698: How this Sales Training Tool Went from $600k to $1.2M in Revenue in 1 Year

Sam Caucci. He's the CEO of Sales Huddle, a training and development team that is using game technology to help organizations better prepare their people for the workforce.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Meditations
• What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin
• Favorite online tool? — GrowBots
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Sam is a big believer that you have to over-network

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:52 – Nathan introduces Sam to the show
• 01:30 – Sales Huddle is a mobile game platform for employee training
• 01:43 – Sales Huddle has everything a business needs to learn
• 02:04 – Sales Huddle is a subscription business
• 02:10 – Pricing is from $5K to $15K
• 02:13 – There's a monthly recurring fee based on the number of employees on the platform
• 02:20 – 2016 revenue closed out at $1.2M
• 02:29 – MRR is around $800K 82 subscribed clients on the platform
• 02:58 – Sales Huddle has an initial integration fee for converting a client's current content into the platform
• 03:18 – Most companies pay Sales Huddle an upfront payment
• 03:36 – Sales Huddle tries to get companies to pay upfront first
• 04:03 – Sales Huddle has 100% retention
• 04:37 – Sam credits their 0 churn on the product not infringing on the customer's current learning stack yet
• 05:10 – Sales Huddle started as a part-time consulting company 6 years ago
• • 05:26 – The development of the product was in middle of 2014
  • 05:27 – Selling started in 2015
• 05:40 – Team size is now 20
• 06:05 – Sales Huddle is currently raising and has raised $400K
• 06:33 – The round was a kiss convertible note
• 06:41 – A kiss convertible note converts to an equity and is similar to safe note
• 07:44 – Many startups don't think of their sales pipeline
• 08:08 – Sales Huddle is currently in a strong position
• 08:40 – As a founder, Sam believes it is his responsibility to drive the shift with his team
• 08:58 – Sam can definitely raise money through sales, but they have to think of the worst case scenario
• 09:12 – Sam sees his company running a 100m dash; once they get to 200m, they will think about how to get to 300m
• 09:30 – ARR goal is around 100m and they're currently at 50m
• 10:16 – Sam just had a daughter
• 10:49 – Sam is building a team that is going to have your back in a bar fight
• 11:12 – Sales Huddle's competitors
• 11:43 – Sales Huddle just started to spend money on paid acquisition
• 11:59 – Sales Huddle is almost always breaking even
• 12:16 – Sales Huddle is burning $40K-60K a month
• 12:41 – The hardest shift for Sam
• 13:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• A great retention rate could mean you're not charging enough or your product is just that good.
• Be the founder that your team trusts—even to the point of trusting you that raising funds is not necessary.
• Always invest in growing your network!

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives