.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another week of B customer led. I’m your host bill Staco. I have a really exciting guest for you all this week. YOA ner is the CEO and founder of Walnut and we’re gonna get into Walnut does, but the story arc of this show. Do not forget about the sales experience in the journey, which is really critical and YOF, and the team have created a fantastic product.

We’re gonna talk about YOF welcome the show. I’m really excited to have you on.

[00:00:59] Yoav Vilner: Thanks for having me. I’ve been, listening for the past couple of months. it’s a great show.

[00:01:04] Bill Staikos: Cool. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the support. All right, let’s get into it. So, the first question that we always ask our guests, you of is.

Tell us about and share your journey. And I think you got a really interesting one you’re you’re in Tel Aviv today. And, you’ve been in this space, in the software space for a while. And, tell us kind of like that progression into, ultimately, founding Walnut.

yeah, I, I started my journey, some time ago I was, I was 22 and, and I identified a gap, in Tel Aviv where a lot of startups were starting to raise sea round.

Israel was just becoming the startup nation. It is. Yeah. and they didn’t have a lot of, a lot of solutions and a lot of, possibilities to handle anything about growth and marketing. the, the phrase growth hacking was just starting to, to emerge and they, that they can’t, rely on the huge ad agencies with the huge tall buildings.

that normally work with, enterprise companies. and then I just started, being like a fillin sale that handles like maybe two or three startups, doing all of the growth in marketing, not really knowing how. It was fun. And that turned out to be the biggest company. one of the first companies in the world to do tech marketing as it’s referred to.

so we had 600 startups. We had dozens of employees. We had offices in Manhattan and London, and I lived across all the locations. So it’s a good, it’s a nice gig to have in your twenties. I

[00:02:31] Bill Staikos: can imagine that sounds like a really awesome story. So, so you founded Walnut not a couple years ago, right? and I always love, I love asking the question, cuz I think the, the name behind companies is a really interesting one.

So, but two questions though. One, what problem were you trying to solve when you were like. We need to create technology to do this, cuz it’s a really important problem. Cuz if you’re working with 600 companies, you’re seeing what the problems are day in and day out. Right. But what was it about, what you guys do and tell us a little bit about what you do, as well, what problem were you trying to solve with it?

And then how did you come up with the name of the company?

[00:03:08] Yoav Vilner: Yeah, we, we get asked about the name. I’m sure man. I just like to say that, we think that demonstrating your product. To people is like the toughest, not to crack in the sales process and yeah. People like it. So, so like you said, when I was running a company, that’s working with 600 startups, you get to see a lot of stuff, go, go right, go wrong.

you get to see why startups shut down and you get to see why startups raised. 200 million. yeah, and eventually I kind of noticed that every time a company would spend millions of, of dollars trying to get you and I to see a demo of the product, eventually what comes afterwards is the demo and something broke or failed.

[00:03:45] Yoav Vilner: My co-founder my CTO and the company. He had a startup, he was selling to enterprise companies. And then on the opposite side, he had exec roles at enterprises, seen startup. selling their software and we just kind of came to our conclusion that, it doesn’t make sense. It was 2020 at the time, and we felt it really doesn’t make sense for things to work that way, for everything to break for everything to bold the prospect, for things to go just bad.

[00:04:08] Bill Staikos: Very, very cool from like idea to like having a prototype. How long did that take you guys to like build. So

[00:04:14] Yoav Vilner: I think what’s very unique about Walnut is, is speed. Like everything just happened super fast. I’ve never seen a I’ve I’ve seen stuff happen here that I, I wouldn’t you, I would expect to see after like five or six yield happening in a, in a startup.

Wow. from the moment we started interviewing VP sales and it was like 60 or seven 50 sales at the time for major companies and we were interviewing them. They were not just saying it’s a big problem. Like they were saying, this is killing me. I will pay. To solve this. Like, I will pay you to reduce the friction between our sales team and anyone from the backend R and D product and design in creating and managing all those demos.

My, my CTO took like two or three weeks to just develop what was the very first version of Walnut. Wow.

[00:04:59] Bill Staikos: That’s pretty incredible. Yeah. Cuz you guys you’re, you’re under, it’s under two years old the company. Right. But you guys have seen some pretty serious growth in that time. Yeah. It’s about

[00:05:07] Yoav Vilner: one and a half years

[00:05:08] Bill Staikos: officially.

That’s awesome. I love the growth story and the trajectory and it’s rooted in like real knowledge. Like you’re working with all these companies, you’re kind of seeing what works well, what doesn’t work well, it’s, what’s interesting to me is, I, I get to talk to a lot of people as, as you can imagine.

Right. But sometimes people don’t notice. The problems and saying, Hey, there’s an opportunity here. They’re just focused on, Hey, you could have just stuck with growth marketing at the end of the day. And you could add a great company you did, and you just that’s, which could have done. Right. But you noticed this other sort of opportunity here and you said, Hey, let’s pivot.

Let’s do something else. New and interesting here. That takes just a lot of courage. To be able to do, especially if you’ve got a thriving business right. Already. Is the other business still, do you still have that or did you kind of shut that down or move on or?

no. So I was living in New York for our, us office and I was just wrapping up about almost seven years of being the CEO there.

[00:05:58] Yoav Vilner: And, that was quite enough for me. So I came back to Tel Aviv and then COVID just started. So, I would go back anyway and. And, we launched, we launched Walnut in between and was also a CMO of a startup designed to save kids from bullies on social media. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. As part of their founding team, I helped them raise funds and launch everything.

Walnut was just too much of a passion that I was, I was wanting to

[00:06:22] Bill Staikos: build very, very cool. I love, I love founders and folks like you because you’re not just doing one thing. Like you just got, you’re doing, you gotta be busy all the time. And I love that. Why do you think a lot of people forgot about the sales experience?

Why do you think that wasn’t maybe like an, it was an afterthought almost right? What did you notice that, that maybe others didn’t in that. As a, as a buyer, and I’ve bought SAS software before and past lives. Right. I don’t know if people necessarily think about the sales experience as part of that overall journey.

Right. It’s sort of like awareness, you buy it, you use it. And that’s the, the big part of the journey. But the sales experience necessarily, maybe not so much. What, what were people missing? Do

[00:07:00] Yoav Vilner: you think. And, the main thing I think that got lost is if you think about like B2C sales, like if you, you would wanna buy a pizza or yeah.

Or, treadmill online and you would Google it, it would come all the way to your house and you wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. And when people are buying SAS, Products. They’re used to talking to 17 SDLs and then three AEs and then a VP that’s coming into, bargain and price again. And yeah, it’s like such a difference that B2B just did not evolve, although the past, I don’t know how many years.

And, and this is why our validation process was so quick. Everyone were like, yeah, please fix this. We’ll pay for it. And then the 70 people on, on, in our validation phase, they turned into 700 people on a wait. And everyone were saying, come on guys, let’s, let’s build this thing and you can’t really get any more validation than that for

[00:07:49] Bill Staikos: your idea.

No, that’s really, it that’s all you needed. I love that, but you guys don’t just necessarily focus on the sales experience. Right? You guys have solutions for marketing, you have solutions for customer success, particularly in that onboarding process, was this sort of a natural extension, or did you say.

And did you start with the sales experience and, and the demos and then said, Hey, let’s do this for marketing. And let’s do this for customer success because those same 700 were saying, Hey, we can, you could fix this problem over here too. Or was there something else going on that you had observed and identified and you saw the need to build that, that as well for, for, for those personas?

[00:08:23] Yoav Vilner: Yeah. I think that like demonstrating your product is tough for every team. Most of our efforts are focused on sales. Naturally marketing is also. very close to it. And so there’s a lot of marketing and product marketing teams we work with. I think sales is like the core business. We’ve got a lot of requests for use cases that we didn’t go for.

founders wanting to demonstrate to VCs. You could do it with Walnut, but mm-hmm , it would be too expensive for you just to do that product team, wanting to experiment a feature, announce it internally or externally. these are all things you can do if you, if you own the product demonstration.

[00:09:01] Yoav Vilner: For us like this whole play on sales and marketing is kind of sufficient at the moment. like there’s enough demand. and so it’s kind of every, every other use case is just kind of naturally expanding within the existing customers that we have.

[00:09:16] Bill Staikos: And you have, is it typical? Like are sales because it’s a no code solution, right?

Like, I mean, for folks who go to walnut.io, excuse me, and check out like great demo on there. Right. Like how to build it, et cetera. And you guys have some slick marketing on there too, which I love is it sales people able to develop the demo themselves? Or are they still going maybe to their, different product teams or maybe their product marketing folks to do it, or like who are like the primary users of, of, of the, of the.

[00:09:44] Yoav Vilner: So the whole, the whole concept of Walnut, is that you don’t need anyone from L and D and you don’t need anyone from product or design. You can’t, you can’t crash the system. Like you’re not connected to your backend anymore. So 90% of times, we all know something’s gonna happen. When you go on that live demo with Microsoft and you’re gonna show them your product and it fails.

we’ve all been there. So this is what it helps save. It’s more like an insurance for demos and sales people can. Handle it on their own. It’s like a drag and drop system. Super easy. Just like building a website on Ws or just like customizing the words within the website.

[00:10:19] Bill Staikos: Yeah. No, it is really, really slick.

What do you think? So, like, I, I, I feel like there’s, like content as an example, just broadly like big C, right. But I think demos and of service demos or product demos are certainly part of that broader category. A lot of companies, I feel like don’t see that as an. To the organization, right? A lot of teams still focused on product attributes, trying to get through as much as possible and sort of in a demo, in a short period, then things fail and go sideways for the companies that maybe have not heard of while not, what do you think that they’re missing by not treating these things like a, like an asset, like a real asset to the company that they should be using to.

Drive growth. I mean, certainly from an efficiency perspective, cuz it’s easy to use from a, drag and drop like that, no code kind of stuff, but like why aren’t companies, do you think looking at this stuff like an asset generally,

I think people get used to what they, what they know.

[00:11:11] Yoav Vilner: And so if you think about it, if you try to be creative about, like you said, you don’t wanna just go shove million features and show a, the same demo to everyone. So what people used to do, they would try and record a video. That’s kind of. more cost, you tell the story, it’s the same demo, but you tell the story differently, but nothing interactive about that.

Right? Cuz you just send it in advance. Sure. you would go to Google slides or, PowerPoint and you would kind of try and make up a whole story of what this part can do for you. It’s really like brick and mortar solutions. and so I, I do think, the expectations have, have increased and I think that the market, the prospects right now, they don’t have the patients.

To get that type of a process or an experience. And so companies are definitely left behind and then they spend lots of internal resources, right? So you spend a couple of millions of dollars a year. You build out a team that’s supposed to like maintain, create and stabilize them and stuff like that.

That would still potentially not be interesting enough for prospects even in that form. and so you just spend so much time and money on all, all this stuff that you can just solve with a click of a button and it kind of makes no sense.

[00:12:16] Bill Staikos: Yeah. And I think that actually tools and capabilities like yours, I think also open up people’s eyes to realize like, Hey, this is an asset.

Like we can use this creatively or in different ways to really drive. New connectivity with the customer right. In a different way. And I think that’s what I like one, not as, not only is it easy to produce, but the demo also comes off, I think a little bit differently maybe than it has in the past. And I think that’s also an important part of that.

at the end of the day, like when I, when I saw the demo was like, and full disclosure folks, Medallia is a customer of walnuts. So it’s important to also say that when I saw the demo, I was like, This is gonna change the way that we think about showing the platform to our clients. Right. And be more creative in that process too, which I think is, which I think is, is, is, a really important, a really important point to make a couple of things about Walnut though.

[00:13:06] Bill Staikos: Like you guys just don’t create sort of like the demo and like, like the no code, like the drag and drop, right? Like I really love so as a, as a customer experience person and, and professional and practice sooner, I love data. And measurement, just kind of like, and, and the way my brain works, a lot, the insights that you guys actually produce and deliver through the platform provides clients sort of like the ability to identify opportunities with your sales team, your sales process, client engagement, with the demo, et cetera.

Talk to our listeners a little bit about, these features and the functionality. Why was it important to include. when you guys were building this out, was it a, was it part of like VDO one or did you guys. Kind of build that on top as well, like as you guys were going along.

[00:13:50] Yoav Vilner: Right. So I think that insights and analytics and all of that, all of those nice words that actually say what you’ve just said, which is data.

This is kind of, this is kind of the more advanced phase of, of such a product. And it really makes no sense just to let you customize demos, if you don’t know what ended up happening or who saw it. And there’s so many things that you need to know, you need that data, especially if you’re a team leader.

There’s a lot of insights that you can get into this whole process, which kind of, let’s admit it today, you would send your sales rep and they would go on and make a live demo, which isn’t like, customized. And then they would go back to the CRM and they would type, it was a great call.

And you wouldn’t know what that, what that means. and so, so yeah, so we provide like, insights, first of all, very general insights into the actual demo. we refer to as a storyline because. you tell a story to a specific prospect, who saw it, and how long did it take and which features were more important to, to that prospect?

If you imagine, if you can send the demos to your prospects, like you do with Walnut as a link, there’s a lot of tracking we can do, like, was it likely to convert and what was more interesting? And then you can also plug it in black, back to your CRM, and you can sync the data. there there’s a lot of stuff to do there.

and you need to know who saw the demo for, in terms of your, your knowledge and, and, and privacy and everything. so there’s a whole world of, of data points that we’re, we’re trying to, to present, to go all the way from zero clarity, which is completely zero all the way to

[00:15:25] Bill Staikos: hundred.

And, and as part of that, yo, I’ve, if say, like I was, I was a salesperson, I let’s say I created four templates for demos. Could I AB test and kind of figure out okay. Where specifically, or what specifically people kind of keyed in on. So I can then start to kind of say, well, this worked on this one and that worked on that one, so I can start bringing them together and start testing that way.

Cause you, you can create a demo pretty quickly after that. Right.

[00:15:50] Yoav Vilner: Yeah, you could, once you’ve created that first, the first step you take with Walnut is like replicating the past that matter most to you from your SAS dashboard to our cloud. Once you’ve done that, once you can create millions of storylines and demos and templates and everything, you don’t have to do that more than once.

And, and yeah, you can totally like, compare the different types of store lines and, and you can see, what’s working best for, for which type of customer like we really try. And this, this will take us a couple of, of more months, but I really want us to be able to tell you, cuz we all have prospects from different.

Types of companies size and, and industries and a prospect that works in a cyber company doesn’t need to see the same demo, someone from a gaming company. Right. and eventually we want to get to that point where you can actually be, the best sales rep you can for a specific type of customer with a specific experience.

And this is something, we learn as we go. we already have over a hundred customers in just one year and, and now we’re on boarding hundreds more so we’ll have more data to.

[00:16:49] Bill Staikos: Very very cool. Are you thinking about, how, how do you think about aggregating all the data that you’re capturing from your customers and creating even benchmarking or like feeding that back to say, Hey, these are the types of things that are working.

Here’s how, SaaS buyers are consuming information in different ways, right? Maybe the videos like art should be between two and three minutes or one and two minutes or whatever that is. Are you actually, are you able to deliver that back or are you guys thinking about that as well?

[00:17:16] Yoav Vilner: Oh yeah. It’s.

It’s part of the plan, because I think after you get a lot of data, then there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of conclusions you can get from it that will help. Your, your clients save time. So we don’t want people to create demos all the time. Yeah. We want them, to like the evolution of, where this is going is we just want you to show it and everything will be taken care of.

So, so the first type of, the first type of help that we can bring, is if we connect to the CRM, we can just propel the demo because we know the customer and their side and their industry and everything. And afterwards we can like kind of predict and tell you, this should be that, and kind of take the brain walk out of everything.

but I would feel confident in releasing such features after we’ve worked, worked with hundreds of customers, we got a lot of data and otherwise it’ll be just be like us guessing, as much

[00:18:06] Bill Staikos: as you. Yeah. That’s really, that’s really fascinating to me. I do you think that that’s where this space is going?

Just more like automation and predictive. Built into the capability or like, what else are you, do you mind? I, I’m curious, like where do you think the sales experience as a differentiator for businesses is going generally?

[00:18:22] Yoav Vilner: I think, in a couple of, in a couple of years, people are really gonna make fun of the way you used to show your products in, in the past, showing their real life thing and praying nothing breaks, or just ignoring the fact that different prospects don’t need to see the.

Experience. Yeah, this is all really going, going to the next phase of this revolution and, with, or without us, this whole PLG thing is happening. And, the demos are starting to be like the engine for, for growth. we just got, we just got the privilege of announcing and being the first one to do everything first and the market really appreciates it.

But eventually, a couple of years, a couple of years from now, you would get a lot of tools that lets you create PLG materials, a lot of tools that let you customize your demos. And by that time, it’s kind of be, I, I think it’s gonna be an industry with a couple of big winners from all kinds of different angles of the process.

[00:19:12] Bill Staikos: I actually got pitched by a company I’ll have to forge you the email and, actually to. My work accounts. Like it’s like we’re already working with Walnut. Thanks though. but, it was very interesting. So I’ll forward you the note, I don’t know if you may be aware of the company or not, but,ask you, why do you work with Walnut?

No, no, no, no. It was like a, it was a similar type of solution and I was like, oh, we’re already working with Walnut. No, thanks. Right. So, I’ll have to for you the note, maybe, the company or not, but,yeah, probably, after you announce something and it hits, the market and people appreciate it.

[00:19:42] Yoav Vilner: a lot of, a lot of people would try and kind of do the same things. Lucky for us. Like the market now has no. Has no, like there’s not even a debate over who’s the winner in terms of, land grabbing and being the bigger, the better brand there’s like, but it’s going to be a huge market. Like I think, I think that SaaS companies are really trying to be, as creative as they can.

And they’re actively looking for such solutions, Gartner is running blog posts. Yeah. Mentioning us. And like you said, we’re under two years. Everything’s really overwhelming, but I think it’s gonna be a big, a big.

[00:20:15] Bill Staikos: Yeah, no, I, I think, even for myself kind of doing the work, I mean, doing customer experience, the actual work, for companies in the past, it’s interesting.

Like I never really thought about the sales experience. As a really critical part, but now that I’m at a SaaS company, I actually look at it very, very differently. So, wherever I go in life, like whatever I do next I’m like that really has to be a critical part of the journey. I just think that, whether it’s a SaaS company, otherwise it just, you really need to think end to end in those touch points and what customers are receiving, what they’re viewing, how they’re engaging with your brand.

I think new creative ways to be able to. To do that with a potential customer or even current customer for that matter is really critical, to that connectivity. and that growth. So. All right. I got two more questions for you. I know it’s, it’s late on a Friday for you. Who do you look up to?

What business leaders do you look up to? If any, maybe you don’t, maybe you say, Hey, I benchmark against myself. I don’t know. But, do you, do you have business leaders that you look up to and say, that’s, that’s someone that, I like to.

[00:21:14] Yoav Vilner: I’m I’m lucky enough to be backed by some of the people that I appreciate the work.

And so, whether you’re investors or advisors, so you get to like talk to them about everything. Cool. usually, I don’t get inspiration from like the massive, CEOs of, the top three companies in history where everyone’s going, reading the same quotes and inspirational quotes as everyone.

I ju I just like talking and hear hearing smart advice from. People that have in recent years built massive, multi-billion dollar companies, in, in industries that I care about. And so, some of them are investors at Walnut and I get to talk to them, and hear, and like consult with them every time I, I need to.

So, very lucky about

[00:21:53] Bill Staikos: that. Awesome. Where, where do you go for inspiration? Just personally? Like what, what, Where, where do you go for like things to like, be motivated and get charged up?

[00:22:02] Yoav Vilner: Oh, that’s a good question. Sometimes mindfulness and more often,boxing, like tie boxing. No kidding.

Cool. Kind of it wears you out. You don’t remember your name anymore when you wake up for a new morning. also a hobby of. How

[00:22:18] Bill Staikos: did you get into, into boxing? I was

[00:22:20] Yoav Vilner: looking for something, something extreme to do. so I was like looking at all kinds of stuff, like surfing and snowboarding and boxing and, and I, and I just felt that boxing could be, it has a lot of impact, and a lot of impact on your.

Your, concentration, your blood flow, your shape, your ability to face challenges, your ability to kick someone’s ass, if you ever need to on street which we all need to do, you all need to know how

[00:22:45] Bill Staikos: to do, every once in a while. You never know, right? Yeah. The one time that you need that skill, it’s a good skill to have for sure.

[00:22:52] Yoav Vilner: Yeah. You wouldn’t wanna snowboard on someone that’s trying to, to beat you on the street.

[00:22:56] Bill Staikos: Yeah, no for sure. Hey yo, this is one it’s it’s, it’s been great to get to know you a little bit. I really appreciate this conversation. I think that, I think what you guys are doing is really fantastic. This show is not about promoting platforms or software, but like, I really do believe that what you guys are creating is something really special.

I certainly see it on, on the end, on my end, where I. I, I believe in the product, it’s changed my perspective and I love this about the company. When I see companies, I change my perspective on the work that I do and how I think about it. Not just the product itself and its capabilities, like, you got something special there.

So yeah, I’m a sample of one, but I really think that, For a lot of people to be able to think about and consider this sales experience as an integral part of the overall customer journey and what capabilities can help you get there. I think you guys are nailing it. It’s just awesome to see. Thanks.

[00:23:45] Yoav Vilner: Thanks really means a

lot.

[00:23:48] Bill Staikos: Yeah. So listen. Great, great show. Thanks for coming on. alright everybody, we’ll see you next week. We’re out. Talk to soon, everyone

[00:23:54] Yoav Vilner: for listening to be customer led with bill Staco. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes.

Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you wanna hear more about until next time we’re out.