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Carl Goff

SUMMARY

Is business seeking to engage business where a strong fit might be discovered in the venture capital market?

Yes, as a company seeks to expand and scale, it seeks to have one-on-one talks with its target market since it is more efficient than spending money on conferences or roundtables.

What steps are involved in creating Meetmagic?

After Covid became successful, customers started having success scheduling meetings through Meetmagic, which generated favourable word-of-mouth recommendations and a product-to-market fit in the sales and vendor worlds. The founders had spent the first few years figuring out a solution that people would desire. With more than a thousand executives already registered on the site, they are currently aiming to accomplish the same in the executive market.

How did Meetmagic succeed in the B2B market? What is Meetmagic?

By developing a product that consumers wanted, determining product-to-market fit, and receiving favourable customer feedback, Meetmagic found success in the B2B sector. They are a useful tool for people pursuing corporate deals and hard-to-reach important executives because they have had success with clients like Macquarie Cloud, closing the largest deal in their time of existence.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

Ricky Pearl: Today on a Couple Of Pointers Podcast, we are lucky enough to have Carl Goff from Meetmagic. Welcome to the show

Carl Gough: Thanks mate. Good to be here.

Ricky Pearl: Man I'm pretty excited to talk to you because I love the concept of your product. I think it's pretty novel and I think the way you're doing it is very interesting. Tell us a bit about it.

Carl Gough: Thank you novel, I'd call it the best ROI of the planet right now. I think you, came up with this idea probably five years ago, and I've been in sales for 20 years, so I get it. I understand what salespeople are up against. I understand what marketing teams are up against, so I just came up with a brand new way to do things.

It was, I think when you look at the traditional marketing teams it's slow, it's costly, and it's unpredictable to get access to exec. I've just flipped it on its head and made it predictable, fast and low cost. And we're doing something good with each of those meetings because we're donating to charity at the same time.

So it's just a new model, but it's working.

Ricky Pearl: So I think dumb it down for the audience and don't assume all of that prior knowledge, just in a few lines, like

What is the product?

Ricky Pearl: what is the product?

Carl Gough: Well Meetmagic is [00:01:00] a, it's basically a B2B platform that connects business leaders for one-on-one collaboration meetings. So the whole idea is, we use a matching algorithm to match the salespeople with the execs and they can go and have a meeting on our platform. It's that simple.

You don't pay for meetings that you don't have

Ricky Pearl: Amazing and pay per meeting. You don't pay for meetings that you don't have. Seems like good value.

Carl Gough: Right well, I think when I look at the list of clients that we've got, they're the top tech companies. There's about 70, I think of them all up. And it's everyone from Snap Logic to Octas and the Twilio's of the world. It's the Dells. And they've been with us probably for, since we started, and they've not gone away.

So I think when you look at, from a business perspective, repeatability is pretty important because it tells you that your product is worthwhile. I think most of our clients stick around with us because they're getting value from these meetings and these connections. So it's just a brand new model.

Ricky, I think what we've done is we've said, look, don't go in there pitching product. Don't go in there selling. Use it as a way to get advice and guidance. And from that perspective it works a lot better than trying to shove something [00:02:00] down someone's throat with a pitch or a demo.

If you ask for money, you'll get advice, and if you ask for advice, you'll get some money

Ricky Pearl: Hey, what do they always say? If you ask for money, you'll get advice, and if you ask for advice, you'll get some money.

Carl Gough: I've always said this is in my experience in the charity fundraising model, in charity fundraising world, which is where, came up with the whole concept of stopping some time for some money and giving it to charity. That is something I learned from a very famous person called Peter Baines who is the founder of a charity called Hands Across The Water.

And Peter told me this quite a few years ago now, and he said exactly those words, if you go ask him for money, you'd get some advice, but if you ask some advice, you might get some money. And there's never anything truer than truer said than that. I think it's probably the best thing that a salesperson could learn.

To go in there and seek some guidance and ask some advice, and that's what we're trying to do with these meetings. We want the execs to come on board and share some stories, and give some tips to the salespeople on what their product is or where it fits or, just share some stories and some guidance.

Ricky Pearl: Look, I love that most of the clients that Pointer works with we trying to figure out product market fit. We're trying to help formulate a go-to-market strategy. They're usually earlier stage and they need support in kind of [00:03:00] understanding the roots and we providing a layer of strategy, a layer of management, and a layer of execution for them to get there.

For companies that have gotten there and all they need is meetings with top level execs, I think a solution like yours is amazing.

Is that where you're finding a good fit? Enterprise wanting to speak to enterprise?

Ricky Pearl: But now the names you mentioned are primarily enterprise. Is that where you're finding a good fit? Enterprise wanting to speak to enterprise?

Carl Gough: Well, I think when you look at it, the venture capital market or invested in it prior to this whole meltdown. The venture capital market had a lot of cash in it. Were throwing it into these companies to grow at all costs and, they had to scale. And obviously if you're a company on your, a round of funding, then you know your job is to go and grow the business because that's the whole bus, that's the whole point of getting that a round is to scale.

And so they would come to us and ask us for those connections because it, quite honestly, if you're going to spend 20 or $30,000 going to a conference or having a round table you'd be much better off having 20 or 30 one-on-one conversations with your target market. Cause if you can't sell something in those 20 or 30 meetings, you've got more than a sales [00:04:00] problem.

Ricky Pearl: I lost a deal where somebody came to us wanting us to set up meetings for them. We gave them the price. Anyway the customer, the company that we lost the deal to was charging $1,300 per meeting that they booked up with the C level execs that we were hunting. So that's what they were charging when this prospective clients of ours took it to their head office to say, Hey, we found an agency that will do it for $1,300 a meeting. What do you think this execs of this big cybersecurity company in the US said? He said to them,

Carl Gough: Oh, they probably

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, what do you think? What do you reckon?

Carl Gough: Got I your tongue to sling it.

Ricky Pearl: No, I was shocked. They said, that is so fucking cheap.

Would this company be willing to work worldwide?

Carl Gough: Wow.

Ricky Pearl: Right

We're underpriced

Carl Gough: Yeah. I've always said we're underpriced.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. You're underpriced, right? So are we. So we are too cheap for this deal, right? But when you actually weigh in the costs of everything from your fucking data sources, through to your overheads, to all of it, when you are willing to attribute your marketing manager and your [00:05:00] CMOs salary down to the lead level, what you are paying per lead is a hell of a lot more than people wanna admit.

Carl Gough: Yep. Totally agree. And I, you look at SEO, you look at SDRs, you look at, your marketing campaigns and conferences and all that stuff your salaries that you're paying. Literally, it's way more than a thousand dollars. I've often said we're under price at our price

Ricky Pearl: Look, it really does depend. We have customers that will set up no easily two meetings a day. We have a customer that all set up two meetings an hour. They've got such a good market fits and such a big time. But then there are other customers that eight meetings in a month a real success.

So it really does vary.

Carl Gough: And how you getting, you picking up the phone, cold calling for?

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. So we classic outbound, your full omnichannel. We are doing LinkedIn, we are doing emails, we are doing calling, we seeking internal referrals. We do primarily account-based marketing, like that's us as an agency. That's what we focus on. Most of our customers will come to us and say, Hey, Ricky there's 140 companies that we could target in Australia.

And it's not worth it for [00:06:00] us to set up a full team and operation there, but we do need those 140. Can you get in the door with us and we'll say no problem. Like, we'll have you sitting down in front of 60, out of those 140 within the year, but like, that's very targeted. Now they might,

Carl Gough: Yep.

Ricky Pearl: I should probably be checking your fucking platform because if six of those 60 are on your platform, it's probably cheaper for us to buy the meetings from you than all the effort we go through to get them.

Community helping a community

Ricky Pearl: Right. Like I really love idea of like, of a community helping a community. Besides for the philanthropic angle, which don't get me wrong, I appreciate and I think's fantastic, and I think you need that to overcome the elements of this executive thinking like it's a bit tacky me charging for my time. But as soon as there's some benevolent benefits out of it it all of a sudden becomes really worthwhile.

Carl Gough: And it's more of an opportunity for them to actually grow and actually build a peer network as well. Cause we built a platform that these execs can actually come on and share some of their time. To meet a mentor with these companies, but also they get to meet with other peers of theirs as well.

That this peer group and this being able to draw upon resources, [00:07:00] from people in different companies really gives them a chance to network properly. So it's more than just networking. It's a council that's, it's unique opportunity to build that peer-to-peer network as well.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, that's nice. Now I'm gonna ask you a bit of a meta question, right? you're a company, you helping other companies meet potential prospects or advisors but you, yourself need to find people willing to use your product. To know about your products, to be interested in your products, and you need to find advisors to be on the platform.

You know you've got a two-way market here.

How do you go about building Meetmagic?

Ricky Pearl: How do you go about building Meetmagic?

Carl Gough: Well, honestly, Ricky, in the beginning, like anything, you've gotta build something that people want, right? I think you to find product to market. Your job really is to find, create a product and find out if anybody likes it or wants it. So we spent a few years doing that. Obviously the first two years was trial and error.

Then Covid hit and people started getting meetings and booking meetings and they started getting some success from those meetings. And of course when people get success from meetings, they talk about it. And then when they leave their job, they go to their other marketing teams and tell you, Hey, have you heard of Meetmagic?

So we've, for the past two years, have not chased [00:08:00] a sale. They've come to us, so any company out there that's like a vendor, a startup that wants to get access. There's often someone that knows about us in the marketplace and they've spoken positively or highly about us.

We've got case studies and references from some of the biggest tech companies on the planet that have closed the big some great deals. So that sort of has a swing in the market and people start talking about it. But salespeople leave, marketing people leave and when they go, because we've done such a good job, they come back to us.

So we've got this product to market fit happening in the sales and the vendor world. And we're trying to get that same thing happening now in the exec side of things. And so far we've got about a thousand execs signed up on our platform. There's a hundred or so key ambassadors who put the fact that they're a Meetmagic ambassador on their LinkedIn profile, which for me is really amazing.

But it tells me that they're getting so much value from these meetings and that's people. Jamie Wilson, the CIO of Wilson Car, oh, sorry. Jamie Newman, the CIO of Wilson Car Parks. And there's so many execs out there that have constantly taken these meetings. It's the CEOs of banks like Steve [00:09:00] Jurkovich in New Zealand.

He's have something like 10 meetings. We've got, directors of Macquarie Bank Digital who have had 20 or 30, close to 30 meetings.

So you wanna meet the CIO for Wilson's Car Parks. What does it cost?

Ricky Pearl: So you wanna meet the CIO for Wilson's Car Parks. What does it cost?

Carl Gough: Well, he is a thousand bucks. He's had, I think Jamie's had probably 8, 10 meetings so far. I think he is just scheduled in another 4 this quarter. So, he loves the fact that he can spend 45 minutes of his time meeting people that can add value to his world, because of course, if he's got projects on the go that need guidance, maybe there's just some advisory stuff that's needed.

He gets to meet with these people and get the latest in thinking, the latest in tech use that information

Is he using your platform to book meetings with other people or other people booking meetings with him?

Ricky Pearl: So is he using your platform to book meetings with other people or other people booking meetings with him?

Carl Gough: Well, our platform is a place for the execs to actually come on first. So the execs tell us what their preferences are. They sign up, they tell us their preferences, and we then use our algorithm to match with the vendors on the other side. So the vendors then get to write to Jamie on the platform.

And Jamie then gets to say, yes, I [00:10:00] want to meet with you. They can click and schedule that meeting through the platform and then they can actually have the meeting on the platform. Cause we've been built video into it, into the whole thing. So, It's a great way for for the execs to meet with the market or meet with vendors if they've got a project in cyber or a project in, don't know, data analytics or whatever it is they've got going on.

There's always some projects out there. Transformation, right? I think the whole world is transforming it.

Are they mostly enterprise execs? Are there some just founders of startups?

Ricky Pearl: So of your thousand execs, what would you say is like the main thing, are they mostly enterprise execs? Are there some just founders of startups?

Carl Gough: No we only accept execs who have got 50 or more staff. So it's the top ASX 300. Basically, it's the, I think Westpac, NAB, and ANZ Bank are our top three supporters at the moment. There's loads and loads of execs, in inside there. So it's quite an enterprise focus.

But there's also there is a mid-market size, but any, but only down to 50 or staff.

Ricky Pearl: I mean, 50 staff, yeah, 50 staff still small, medium business SMEs.

Carl Gough: Well, I mean, could say that but there's some amazing startups with 50 staff in there, right. You know, some these [00:11:00] SaaS companies

Ricky Pearl: Hey, don't get me wrong. I'd love to have a business with 50 staff members. It's not about what's big or what's enough. It's more just enterprise of 5, 10,000 plus versus, 50, it really does depend. But understand, so, so a bit of an enterprise focus that makes a lot of sense.

And certainly for enterprise with their kind of budgets with their kind of operations, being able to say, I want to meet with this person, for a thousand dollars versus putting on a lunch with Gartner where you're paying 20 grand. Plus you've gotta get a guest speaker, plus you've gotta pay for the food and everyone's just coming for a free fucking meal,

Carl Gough: Snouts in the trough I call that.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, exactly. Snouts in the trough, like, you know, and that's a 30 grand lunch. Whereas

Carl Gough: Bullshit mate.

Ricky Pearl: Listen, don't get me wrong I'm completely jealous of Gartner and I'd love to have their business any day of the week, so I wouldn't wanna downtalk them too much.

But yeah, that 30 grand is not gonna be as effectively spent as if you have a purpose-built focus. Like in my world, even just working with an agency like ours saying, these are the people we wanna talk to. Here's three months, let's target them. We'd have much more meaningful and deeper conversartion within those [00:12:00] organizations where we've spoken to 10 people at every organization, mapped out their problems, ready to put proper business cases towards them that are personalized based on their needs tied to their fucking CEO's agenda for the year, like the, I think you can do better.

But for these enterprises that are putting on 30 grand with Gartner as an alternative to say, Hey, actually 10 of the people we want to meet are on Meetmagic. He has stick 10 grand in there and let's try and meet with them. I think that is just, I think it's a no-brainer for anyone that's currently has a customer acquisition cost of 10 grand plus.

Don't even think about it. Log on today and go.

Most widely talked about B2B company

Carl Gough: Well, I think there's a reason why Neil Templeman, one of the founders of Baidam, he said, we are the most widely talked about B2B company at the moment. And that was because I think we were just getting some amazing results for our clients. I think one of our clients is Macquarie Cloud.

And they've, I think they've had something like 60 meetings that they've paid for and they've closed the biggest deal in their time of being around. And that's now a case study for us. Right? So when you look at that's a multiple [00:13:00] seven figure deal that they've got from 50 grand.

Let's say that they're spent with us. They could spend another couple of million dollars with us and still be ahead.

Ricky Pearl: I hope you got them an nice bottle of champagne for Christmas.

Carl Gough: They bought me one.

Ricky Pearl: Oh, mate fair enough. Mate, well, listen, I was really interested I was really like, excited to introduce you to, to my audience. People come to Pointer to help them with outbound, but my goal is to help their businesses succeed. And sometimes, and very often that's me saying, look, you don't need my services.

There's alternative to my services right now. Maybe we too hot, too cold, too big, too small. Like we know where we fit in within the market. And I think there's certainly a place for your tool. And I'd encourage people, particularly if you've got high average customer values, you're chasing enterprise deals.

You within that cybersecurity space, you're within some of those spaces that are really difficult to get hold of those key executives.

Can somebody log on and just see your available executives?

Ricky Pearl: Can somebody log on and just see your available executives?

Carl Gough: [00:14:00] No, not yet. You've gotta be a member. So you gotta pay a subscription with us

Ricky Pearl: Pay to play.

Carl Gough: Pay the play away. It's bit like you wanna go in the hotel room and sleep on the bed. You better buy a room. But if you wanna use the fridge and have a drink, you gotta pay for that fridge.

For the drink at the fridge, right? So,

Ricky Pearl: But if you want, just have a look at the hotel room before booking. They will let you do that.

Carl Gough: No they won't. You can do that online.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, exactly. So like, let me know, like, tell me who's there that I can meet with. All right, we'll talk

Repeatability

Carl Gough: What I mean, we are more than happy to share that stuff offline, but you can't do it online. But, I think when we, I think the fact that we've got, I was talking to my, to Rebecca, our head of partner on Friday, and we've got the, I think there's three new, three new clients coming in this month, I looked at these two clients. I looked at these three clients. I went, hold on. That's not three new ones. That's two repeat customers and one new one. Two of them have actually been around quite a few years ago, but they've only got budget again since the, for whatever ha, whatever reason happened.

And so then now they've come back, which tells you this repeatability thing is working with us. It's, you wouldn't keep [00:15:00] coming back if you didn't get the results. So that for me is a really big sign that there's something really positive happening here. I think the fact that it's a win for everybody.

You get to get, you get to go and have a conversation with an exec, have some, have a great conversation. Don't go pitching, just keep, it's a bit like Tinder for business, Ricky, you wouldn't ask them to marry you on the first date, right? So just go in there and make it and have a really nice conversation

Ricky Pearl: I dunno what to tell you. I proposed two weeks in, so I'm not a good example of that. Everyone uses that analogy. I'm like, mate, I'm sorry. Like, yeah, I pitched too early. I pitched too early. But mate, fantastic. I hope that anyone listening to this, found it interesting, willing to go have a look.

And I'd love some feedback from some users afterwards that have come to you from this to say, Hey, we got what we needed. I'd love to be able to send some of my clients to you when it's right.

Carl Gough: Yeah, and likewise, we may,

Challenge: 10,000 execs for a million bucks

Carl Gough: maybe you can help us, Ricky, cuz we are looking to scale the execs and that's our biggest thing. I'll give you a million bucks if you gimme 10,000 execs on the platform. How about that?

Ricky Pearl: 10, 10,000 execs for a million [00:16:00] bucks. Geez.

Carl Gough: Challenge. Challenge, accepted?

Ricky Pearl: Wait, let me work. What's that per exec? Gotta do something else here. Is that 10 grand, that's 10 grand an exec.

Carl Gough: I don't know. But if we if you gimme 10,000 execs and we get just 10% of them having one meeting a month, I think we'll have a, probably a billion dollar valuation on our platform.

Ricky Pearl: All right. So, if you've got billion dollar valuation, I think I'd be asking for more than one bar. But anyway, I'm joking mate.

Carl Gough: That's the easiest one buyer you'll ever make though.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Alright mate, listen, I love it. Love talking to other sales professionals that are solving problems and mate, I'm definitely gonna stay in touch and I want to keep following your journey.

Carl Gough: Let's do it, Ricky, and then we should catch up more. We're gonna be in Melbourne, I think next week, the week after.

Ricky Pearl: Listen, you've gotta, you,

you've gotta get good coffee somewhere. So,

Carl Gough: Well, we've got a rooftop bar somewhere. We've got some execs coming along to say thank you. So if you're around in Melbourne,

Ricky Pearl: Right. Absolutely. Lemme know when it is. I'll never say no to a rooftop bar unless it's Melbourne, in fact, and the weather's fucking shocking, in which case I'd probably prefer an indoor. [00:17:00] All right we'll chat soon.

Carl Gough: Good man. Good chat, Ricky

Ricky Pearl: Cheers.

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