The Intersection of Relationships and Revenue

[0:00] Your personas are not personas, so people. Your partners are not partners, so people. Your customers, they're not customers, they're people. Everything is people first. So having a people first approach, relationship driven, that's gonna create the flywheel effect of the revenue, the referrals, recommendations, and it continues on.

[0:24] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue. Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your funnels consistently, reliably full.

[0:41] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I am absolutely delighted to have Amelia Taylor as my guest today from The Revenue Table. Amelia is a daily challenger of the status quo and the founder of The Revenue Table, pioneering the way companies drive revenue through strategic relationships and communities is where she excels while meeting buyers in their most active spaces creating trust backed by EQ to transform sales strategies for measurable results in today's dynamic market. Amelia is a skilled communicator thought leader and mother of two girls who are her biggest why driving her to be her force to empower growth in unorthodox ways. Amelia welcome to Full Funnel Freedom. freedom. Thank you so much for having me right before we chatted.

[1:28] We both said, oh, looking at our calendars yesterday. Oh, we're so excited because we get to chat today because there's so much that we're going to dive into and so many good things that need to be shared that I feel are not talked about enough.

[1:42] So I think we see eye to eye on so much. So I'm super excited to dive in here. Amen, sister. Yeah, I was delighted when we first got connected and was really looking Looking forward to this today as well. So I've given the audience the 30,000-foot view of who Amelia is. Tell us your story from where you started to where you are today with Revenue Table. So I will give as much detail without talking so crazy much here. But I have not been in this space, this B2B SaaS world, for long, like a lot of people would maybe assume. I think there's a big gap.

[2:17] Misunderstanding where there's a follower count and there's also the experience so I'm learning that as I go and grow through the revenue table and creating something that I feel is super impactful and needed in today's market but I I started my you know experience within SaaS by jumping into an SDR role not knowing what SDR meant for two weeks when I joined I literally had like I had zero clue I'm like okay I'm an SDR but what is that acronym no idea so jump in and first month I put a cap on everyone's commission because it was uncapped prior they did not think people can meet the goals that they had set even during that ramp period but I 3x'd it because I had such a heavy why and I knew that my girls and I had to be on like on a bridge you know under a bridge or we're going to be under a roof and like hell or high water, we're going to be without question under a roof. And so knowing my why, knowing that I didn't know everything that I needed to, I had to lean heavily into that EQ side of things and the curiosity driver that was.

[3:24] Already innate and instinctively something that I do, but really lean into it and ask for feedback because there was no ego in the way. It was just, there was a pride that was happening. It was like, let's see what we can do and there was that organic growth that started to happen with the people that I was building these relationships with and realizing oh I can kind of fill this funnel of mine by relationships being at the forefront so knowing that and then going and doing things kind of sales marketing and touching CS a bit and jumping in marketing meetings when I wasn't even a part of marketing just because I would say hey I'm seeing this this looks like a trend that's happening. Why are we not doing this? Because buyer engagement could be so much more than what it is today if we go and follow what this X company is doing, but do it geared towards our audience more. Just ideation galore. Because when you don't know everything, I feel like there's so many things that you possibly can do.

[4:23] There's so much opportunity. So I just started really having this intersection between relationships and revenue and seeing that's where the fruition came, and if I did not really pursue that, then I wasn't giving myself the opportunity to grow in the very best way personally, professionally, for my children, for my just overall career trajectory. Because if I knew...

[4:48] If I know and I knew from the very beginning the same thing and I kept seeing over and over and over relationships being at the very core of how I was being able to thrive and not while I was in survival mode, too. So I was surviving and thriving, if you will. But learning how to just speak to individuals as people that drove me to create the revenue table where the focus is going to meet your buyers where they live and being able to have those executive conversations with people. The pen in hand or the champions within the spaces that they're talking the most to their peers and how to not be a salesperson, how to show up as a really good marketer. And when you do so, that's where the fruition comes because you're not selling, you're helping. You're not helping get out of sales. This is my take on my quick little two cents on that. But I know that to sustain where we're at today, day if people don't start really focusing on that community growth the relationships and your personas are not personas so people your partners are not partners they're people your customers they're not customers they're people everything is people first so having a forced approach relationship driven that's going to create the flywheel effect of the revenue the referrals recommendations and it continues on that's where i'm at today in helping companies let's say there's a longer than a short intro for you.

[6:18] It's really incredible. And it's a really cool story. And I appreciate your, you know, your humility and your vulnerability as you're sharing, you know, where you started and not even knowing what an SDR was and having that super commitment of like, we're going to have a roof over our heads and just being so laser focused and crushing your targets is really inspiring for me. And I'd like to believe all the sales leaders around the world who are listening now we are have used this acronym a couple of times and i'm sure most people know but for that one listener who's like i don't know what you're talking about eq means what what are we talking about when we say eq you're talking about not that intellectual.

[6:58] Property up here you're not talking about what it is that you know that those are the factual things it's that discernment that you've got within it's that understanding on an emotional level of how to read a room, whether it be reading the room, figuratively speaking, through the phone, or the virtual rooms that we find ourselves in every single day now.

[7:18] It's reading an individual. So a C, you know, a CTO and a VP of sales, those are going to be vastly different conversations. I mean, I don't speak CTO well, they don't speak Amelia well, but like VP of sales and I, we can giggle and talk about things and like they have more fun. You know, nothing against you CTOs out there. I think you're great, too. You make the world go round in the SaaS space. But I know that there's a way to lead into those conversations. organizations. So helping reps understand, because that frontline management, we could dive into that all day, but like that is where companies are failing. That front, you know, first line, second line management, because they're not equipped to be able to help these reps in the very best possible way.

[8:01] And that's far, you know, we're seeing this whole downfall of this, like these companies building on sand, not brick by brick. We're seeing just these castles that are built and crumbling because when the waves come, revenue's not streaming in, they're knocked down. And so EQ being a driving force for me, and I call it kind of my street smarts, if you will, because it is street smarts. It's like, okay, what do you do when you don't know what to do? You got to lean into your intuition of what's the next best step I can take.

[8:33] That's brilliant. It's so simple in the explanation of like, relate to the human being. And so let's unpack this a bit more because this whole idea is you shared about like you know the intellectual what we know and when we're talking technical and you know sass is technical and you know i'm in calgary very engineering heavy city very technical it's like this is the fact it's like that's great and humans don't do well with facts uh they're they're the you know much more we have these squishy emotional things called emotions that uh that we you know have to address so when we're looking at if i'm a sales leader and you were coaching me to to coach my team, frontline managers or frontline sellers, customer service. How do we start this whole EQ conversation? Because again, we've been trained to keep sales arms length. I have a thing, you need it. I tell you how much you buy or you don't buy. And now what I'm hearing from you is, we got to actually relate to a human being.

[9:27] Before we start talking about the facts and the data. Is that fair?

[9:31] Totally. Beyond fair, yes. Because if you cannot, I mean, where are we at today? Trust. Trust being the currency of everything. I mean, if there's not trust, because buyers are smarter than ever. What are they doing? They're going to talk to their peers. They know. The people that they've worked alongside of maybe 20 years, these executives, the pen in hand where you actually get the deal done. And they're saying hey who knows this about this company so first go find out where those people are living and breathing and talking and that's going to be the first direction that you need to go in but back up you can't just go jump in like that's jumping in the deep end without having any kind of process so people are not manageable that is just a fact of the matter people you cannot manage and you cannot you know you can't tell people exactly what to do because there's going going to be the challenger in every single thing.

[10:25] Sure. I love the challengers in the world. I'm one of them, but don't challenge just because you want to like not follow the rules. There's the rule breakers, rule followers, never been a rule follower, but a challenger of the rules when I see there being gaps. So I encourage people to challenge what it is that they're seeing because I don't care if people say cold emails dead. I don't care if people say the phone is dead. it is all situational and it all matters based off of who it is that you're speaking to and where they're talking and where it is that they are most active so by providing not just the tools and the training which is like absolutely what's needed for salespeople to be able to do what they need to be doing it's ensuring that you're being in tune with how they best learn like inaction is still in action and a lot of people are just in a stuck position of like i don't know what the next best thing to do is because my managers think this and i'm getting zero results what do they do they're just like going through the motions and there's no real action being taken to challenge what it is it's continuously being done you know the seven worst things you can say in any business and says, we have always done things this way.

[11:40] So knowing that, it's like, all right, this way before is not the way. Like right now, if there's not a new way, an unorthodox way to approach things per se, that should become way more orthodox, then businesses are blind. I mean, you got to keep up with the AI. Like that is one thing, like on the technology side, like AI will become your friend. You have to let it be. You got to put that into what it is you're doing. But if you don't have an expert within, do not assume down and delegate down to those who do not know what they don't know. There are specific things that people know. And there's things that these people are putting these manager roles based off of the fact that they did X amount of meetings, books, you know, and I've seen that. And it's like, but what percentage was closed? What revenue, right? Like what converted and looking at that, then you think like, okay, I trust this person to help me and figure out a way to like move things forward. But when you look at salespeople and you look at their behaviors that they have, like, what is it that's making you do this kind of approach? What kind of results are you seeing?

[12:48] And where do we go? And as you, like you, Mr. Salesperson, Ms. Salesperson, how do we make you better? With a strategy and a method and a plan to get you from here to here to here to here and to actually achieve X result. It's looking at that behavior of that individual themselves. What is it they are doing that is their personalized outrage? How are you doing that? Is it relevant to that individual?

[13:15] Everything is evolving and the way the buyers are buying is not going to be the same. So if you can streamline things in a way, jump over a few those things where it's like, hey, no, let's go ahead and just get so-and-so and so-and-so-and-so on the next call because you know those are the stakeholders. You be the point or like you take point in that conversation and they'll back back and say, no, no, I think it's this person who would be better suited. So drive the conversations forward, but know where your buyers are living and

[13:45] breathing and talking, but have a methodology behind that. Like I'm going full circle back Back to what I said at the beginning, have a method for the madness within communities where you go with their talking, because you can't just show up and sell because you're going to be kicked out in two seconds. I promise you that. There was so much awesome insights in there and so much I would love to unpack. We may not have time in this entire, in this whole episode. So where I want to start though, is finding these communities because the sales leaders who are listening around the world are like, Hey, Amelia, great communities. Love it. Where? wear. So when you're coaching your leaders that you work with to help their sellers and help them go out and find these communities or build these communities, how are you recommending that they go about that so they don't show up and smell like a salesperson?

[14:34] Yeah, that's a great, because you can smell a salesperson from a mile away. Like people do when you're cooking and you're like, oh, you're like the predator prey kind of thing. And it's like, nobody wants to feel like they are the prey when they're not vocalizing in these communities that there is a problem and you're living in that problem space and you're having these feedback loops to your team.

[14:57] If there's not someone delegated to have those feedback loops, I would encourage any leader to say, like, get a SWOT team together, almost like your top few reps. Put them in a community. So let's say you have, like, B2B SaaS is your focus, and you reach out to VPs of sales to make it as basic as they possibly can. That is your ICP2OT, and it's the CEO who signs off. That's your executive buyer. the average deal price i don't know say it's 20k so knowing that so say there might be another you know you might have that's where marketing might have a little bit of a touch here because they might it might matter to them also maybe your cfo needs to be involved because they're it's over that 14 15k mark where they can't fly under the radar just get something done it's a proactively engaging portion of things where I think that you need to go and see and test and iterate. So proactively engaging by looking to see where that little green circle is where people are at. So if I'm looking and let's say, let's use Kevin Dorsey as my example. He taught a course within Pavilion. I took this course, I've known him for years, buddy of mine. And I asked him a question after this is a couple years two years ago maybe but he just recently did another awesome one but um on sales leadership and so two years ago i asked him a question in pavilion.

[16:22] Right after he had gotten done with one of the sessions and it was a few basic what i had like one two three four like five like basic questions like you know i asked him how many people reach out to you afterwards to continue learning what did you talk and he said amelia i want you to he guessed. And I said, I don't know. There were 200 people in class, a hundred. I don't know. He goes five, five people. Whoa. And the whole entire time that I've been doing this course over the past year.

[16:52] I don't know, four or six weeks, five people have reached out. He goes, you know where they've reached out? In places I don't live. If they have, I will check. And he's like, I'm not actively checking my email, like, throughout the day. I'm very good with my time blocks. If you see my green circle right there within a Slack community, go reach out to me there. I'm online. I'm active. It says active as your status. Then the same goes for LinkedIn. in. I mean, if you see someone engaged with something on a post of yours or some post that you commented on and someone comments, you know, follow that if that's, you know, around the realm of your problem space and what you solve for. Look at the people who are in this comment threads. If they commented like right then, go and shoot them a message like, hey, I loved your comment that you shared. Here is X, Y, Z. Build a relationship. Do not go have a CTA with that at all like hey we'd love to jump on a call no just engage engage engage even in the comments maybe or just connect with that individual so to answer your question there is an air table and i can provide this after too an air table link it has all the different communities you possibly could think of under the sun literally say you wanted to be in the uk and only catered you only help HR and you want 4,000 plus members within this community.

[18:16] You can go filter it down just like that. And to know that there's from a 2023 report, there was, what was that? It was 32 million daily active users within Slack communities. That's insane to think about 64,000 or 64 million monthly active users. And that's, almost double that of different communities. I mean, like, it's insane the amount that you can go find.

[18:48] They're out there. But you know what? Let's not just talk about Slack. Like, there's also Reddit threads. Like, you might be where you're in a different kind of, you're selling to a different audience completely. That's not B2B SaaS. They have no idea what Slack even means. They have zero clue. Like, what are you talking about? So those people are probably sitting on their, They've got their phone in their back pocket walking with their steel toe on and some, you know, on land somewhere. They're going to be the ones that that's the that's not the community focused approach. That approach is going through that channel. So knowing what channels people are at, they might live on Facebook. That might be there might be groups there that are communities that you can join. But it doesn't matter if you're part of a community if you don't create the feedback loop to share for the betterment of the company that you're a part of or your company. So communication from all this is like key. Like I will say that is one of the biggest takeaways here.

[19:49] Communicate people. Community, communicate, figure out the channels, understand how to be as simple as possible when you do reach out. For example, someone says something somewhere, a Reddit thread, I don't care. Hey, I think I can help you out. Talk to them on the side. You don't go and do that. In a community, in a Slack community, Pavilion example for you, do not, if they say... I'm looking for some help. I needed a newly gentle. He just got an example of like how they're saving money and also best in class data for UK, you know, whatever. I could go in and say, hey, I think I can help you out here. Let me shoot you a DM. You and I are completely aligned on that, Amelia. It's the, you know, we don't want to be salesy. We want to be specific. This is something that I know a lot of very technical sellers struggle with is someone says, I need help with this. And they're like, we could do that. and all of this other stuff too. And the buyer's like, yeah, yeah, pass, pass, timeout. No, no, thank you.

[20:48] And that's why, you know, for our clients, it's fix their problem and then it's land and expand, right? Because it's easier to sell stuff to people who are already buying from you because they went, well, if you fix that, what else can you do for me? So I love that you're reinforcing this idea of solve their problem, listen, communicate, you know, make it about them, not about us. So we could obviously nerd out about this stuff all day long. And I certainly look forward to doing that again with you. Totally. I do have a few more questions to wrap up our visit today. So first question being, if you could go back and coach younger Amelia. So go back as far as you like. Maybe you tell younger Amelia what STR means before they start. And you said, hey, younger Amelia, you're going to be here in a few years. And it's going to be amazing. But you're also going to have a lot of scar tissue and some bumps and bruises. is what would you coach younger Amelia to say or do differently to get to the same spot?

[21:45] But with maybe a little less scar tissue and fewer bumps and bruises?

[21:47] I love that question. And I have thought about this to the nth degree. Time management would be a massive, massive, massive focus to nail down.

[21:57] Managing my time and knowing where I add the misvalue into who and where it is that some conversations... Okay, some people might come to you and book on your calendar and what they're wanting is just to get from you. They're not trying to pour into you. and you find yourself pouring from an empty cup if you do so you you eventually run dry so when you're doing any kind of you know managing your time because that focus has to be on it's going to be why do we work we have to make money we have we have that's part of you know and I want to be really good at what I do so being a specialist in all is literally helping none so knowing that i can't i think this is kind of second part to that i i did a big v on a sheet of paper not long ago basically did this whole funnel if you will um of who it is like that i am what am i SWOT analysis really and then the process of elimination with saying this is not what i want to be known for what am i what do i where do i shine the best like how do i I deliver the best value. And I literally, I just kept crossing things out till I got to the very bottom. And it was like, I help drive revenue through relationships. Like that's what I do best. Then it was like a little smaller funnel, like, but how? Time management would be one of the biggest things, what serves me, what doesn't, and pouring energy into what actually is going to push me in the right direction.

[23:25] And really focusing in on one, two things where I feel like that's where I'm the best at, on instead of trying to be the best at 12 different things. Like where do I really add value? And then asking people to like, that's a challenge for everyone listening, go to people you trust and say, Hey, if I were to walk out of a room and we were having a conversation with someone else.

[23:48] And they said, who was that? What would you say? So be vulnerable and go ask people what it is that they see in you to become that expert with the expertise backing it up.

[23:58] What a great piece of advice. I love that exercise that you just walked us through around like, who am I? What do I bring value to? And then breaking it down into that into that how sales leaders go back and listen to that part. And of course, listen to this whole episode over and over again. Also listen to that. Do that exercise. Really determine for yourself. That's a really cool thing. inspired me to do

[24:18] some personal development today, Amelia. So what have you read, watched, listened to, whether recently in the past that you would encourage the sales leaders listening to check out to further their own development? I relate big time to this woman named Heather Chauvin. So she is a mother. She is also, so this is kind of for the mamas of the world out there who are working, but she's a business coach. She's a professional. She has kind of been through the ringer in her life and has a story to tell recently just launched a book um and it's i mean she has three different podcasts where one is like focus on motherhood one's focus on career one's focus on both and so i listen to the both because or the you know career and the both because to juggle that as a single mommy too it's i need to understand how to keep a roof over our heads while also being a good mother so she has a really she has structures and outlines and all these things that she created by not knowing. So a lot of her stuff is EQ focused. But also, Jared Fuller wrote a book, Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy.

[25:23] That has been a game changer book for me. I know for a lot of people within the partnership side of things, but I think this needs to be read by people.

[25:33] Everyone, literally everyone, because it's a line. How do you have internal, external evangelists, those who spread the good word of your company, goes into influencer marketing, all that. But also, how do you overlay on the sales side? Like if you're on the sales team, how do you go and ensure that your customers are still at all? You know, how do you make sure that they're not an afterthought because you got your money and you ran? But the near bound and the rise of the economy touches in every kind of aspect of the who who being the biggest thing in the economy today, like who it is that you're talking to, like surrounding those individuals in the very best way, your customers, your employees, every single touch point. So I encourage that one big time. Very cool. Thank you for recommending those to us. We'll put the links in the show notes to all of that. And now my last question for you, Amelia, you have already shared amazing ideas

[26:24] and insights with us today about the intersection between relationships and revenue. What do you have as a final thought, extra bit of wisdom or maybe something to plug the floor is yours.

[26:34] Amazing so one this has been super fun and everyone should go listen to him everything that he's sharing because he's moving mountains with the guests that he has on and the wisdom that he's sharing so go listen to all these different podcast episodes and you know, If you want to have the life that you desire to live in, like go figure out what that is. If it's not in the SaaS space, go figure out what that looks like. Like do not wake up every morning dreading what it is that you're doing. That's just food for thought. And let me just toss that out there because that's been something as I've been building the revenue table.

[27:08] I've learned that there's so much that I did not know that I believe that I knew before.

[27:14] So I'm super grateful for the relationships that I've built along the way where those are the people I can go to and say, hey, does this even make sense? Like, SOS help, what do I do? And they're like, breathe, first and foremost, Amelia, chill help. Also, no, it doesn't, but here's a better way. And just the help that you get along the way. So build those relationships with people who are in your corner. You don't need a big corner and a big group of people to have really sound and solid advice.

[27:41] But right now at the Revenue Table, I'm helping companies with their different content strategy, the way that they're meeting their buyers, where they can meet their buyers, that engagement process how to best do so and helping the sales team learn how to be really good marketers if you will by sharing what matters most and creating those feedback loops so i would love to chat with any companies that are really looking to push forward new ways of being able to meet their buyers where they live and breathe and talk and secondly a big company that but I'm an awesome, awesome company I'm working with, CapChase. They are, they were named Forbes next billion dollar company. I mean, they are doing things that I'm like, but I am like really excited to be working alongside them and helping their team as they are pushing the way that lending is done, the way that companies are able to actually have the funding that they need in order to grow their business, whether it's at a startup level, whether it's enterprise level, but doing so where they're boosting that ARR and actually saving money. And you can have these annual contracts post monthly. Like there's so much to learn. So reach out if you want to learn about CapChase. It's a game changer through and through.

[28:52] Cool. Well, thank you for that. We will certainly put those links in the show notes as well. So Amelia, I'm delighted every time we get to hang out. And so thank you very much for sharing your wisdom and insights with the Full Funnel Freedom podcast listeners today. Thank you. It has been a joy and a pleasure. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast. You can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating, sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about. I'd love to connect with you. I'm easy to find Hamish Knox on LinkedIn. Also, if you'd like a free 15 minute call with me, go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[29:40] Music.