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Mike Heller
GTM Advisor
Mike Heller is a seasoned professional with a background in sales, partnerships, and business development. He was an early member of the sales team at Dropbox and the first go-to-market hire at Clearbit, where he played a key role in building and scaling the Sales, Partnerships, and Post-Sales organizations. With a strong foundation in Economics from UCLA, Mike currently leverages his expertise by advising and consulting for promising startups. In addition to his advisory roles, he has held various positions in notable organizations such as Craft Ventures, Clearbit, and Prep Zone, where he managed marketing solutions, sales, and business development in different capacities.
Highlights
It seems like a lot of founders are stuck trying to figure out a new ICP, more precise messaging, or an innovative sales play to re-ignite growth.
The timeless wisdom of "talk to customers" is solid and data can be helpful, but it's often faster and more effective to just listen to some calls.
In ~3 hours this afternoon you can listen to 15 thirty-minute sales calls in Gong or Grain. Listen at 2x or 2.5x speed and skip demos. I guarantee the time won't be wasted.
Some questions to think about:
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How are your most successful reps positioning the product (look for moments that have the prospect nodding in agreement)? Is this positioning above the fold on your website? Should it be?
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Any surprising trends in why these prospects are engaging with your team in the first place? Competitive dynamics and market trends have been rapidly changing; your context from 6-12 months ago may be out-of-date.
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Is your sales team really digging to understand the "why" behind the prospect's tactical need?
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Does your team end each qualified call with a compelling reason for the prospect to jump onto the next call?
Even at the founder sales stage, you'll be surprised at what you pick up reviewing your own calls, without the pressure of winning over a prospect.
And finally, don't forget that sales is a stressful performance art. Shoot your sellers a compliment when you unearth a great clip. They'll really appreciate it!
The call recording/coaching vendors are adding AI summaries to scale this type of call review activity, but I've only found those useful for identifying calls to listen to. Anybody have a more efficient or defined process for pulling insights from sales calls?
Outbound sales is about to go extinct! GPT-4 (without any fine-tuning or optimization) can outperform 95%+ of SDRs (entry-level sellers) and most early-career AEs. The screenshot below shows GPT-4 acing the final interview exercise we ran for AE & Sales Manager candidates while I was at Clearbit.
And the impact AI will have on sales is no secret! An AI sales tools arms race is underway with Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo.io, ZoomInfo and seemingly 300 current YC companies striving to build the ultimate AI-powered sales email platform.
What does this all mean? The cost of great outbound (right person, right message, right time) is trending very rapidly to $0. And when that happens, every early stage startup will be able to hire the equivalent of an 80-person SDR org. After a brief arbitrage period where early adopters will see incredible results from AI-assisted outbound, every qualified buyer (and many unqualified ones) will be drowning in very good sales emails… and ignore them all.
And that’s just outbound! When an AI-infused chatbot can ask probing discovery questions then instantly spit out a compelling & personalized pitch deck, SDR roles won’t the be the only ones at risk of automation.
A few other quick thoughts/predictions:
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True Enterprise sales skills will fare incredibly well. Enterprise AI transformation projects will not be sold by a chatbot (at least not yet!). And there are going to be a lot of these projects taking place across industries and functions.
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At Clearbit, we got to $12M of sales-driven revenue with a 3 person sales org. It might not be long before we see an Enterprise company hit $100M or more with that level of headcount
-Founders will invest dollars that previously went to Sales into other strategies to drive awareness and inbound (PLG, Community, Content, Influencers, Chatbots, etc.)
-There’ll be some very interesting businesses built applying a modern sales approach to verticals where it wasn’t previously viable. What happens when you give a small-town CPA firm an SDR function that would have previously cost $1M/year?
I have a 4 month old on a 2 week sleep strike so could be over-reacting, but I do think big changes are afoot. What do you all think? Has anyone found thoughtful articles or good resources on AI's impact to the sales function?
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.