727 - Future of Marketplaces in Sales, with Jeff Torbeck
Welcome to another episode of sales transformation brought to you by Leadium. Today, we have Jeff Torbeck on to discuss the future of marketplaces and the importance of brand building in sales. Colin, back to you.
Collin Mitchell:Alright. Welcome to another episode of sales transformation brought to you by Leadium. I'm your host, Colin Mitchell. And today, we've got Jeff Torbeck on. He is the VP of revenue over at Gun.
Collin Mitchell:Io. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Torbeck:Welcome. Thanks, Colin. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Looking forward to to this conversation. We were chatting a little bit before, so I know that there's gonna be lots of, nuggets here for our listeners, but give us a little bit of background on yourself.
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. So I've I've basically been in the marketplace business for the last 12 year 10 years. I started at LinkedIn, then went over to Hired, which is marketplaces for software engineers, then, ended up at Betts building their platform for go to market. Had a quick stint at, Clipboard Health doing their marketplace stuff for nurses. And now I'm at Gundaio, which is a marketplace for software engineers to be able to find, you know, full time or freelance work.
Jeff Torbeck:So as we kind of discussed a little bit before, I love the marketplace space. I think it's the future, so I just can't get out of the space.
Collin Mitchell:You clear clearly love marketplaces.
Jeff Torbeck:I do. I think it's the future, and I you know, it's a it's a fun and challenging space to be in, but I think there's a lot of upside if we can, you know, get it right.
Collin Mitchell:What what is it that you love so much about marketplaces?
Jeff Torbeck:I think the way of connecting both sides to be able to figure out what they want. Right? I always think of it as, like, the match .com or something like that for, like, people finding a job. Companies don't wanna be over alone run with resumes today, and candidates don't wanna just, like, be slinging resumes out to hope that they can find a job. From a marketplace side, the marketplace model can give candidates the ability to really look for the opportunity that they're looking for, not necessarily just the company.
Jeff Torbeck:Because I think when a lot of lot of candidates are like, hey, I'm looking for a job. Who can help me? And people raise their hand and go, oh, cool. Like, what are your top five companies? I'll try to make introduction.
Jeff Torbeck:Most of the time, they don't have those nailed down. They have some, like, cool companies they think they would want to work for, but it's more of, like, what projects do you want to work on? What do you want to build? Like, if you're in sales, what size deal do you want to sell? What kind of industry do you want to be in?
Jeff Torbeck:Like, that's the kind of stuff you can find on a marketplace, and most of the time get introduced to companies that were never on your radar. And vice versa for the company side, companies can really have the ability to find the right people without just sorting through resumes and hoping that, like, the right person's gonna apply to their gig.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and what do you think are some of the I mean, you know, the the landscape has changed a lot. Right?
Collin Mitchell:The a lot of companies, you know, sort of took this revenue at all cost approach, and they can't anymore, but that's all they know. So, you know, just kinda curious to see what your thoughts of why that doesn't work anymore. What are some of the common mistakes maybe specifically around marketplace businesses?
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. I think, high level, the challenge today is that it's harder to get funding at the percentage you want. Right? Like, you can go get funding today and last year and things like that, but you have to give up so much for it. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:Because 2 years ago, valuations were so high. It's like Mhmm. There were a $1,000,000,000 company there were companies that were value like, value had an evaluation at, like, a $1,000,000,000, but only had, like, 10,000,000 in revenue. Right? It's like that gap, like, to raise the next round after that is pretty tough.
Jeff Torbeck:Right? And so this idea of just, hey, we'll raise a round, and we'll just put butts in seats, and we'll race like hell to the next round of funding, which should be 9, 10, 12 months down the road. Doesn't happen anymore. Like, rounds now are 16 to 18 months apart, and that's a lifetime for a start up. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:Most start ups don't have 2 years of runway. Like, they're lucky if they have 1 year of runway if things don't go perfectly. And so I see the shift going to, like, how do you run a eventually a profitable business? Hopefully, it is profitable. But how are you building enough efficiency into the process to where you're showing that you're on a path to profitability?
Jeff Torbeck:Right? There was this focus, I think, a while ago where, like, you had to be profitable to get really good terms on, like, the investments that you get or the funding that you get. And now it's like, okay. They might not be profitable because they're gonna take some of that money, take a big bet to move the needle farther, that's where I think we're seeing the shift go to.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Yeah. And and it it's kind of always, blown my mind how profitability wasn't more of a priority in the past.
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. I was at Salesforce in the early days. Like, I think I was, like, employee 3,000, which seems big, but since they're, like, 50,000 today, that doesn't. And I remember, like, lavish, Christmas parties and things like that. They were going to buy the space in Mission Bay to build their new office, and they were gonna pay cash for it.
Jeff Torbeck:And, like, they we weren't they weren't profitable. So it's like, why were we spending all this money? And it just didn't matter back then. Like, they just saw the, like, the upside of it, and that was enough for investors to be like, cool. We'll just keep pumping money into it.
Jeff Torbeck:And I think that ran a long way because there's a ton of VC money out there. And most VCs, you know, wanna have you know, they really only need 10 1 of 10, you know, companies to hit for them to see the profitability. And I think we're seeing that shift now to where we need to run smarter, more profitable businesses. I mean, I think I've heard EBITDA more in the last 6 months than I've ever heard the term used. I think, you know, accounting and people knew that on the back end, but, like, it's coming up in revenue meetings.
Jeff Torbeck:Marketing people are talking about it. It's now a company thing, just like I think revenue has shifted to be a team sport. Like, getting to profitability and having good EBITDA so that your company looks good on paper is, like, cross functional now, where I think it was just an accounting thing and just a financing previously.
Collin Mitchell:And do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing?
Jeff Torbeck:I think it's a great thing. I think we were running businesses just to make money and have a big revenue number. And say I got to 10,000,000 and how fast you got to 50,000,000 or how fast you got to 100,000,000, but it's like, what if like, if you got to 10,000,000 but it costs you 9,000,000 to get there, that's really not that good of a business. Right? I'd rather see a $5,000,000 business that they spend $1,000,000 to get there.
Jeff Torbeck:Right? That's a much better gap, and it also protects you from the downturns. And I think we saw that a lot. Yeah. Not in COVID for sure, but I think 2023 really hurt a lot of businesses, because they couldn't go and get the money.
Jeff Torbeck:And they were just focused on, like, well, if we just get more revenue, we get more revenue. They didn't think about how do we be more efficient on that. Right? Do we lean into content more? Do we lean into networks more?
Jeff Torbeck:Do we lean into, like, meeting people at events, which, you know, can have a bigger ROI? That's the focus now. And I just think it's a really interesting space, because the companies that are doing really, really well, and a lot of, like, the small start ups that are coming up now, are basically making a name for themselves on LinkedIn, socially through their networks before they're, like, essentially launching themselves. So they already have this, like, group of fans that are ready to support them at all cost.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Yeah. And there's even, like, been you know, I mean, this is not a new concept, but more of, companies being like really transparent and, you know, building in public, you know, which even accelerates that sort of, you know, raving fans even more.
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. I think people wanna be a part of it. Right? And I like the idea of building in public. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:I think the old school way to look at it is, like, if we have good SEO and we just throw a bunch of money to be at the top of search bars, that we're gonna get it. But I don't think the I think the buyer journey has changed. Right? We we know it for sure that, like, buyers are coming in a lot lot more educated than they ever were. So, like Yeah.
Jeff Torbeck:You're not really starting at the top of the funnel. Right? I was like winning by design's bow tie funnel because, like, they're already, like, pretty deep into what their knowledge is about it, and you're either, like, confirming their knowledge or, like, kind of helping the customer understand their knowledge was wrong or what they read was incorrect, so that you can help kind of paint the picture of how they need to solve their problems. Where, like, before, 5 or 10 years ago, sales was about, like, I have no idea what you do in this space. Start educating me.
Jeff Torbeck:And it's like, if you were the first one there to kinda educate them on the space, like, you had a customer for life because they didn't wanna go and find data elsewhere.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And where do where do you think marketplaces fit in sort of this transition of, you know, buyers that are much more educated and, you know, typically wait until they're very far down the process before they actually wanna talk to a salesperson.
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. I think it's the marriage between, like, we wanna move away from agencies because we don't wanna pay 30, 40% for a hire. But also, like, we know we can't just hire a recruiter and do it on our do it on our own. Right? The the hardest part of just, like I think if companies didn't have to go outside to hire, they would.
Jeff Torbeck:Right? If they didn't need to use agencies, if they didn't need to use marketplaces, if they didn't need to use job boards, they would. The reality is that's not possible. Right? It's Mhmm.
Jeff Torbeck:If it was, there wouldn't be 100 of agencies. There wouldn't be $1,000,000,000 companies that are agencies and things like that. And so I see marketplaces as, like, plugging the hole in between, where, like, you can empower your team whether you have a recruiter or not. So, like, you know, in a tech platform like Gun. Io, you can have you don't necessarily need a recruiter.
Jeff Torbeck:You could have your hiring manager who needs a hire for their team, who really understands the spec of the person that they need, because it's not just as simple as, oh, I need a front end person or a full stack person. Like, what do you really need them to be able to do? They can use their knowledge. We can make it really efficient for them to find that candidate, and they can move the process along faster. Because I think one of the things I've seen kind of in the last 10 years with Marketplaces is, especially with technical talent, there's a big gap between what recruiters know and what the hiring manager wants.
Jeff Torbeck:And it's, you know, it's not that they're not communicating well. They're just communicating differently, and typically, it doesn't match. Right? The recruiter will try to find, based on just simple skills, like do they have do they know a language? Do they know how to code this?
Jeff Torbeck:Have they used JavaScript before? Something like that. Versus the hiring manager wants to know, like, what projects they use that language on because that shows that they're either capable of doing it or not. And so I see marketplaces as just being a much better way to understand who's actively looking, what are they really bringing to the table, and is it a match. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:And match being what they've done previously, our salaries or or hourly rates, you know, within what we're we want to spend on this. You really don't have that kind of transparency when you just post a job or go to a recruiter and things like that.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And where else do you see, you know, marketplaces being a good fit outside of hiring talent?
Jeff Torbeck:I think I think a big part of the marketplaces and one of the things we did at at Hired, I think, pretty well was educating the world on what's happening in that space. Right? What does it cost to have engineers onshore versus offshore? There's this new term out there called nearshore, where they're offshore, but they're in the right time zones. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:So they could be in Brazil and still line up with, like, East Coast time zones or things like that. I think it's a it's a way to educate people on where the market's going, because I still think we're trying to figure out this remote first world. There's a lot of companies that are trying to bring people back in office, you know, 2 days a week, 3 days a week. And that's great for some people. And I definitely think, like, younger people should go in, kinda understand the culture, and then have the flexibility.
Jeff Torbeck:But what's made it challenging is, you know, there are a lot of people moving to cheaper areas, things like that. And so how do you help kind of have the cost conversation of, you know, tier one cities in the U. S. Were basically San Francisco and New York. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:So if I move to Iowa, why should I be paid the same as somebody that has a cost of living in New York? And and when COVID first happened and everybody said, oh, we're going to go remote. We're not going to change your salary. Well, now they're realizing that, like, that doesn't scale for them, and it doesn't make it efficient. So I see marketplaces being able to really help kind of educate what's the reality of the talent that's available, where are they located, what do you really have to pay for them.
Jeff Torbeck:Because I think one of the biggest things, and I think a lot of the surprises for organizations today is offshore talent has gotten more expensive. It's caught it's catching up to the US. It's still behind. Right? Because just cost of living is very different.
Jeff Torbeck:But that's a big kind of like stake in the ground for organizations, because 8, 10 years ago, you know, you used to be able to hire a ton of engineers in India for a fraction of the price that you hire, you know, people based in the US. And so now it's more of, do you want people in time zones that can work on projects similarly, or do you want to find kind of the least expensive talent and you don't really care where they are? So that's where I see marketplaces fitting in.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Yeah. And just kinda curious to see some more of your thoughts around, okay, if there's a kind of shift in a focus, where revenue at all costs can't be the playbook. What are some of the things that, you know, some of these younger companies need to be focusing on?
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. I think brand's important. At least people know who you are. Right? And then and the reason for that is and I've seen companies like Apollo and warmly do that pretty well to you.
Jeff Torbeck:Like, I think we talked about it, like building in in public. I think warmly is doing a great job building in public, if you if you wanna say it that way. And I think what that allows is for people to understand what you do, because sales is all timing, right, and people buying your products is all timing. If they don't need your product right now, it doesn't matter if you're the leader in your group or you have the best product. So building in public and having a brand of, like, what you guys do and what you offer allows that when people are ready to make an evaluation, you make the list.
Jeff Torbeck:Right? Hopefully, you're the 1st person they reach out to and things like that. I think the also thing it allows you to do is when you have the notoriety and and people are talking about you, you don't necessarily need such a huge development team where you're just, like, making thousands of calls a day, sending thousands of emails, a day to try to get people to have a meeting with you. You know, it's not this 1% conversion rate now, where if I send a 1,000 emails, I'll get enough people to fill the funnel. It's now focused on, like, how do we have smarter teams, more full cycle type reps that can basically deal with these warm leads, Right?
Jeff Torbeck:People that already know about your brand, people that already know about your product. You've been able to figure out intent or something like that, that they would be a good fit for you based on how you built your ICPs and potentially you have intent data, that you're reaching out at the right time. And I think that's where we're gonna start to see it. And I think we had to build such big teams before because we just assumed the more people we talk to, the more deals we're gonna get. And I think today, buyers are way more sophisticated, and you really need to tell them and guide them on, like, why this product is gonna solve the problems you have.
Jeff Torbeck:And I think that's first by educating them that you actually know how to solve their problems. Right? Whether it's customer stories or things like that.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Yeah. It's a such a good point. I think brand is you know, obviously, there's a lot of people that have caught on to this, but it's still one of the most, like, underrated, you know, high value, activities for, especially for younger startups, you know? I've built a business without a brand, built a business with a brand.
Collin Mitchell:And I can tell you with a brand, it is so much easier. Like, the it can cut the timeline in half of what it takes you to get to 1, 5, or even 10, just by leveraging brand. And especially if you get, you know, maybe not just the founder or founders, if you get your entire team to participate, it can be very effective.
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And it's it does cut the time in half. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:If if you go to events or things like that, and they're like, oh, what does your organization do? I've never heard of you. It's like, okay. We're really starting from 0. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:But if it's like, oh, you're with, like, all these other companies, and this is what you guys do at a high level. It's like, cool. You're already, like, partly educated on it. Now let's just talk about differentiators and, like, why we're different and why we may be a fit for you or not. Right?
Jeff Torbeck:I think that's the real value that having the brand and the marketing and and really the, like, sense of people understanding what you do before you get to them is just paramount today.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Jeff, it's been awesome having you on. Any final thoughts, and where's the best place for people to get into your world?
Jeff Torbeck:Yeah. Best place is LinkedIn. I don't I don't try to multichannel it too much on there. I think it's just a great platform for for people to get together. I always love reaching out to people and chatting with people.
Jeff Torbeck:So, hit me up, just on my LinkedIn there. Send me a message. Happy to connect with anybody, and then I'm always willing to jump on the phone with people and chat about career moves, motion upward, and things like that. So just look me up on LinkedIn.
Collin Mitchell:Awesome. We'll drop the link there in the show notes to make it easy for you. If you enjoyed today's episode, please write us a review, share the show with your friends, helps us reach more sellers and sales leaders to transform the way that they sell.
