IAM2649 – CEO Helps Sellers Eliminate Administrative Burden through Sales Intelligence Platform

Transcription:

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Yoni Tserruya Teaser 00:01
The main challenge of the sales people is that they have so much admin work in their day-to-day and they're not spending enough time with customers. So with AI, our solution now is focused on we're going to take off your plate all the non-selling activities so sellers can just sell and be in front of customers.

Intro 00:22
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:48
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have an awesome guest on the show today.
I have Yoni Tserruya. Yoni, excited to have you on the show.

Yoni Tserruya 00:57
Hey, thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to be here and look forward to discuss. Let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 01:03
Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to discuss as well too. Yoni's doing so many awesome things that, of course, before we jump in and have that conversation, In that powerful conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Yoni so you can hear about some of those awesome things he's been working on.

And Yoni is the co-founder and CEO of Lusha, a product-first founder without a sales background. He's building one of the fastest growing sales tech platforms in the world by obsessing over what makes salespeople actually sell.

Under Yoni's leadership, Lusha pioneered the sales streaming category, helping sales teams move from guesswork to real time signal based outreach. And one of the things I was reading before we had this recording is that Lusha began actually as a side project while he was working as an iOS developer. And after one year, the project gained significant traction, led him to, of course, pursue it full time.

So I think that's one of the big things that everybody thinks when they start something, they have to jump all the way in. But I love that you were able to have that. as a side project. And one of the things I was reading on his LinkedIn, he says, the future belongs to the teams that are built as human AI from day one.

And that's what they're doing at Lusha. So, Yoni, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Yoni Tserruya 02:10
Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 02:11
Awesome. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit. Let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started.
What do you call your CEO story?

Yoni Tserruya 02:20
You know, it's all started. I mean, I remember myself from day one as a builder. So, I always build stuff. When I was 15, 16 years old, I built websites even without no coding.

I just copy and paste stuff and hope that it will work. And this is how I started to work with computers. I think it started when I was doing the university and I started to build stuff and during university, just when I ended it, I got accepted to be an iOS developer and I started to learn how to build apps and really like, you know, user experience, simplicity, all this kind of stuff.

This is how everything started. But as a side effect from this project, I got to learn how to work with data, how people search in data, how can I find accurate data. And I did it for a few years in mobile applications. But then I realized that it's not big enough or it's like, it's kind of be a real company.

And then it's got shifted to the B2B need of people who need to look for connections or how to connect with people online. So this all started as bootstrap side project. Lusha was a side project that me and Asaf said, it's interesting. We think we can do something better than the competition.

Let's try. We had targets for ourselves as a side project. We said, let's hope that it's going to do after two years, 100K a month, we'll be happy. That's the side project.

Everything went just better than expected because we iterated fast and we just, you know, figure out stuff and And over the time, we just, you know, every year we realize that these things can be bigger than we thought in the beginning.

And it's just mainly it's a bottom-up story of builders who didn't thought at the beginning it can be big, but every few months you learn more and understand, okay, it can be bigger, let's try. And I think that that's the general, you know, journey that we've got so far.

Gresham Harkless 04:45
Nice. Well, I love that you shared that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more on how you're working with and serving your clients. Could you take us through a little bit more of what you're doing at Lusha and how you're making that impact for the clients you work with?

Yoni Tserruya 04:56
So Lush is a sales intelligence platform and we help sellers to find their next customer. The platform began with, you know, you come and you need to search for your leads.

But what's happening right now is that The main challenge of salespeople is that they have so much admin work in their day-to-day and they are not spending enough time with customers. So with AI, our solution now is focused on, we're going to take off your plate all the non-selling activities so sellers can just sell and be in front of customers.

And we do that in a way that we basically learn the user behavior, the customer behavior. We understand what leads our best work this company and then we stream recommendations for this user, for this customer. So it's kind of similar to what's happening in the music industry, if you like. In the past, we used to build playlists manually to listen to music.

Today, you have Spotify, which tells your taste and when you listen for two songs, it can continue in the same trend. So for sales, it's something similar to that. We learn what is the profile of the ICP that is best for you at any given moment, and we try to recommend you that.

It's a very complex problem in the AI, but we understand that this is where the world is going to, and today we're able to generate pretty good signals to customer, and we just improve it all day long.

We believe salespeople, we just need to be in human interactions and build trust and all the rest, the system should do. So that's what we're building and delivering that to customers already right away.

Gresham Harkless 06:49
Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like that is what I would like to call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but is that ability to kind of hold both and understand it's not either or, it's not either technology, either human, but it's both and better.

Do you feel like understanding that and being able to kind of have that into the culture, it sounds like, and foundation of what you build is part of your secret sauce?

Yoni Tserruya 07:10
Yeah, I think it's similar. I mean, our secret sauce since day one was the combination between the data, the quality of the data and the simplicity of using it. We were always very user focused and in a way that we are building things in a simple way so that everyone can just use it and start instantly. I think that, but I think that, you know, data accuracy is still number one priority all the time.

I do think simplicity is now changing dramatically because simplicity when we started was, you know, simple user experience, very click user interface and all those kinds of stuff. I think today, this volume of user interface is and the system will do it for you. So a lot of the simplicity went to be on the back end. You just need to ask and the expectation is that you will get the answer.

The value of simplicity is, in my opinion, is still strong because Most people, a lot of people are not technical. They're not professional in what they do. They need to be a multidisciplinary people that can do several things. And the simplicity of ability to do things in a simple way, I think it's crucial.

It's even crucial today. It's just the way to do it is different.

Gresham Harkless 08:44
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an App a book or even a habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Yoni Tserruya 08:56
I think that one of the things that works really well for me for day one was the ability to break the ceiling wall. The glass wall is like a lot of time exists around CEO that getting access to the CEO or being like to connect with him is sometimes feels like pretty hard, like there is a distance between CEO and people.

And I think one of the things that I am able to do is just create a very transparent and authentic environment where you can just talk about anything, ask anything, and you get access to all the information so you can do your work in the best way. So for example, everyone in the company can see all the metrics, can have access to all the data so they can make decisions.

For example, we're making a session of Ask Me Anything every month. People can just come and ask anything they like and I answer everything. I don't know what they're going to ask, but I answer everything.

And I think what it creates, and you know, there is a lot of it, like I walk around sometimes and I talk to a lot of people and it just interests me and I care about them, really care about them and what they do.

So I think this creates, an environment of trust between employees and the leadership. And even when things arise, because there are always things that happen, concerns, discussions that happens between people, when they come to you and you can answer it, I think it's reduced the noise and the volume.

So the company can stay on the essence and less on all the politics. I think in a lot of ways, very little, a very small amount of politics in the company, which I think is one of the things that creates unique environment.

People love that, love to come to work, love the company. And I think it's created a pretty unique culture, which nobody taught me to do it, but that's what's what happened naturally. So after a few years, I realized that it's actually something that's really helped us to get the best out of people. And yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:17
Yeah. So what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you opt into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Yoni Tserruya 11:29
I think at the beginning, we were a bootstrap company for four years. And I remember that back then, because we were bootstrapped and it was founder's own company, we did everything as we thought was right. And we just did what we thought was right.

We were eager to run. And I think what happened then we raised money. At the beginning, we just stayed the same, but after a while, I think you start to do all those best practices stuff. And I think best practices, once you start to do a lot of best practices and do everything like others are doing and hire people like others are hiring and you've got to put like best practices.

If you do like everyone else, you are becoming more and more average like everyone else. So I think good company, they can do things in a normal way, but they have to have to have few things. that they're doing in a unique way that stands them out, like they make their performance better than the rest, that make them excellent, not like everyone else. And it can be even sometimes a fanatic thing that you are doing.

Yeah, but it's like, it should be something that you are different. And over the years, I realized that, well, I don't wanna do all those best practices things. I wanna do what's right for us, what's right for me, what's right for our product. And when went back to take decisions on the things that's right for us.

And so I think I encourage people to do what they think is right and not what other things is common or the right thing to do. A lot of times you do know or you do know that something doesn't feel you're right.

And if it doesn't feel you're right as a founder, it's not going to last because it's going to be hard for you to to protect it and to do it for the long run. So it's basically to encourage people to listen to themselves and do what's right for them.

I think that's what will make you unique. And if you're not unique, you're just like anyone else.

Gresham Harkless 13:36
Yeah. So now I want to ask you one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Yoni, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Yoni Tserruya 13:50
It's big, but I think be the fastest learner person in the company. In general, I will say you, the CEO is the person who replaces job every few months, the focus area every few months, you're a problem solver and you need to be very flexible to get into areas you've never been before.

And you basically need to replace your job, but nobody's telling you, you need to replace your job. You just need to be wherever the company currently had the highest bottleneck and you just need to be there.

So the bottleneck is every time moving to another area and you need to figure it out. So it's like, you have to be very fast learner because that's your switching job. But also, if you are not learning, you are becoming the silver glass of the company. You need to grow, you need to take everyone with you for the next level.

Otherwise you are blocking things without even noticing. So I think, I think it's both, you know, learning and speed. It is just, those are the two things that I found myself doing from day one. And every time I did it, I felt like the company jumped to another level immediately.

And every time I didn't, I felt like the company stuck. Um, and, um, You need to be comfort also with the idea that you're not good enough. You need to learn every time. It's just, it's just constant, uh, it's constant iteration.

Exactly. As we spoke about the product, it's like we are, I'm the product anyway. I need to do the same thing for myself. I need to, to constantly learn and constantly upgrade myself that that's, that's how I feel every day.

Gresham Harkless 15:48
Absolutely. Well, Yoni, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get out of you, your team, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Yoni Tserruya 16:04
The website, the company, I mean, answer everything, anyone.

Gresham Harkless 16:18
Absolutely. And of course, to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Yoni Tserruya 16:18
Thank you. This was a great time.

Outro 16:20
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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