SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 843: SaaS: Call Tracking Convirza on $10m ARR, Major Acquisition to Double Business
Nov 14, 2017
27:55
Jeremiah Wilson. He founded Convirza over 15 years ago. As the patent-holding inventor of The Maculon, the original, passive, remote conversation monitoring device and sales management system, he shaped the call tracking and marketing analytics industry. He's positioned the capital raises and recent acquisition.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – 48 Laws of Power
- What CEO do you follow? – N/A
- Favorite online tool? — Salesforce App
- How many hours of sleep do you get? — 6
- If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I believed in myself more"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:51 – Nathan introduces Jeremiah to the show
- 02:22 – Convirza acquired a portion of their competitor's assets to expand their customer base
- 02:56 – Jeremiah shares how they found out about the acquisition
- 03:29 – Call tracking is what drives the calls
- 04:00 – Convirza also listens to the calls with machine learning to check the quality of the call
- 04:46 – If a phrase that the sales agent used didn't drive conversion, it should be changed
- 05:00 – Convirza tracks the attribution rate
- 06:20 – Convirza finds out which billboard led a prospect to call, the cost of the billboard and the actual sales made from those calls
- 06:54 – Convirza only focuses on where the lead came from and the conversation itself
- 07:01 – "Our objective is strictly the audio, strictly the call"
- 07:54 – Convirza is a SaaS business and charges a platform fee plus minutes
- 08:13 – ACV is around $600K
- 08:40 – ACV is per business
- 09:27 – Prior to Convirza, Jeremiah was a national trainer for a company in Ohio and was teaching people how to sell on the phone
- 10:35 – In 2000, salespeople were looking into live call recordings
- 11:20 – Jeremiah set-up the stick and the device that could plug into a computer and record calls
- 12:00 – Jeremiah started with 100 units which cost him $70K
- 12:20 – Convirza was launched in 2001
- 13:30 – Convirza had their first client within six months that paid $20K
- 13:47 – 2010 revenue is $3M
- 14:05 – Convirza listened to their clients in order to improve their product
- 14:17 – Convirza has raised $24M in total
- 14:46 – The investors are private investors
- 15:55 – Convirza has over a thousand customers
- 16:09 – Convirza has 50K unique businesses using them
- 16:42 – 2017 ARR goal is $10M
- 17:33 – Gross logo churn is 3%
- 17:44 – Convirza has been focused on having their net negative churn negative for the last 2 years
- 18:56 – Team size is 66 with 7 in sales and 25 as engineers
- 19:21 – They have a team of 40 in India who are augmented in their engineering
- 19:47 – Convirza has an office in Utah and California
- 20:08 – Pre-acquisition CAC is $1200
- 21:00 – From the acquisition, they gained around 500 customers (more than double of what they had)
- 21:23 – LTV is 4 years
- 21:41 – Convirza's best source for customers is their webinars
- 21:52 – They partnered with similar associations and publications in the space to promote their webinars
- 22:54 – Payback period is 9 months
- 22:18 – Paid spend was around $6500 in July 2017
- 24:01 – Gross margin is 60%
- 24:24 – Convirza built their own platform
- 26:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Acquire a part of your competitor's assets to grow your own business and customer base.
- Having another team in another country can be your secret key to success.
- Focus on one specific goal at a time.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- 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
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- 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