January 23, 2024

Blending Sales Expertise and AI Innovation with Thibault Brioland

In this episode of sales therapy Thibault and Alper delve into the sales strategies to get from 0 to $10M ARR and the benefits of all-bound go-to-market.

Meet our guest

Thibault Brioland, CEO & Co-founder at Humanlinker — a cutting-edge AI Sales Assistant that helps revenue generation teams close more deals through hyper-personalization.

Thibault is an experienced sales specialist and start-up advisor with + 12 years of work experience in various Tech Start-ups (B2B SaaS - Adtech - MarTech).

Key takeaways

  • Embrace AI-driven personalization to enhance every sales touchpoint and streamline time-consuming tasks.
  • Leverage AI to analyze data points and craft tailored sequences for each prospect, empowering sales teams with invaluable guidance.
  • Find the sweet spot between sales-assisted PLG and direct sales approaches to engage diverse buyer personas effectively.
  • Stay informed about industry trends while prioritizing customer feedback to drive business decisions.
  • Opt for precision-targeted, personalized outreach over mass communication tactics to safeguard brand reputation and maximize sales impact.

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From early years to recent fundraising

The conversation delves into Thibault's childhood and early life in the sunny South of France, emphasizing his interest in sports and connection to family members who were entrepreneurs or salespeople. The host explores Thibault's current hobbies, including mountain biking, golf, and kitesurfing, and discusses the expansion plans of Humanlinker, with a potential future office in the U.S.

Next, the discussion shifts to Thibault Brioland's recent fundraising experience with his current startup. He shares the story of the company's creation with a venture capital firm from Switzerland in 2021 and the subsequent fundraising rounds, including the pre-seed and seed rounds in 2022, totaling three to five million dollars.

Thibault highlights the notable investors who joined the capital, and emphasizes the importance of having existing investors, like the venture capital firm that invested in 2022, contribute more to accelerate the project towards a significant Series A round by the end of the year.

Thibault then explains the strategic reasons behind the fundraising, mentioning the acquisition of MyProfilia, a Luxembourg-based company, to enhance their AI and personalization capabilities. The discussion touches on the company's transition from a software focused on CRM connections to a broader platform with a Chrome extension, integrating product-led growth (PLG) motion to expand globally and efficiently engage with prospects.

“We need to help and to guide from prospecting to closing the deals, salespeople to save time on time-consuming tasks for sure, and to help them be more impactful in every touch point, you know, because the first situation is the decreasing of meeting book ratio and the low reply rates in the album for sure. But the second is like time time-consuming task for salespeople in their day-to-day.”

Leading the AI revolution in sales

Thibault explains the genesis of Humanlinker, born from his firsthand experience and frustration with the challenges of sales. He recounts his journey from sales consulting to founding Humanlinker, driven by the need for personalized and efficient sales processes amidst the inundation of generic outreach.

"So I feel the pain that I'm solving with Humanlinker, actually, so I first felt the pain during my previous role. And after that, I was helping founders of startups, better generate revenue and be more structured in the sales process.”

He also highlights the role of AI in saving time on time-consuming tasks and enhancing personalization in sales, leading to the creation of a technology capable of analyzing data points to generate impactful sequences tailored to each prospect. He discusses Humanlinker's unique approach within the sales tech landscape, focusing on AI intelligence and personalization, and its capability to support the entire sales process from prospecting to closing deals:

"We wanted to focus more into the intelligence, how to better understand the prospect, the companies, et cetera."

Thibault emphasizes that Humanlinker's technology works across the spectrum of sales development and closing deals, providing guidance and insights to salespeople based on data analysis and personality assessment:

"For example, we have like tips to better close deals and to better negotiate with someone thanks to AI and self to the personality analysis."

Thibault emphasizes the importance of data in training AI models to produce impactful content and highlights the simplicity of understanding and utilizing public data for this purpose. He also discusses the challenges faced by sales teams in crafting personalized emails and the time-consuming nature of the process. Alper acknowledges the significance of such technology in alleviating these challenges and streamlining the sales process, making it more efficient and effective.

The synergy of sales-led and product-led motion 

In this section, Thibault and Alper discuss the challenges of targeting the right audience and the integration of sales-led and product-led growth (PLG) strategies. Thibault emphasizes the difficulty in determining the target market within the vast sales tech industry and the need to balance between sales-assisted PLG and direct sales. 

"I think there are different kinds of targets, you know. For example, currently, the target and the buyer in the PLG motion could be small business owners around the world in the UK, the US, and Europe as well. And it could be sales reps as well. But most of the time, it's sales rep because in the PLG motion for us, it's without any CRM connection. But if we analyze that someone with the one plan in the PLG motion, could be a good user with his team on the team plan with all the CRM connections, we need to be more proactive."

He further explains the complexities of targeting different buyer personas and the nuances of implementing PLG motions, reflecting on their own strategy adjustments. They also touch upon the importance of seeking inspiration from others in the industry while maintaining conviction and customer focus:

"I listened like podcasts, rea some books, et cetera... But the best way to, for example, make some modification on your business model is to listen your customer and listen to the users, you know and better understand the market."

They discuss the shift towards a more qualitative approach in sales prospecting, emphasizing the importance of quality over quantity:

"I think it's one of the best advice I can give to the audience. It's to be more focused on more qualitative approach... Because the quantitative approach, it could be tough for your brand as well, for your company."

Resources

Full episode transcript

Alper Yurder: So today in the therapy chair, we have Thibault Brioland, who is the CEO and co-founder of Humanlinker. Thibault is your outbound guru, a startup advisor with 12 years of experience. And he just went through another round of raising in the middle of this sugar storm. So I'm sure he has a lot of good stories to share there. We'll talk about his success, the joy, the pain, and the journey. Welcome to Sales Therapy, Thibault. How are you feeling today?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, hey Alper, feeling good. Thanks for the invitation and let's go.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. So maybe let's start with a little very quick intro from these past few years. And you just went through your fundraising and again, I mean, we raised a year ago when it was already tough. You just raised recently. I imagine it was even tougher. Do you want to brag a little about it? Very, very rightfully.

Thibault Brioland: Let's do it. So first thing for the invitation, very happy to be part of the podcast. So I'm Thibault Brioland, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Humanlinker, 31 years old, located in France, I'm French as well. And so I created Humanlinker, it's basically a cutting-edge AI self-assistance that helps self-suggestion generate more pipeline and close more deals through AI and personalization as well, uh, sales background, started my career in 2011. And, um, I started as a sales rep in door to door. I was in charge of selling joinery, no, like the city, the TV show, white gold in the UK. Uh, I was in charge of, sorry, it was in the South of France and I was in charge of setting door to door.

Alper Yurder: Oh wow, the real deal! Yeah, yes.

Thibault Brioland: joinery, shuttles, like adding insulation, et cetera. And it was really, really difficult because when you are 18 years old and you are on the field, like, and you are, you need to sell this kind of product, it will be difficult, but it shaped me in the good way for the future. And so quickly I jumped in the digital ecosystem.

Alper Yurder: Oh my god.

Thibault Brioland: And I was like, I can executive business developer for several companies, most of the time in the SaaS industry and the market ecosystem as well. And so I did, I made a business school and the particularity of this business school, it was in like sandwich course. That is to say, I was working for a company in the same time, three weeks.

Alper Yurder: Mm-hmm.

Thibault Brioland: in the company one week at the business school. So it helped me to better understand the job of a sales rep, to sign my full deals and to improve my skills for sure. And it was very, very interesting to get all this experience as a sales people. And I...

Alper Yurder: Okay, excellent. Well, we'll get to the experience where you straight jump straight to it because you skipped the younger years and I won't let you do that. So I, and I want to know about the fundraising story, but let's follow the process then. Okay. Let me start it with any good therapy starts with childhood and growing up. And let's hear a little bit your, your background story, your younger years before school and everything. Like how was your childhood? How did it shape the person that you are today? You already started mentioning the hardships.

Alper Yurder: and how it shaped you, but let's hear a bit more on that.

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, before to start my studies, to be honest, I wasn't a good student because, you know, sitting on the chair all week long, it was like too boring for me. That's why I needed something different. And that's why I started to work in the sandwich course as well after my graduation. And so I grew up in the South of France, near the sea, lot of sports like mountain biking, running, et cetera, et cetera, golf as well. And so I had a chance to grow up in a very sunny place. That's why after many years, I decided to quit my job in Paris and to go back to the South of France. And yeah, pretty happy childhood. And I don't know if I was like dedicated since childhood to the job of salespeople, but yeah, it's like that.

Alper Yurder: Okay, is there anyone else who was interested in selling in your family? Like who was an entrepreneur or salesperson? Any anything like that?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, my grandfather was a salesperson, so it was a long time ago, maybe, and my father is a golf teacher and for a long time he worked by himself, you know, as an entrepreneur as well and so yeah, I think.

Alper Yurder: There you go. So we found the root cause. Mmm, I love it.

Thibault Brioland: It helped me better understand how to run a business and how to create something from nothing, etc. So I think it shaped me.

Alper Yurder: I love to create something from nothing. We'll touch on that. Do you continue those hobbies, mountain biking, golf, et cetera?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I have time to do it during the weekend, et cetera, I just started kitesurfing as well a few months ago in the south of France. And I'm just back from Morocco. I was there for kitesurfing as well in the south of Morocco. It was a blast. So...

Alper Yurder: Oh, I love it. Oh man, you're living the dream. That sounds really cool in the sunny south of France and then traveling all those places. But you said you have an office in Paris, I believe in our intro chat. Whereabouts is that?

Thibault Brioland In the west of Paris, near the house of our head of sales, Romain, we decided to create an office in Paris because it's better to interact with our partners and our customers as well and our investors as well. So for the moment, we have only offices in Europe and in France, but we are for sure expanding our business globally. I think the next step would be an office in the US, but I think at the end of the year, after the series, hey, maybe, but we're gonna deep dive on it.

Alper Yurder: Fanta, fantastic. Yeah, there's a lot of French founder friends that I speak to whose patterns are somehow in sunny, beautiful South or somewhere, Lyon or whatever, and then they end up in the US. So you might be the next one to do that.

Thibault Brioland: We'll see.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. And yeah, I want to touch on the recent fundraiser a little bit, just as I said in the beginning, I think this is a really difficult time to raise, but you just closed your round recently. Like who did you raise from? How was that? Was it hard? Easy? Do you have any secrets for anyone raising at the moment? Any tips?

Thibault Brioland Yeah, so maybe to tell you the story about it. So we created the company with a venture capital firm, Swiss from Switzerland. And so we created a company with them in 2021, directly at the beginning of the project, at the creation of the company. And so we make like the first fundraising at that time. And we made another one in 2022, it was like the pre-seed and actually it's the seed round. So we raised from the beginning, like three from five million dollars. And on this round, we have more than 14 business hand jobs added to the capital, including the former CEO of Microsoft in France and South Asia. It was the CEO of Altran as well, like a very large company. It was the global CEO. And we had the chance as well to have the thousand Europe VP of Hubpot. So it's a great opportunity for us to work in close collaboration with HubSpot. And for sure, we have Caristar. So the venture capital firm we invested in the company in 2022 put more money in the project to accelerate and to, I hope, raise a really big Series A until the end of the year. So...

Alper Yurder: That's really great. It's always good when you have existing investors who are putting a bit more money, who are willing to and jumping into.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, and to maybe to give you more context about why we raised funds. So last year we bought a company. So we bought MyProfilia, a company from Luxembourg, and we bought this company, this technology to be more efficient and be more impactful on AI and personalization because I'm going to talk about it after I think, but it's interesting to understand the personality of your prospect to better engage with them. And we bought the company and we launched the PLG motion as well. So that's why we started with the sales-led motion. So we created the software. It was only with like CRM connection, et cetera. And most of the time, I think it's interesting to put some insight for your community, etc. So we created first the technology. So our software connected only with HubSpot, Salesforce, and it wasn't available without any CRM connection. And so it could be difficult to expand your business globally when...because you need a lot of customer success managers, et cetera, et cetera. You only work on like annual commitment deals, et cetera. So we wanted to expand our business globally and faster. And that's why we created from the first software, a part of our technology and we created the Chrome extension. So we added PLG motion to the sales-led motion. And that's why we invested a lot of money into it. We bought MyProfilia as well, and we jumped in the AI generative landscape as well, because we are really into AI generative motion for salespeople. And yeah, so to accelerate, it was better to invest more money and to be for sure more present in the global ecosystem.

Alper Yurder: Okay, so AI. Okay, that all sounds very interesting and timely. And I think a lot of people will take away good, good stuff from that today. But just so I understand, the road to building Humanlinkers. And I always love to understand the founder's story. Like, are you solving your own problem? Are you solving a problem that you see in the market? Obviously you've been in sales. So I guess it's a bit of both. What was the story to building Humanlinker? Like, or what kind of experiences you had before that led to building Humanlinker.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, sure. Loving to explain this kind of situation. So I met my co-founder three years ago. I was living in Marseille at that time. And I was running a company, a sales consulting company, after many years as salespeople in several tech startups. So I feel the pain that I'm solving with Humanlinker, actually, so I first feel the pain during my previous role. And after that, I was helping founders of startups, better generate revenue and be more structured in the sales process. So I helped for like 15 different companies as an acting VP of sales, acting head of sales with my team, implementing some self-technologies, et cetera. And it was all the time still the same pain, you know. It's difficult to prospect, we need to target, it's difficult to get meetings, decision-makers are overhands, et cetera, et cetera. And with Regis, my co-founder, we were at the beginning of the COVID crisis because the beginning of the project is at the beginning of the COVID crisis, you know. So we were wondering about the future of sales and the role of AI into the future of sales. And we say, okay, many, many sales technologies are working to send like sequences, like massive sequences to decision makers. And decision-makers are over them, you know, they receive tons of email with a lack of context, a lack of personalization, etc. day after day and it's very difficult for them. And in the same time, salespeople don't know how to make the difference, how to create another kind of approach that better perform. And so we wonder about the pain, we make some different survey to speak with a lot of salespeople around the world. And we say, okay, we need to put some...more personalization and to give more context inside this sequences, this message. And we need to help and to guide from prospecting to closing the deals, salespeople to save time on time-consuming tasks for sure, and to help them be more impactful in every touch point, you know, because the first situation is the decreasing of meeting book ratio and the low reply rates in the album for sure. I think it's the first thing and one of the biggest on the market actually. But the second is like time time-consuming task for salespeople in their day-to-day. If they need to like better prefer meetings etc they need to find the right information, analyze information, et cetera, it takes some times. And most of the time, if you are other time-consuming tasks, like putting some contact on your CRM, et cetera, it could be difficult to manage. And in the same time, like 68% of salespeople do not achieve that target. So if you see the problem globally, you say, okay, we need to save time on time-consuming task. We need to put some more personalization. On outbound, et cetera. But how to do it for all the different targets that you are reaching to from SMB to enterprise, you need to save time. So we created basically a technology able to analyze tons of data points about a company and about any decision-makers in order to better generate impactful sequences. For example, we are able to analyze the personality of anyone to understand his or her communication preferences in order to better generate with AI the tones of the emails, the sequences, et cetera. If it's possible, for example, to make some jokes, et cetera, et cetera. And it's more impactful and we are able to analyze the increase of the reply rates. For example, so it was the story at the beginning, and we worked in close collaboration with the Venture Capital firm to create all the technology with more than 30 tech engineers.

Alper Yurder: Okay, wow, that's a fascinating story. I'll do a little cut for Buse. Just to make it a bit more interactive and for the story to be more interesting, Thibault, I will cut you because I didn't want to interrupt you, but you spoke there for five minutes nonstop. If I ask you the impactful questions, then you give me all those facts. I think it's gonna be more interesting for everybody. Okay, so what I'll do is, so for example, there were a lot of great stuff, but I couldn't go in. Like the data that you analyze. Like how is it different for personalization from all the other stuff in the world of sales? Like if you let me to get in, I'll make it more impactful for you. Okay. Great. Cut, cut, cut. Done. Boo say great. Great. Okay, man. Those are very timely problems for a lot of people. I'm sure a little sales people. The thing is like this question is that, okay, we all hate emails, outreaches, terrible, a lot of noise, blah, blah. And then everyone comes out and says like, Oh, I'm going to save you. And actually France is a great producer of sales tech tools, like you are among great company. We can dive into that. Like, I don't know why, but France produces great names like Lavender, Guillaume Vache, Waalaxy, so many great tools that you are up against, maybe. Where do you feel like you are among all that crowd? Where do you fit in better or what is your niche? Do you feel like?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, I think we have a different approach from them from, for example, Waalaxy or Lemlist for Lemlist we are partnered with them because we are connected with them because we are more into intelligence, like AI intelligence and they are more into like sending the cadences, et cetera. So I think it's like a different approach.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. Mm-hmm.

Thibault Brioland We wanted to focus more into the intelligence, how to better understand the prospect, the companies, et cetera. So I think it's complimentary. But yeah, in France, there are a lot of good sales tech, but I think, you know, it could be, for example, in the venture capital point of view, it could be crowded. But if you see the market opportunity and the size of the market globally, you know.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, yeah, it's a huge, yeah. I completely agree. I mean, I completely agree that was my point, you know, when starting flow, that we started from my own pain point, which is closing complex deals is difficult and I was thinking like, how many AEs do I see on Apollo and how many of them could use my product and that would save their world. I think that the market opportunity is quite good. Does it work solely with the purpose of sales development or does it also help with closing deals?

Thibault Brioland It's okay, you know, depending on your code. Yeah, so we are working from sales development, prospecting to closing deals. Because for example, I don't want to do some too much promotion about Humanlinker, but we have a part of the technology connected to the Ethereum system, able to guide on a daily basis, salespeople, detect some buying signals, trigger events, about prospect or actual customer in order to give them information about them prioritize the territories like prioritize between accounts between companies so be more impactful For example, if it's a natural customer, you know about the buying signals You can for sure like walk on the upsell or cross-sell for example And the same time we have AI guidance for example through all the data that you have about the company and the decision-makers and personalization as well. For example, we have like tips to better close deals and to better negotiate with someone thanks to AI and self to the personality analysis.

Alper Yurder: Okay. I love that. I think what we can do is in this, I don't generally do this because I try not to do it very primarily, but it's very interesting. So maybe we add the teaser video or something, because I'm looking forward to trying it a little bit as well. It's very interesting. What we try with Flola is a similar approach, like a bit like a sales companion where the product can give a bit of signals about, you know, when do you have to act, what do you have to do? That's all good. I want to talk a bit about AI because I think it's, it's a word that over-vending now is so overused and some people love it. Some people are like, okay, what am I going to do for others? It's just chet GPT. For you, what is AI and how do you see its best implementation with Humanlinker?

Thibault Brioland Yeah, for me, AI, it's all about analyzing tons and millions of data points and creating like some content. For example, in our case, it's it could be sequences, emails, comments, etc. And it's all about helping and yeah, helping salespeople be more impactful and level up their their skills. And in our case, at Humanlinker, so we have like a huge prompt engineering system that's automatically integrated in the technology, able to scan all the information about the company. So it's our own AI able to do it. At the same time, analyzing all the data points about a prospect, including their personality, you know, for the personality, we are basically analyzing the LinkedIn profile, the semantics, the way to write the LinkedIn post, the comments, the studies, professional experiences, et cetera.

Alper Yurder: Mm-hmm. Wow, I wonder what my personality comes out as if I go into a Humanlinker. I think we should do a little video of that for the viewers at some point.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, you can do it. So as you know, like AI, it's like the sentence I love is like data is food for AI, you know. So and we have food, you know, we have food about companies, we have food about prospects and it's better to train AI models and to generate like a very like valuable content. So after sending all this information to OpenAI, but in the future it could be Mistral AI or any other AI technologies, we are able to generate very impactful sequences according to the previous LinkedIn posts, context, the communication preferences, etc. And that's why it's very impactful and that's why it's generate more meetings, etc.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, when you talk about AI, it's almost to me, it sounds like you... Are you an engineer by the way? You're just business, right? Yeah, because the way you explain is quite clear and I feel like sometimes, wow, this guy is so much in the data that he became an engineer just by building the product.

Thibault Brioland No, no. Yeah. No, no, yeah, it's not so complicated to understand. Like, data available, most of the time it's public data about companies, about people, it's okay. Like a press article, a LinkedIn post, et cetera. So AI models are able to, if you give them the right information to analyze the information. If you guide, for example, we are using a specific copywriting framework at Humanlinker generate our sequences, we are using the BASHO style framework. And most of the time, BASHO style, it's very strong email, short email with a lot of context. And most of the time at the beginning, it's used like press article and LinkedIn post to create the introduction at the beginning of the email. And most of the time, we are able to create a link between the beginning of the email the context, you know, like the press article and the value proposition of the company and the key initiative of the future and your value proposition as well.

Alper Yurder: Yeah. I think that's, that's what we tell sales teams to do all the time. And then just, they don't really have the resource to do, or they don't have the time. So something like this is just that godsend definitely.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, we realized two things about it. Since team need to be trained to do it if they don't have access to an AI, how to generate the best copywriting, how to analyze the data, et cetera. And in the same time, it's very time-consuming, you know, so the two different situations that we analyzed and that's why we created this kind of technology.

Alper Yurder: I agree. I mean, it's so difficult. I remember that this was a hundred years ago, but my boss, who was the founder, he was right. Emails with me. He would teach me how to write the emails, the body of an email. I mean, now thinking about it, it just gives me anxiety already. So coming to today a little bit in the therapy to you, let's talk about some of the more current issues you're dealing with in terms of building your business. Like, generally, I like the question to be what brought you to therapy today, which is basically what are you trying to solve? What keeps you awake at night? And yeah, let's talk about that Elizabeth, if you don't mind.

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, sure. Yeah, to talk about the different issues that I had at Humanlinker, I think first it's the targets because around the world you have small business owners, they need to develop their business for sure. Then you have sales teams, but sales teams from small companies, mid-size companies, large companies segments you have, for example, a sales team of small companies selling to small companies, mid-market companies, and large companies. So it's very difficult to understand. I was familiar with that. But it's difficult to say, OK, in which segments my technology creates the best value, the more value. And then,

Alper Yurder: Big companies. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's such a problem that resonates with me as well. I think any founder, where do you target? Yeah.

Thibault Brioland: Yeah. And I think on the sales tech is more difficult than other industries because it's a very, very huge market and you can wonder all the time, who is your target, etc. And in the same time, your product is still improving, etc. So it's going to be difficult. I think it's one of the biggest challenge of all sales tech founders. In the second time, I think it's still the question and still an integration for me, but it's the revenue generated from the PLG motion and the sales-led motion. Because for example, at the beginning, we started with the sales-led motion, you are selling to this president of sales, but after that, the end user are the sales team.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, of course.

Thibault Brioland So you need to have had option from the sales team. But in the same time, if you are selling to like sales team directly, you need adoption. But most of the times are not holding the budgets. So it could be, you know.

Alper Yurder: You know what, I'm going to tell a little personal story of mine, which aligns 100% with this. So I've been in sales forever and complex enterprise sales in the last three, it's been SaaS high velocity. And in my last role before founding Flola, I was like, you know what, I want my product to be PLG, the dream. Any salesperson can go and buy just like, you know, put their credit card and buy just like an Apollo, whatever. And then starting to build Flowla, I quickly realized no one is as advanced in… assigning budgets to their teams. Like it's still a budget holder. It's even if the team is small, there's still a decision-maker. So quickly I realized, well, we need to support this with sales. So now we do sales-assisted PLG. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, yeah, he's the same for us, you know.

Alper Yurder: So what's your solut- Okay, I was gonna ask what's your solution? How are you organizing right now your team around? Go to Market.

Thibault Brioland Yeah, I think it's different kind of targets, you know, because for example, currently the target and the buyer from the PLG motion, it could be like small business owner around the world in the UK, in the US and in Europe as well. And, and it could be like, like a sales rep as well. But most of the time if it's self-trap, because the PLG motion for us, it's without any CRM connection. It could be connected with a lemlist, but that's it. If we analyzed that someone like Bout, like the one plan on the PLG motion and could be a good user with his team on like the team plan with all the CRM connection, we need to be more proactive.

Alper Yurder: Mm-hmm. Figures out, yeah. Yeah.

Thibault Brioland: and to reach to the key user to help him better use this part of the technology and to generate a meaning to sell the entire product, you know, because it's like low value for him month after month.

Alper Yurder: Yeah. When I started building Argo Target Motion, which is a year ago, I was getting inspired by like, I don't know, Notion or the founder of Apollo. I was listening to a lot of podcasts, you know, YouTube, reading books, blah, blah. Do you get your inspiration from others? Like, do you follow anyone else who seemed to be doing all these things? Well, you get advice from or any of that?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, sure. So as you, I listened like podcasts, read it some books, et cetera. I think we had an extraordinary luck to have like many business angels here at Humanlinker experience both enterprise sales and PLG. That's why we received some advices from some of our business angels and you need to have your own conviction about it, you know. So like understand the market and for sure, I think it's important to listen your advisors, your business angel, to read some books. But the best way to, for example, make some modification on your business model is to listen your customer and listen the user, you know and better understand the market, of like the mapping of the market, et cetera. And that's why one of the first employees at Humanicure I hired was a product manager, head of products, to help us better understand the markets, better understand the end users, in order to make some modification into the product and into the way we sell the product, the technology.

Alper Yurder: Mm-hmm. I love that. How many founders are you? Is it just you or? Two of you. Okay. Excellent. Okay.

Thibault Brioland: Two founders and we have a small team of 10 people.

Alper Yurder: Okay, and yeah, we're 10-2. Small, but it's a big, I'm sure you're punching above your weight, so it is a small but big team, I'm sure. So, Yoko Fonda, how did you meet them?

Thibault Brioland: So as I told you in 2019, I created my first company, it was a sales consulting company. And basically I partnered with a venture capital firm. And so I was working for a Swiss venture capital firm. It was VC with a specific way to invest. It was capital as a service. And basically partnered with...

Alper Yurder: Okay, okay, I thought there was another I thought that was another t-ball

Thibault Brioland: Sorry. Yeah, he partnered with different companies and my companies and another one. And Regice was the founder of another company, a tech acceleration company. And Regice, it's an engineer. He started to work on engineering at 14 years old. And after that, he created many companies and in this company, Flexper. He hired 40 engineers. So we had the chance at the beginning of the project to have a lot of engineers to create a Humanlinker. So the founder of the venture capital firm do the go-between at that time. And we started the project like that.

Alper Yurder: Gotcha. Okay. Coming towards the end of the show, the one question that's still hanging in my head and in many people, I think on LinkedIn, for example, there's so much outreach advice, prospecting advice. Like everyone's giving advice. A, I'm interested in hearing your perspective on which advice to take and which not maybe, which you already alluded to, like your own conviction is important. And B. If you were to throw in like practical tips for people using your product or not regardless, but they're out there, they need to hit their numbers, they need to prospect like, and you've been there for a decade over, what are your tips for people? What should they do?

Thibault Brioland: Yeah, I think I really love to speak about like the fight against like quantitative approach and qualitative approach, you know. I see in 2024, we are really into a new way of doing business, a new way of prospecting and we focus more on a more qualitative approach. And it's not important to send like 1000 email per week to find your next 10 customers You need to focus on your ICP focus on the rights on the right target and after that start to send like low quantity of messages, you know and understand feel the answers like speak with them etc. And after when you when you analyzed the small parts of the, like always, like you get success, it's better to put more quantity of the and the biggest volume on the emails, et cetera. And yeah, I think it's one of the best advice I can give to the audience. It's to be more focused on more qualitative approach. Because the quantitative approach, it could be tough for your brand as well, for your company. Because if you are like sending a thousand and thousand cadences, it could be really difficult for your company. And year after year, company need to be careful about it to preserve the image.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, reputation. Absolutely. I completely agree with that. Like start small, test, improve before you hit, you know, full throttle, like blasting 500 emails. Figure out what works for you. I completely agree with that. Well, that's been a great chat Thibault. Before we come to the end of it, do you have any closing remarks for people who are trying to make it in the world of sales or in general about Humanlinker, anything you'd like to share?

Thibault Brioland: God. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think the closing words would be good luck, be strong for this year. I think it could be tough like past year, but focus on the more qualitative approach,

Alper Yurder: Thanks for watching!

Thibault Brioland: And I see, and after that, yeah, better prefer your meetings. Better prefer your meetings to generate more impact in the meetings. I think it's could be one of the biggest success key in 2024 to generate value and to cause more deals.

Alper Yurder: Yeah.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, I agree. I think quality over quantity is something that already some people speak. We just did like a roundup of the best practices and we featured actually your remarks on our blog about, you know, how to prospect in 2024. And one of the interesting quotes I saw was quantity of quality, which I think is a new term. But, you know, you need to do both, unfortunately.

Thibault Brioland: But yeah, and maybe I can give you something to close the conversation, but we're gonna launch something during the next few weeks. It will be quantity and quality in the same time. But...

Alper Yurder: Okay, I think now you're giving people the carrot so they're gonna stick around to see what's coming I mean, we'll definitely be following. Thank you so much to both for being a guest and It was a pleasure chatting with you Thank you for listening to this episode of sales therapy If you want to follow us on Spotify YouTube, you know what to do and you know where to fight people probably on LinkedIn and go and check out Humanlinker. I mean, I definitely will and I want to do that video where

Thibault Brioland: Okay. Thanks, Alper. Thanks for the interview. Yeah, you paid it. Thanks, Alper.

Alper Yurder: We profile my profile so people can know how to prospect me better. Excellent. Thanks, Tiwo.

Thibault Brioland: Yeah. Let's go. See you soon, Alper.

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