Three Non Obvious Lessons Learned Selling to SMBs with Xero and Friends

Xero proved you can build a unicorn SaaS rocket ship selling software to SMBs, even from New Zealand. Please welcome Carrie Gohman, President of the Americas, Xero.

Hey guys, I'd love to bring out my panelists as well. Good afternoon. We'll introduce these guys in just a minute. Here we go. Come on out. Great. Hey guys. Um, so we're gonna spend the next 45 minutes talking all things small business. How to design products, how to reach small businesses, and how to engage small businesses. Now for those of you that serve this particular segment, you know how challenging that can be. These guys are diverse. They are incredibly time-starved, and in many cases, really need to take advantage of the software that, that we all provide. Now, I wanted to, as we talked to this panel, put together a group of folks who are in different stages in their company's evolution. And we also wanted to have a conversation, if you notice the title, that is not so obvious, that really focuses on things we've tried, succeeded at, tried, failed, tried, pivoted, and tried again. So that's really the conversation that we will have. I'd love to introduce Matt Russell to you. Matt is joining us. Matt is the CEO of TSheets. Now, TSheets is a time tracking and scheduling software. And Matt is really in a growth phase, 40,000 customers as well as 500,000 users. About 200 employees out of Boise, Idaho. We also have Amit Mithradas. Amit's joining us as the general manager and head of North America small business from PayPal. Uh, we're excited to have Amit here. Uh, a couple of you might have heard of PayPal, an online, uh, payments provider. Uh, and definitely at scale, 197 million consumer relationships. 15 million small business relationships, about 6 million of those in North America alone. And PayPal's really seeking to democratize financial services. So big mission, lots of scale, 18,000 employees worldwide. And then last but not least, we have Alex Fella. Alex is the CEO of Vend. Vend is a software focused on POS for the retail segment, so very verticalized strategy, focusing on helping businesses build and thrive in their organizations, but also have more fulfilling lives. About 20,000 stores and about 200 employees, and very much in a growth phase as well. Let's welcome our panelists tonight. All right. Now, let's get started. You know, I want to just note that we're not just here because we are all at different phases in serving small businesses. But we're also here because we're part of an ecosystem together. And so many of you know of Xero as an accounting software, but one of the things we also are is a platform bringing together an ecosystem of software providers who are serving the small business segment to make it easier for financial management, to make it easier for businesses to be successful. So both bringing together software providers and advisors, accountants and banks, and we're all part of that ecosystem together. And are all deeply integrated. And you'll hear how that strategy impacts pretty significantly the way we all go to market. I think the other thing that's notable is we're really deeply integrated. So Alex, I hope you don't mind if I share this story, uh, but Alex was so committed, uh, to integration with PayPal, uh, that, uh, they actually threw their founder off of a plane to prove that you can take PayPal payments from literally anywhere using Vend software. Was successful?

He's still alive. It was fun for the rest of us.

Excellent. Excellent. We don't recommend that as a tip for you guys to take away from today's session, but an interesting anecdote. So hey, let's go ahead and jump in. And I'm actually going to— Matt, I'd love to talk to you about designing product. So one of the things I mentioned is just the diversity of the small business segment, how challenging it can be to serve. When you're designing a product, how do you make sure you get that right? So that you get enough scale to sort of build a business, but also meet the unique needs of business owners?

Yeah, good question. Carrie, thank you for having us, and it's great to see everybody. So designing a product, first, I mean, obvious that you have to solve a problem, right? I mean, when you first go to design a product for SMBs, it's like, okay, what problem am I gonna solve? The second thing is I would say, look, small businesses, I don't think want to, try to implement a system that tries to do absolutely everything. And so my recommendation always is, and the ones that I actually think are gonna win in the marketplace are those that solve one problem, they're the best in breed solution, and then what they do is they seamlessly integrate with other applications that provide a solution. But if you put yourself in the shoes of a small business owner, I mean, big companies, like massive Fortune 100 companies, They can't implement systems that do everything, and it's a disaster, right?

Yeah.

So why would you think that a small business can? So the ones I think are really gonna win, and win in the, in the SaaS space, are those that are a best-of-breed point solution with seamless integrations.

Absolutely. Alex, any advice from you on this front?

Yeah, I mean, I would echo what Matt said about being part of a healthy ecosystem. Uh, the thing I would add to it though is you also need to think about, um, which customers you're gonna target, which is kind of obvious. But we often talk about product-market fit as this one-time event, and it's magical, and when it happens, it's kind of, "Yeah, we're done, we can just grow." But it's also something you need to sharpen over time. And I think at Vend, we experienced that. We started out as a very simple point of sale for pretty much anyone across any vertical that needed that. As we went upmarket and discovered kind of more profitable customers and other customers that we we wanted to serve, we realized they had very divergent product needs, and so we had to make a choice. So for us, that was saying we're no longer going to be hospitality POS, we're going to focus completely on inventory-based retail. So I think you really need to keep thinking about that over time.

Yep, so how to focus, do that one thing exceptionally well. Matt, you guys do a lot of things at PayPal. How do you focus, how do you design products when you have so much that you're doing?

You know, one of the things that, that both my colleagues here have mentioned are, you know, looking at data, looking at how you want to go interact with the market and serve that base. But the one thing at PayPal, you know, Kara, you mentioned we have 18,000 employees, but most of them actually sit in, you know, the customer support and sales. And so keeping that open loop and that open feedback is, in our opinion, you know, critical. And as you guys are designing, building, and expanding on products, The number one thing to make sure that you're doing is building it from the outside in and having that open feedback loop on what is it that a customer really wants and how do you continue to accelerate that as, as you're getting that feedback.

Now as you're implementing things, one of the things we talk a lot about at Xero as well is how do you test things before you go actually to launch, before you launch it to 6 million people. You know, Alex, we've heard about this idea of big bets for big bets versus small bets. Do you guys ascribe to this kind of methodology or how have you used that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to make big choices around strategic direction as I mentioned. But on a sort of day-to-day, week-to-week, quarter-to-quarter basis, we've certainly got a bias towards doing small things, thin slices, testing and seeing how it goes. At the same time, we're always though trying to check ourselves and make sure that we're sort of, we're applying the courage that you need to take big choices around where the products going. So look, for us, it's a bit of a balance, but certainly a bias towards small things that you can test and get real data around.

Yeah, so Matt, how do you know if you get that small thing right? Because I know you have pushed on this in the past.

So look, I'm sitting there in your shoes, and everybody's heard of The Lean Startup, right? I mean, everybody has. And I can tell you, though, that of all the businesses that I actually talk to, and the startups and the SaaS companies out there that actually implement the principles are so small, and it's that simple. I mean, basically, you draw a line up on a board. You take a whiteboard, you draw a line on one side, and you put on one side what's working, and on the other side you put what's not working, and then you make a list. But here's the kicker, is you have to be able to prove it. And so, I mean, it was like in the T-Sheets story, I mean, it's that simple. We read The Lean Startup, it took us from, really the startup that wasn't gonna make it. I mean, we had 4 miserable go-to-market failures, to the point where we ran out of money, we had to move into free space, we had like 4.5 employees, like the world was coming to an end. And then we read that book and we did that, we wrote it up, what's working, what's not working, and then when we asked ourselves, how do we know? That's when it got real fuzzy. It's like, oh, well I think, This is working. But the truth is we had no idea. And most of the things that we thought were working, they weren't. And so the way that you know is that you actually use analytics. I mean, this is a SaaS conference. Put, take the time to put the infrastructure in to actually find out the results of whatever it is you're gonna test. And then start with a hypothesis and then prove it. But don't get lazy, 'cause it's really easy to say, oh, it's a hypothesis, I know I'm right. Use data.

So that really changed the way you went to market. It sounds like it fundamentally changed your traction for success.

I mean, it wasn't overnight, but there's absolutely no question, like, that was the pit, that was it. And so it was back before all of these really great analytics tools were out there, and so what we did actually is inside of our application, we built what we call, what we coined, the lean dashboard, and basically we started to gather all metrics from everything that customers were actually touching our product, and as much as we could, and it was rough. I mean, it was kind of rough, and that's how it started, so yes.

And so you home grew your own analytics platform?

To begin with, yes.

Impressive, impressive.

It was ugly, I mean, just ugly.

But it got the job done, right?

Since then we've taken it out to the desert and we've shot it, I mean, it's not around anymore.

Nice, well, I mean, do you guys use a heavy dose of analytics and testing at PayPal, or how do you make sure you get it right for your 6 million customers in North America?

That's such a great question because there is no simple answer to it. And the point I think that both Matt and Alex have made around testing and getting into it and looking at it from a small versus big bets is critical. Look, the challenge that I think all of us have in this industry is we are in a fast-paced tech software SaaS base market. And what you're testing and building today may be irrelevant for 4 years down the road as new technologies come out. So the methodology of really thinking about, you know, and we do this, I think, pretty well at PayPal, which is, you know, take core products like even invoicing, which is a, you know, an old staple. And we've added features to turn it into mobile and one-touch, which allows a single sign-on, you know, checkout to increase the speed. That's the small bets.

Yeah.

But the big bets are things like what we're doing with Visa, MasterCard, where we're democratizing choice for customers, which you may have heard of, which will change the trajectory of payments. So I think you have to look at it from both sides.

You want to add a comment?

Well, I would just say as a startup, right, and I don't know what everyone's scale is here, as a startup, like, pretty much anything you do is a big bet, right? And so find a way, I mean, find, be as scrappy as absolutely possible to find a way to minimum, like, minimum viable way to prove your hypothesis.

Yeah.

And do you guys have any— if you're a startup just getting going, do you have any recommendations for a platform that you would say, hey, check out this analytics toolkit if you're just getting going and don't have the resources to home grow? Or did you guys all kind of home grow some of those systems? Home grow?

Yeah, home grown.

All right, there you go.

For us, if I can just add a little bit, for a lot of us it's a cultural bias towards analysis as well. The thing I would add to to some of what Matt said, is you have to be really careful that that bias towards being analytical doesn't make you boring. It still means you've gotta try new things, right? 'Cause you get really analytical, and then the natural tendency is kind of, okay, now we're gonna analyze support tickets, and verbatims off NPS surveys, and you just end up doing what people told you. You still gotta have the courage and the boldness and all of those things to try new things.

Yeah, well, let's talk about that. So, we've talked a little bit about designing products, Now let's talk a little bit about how you reach customers. You know, Alex, you know, you talked about sort of not getting boring. How do you get a customer interested, particularly one that just doesn't have very much time for you? They're busy running their business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, there's a lot of really obvious things around marketing tactics, but since you said we're going to do—

Yeah, do the non-obvious. We don't want to hear about that.

For us, the thing that we've really discovered is that the magic comes from deeply empathizing with our customers' lives. and note that I said their lives, not the way they use our product. So if I think about that in our situation, our customers are retailers. So they're passionate about product, they're passionate about shoes and clothing and that kind of stuff, they're passionate about their team, running stores. During business hours, they're doing all of that stuff, they're time poor. And so, the things that we've done to try and, make them be more interested in us? I'd say a couple of things. The first one is you just have to have some personality.

You know—

We don't have any of that.

Well, I'm not speaking me personally, I'm saying our marketing, right? I mean, you know, you mentioned the jumping out of the plane. We had another piece of ad creative where we compared VenPOS point of sale to a legacy POS pile of S star star star. We were prepared to do those kind of things to stand out, and I think that's super important. The other thing is just make life easy for them.

Yeah.

And again, there's a lot of sort of technical process things around having good trial processes, complementing that with content, but sometimes the most obvious things are the ones you forget. Like our customers are focused on running their retail business during the day. Which means you have to do demos after hours. Those basic insights can have material impact on the business.

Yeah, Matt, any thoughts on how do you actually get customers' attention? How do you figure out how to reach them?

So one, I really like what he said because as far as empathy is concerned, truly you have to understand and put yourself in the customer's shoes. Everyone said, yo, TSheets, oh, you guys do time tracking. I mean, that is so freaking lame. Well, except when you're the small business owner. Let's say you're a painter, right, and you have 20 employees. Let's say you're a mover, right, we were just talking about that, and you have 20 employees, and your margins are really tight, and what's the single largest line item on your P&L statement? That's a real question. Labor, right? It's labor. Well, you think of payroll products and that kind of thing, well, all they do is they just aggregate information. They don't actually help you control or help you manage or help you run your business. The one tool that helps you control your single largest line item, your P&L, is a time tracking tool, right? So you have to understand, I mean, they come to us and they're actually emotional about a time tracking system. The other thing is this, is understand the language that your customer talks. I mean, it doesn't help when you label features and you call yourself one thing and your customers are calling you something else. So figure out the right message to hit them at the right time in the life cycle because they may be searching for something, obviously you guys already know this, searching for something that has nothing to do with time tracking, but they're having an employee issue, they're having a labor issue. Well then meet them there with the right message.

[Speaker] So let's talk about that idea of contextual marketing. I know that's a bit of a buzz term, but it's the idea of finding someone at that moment where they're searching for, "I've got a problem." How do you do that? Matt, you talked about data. Do you use data and analytics in trying to find those customers?

I don't know, maybe Alex thinks it's boring, but we use data for everything. I'm not kidding you. I mean, we test buttons, and like whether a color of a button to see if it makes a difference, and the funny thing is, is it really does make a difference. It's weird, but we do, we use data, and we test based on markets. Obviously, it's like the basics. but we try not to get too ahead of ourselves. It's like, you know, how do you win Super Bowls, right? You block and you tackle really well and you stay in the game, and that's what we do. We constantly are leveraging our pay-per-click campaigns, testing, using that as our testing base to really drive our strategy on SEO.

Amit, how do you find customers when they need you? You guys probably have tons of data flowing through your system.

Yes, we do. Uh, you know, but the, but the data also has to be translated into something that, that is meaningful.

Yeah.

And I think both of, you know, both Matt and Alex have, have coined or have been talking about, don't, you know, don't have analysis paralysis, right? So eventually the feedback that you're getting directly from customers is a big one. Uh, and also understanding, you know, I'll give you a, an example. So, you know, we had a, a, a product that came out, which was around a mobile app for Run the Business, and the whole idea was, hey, how do we just get you reporting? Customers were asking for it. Tell us, you know, the basics of running a business. What we found is if you take that product, and we included our invoicing in that, and so now you can actually just fire off an invoice to anybody out there and include One Touch, what it's starting to do is the engagement has gone through the roof because the product has turned from being a business tool to a run the business tool, and there's a, and there's a big difference in how those two things come together.

So this idea of using data and analytics and combining that with sort of fun and human empathy, you know, that's a really unique set of skills. How has that sort of evolution changed the way you hire the type of talent that you need, maybe even the location of your business? Has that evolved what your sort of strategy is around human capital, around your people? Alex, do you want to take it and then—

Yeah, sure. I mean, We're all looking at each other because it's a really, really tough question. I don't think there's any magic to that other than, from a personality perspective, I think that comes through from your culture and being really clear about your values and hiring people who are gonna fit with that and who are really gonna be able to speak in your language. And then on the analytical side, I think Matt's really role modeled having the obsession to— Yeah. Around that. We very much try and do the same, but unfortunately I don't have any magical answer on that one.

Yeah, it sounds like you also really spend some time thinking about your values and culture at the beginning of that interview process. Matt, how about you from a data perspective? How do you find analytic talent? Can you find great analytic talent anywhere? Do you need to be in San Francisco for kind of digital talent?

Well, we're here, you know, so there are two different questions there. I mean, do you have to be in San Francisco to find top talent? and I would say absolutely. I mean, I'm in San Francisco and I love San Francisco. Everyone here is fantastic, almost as good as Idaho, if you haven't been. But no, I think you can find brilliant people anywhere. I really do. It doesn't matter the city, and that's the truth. And so, there are definitely advantages to being in San Francisco. There are lots of pros to being here, and at times there are, you know, I wish I was here more often, but the truth is, is there are a tremendous amount of pros of being outside of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and we love that we're headquartered in Boise, Idaho of all places, a new tech center, but the other question is how we hire them.

Yeah, how do you hire for analytic talent in particular, the kinds of folks that are doing the kind of marketing that you're really talking about?

Well, so we just look for, we look for really smart people that care about what they create, that want to do like they truly want to do the best work of their lives. It doesn't come from external accountability with like, we have no management titles inside of TSheets at all because I think managers are like trying to constrict and trying to manufacture authority, right? But we want people that really, it comes from within, they wanna do the best work of their lives. They have a natural aptitude to have attention to detail. So they actually, they have a desire to put excellence into everything and it's funny, An analytical person that really cares will actually pick up trash off of the bathroom. They can't stand to leave the bathroom with a paper towel. Of course they wash their hands, right? But they do, they put excellence into absolutely everything, and those are some of the things that we look for.

Yeah, absolutely.

Kerry, if I can add a little bit to that, that sort of Bay Area question, 'cause I actually think it's something that when you're targeting SMBs, many companies need to confront, because this is an expensive place to live. And so for us, the challenge has been, okay, there's a lot of— Matt's right, there's great talent everywhere in the world, but there's a lot of been there, done that talent in San Francisco, and you're kind of trading that off versus, in many cases, the reality that you have to pay 50% more for a salesperson in this market. And so that, I think that is tricky, and as I said, I don't really have a great solution other than to say, you know, we're hiring in Auckland, Melbourne, Toronto, and London, and they're great cities, and I'm sure Boise, Idaho is as well, Yeah, I think you guys, it comes down to this formula, right?

And the formula is what is the sort of caliber and type of individual you're looking for, and you will find them everywhere, you know, in this country, worldwide. And it's about finding that person that will deliver, you know, is analytic, as well as the fact that they will take ownership and actually run the business like they own it. And you will find that anywhere. So I think that's a, that's a, that's a critical piece.

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting, you know, you brought up Alex, you You brought up sales and Amit, you talked a little bit about the environment you create around the person you hire. We've talked a lot about data and analytics and we've talked about how you use that a little bit in the marketing context as well. Is there a role for salespeople in a world where there's tons of data, you can identify the moment of need that a customer may have, is there a role for physical sales? Amit, I'd love to hear from you on that.

My take on this is absolutely. And you know, as the world's turning digital and contextual is becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle, yes, there's absolutely a role for contextual and contextual helps you kind of, you know, translate those sales a lot faster in a certain part, but don't forget that depending on who you're targeting, so if you're going after a transactional, you know, customer, whether it be small business or consumer, contextual is big. As you start moving up the food chain and want to start having conversations around a lifecycle, not just a sale, single product, then that's where the beauty of sales comes in and the ownership and the account management. So I think as you all are looking and growing and deciding which channels to use, contextual to me is one piece, one important piece, but it's not the only piece.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, look, for our business, I 100% agree. I think it really does depend on the nature of your product and the the sort of customer you're working with. So it all starts again from that empathy. You know, for us, it's our customers are not technologists, they're time poor, and you know, our platform is what they use to run their business. So it's a big risk. And you know, put all those things together, you need to put a human face on it to get a sale done.

What do you think, Matt?

So I actually agree as well, and guess why I agree? We tested it.

It's true.

I'm not kidding.

I couldn't have guessed that.

In fact, we actually tested different approaches and different timing of salespeople and where to enter them into the process and which ones convert the highest and then tied it to LTV. I mean, we did. I mean, we—

And have you ever tried a type of sales that wasn't successful? I know one of the things you shared with me is that you guys even tested outbound selling versus kind of feet on the street. Talk a little bit about some of your lessons there.

Yeah, now that, so our second miserable go-to-market failure was, so my background was in enterprise sales and business-to-business sales, and so when our first go-to-market failure didn't work, I'm like, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll go get a stable full of thoroughbred salespeople, give them calling lists, dial for dollars, and that was going to be our demand generation, right? and while we had some success, uh, there was no way we, the return on investment was gonna come soon enough and we weren't, it wasn't gonna scale. Like it couldn't be an outbound sales team that created the demand. And so, um, that, that, that was, didn't work. So now our salespeople are different, right? So, uh, we have, uh, uh, those that come in and they actually sign up for TSheets and then we have, uh, salespeople engage with them.

Yeah. So the really the power of testing and really unlocking which model works for small businesses. But I think a lot of agreement around the human side of small businesses to help, or the human side of salespeople to help small businesses move forward, which is really powerful. So we've talked a little bit about designing products. We've talked about different methodologies for reaching customers and the balance of marketing analytics. And digital with physical salespeople, how do you actually keep customers engaged? What do you do to design the right next set of products that a small business owner might want? Amit, I'd love to hear a little bit about how do you ensure that you keep a small business owner who's tried the product continuing to come back and stay with you.

Yeah, one of the key things that I often see as I talk to a lot of, you know, our customers is keeping a customer engaged. Obviously you'll hear things like, you know, content and lifecycle management and keeping them and talking to them about all their aspects of their business. Check. I think that, that's a, that's a basic. But the other thing that we, I think, do aggressively is use our ecosystem. And what I mean by that is think about a product. So we're in the payment space, you know, we want to do payments. But a customer, for a customer, payments is one part of the solution. First they need an online store. Or they need accounting software, or they need to be in retail. And so for us, the way we drive engagement is all about how do I reach out to my ecosystem and have our partners, you know, such as Xero and others out there, BigCommerce, etc., talk to the base about here's why PayPal actually fits the need of payments in this part of the business, which is what you're looking to me for. And I think that really helps accelerate the go-to-market and the engagement you get because it's from— it's a double-sided network. It's PayPal talking to them, but also the partners where the PayPal product is used talking to them, and that comes together.

Yeah, and probably builds a bit of credibility along the way for PayPal and for your partners as well, which is really powerful. Matt, how do you make sure that you, when you're developing that next product, you protect yourself against taking that big bet, right? You've talked a lot about the fact that every bet is a big bet. How do you ensure that you, the next thing you try is is right.

I mean, so we take the same approach to when we develop features, and it's the truth. So when the base core, when we first started, it was time tracking and basically mainly for hourly employees for payroll. And we knew that we needed to launch a scheduling system as well because they're so closely intertwined. But we weren't sure exactly what that product would look like, et cetera, and so what we did is we launched a very minimum version of scheduling, and what it did is we tested it, and then we used not only customer feedback, but we actually watched. So I mean, you guys are SaaS products, put the infrastructure inside of it and watch what they do, and watch what they actually use and they don't use, and then interview 'em. Interview 'em for what problem are you trying to solve? And so the result of that is really interesting, actually. For those of you that are into scheduling, but it's really interesting because there were two problems fundamentally that they were trying to solve. They were trying to solve both, okay, I have a restaurant and I have a bar staff and a wait staff and I need to schedule my employees, that was one problem. The other one was service-based companies like plumbers. I have a whole list of jobs and I need to schedule them out among all of my employees. Well, both called scheduling systems, two fundamental different problems, but what's cool is because we detected that, early on, like about halfway through the development cycle, we actually killed both birds with one stone.

Oh, that's fantastic, and I think what you're highlighting is not just the data, but also really listening and seeing what customers are doing, and that sort of human part, human component as well. Alex, how about you?

Yeah, I mean, really not much to add to what the guys have said. I mean, it's a combination of analytics and being human, I think, for us.

Yeah, absolutely, it's essential. You know, one of the things that I've heard a lot about in small business and serving small businesses is the idea of providing content, right? So content-based marketing, communities, right, where we send out general information about starting a business and that kind of thing. Do you guys use communities? Is there any value in them in keeping a small business engaged? What have been your lessons around that? Matt, do you wanna start?

Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously, I mean, I think communities are, If you can develop a community, especially if they absolutely love your product, do it. One of the ways that we've done it, and to be honest with you, we haven't done as good of a job as we could've, but the things that have worked for us are when it's actually short, interesting descriptions or videos about your product. It doesn't ever hurt, as you guys know, it doesn't ever hurt to be looked at as an authority in your space. What we've done is we've spent a lot of time actually building people's not only personal brands, but actually their true understanding of the problem that they solve. They're looked at as industry experts, and so when they talk, our customers really listen, and again, it's based on by vertical. So yes, and we plan to invest there a whole lot more.

Yeah, and what I hear you saying is kind of narrowing in on content that is relevant to your product, so it didn't sound like you're providing just general information, but a lot about what you do. Alex, how do you use education?

Yeah, yeah, so very, very much along the lines that you said. So we have something called Vend University, which started out as something where we're trying to build content to help retailers get better at retail, and surprise, they knew more about their business than we did most of the time. So we've kind of evolved that over time, and there's still some of that for retailers who are starting up, but now it's much more around product education. Education. And we, I guess the way that we build that, build the agenda for that is often out of support tickets. What are they giving us feedback on? What do they not understand how to use? So a lot of it's about customer success, but it's also about reducing our cost to serve. And now we have like thousands of hours viewed on Venn University per month. So I think it's doing some good.

Well, it sounds like your users are actually generating your content because they're telling you what they need to know more about, which is a really powerful feature. Feedback loop.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we're probably similar to Matt in terms of we think about this a bit, but there's heaps of opportunity to do more. Like, we have community support and all of those good things, but I think there is a huge opportunity for us to leverage off the natural sense of community that our customers have and really amplify that. So yeah, it's certainly something to do.

Yeah, small business owners are definitely the best networkers. Um, Amit, any thoughts on what you guys do at PayPal?

Yeah, one piece I would add though is You know, content is, is obviously important, but also know why your customers are coming to you, right? And what I mean by that is, look, at PayPal we have, you know, we've been fortunate to have tremendous scale, and it also brings a lot of credibility. But the other side to it is they all, you know, a lot of customers come to us with an ask of, tell me, where do I go for different things? So that community aspect of, hey, come, you know, come to PayPal, we'll talk about payments. But when your question turns into to where do I go for an online store, where do I go for accounting. We have already done the hard work of partnering and curating and bringing that forward. And I think that level of content and that level of communication really amplifies not only your product and brand, but also why these customers depend on you. And I think that kind of helps elevate your own business.

Yeah, and I think one of the really cool things that you can do as you get the kind of scale that you're talking about, Amit, is to really bring together those business owners to help educate each other. I know we all do that in our businesses, really in our specific areas as well, which is a really, really cool thing. Last question, as you think about— a lot of us have had debates about how do you know how you're doing? Once you've designed for small business, you've engaged them, you're having a deep relationship hopefully with that customer, how do you know how you're doing? Lot of lore about Net Promoter and whether or not that's a good way to measure or something else. I see everyone smiling. Do you guys think Net Promoter is a good useful measure for understanding how you're doing with small businesses, or is there something different that gives you a good gauge on how you're performing? Alex, do you want to start?

Yeah, sure. So there are a lot of things that we measure to see how we're doing with our customers. On Net Promoter specifically, For us, it is culturally really important to have, to put a number on customer delight. You know, we wanna provide something for our customers that they truly love. And, you know, like many of you, we have a lot of analytical people in our business. And so if you don't put a number on it, it doesn't get managed the way it should and it doesn't get to the top of the priority list the way that it should. Having said that, is, you know, is NPS perfect? No, I don't believe so. And I'd really encourage people encourage people to look below the standard question and below the standard methodology and understand the things which really drive your business. We did quite a lot of analysis around what feedback we get from NPS correlates with, you know, with churn and with actual word of mouth. So, I just encourage people to think a bit deeper than the headline number.

Yeah, anything else that you guys use to figure out how you're doing?

You know, I agree with you. I think it is, NPS is a key metric, metric, but it is one metric. And, you know, I've been in organizations that measure NPS to death, and it doesn't really move the needle as much as you'd like. And you— and other organizations that actually measure NPS and take it seriously and, and have it as part of that culture, and I think that's an important piece. But today in the world of social, I mean, you will find out pretty quickly how you're doing. People will text you, tweet you, you know, Facebook you on, hey, you're doing great, you're doing badly. And I think all those things have to be taken into account when you're measuring how you are serving your customer versus just one metric, but it is an important metric.

Yeah. Anything to add?

Well, you need multiple metrics, there's no question. One thing that I will say is the NPS score, I mean, you will be tempted to create a bullshit NPS score. You will. You'll be tempted to do it because it's something that you control how you do it internally, and then people leverage that as a marketing tool somehow, I think it's crazy, and I think long-term that kind of bites you because you really don't know how your customers are reacting to your product or whatever it is you're trying to— you're just lying to yourselves, and you'll start to make decisions, by the way, and drink your own Kool-Aid. I highly recommend that you do an NPS score, create your NPS score by using the best practices, like the most academically correct ways, and there's a few different ways to do it. To do it, but just make sure that you do it with some level of integrity, 'cause otherwise if you don't, I mean, I won't care, but you won't have the feedback to make good decisions, and I think that that's kind of the core purpose of it.

Yeah, absolutely. Any last words of wisdom that any of you wanna jump in?

Yeah, sure, I'll jump in. So I think one thing that I touched on but we didn't talk a lot about is culture, which for me is the, the not-so-secret weapon of every company, but particularly an SMB. You know, for small business owners, business is personal, and they want to know that you care. You'll be hiring a lot of young people into sales and support and CS-type roles, and they're gonna need something to get them through the ups and downs of their careers and also of your business. So for me, programming and great culture is something you need to do from the start. Start, because you can't fake it.

Totally. Totally.

Yeah. My, I guess, golden nugget would be, uh, you know, everyone here has started a business or been in a business that is there to serve a need that exists in the market. The one thing I would always say is make sure you're staying on top of that need and make sure you keep that feedback loop open and know what you're doing and how it's progressing is actually meeting your original goals and what the customers are asking for and how things are shifting. 'Cause it's very easy to get a little bit self-absorbed into this was a great idea and I'm gonna keep working on it, and then find out that things around it have shifted. So that feedback loop I, I think will serve, uh, serves us well, will hopefully serve you guys well.

Matt, any last thoughts?

You know, uh, I would say this, I mean, use data, like actually use data. Um, stay focused, pick one thing and do it really well. Really, really well. The third thing that I would say in all the stuff that I've said about data, but I would counter it with this, is that there are so few things in this world that you can control. Think about all the things inside your business that you cannot control, but the one thing that you can is every single interaction with your customer. You get to choose how you treat them.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, powerful. And I, you know, I think that you guys heard some really important points as we went through. And Matt, you did such a great summary. I think it is really about that human component at the end of the day, that you're really touching someone's life, you're helping them be successful, and that you want to balance that with making sure that you've got great empathy backed with great analytics and really leveraging your sort of ecosystem and partnerships. Guys, thank you so much for being on our panel today. I hope this was helpful for you guys. Thank you.

Thank you.