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

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

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

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