Bold Marketing to Win Deals- Eldad Posten-Koren

And I was like, you know, that's the kind of marketing we want to do one day.

It's we are getting together to a room now we are in a point that we sell to very big sales team, try to make a noise and to be different and to the word of sales. I got into something like in San Jose, one of the things that we thought and I think that this is when it's gone.

Today's guest is the co founder and CEO of one of my favorite companies, Wen, who has always made vapes on social media with their clever branding and marketing that and his team have redefined bold marketing, showing how creativity and innovation can really drive results. In this episode, we will dive into some of those unique strategies. How bold marketing helps you win deals and the story behind building a brand that truly stands out. Get ready for an exciting conversation. When you captured the LinkedIn for like a month, everybody had, I think that was a particular day. Maybe your marketing team planned it. And I was like, you know, that's the kind of marketing we want to do. One day.

We are getting together to a room and think together. What is the weirdest thing we can do together? And then executed.

That was amazing. I mean, I looked at some of the things which you did on your website, on your LinkedIn, that winning playlist, and I think you have that clever name as well. So you can play a lot of fun. And I wanted to ask you one question which actually had the fun. And yeah, I think it was fun. I mean, it has that fun, light vibe on your, you know, with your brand. And I think that's what you, like you said, you know, you probably got into a room and thought, you know, what kind of vibe you want to give to people. And I think that was the answer.

And actually that, that's, that's very interesting because now we are in a point that we sell to very big sales team, like very big enterprises. And then people start telling us, guys, it's time to grow up. So, you know, it's a fine balance, you know, because you try to make a noise and to be different, but on the other side, like enterprise people look at this and what the hell is going on here? What is this strange thing?

I wanted to ask you that, you know, because that was my exact, my question because I remember I used to associate it with a brand like that and we had trouble getting into enterprises because they thought the same. So are you saying that you're facing that right now?

I got the feedback. I don't know if I'm facing. I got a feedback.

Okay. Yeah. It's quite interesting. Thank you so much for joining in. I looked up your name of the meaning means God has loved, which is beautiful. Is that. Did I get that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for being here. It's going to be just quick 15 minutes. We are 13 minutes away. I don't have, like a lot of agenda. I have simple question and I think we can chat about it, make it super conversational. I looked at your journey. I saw that, you know, how you have led teams. You have been head of business development. You've been doing that for eight years. Before you joined, before you started this company. You have a lot of sales background.

Right.

And then, of course, right now, I looked at your product and I think, first of all, I want to give you a compliment. The video was amazing. I just sent it to my team and I said, we want to make a video like that. So please tell us, you know, the inspiration behind, you know, creating a product. What you are, what you have created.

Yeah. So I think that, you know, it's very interesting that the journey. You mentioned that I have a long, you know, time in being a salesperson, but. But in my personal perception, I don't perceive myself as a professional salesperson. I came from a very diverse background. Tons of different things, like seven years in the Navy, seven is in the world of nonprofits and to the world of sales. I got into something like eight years ago, seven, eight years ago. And then, you know, fell in love with it. And I think that's my tendency. I didn't tell it, but I was the chairman of the. His. The Hebrew University Student union. And my tendency, my personal tendency is to take responsibility, to see something and to see what is not working well. In the university, it was the student union. In sales, it was, you know, playbook adoptions, sales methodology, adoption, updating the CRM. So I have this kind of, you know, you know, how I look at things that I tend to look for what is not working well. And I'm a little bit crazy, then I want to fix it. So this is actually how I got to be, you know, to build win AI. That the true story.

That is amazing. Yeah. I mean, coming from somebody coming from a background where you have not done sales at that level, and now you're saying that you have a product which actually makes sales reps, you know, live a better life.

Yeah. You know, and I think that now next week I'm going to add a keynote in San Jose. One of the things that we thought, what could be interesting thing to speak about in the keynote? Because nobody cares. Like, it's not an inspirational keynote to speak about why people don't update the CRM? That's very boring. And then you ask yourself, why do people don't update the CRM? Or why do people don't follow the sales methodology? Or why do people don't follow procedures? And then that all goes back to our human nature. And I think that this is when it gets very interesting because I think that AI actually allows us not to fight against the human nature, is actually empower the human nature. I think that for decades we tried not only in cells in every field, even in the Navy, even in the army, in everything that we do, you have procedures. You want people to follow the procedures, and people are people, and they don't follow the procedures. Generative AI gave us the opportunity to change something in this equation that we TR so many years to do it the same and the same and the same and to change some. So I think it's interesting and it's a really big opportunity.

No, that's amazing. When you said that. Is that going to be part of your keynote too? That I get some tips on it?

Yes. The keynote is why the hell people don't do what I'm asking them to do.

That's a great title. You have an event tomorrow in Austin too. That not something you're attending?

Yes. Yeah. So unfortunately I'm not attending, but my team will be attending and the same thing. We are trying to do things differently. So if you remember on our websites, like I hate updating the CRM or nobody loves. I love updating my CRM set. No salesperson ever. So with the same theme of, you know, being very emotional and very, you know, to be connected to the emotional part of the marketing. So instead of doing, you know, another event in the conference, so we are sending 30 sales leaders to a rage room. It's, I think, the first time ever that someone does it. We have cups of Salesforce and HubSpot. They're gonna smash. It's gonna be crazy. So it's all about, you know, doing things different and giving people opportunity to experience something which is unique. Then they will remember.

No way. When you said that, the only thing I can remember from your website was the guy who was smashing the keyboard. And I think, I think. I think I saw different versions of that on your LinkedIn post. So that's one thing which will definitely strike me because as a salesperson, when I would think about updating CRM. Yeah, it's frustrating. You're right about that. And through your journey, how did you choose the name? Because it's very clever. It's like right there, you can make a lot of puns.

Yeah, that's a good story. So it was not our initial name, as always. So the first name. And, you know, you can hear from my accent that I'm not a native speaker. So the first name was Wing W I N G G. And with my limited knowledge of the English vocabulary, I jumped on a call with a salesperson and he said, let me know that to Wing, it is not a good thing in sales. And I was like, no, never. It's the first time I heard about it and thank you for letting me know. And then Wing was off the chart. And then we thought about. So there was a time in 2021 that everyone wanted to have a name of an animal to the company. And then the domain will be, I don't know, doggy, IO or doggy, I don't know, something stupid. So we looked for all of the relevant animals, AI or something dot com. The only animal that was left is Liger. Now, Liger is a combination between lion and tiger. And we had the whole story about, like, why a lion and a tiger together is bigger. Like, it's like salesperson and AI together. It's like hybrid and whatever. But many people didn't read it well or didn't understand what is liger. And then we said, okay, that's too complicated. And then one of our angel investors said, listen, the main thing is to change the bottom line. The bottom line is to win more. We were like, okay, win. Now you don't want to do Y a Y I N because that's, you know, it will kill you on Google search. But then we say, okay, Y I n N AI straightforward. And that's it. That's the story.

That's amazing. Yeah, I always love listening to the stories and I think this is going to be, this is going to be a good one. I'll remember for. You talked about AI, you talked about sales. And I think today everybody's talking about AI. I don't think so. There's any company which does not say, hey, we are not using AI. In fact, we would be looking up, looking down on them if they say otherwise. And you come from. And you know, you're a founder, of course, you, you lead your sales team. I have a tiny question. What's your number one tip for one for winning at sales. And the second question is how are you using AI to win at sales in your own company?

Yeah, so I think that one of the things that I'm trying hard today in order to improve the sales motion is to understand what are the bottlenecks, for example, for us, because we sell big sales organization so it can kill us. IT review is killing us. So today I'm really trying from the first call to tell, hey guys, if that's interesting, let's start the IT review. That's it. And I'm always telling them, listen, it's going to take time. In the time in this time you will ask the other people, you can start, you know, circulate it and. But let's start with IT review and then the rest. So this is one thing that I like, we identified the bottleneck that like push the deal and can push the deals in months. And then we are trying to tackle it from day one today. And the second question was, sorry, how.

Are you using AI to win at SAL on your in your own company?

Yeah, so first of all, I would say people in the company call me the QA founder. So I'm the super user of winai, that's for sure. You know, you know, you need to walk the walk. So I'm using Win AI three, four, five times a day. Part of this heavy user of, you know, LLMs and GPTs. I work on this on a daily basis, whether it's about, you know, helping me to analyze data or to do things that I, you know, even creating content that can be relevant. But I think that, you know, it's everywhere around us, like in every Tuesday. There are aspects of AI and I'm trying very much also to know like what our competitors and what the, you know, sales tech is like, super, you know, super dense ecosystem. So you're trying to think, okay, that's interesting. And we can also do that. We can also do that or pieces of that. So I'm trying to be very involved in like everything is happening in this ecosystem.

Okay, are you using any other thing apart from when. Of course, I'm sure we all are in some way or another. Some of the AI tools which are, let's say, not your direct competitor in any way, which you think, okay, you know what, this can actually automate some of the stuff I'm doing or if I have this, this is making my life better.

Yeah, we use the AI components of HubSpot as HubSpot users. So they have a couple of cool things about that. I think that. And I know I'm not doing Prospecting myself, I'm doing like more warm introductions but I know that our SDR team, couple of, you know, prospecting tools. So I think, you know, personally for myself it's many GPT winning and HubSpot, but maybe I'm using others on my day to day. I need to think about it.

No worries, no worries. My final question to you is, and this is a question I ask everybody, what is one company you really admire and why?

Wow. I think that, you know, it's two companies. Okay. And maybe it's always, you know, it always goes to the founder. I think that Marc Benioff did something really big. Like everybody hates Salesforce but not that they hate Salesforce per se. They had hate the admin work and the app itself. And I think that the ability, the ability to see something is not working well. Be distractive, to be bold. Like he did like, you know, he was giving papers out of Oracle events and you know, he did like a lot of mess. I really can relate to that. And I think that he's a very marketing oriented CEO, which I can totally relate. And I think that's one of the founders. I really can relate. And on the other, on the other hand, I think like I just. On Netflix, Sorry, it's a whole different story. I just saw on Netflix about the founder of WWE or WWF and also from Vince McMahon, Vince McKenna.

I mean, I don't remember, but yeah, you're right.

Yeah. So. And I think that what is super interesting about that is understanding that the narrative is the only thing that matters. I came from a political background. Like I was to be elected as the chairman of the Hebrew University. You need to run campaigns, political campaigns and the students vote for you. And it was like 20,000 students. So it's not, you know, it's not prime minister, but it is a political campaign. And like in political campaign you need to take the mindset and to make people feel something about you. Usually positive, but it could be also negative because they, they know who you are and like you move the needle. I think that he's like, he did really bad things and I'm not taking his moral as. But I think that the perception that narrative is the only thing that matter, Reality doesn't matter. Narrative is what matter and narrative is what you keep saying and what you generating in the reality. I think that's something that I, as a marketeer, I can really relate to that. So I'm very attracted to CEOs who are marketing oriented.

It's amazing. I think you and I will probably hit it off. I think alike, I think. And that's the reason, you know, I'm not. I'm actually. I run a similar company. I run a tech company as well, where I. I'm actually handled the marketing and the growth side, and I love doing that. And I think that's the reason I kind of liked everything you saw on the website. I saw on your website. And that's the reason I would definitely reach out to your marketing team after, of course, the podcast goes live so that I have a connection.

Let's do it. Let's do it. I would love that.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Eldad, for coming here.

It was fun. Bye. Bye.

Bye.