How to Turn Inbound Leads into Enterprise Deals | Michael Conrad (Enterprise AE at n8n)

Carter (00:02.222)
Hey Michael, so you introduce yourself, tell the people who you are, what you do now.

Mike Conrad (00:06.694)
Yeah, right on. I'm Michael Conrad. I'm a Senior Account Executive at N8N.

Carter (00:13.544)
And today we'll talk about a little bit about multi-threading and deal process. Your first 30 days at N8N, what were the three assets slash processes you built that directly drove pipeline and closes?

Mike Conrad (00:26.594)
Yeah.

I would say the first was something that we called the landing larger talking points. And this was really a talk track for reps on the mid market and the enterprise team to be able to not only up level their conversations and get to executives faster, but really be able to increase our ASP. A lot of deals were coming in at our like entry level kind of pilot tier and what we were trying

to do is do larger deals. So I built out some talking points that kind of outlined where the

the major discounts are in our volume discounting and then really have some talking points around why companies should adopt at a larger rate earlier versus starting small, which a lot of companies did. The second thing was a bunch of lists and identifying my companies in LinkedIn. I still think that LinkedIn's the best prospecting tool out there.

Being able to build org charts and really identify who the right people would be to go after in these accounts and multi-thread after you're engaged with these companies was something that I did early on. And that allowed me to be bold and ask better questions about who else was involved in these conversations. And then lastly would be just a series of email sequences and really like a template for how I was going to do my follow-ups.

Mike Conrad (02:05.578)
that consistency has kept my customers accountable. My teammates use that as what they kind of use their or build their follow-ups around. And that again, I think has really increased the pipeline, will increase the pipeline in the first 30 days.

Carter (02:24.24)
That makes sense. Cause yeah, I saw you did 4.8 million in pipeline in six months. Is that like LinkedIn was one of your biggest pipeline sources? Is there like another one that was huge or is it mainly LinkedIn was a good, good amount?

Mike Conrad (02:38.062)
I would say for up-leveling conversations, our business is a little bit different than traditional SaaS businesses where a majority of our pipeline is coming from inbound versus us having to go outbound. these were tools and things that I built to get deeper into some of these large organizations, build more credibility with some of the initial stakeholders that I was meeting with, and also get to a power level faster.

Carter (03:07.548)
Okay, that makes sense. When the leads come in, is there a certain, like, what's the bet? What's the opener you use? Usually.

Mike Conrad (03:15.662)
from a, like a discovery perspective or tell me a little bit more about, yeah. Yeah. I think the, one of the biggest ones that we need to use as a.

Carter (03:20.058)
From a discovery perspective, yeah.

Mike Conrad (03:28.342)
means of qualification is gauging what their familiarity is with N8n and the platform before we really figure out which avenue we're going to take from a discovery perspective. something like, me a little bit about your experience with N8n to date. Are you guys in the platform? Are you using a community edition? Something like that. But open-ended typically wouldn't be multiple questions, just one question.

to get an understanding of like where they are in their process and that usually opens them up and gets them talking.

Carter (04:05.134)
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Like when you enter a NetNew Enterprise account, who's the first persona you go after and why?

Mike Conrad (04:13.421)
So in in lieu of us having this inbound motion, I would say it is the executive buyer, right? So the EB is is probably the first persona that I'm going after. You know, their team wants to wants us to be at their beck and call. They want to take advantage of our limited resources. And the EB has the keys to unlock what we need to make their teams successful. So making it, you know, a give get sort of situation.

is ultimately how we get there too. But that's who I'm going after early and trying to get them involved in these conversations because ultimately they're going to be, you know, signing the order for.

Carter (04:57.37)
And explain to me, because I know when we talked before this, you were mentioning that it is a lot of inbound that's coming in, but then you were saying you got a new sales motion is coming up or something about, I forget what word you used, like saying about warm bond. I forget, I forget what you were saying. Do know what I'm talking about or no?

Mike Conrad (05:11.083)
I do, yeah, yeah, yeah. So instead of us doing pure outbound to organizations that have never heard of NADN, we're doing what we call warm-bound. So it's organizations that were either too invested in another tool or the timing wasn't right for whatever reason, we're going after these accounts now. So they're warmer than a cold lead, I guess you would say.

But it is like the first time that some of the folks at the business have done outbound. So it's a transition for some of the earlier folks that were on the sales organization.

Carter (05:51.77)
And then when it comes to multi-threading, what's your exact move after call one to create two to three additional threads without annoying your champion? Like what are you usually saying or how are you going about that?

Mike Conrad (05:59.648)
Yeah, so I think one of the most important things to understand is one, if it's a coach or if it's a champion, right? Now, your champion would not typically get annoyed that you're going to the power line if that's who you're engaging with in these additional threats. Now, a coach might get it.

about that. one of the things early on in the call is, you know, really understanding like what the ads are for our customers. Because again, as I mentioned, we're in this unusual position as sellers here, where during that first call, they're usually asking us for a lot. We need to be able to like, kind of use that to our advantage and use that to get hired early. So understanding who else is involved.

and the decision-making, understanding what is important to their senior leadership or their stakeholders, right? If you're talking to a specific team versus a central engineering group or someone who, yeah, I say typically a central engineering group, excuse me. But understanding what those asks are and then on the call telling them, we're gonna need to get folks involved. So that when you see a follow-up email and you're grouping everyone in, they already know that that

is going to be happening. And then in that, think, is like the detail follow-up. that's where you're outlining what if-get-are. You're also naming who those people that are going to be responsible on their side are. So if you look them in, like their name is in the email. They're in the body. They have something. They have some skill in the game. That's one of my tactics to not annoying the champion, keep them involved in the decision-making, but also

the things that I need to get to be able to ultimately make them successful from a test perspective or any evaluation.

Carter (08:02.788)
And what's the hardest objection you get usually? And how do you like, how do you get around it?

wait, can you hear me? Your audio cut out.

Carter (08:22.064)
Okay, I can hear you now.

Mike Conrad (08:23.726)
Can you hear me now? Is that good? Good, good.

Carter (08:25.231)
I can hear you, yeah.

Mike Conrad (08:30.758)
And we're back. So I guess when you say it, what type of objection? Is it any objection in general?

Carter (08:36.39)
Well, at any point, when, like if, like, is there any point when they're giving you like any pushback or anything, they don't want to move through with the deal or maybe they're really slow to move and you're like, okay, what, like, what's the deal with this person? Like anything with, you know, budget or I know you said they know a lot of times they are a little bit warm, but is there any point they give you any like pushback at any point in the process?

Mike Conrad (08:56.264)
Yes, mean, so and that's why I said, you know, where are you know, which type of objection? So like from a technical perspective, we get objections all the time because we are a newer platform. So it's sometimes it's difficult for folks to educate their internal stakeholders on what exactly N8N is and how we're AI adjacent versus an AI tool or, you know, a someone who creates a company that's creating

LLMs or something like that, right?

So I think that's definitely an objection that we get often from like a technical perspective. And one of the ways that we overcome that is by first off by educating those stakeholders, asking whether it's getting them on a call and bringing our resources. I think one of the things that they come to N8N for is expertise. So we're looked at as a trusted advisor in this space as people who have been doing this for several years. bringing some

from our team that is expertise to speak to their stakeholders and educate them is definitely one of the best ways that we do that. Another one around budget, folks have an IT budget but they're trying to figure out how best to utilize this. So educating the customer on exactly what they're getting with N8N and how to bring that value to...

their stakeholders. So one of the large retailers in the Boston area is one of our customers. And we were able to, in a three slide deck, illustrate the value that N8N would provide through some of the workflows that we built with them during the POC, and then show an immediate ROI based off of our discounting.

Mike Conrad (10:51.418)
So I think a lot of it is around educating and then building your, empowering your champion to go and kind of fight those battles for you internally.

Carter (11:03.15)
And you've been pretty successful. Like you've worked at a lot of big time places and you've been in enterprise rep for quite a while. Do you have any like quick rapid fire tips for just any B2B SaaS sellers out there?

Mike Conrad (11:14.044)
Yeah, I would say the first is definitely if you have a technology that is not a commodity and something that people are coming inbound to use your tool, be bold in your discovery calls. Definitely not in a bad way, but like.

Get to get the things that you need again to make the customer successful and understand that the you know that there's a lot of things that you just by asking can get whether that's an executive you know executive meeting, that's executive sponsorship.

you know, from your champion. And then also like just understanding what your champion's personal win is. I think that's probably the other thing that like a lot of sellers underestimate. So understanding, you know, what stake your champion has in this project being successful and what that means for their career, for their personal life, for their social life at the company. That type of stuff is super important. And I think that's one of the kind of things that folks miss sometimes.

Carter (12:23.549)
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Well, I'm gonna end it. think that was pretty good. That was a ton of information.

Mike Conrad (12:29.374)
We're hope I.