Vlad Blagojevic is the co-founder of fullfunnel.io, a B2B marketing consultancy focused on high annual contract value technology companies selling to enterprise buyers. On this episode he walks through how his team helps clients build awareness, identify the right accounts, and turn cold outreach into real pipeline with companies that have long buying cycles and large buying committees.
The conversation covers what Vlad calls the five-five-five analysis for defining an ideal customer profile, why the internal champion does the actual selling, and how one sales rep achieved a 30 percent response rate over six months by working a small list of target accounts with persistent, varied outreach rather than volume. Vlad also explains why he recommends running a three-month manual pilot before adding any expensive technology to the process.
Vlad and Jordan also discuss the difference between personalization and relevance in outreach, why AI-generated messages often produce what one observer called 'uniquely irrelevant' pitches, and how the consulting model Vlad chose reflects a deliberate choice about how he and his co-founder want to work and live.
Vlad Blagojevic is the co-founder of fullfunnel.io, a B2B marketing consultancy that works with high annual contract value technology companies selling to enterprise buyers. He and his co-founder Andre focus on account-based marketing strategy, helping clients build the internal processes and cross-functional habits needed to generate pipeline from large, complex accounts. They also run training programs and recently published a book aimed at B2B CMOs navigating long sales cycles in an era of AI.
Full transcript of the conversation, published verbatim. Speaker labels come from the recording itself, not from an automated guess.
Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner of the Mr. Vlad, please introduce yourself with the name, the company name, everything that I cannot pronounce.
Vlad Blagojevic:0:12
Don't worry about it. So, hi, thanks so much for having me. My name is Vlad Vladimir for those in the know and I'm Vladimir Blagljevic. I'm a co-founder of fullfunnel.io where we do B2B marketing consulting for high ticket, would say. We say high ACV, so high annual contract size, usually B2B SaaS, companies selling technology to enterprise.
And I think we are pretty aligned on the audience there. So happy to dive in and anything you would like to talk.
Jordan:0:49
Yeah, no, thank you for the context and the background there. Typically with SaaS enterprise, mean, those contracts can range six figures, maybe even seven figures sometimes. With your, like, what's like the lowest ticket size that you work with?
Vlad Blagojevic:0:59
Absolutely, yes.
Vlad Blagojevic:1:07
We always say a minimum of $50k, like majority of our clients will be $50k a year. Now that doesn't mean that all their contracts are $50k plus a year. Sometimes it could be, you know what, we have lower size contracts, but we would like to focus more on the enterprise segment where we have bigger contracts. So we'll be then working on them on that enterprise segment.
Jordan:1:32
Can you give us an example of like an enterprise SaaS? Just for the people that had that.
Vlad Blagojevic:1:36
Absolutely. Usually it's some sort of a niche solution. mean, it's there, it's all over the place. It could be like one of our best customers or the best case studies was a corporate learning solution. Just kind of like broad, like it can be used in almost any company, but they were targeting literally Fortune 1000 companies, 500,000 plus a year contracts. very difficult because it's super competitive. have two year, two to three years cycle. So because these companies, don't just change their corporate solution every year. They review that every three years. So these are the typical. So it's kind of like a solution for a specific department, specific function. Sometimes for a very niche industry, manufacturing software or. for distribution companies, some sort of an ERP or something like that, customs automation software, like things that you didn't know even existed, right? Yeah, I mean, it's everywhere, like in all of the industries that are big enough for you to have business, you will find companies like that.
Jordan:2:40
That's why I asked.
Jordan:2:53
I would love to pick your brain on how to actually approach from a marketing standpoint Fortune 1000 companies, because most of the audience obviously isn't B2B, but I think their approach is probably a little flawed. How do you help your clients land meetings with Fortune 1000 companies?
Vlad Blagojevic:3:15
Yeah, that's a big question, right? It's... I mean, the most important thing is, like, I guess, like with every marketing approach is really understanding who your customers are, the ideal customer profile. The way we define that is we really like look at their best deals, like five, five, five analysis, like what are your five largest deals, five fastest, and then...
Jordan:3:17
Hahaha!
Vlad Blagojevic:3:45
We also look at the five largest loss deals. And we also look at, we segment the market or segment their previous customers into what we call clusters, not necessarily industries. Some cases they might be serving different industries, like in the case of the corporate learning solution. But then we look at things like, you know, what are, what is the kind of a common use case? So it could be like, you know what?
We've seen a lot of FNCG companies that after they go through some merger and acquisition, they need to kind of onboard the new employees of the acquired company, which is like a big use case for us. cool. So let's go after these types of companies. So not only the segments, but also like the shared challenge, because that lets you also kind of adjust your messaging content and whatever to that segment. That's the start. And then we go down.
We can zoom in any of these details. How do you actually engage? How do you create awareness? This is a big one. How do you then engage? How do you go from an awareness engagement into conversations, from conversations into those booked meetings and yeah, closed one deal. So it is a process where you have to work between sales and marketing together on creating multiple touch points.
There was a study done by Hockey Stack about how many touch points, and that's only those that they can measure. And on average for a 100k plus deal, it's like 400 plus from the first touch until it's closed. Not like 7, 14, or whatever. We are talking about hundreds. So how do you actually proactively go after accounts like those? We can... dive into any of those aspects, whatever interests you or your audience the most.
Jordan:5:42
That right there, the touch points, because for us, it's typically email, LinkedIn, cold call, and you can close like, I don't know, a 10K, 15K project with a couple of touch points, right? But you're doing six figures, sometimes seven figure deals, and it takes hundreds of touch points. What other avenues, what is the cadence, the frequency?
And I imagine you're landing multiple meetings with the head of departments in this particular use case, right? So you might book them with like, I don't know, I'm gonna butcher this, like the CMO as an example, okay? Even the person below that initially. And then we have to give buy-in from this person to tell the CMO to even take the meeting. And then the CMO has to talk to the CFO over here. And then it's like a freaking, you have to meet like four, five, six, seven, like eight times, you know?
Vlad Blagojevic:6:21
Mm-hmm.
Vlad Blagojevic:6:26
Hmm.
Jordan:6:36
Like, oh man, what a long sale cycle. But, what are they?
Vlad Blagojevic:6:39
yeah, I mean, lot of our customers have sales cycles like 12, 18 months and depends on how you measure it, right? But I mean, very long sales cycles, multiple buyers in the buying center. And we are talking about 10, 20 sometimes. And the, I mean, the way that you generate the initial, let's say opportunity deal is usually with the champion. we kind of. make the distinction between different types of buyers. You have your champion, the person who is literally championing your solution internally. And there's a great book by Nate Nasiraya called Selling With, where he actually explains from a sales perspective. And I think if you want to learn about enterprise buying process, this is a really good book, even if you're a marketer. It is It isn't you, you don't sell, it is the champion or your internal buyer, your internal champion that actually does the sale and your job is to identify, engage them and help them sell internally. So you don't really necessarily have to book the meetings with everybody, but you do have to at least, you know, start there. And then there's, there's a whole process behind that, right? Of how you engage in multi-thread and engage the other buyers, right?
But even that initial opportunity. And it's not only because you have the different people, it's also because these organizations, like nobody likes change. I mean, it's just a fact, right? But these big organizations have multiple competing priorities. The fact that they might have a problem doesn't mean that this problem is going, that you have to solve it right now. I think it was Reid Hoffman, think, the founder of LinkedIn, who said, have to choose which fires to let burn, right? You have to like, that's the, that's the whole thing. Like if you want to be successful, there's always so many things that you could be doing. There's so many priorities. So what are the real strategic priorities and does your solution align or the problem that you're solving? Is that an obstacle to a high priority business objective that the executives care about? So.
Vlad Blagojevic:8:59
There is that thing that's happening, may you call it, you might call it like a business trigger or something that makes, you know, I mentioned like merger and acquisition, something that makes suddenly that problem more urgent. Suddenly there is a need to consider a solution. And honestly, I kind of, I'm lost a little bit where you, what your question was, where, how we ended up here.
Jordan:9:27
no, you're crushing it. Basically that executive decision buying process. Like you have to look at meeting with the champion. sounds like the champion then has to do your internal selling for you. But even if you have a problem or even if you have a solution to their problem, they have dozens of problems. Is yours the priority at that moment in time for that specific company? Sometimes they answer.
Vlad Blagojevic:9:35
Okay.
Vlad Blagojevic:9:41
Yes.
Vlad Blagojevic:9:47
Hmm.
Vlad Blagojevic:9:53
Yeah, and also, I mean, it's obviously also discovering that how you position your solution, and even just like knowing what their priorities are, and then working with the champion to show, you know, what is the actual how, you know, the problem they can solve is an obstacle, what is the cost of doing nothing, right? In the terms that they care. But I think like, for that part of the process, which comes usually after the meetings have been booked, after that opportunity has been created. I think you'd better invite Nate to talk about it. I mean, I can talk about it a lot from my own personal experience because I've been selling since 2006, but I think he would be the expert. We are usually focused on the process that comes before that. How do we even create awareness? How do we actually engage that even that champion or multiple buyers and book that initial discovery call where you start that selling with process. That's where we are kind of more focused on with our clients.
Jordan:11:00
And that's what I'm dying to know. So imagine that I know B2B SaaS, or I know SaaS do enterprise companies, and I'm like at a loss for words. I'm lost in like how to even execute this. How would you, basically.
Vlad Blagojevic:11:03
Okay
Vlad Blagojevic:11:13
Okay. So I think the biggest problem that we see the companies are trying to do outreach, for example, cold outreach, if they're sales, SDRs, BDRs, whatever that function is, and they're just not getting responses, especially these days, there's just so much noise, especially trying to reach to enterprise companies, everybody's trying to reach to whatever.
CFO of Microsoft for I mean, he's not gonna pay attention. so how do even like get their attention? How do you get even their response? That's why awareness is so important. Like these days, I mean, we spoke to sales director and he said like, look, it's my experience and I spoke to my clients and they're saying it's like, we are not, it's not that we. see an email and we decide that it's not relevant. We just receive so much email and so many messages that we don't have the time to even read them. it's even if you have the most personalized, best pitch, whatever, if they don't know you, they're much less likely to even open and read your email or message, right? So this awareness and getting that initial, you know, I know like can trust you factor that's where marketing comes in and help sales. And then also it's about trying not by sending them whatever 15 miles and then knocking on their door once more saying, you know, how about now is it relevant now and how about now, you know, one week later and then having creative, whatever goodbye message now what was it breakup males and whatever like, you know, all these tactics.
It is about having multiple meaningful touch points. So you may try initially with one type of outreach or engagement tactic, and then later with another one and another one and another one. And the example that I gave at the beginning of the corporate learning solution, ran, like we always start with a kind of a pilot project. We ran this for six months. And she, the sales rep that was working in that team,
Vlad Blagojevic:13:34
was able to engage like out of 130 about accounts that she was trying to engage for six months, just 130. It's not like volume play, right? She managed to speak to 20 something like it was, I believe it was around 30%, which is like huge, like in that kind of market, you know, speak to multiple times with the, you know, people, buyers, sometimes decision makers, sometimes. champions, sometimes other people. But it was a process of six months trying and trying. And there was a great case that she shared. OK, first I posted this LinkedIn post that was relevant for that target account. And I saw somebody from that target account engaging there. I reached out to them. And I tried to just start a conversation. They kind of ignored it. Then I, you know, We did whatever roadshow, then I invited and then she ignored me. I tried, you know, inviting her to send her whatever one invitation for one thing. And then she invited her to be a guest on her podcasts. Then, you know, followed up via email. It was like one after another, after another, after another that the buyer was ignoring. She wasn't giving up. Finally, After all of this touch point, she actually picked up the phone and invited her to the podcast interview finally. And that's where she agreed. They had the interview, they spoke about the challenges that the buyer was experiencing finally after the interview was actually a cool one. And she said, you know what, we actually help companies like yours with problems like this. If you want to explore different types of solutions, we can show you what we did with our clients. And that's when they booked their first actual discovery call with the account executive. And that's the rest is the history, let's say, right? So multiple different meaningful touch points, excuse me, that are also aligned with the level of intent. somebody liking your post is not buying intent. It's maybe
Jordan:15:41
No, I-
Vlad Blagojevic:15:58
appropriate next step would be, you know, whatever, just to connect to them, ask them what they liked about it, try to start a conversation about the topic that you posted about. Basically, the idea is you don't propose marriage on the first date, kind of appropriate.
Jordan:16:16
Thank you for all the context. so many things I want to say. First and foremost, 30 % is massive to speak with your ICP. If I were to speak to 30 % of my ICP, I'd be a very wealthy man. That's insane. Second thing I want to say is, the podcast interview style outreach crushes in sales. The reason why is because for one,
Vlad Blagojevic:16:24
Yeah, that's yes.
Vlad Blagojevic:16:37
Mmm.
Vlad Blagojevic:16:41
Hmm.
Jordan:16:45
It builds trust, it compresses trust significantly. And when you can build trust on that call, articulate yourself, your message, your value prop, get to know their company a bit more. It's like, just spent 60 minutes with this person. I actually like this person as a person, so let's explore how we can possibly do business together. But if you're just another person in the email box, you're...
Vlad Blagojevic:17:01
and
Jordan:17:10
another person in the LinkedIn messages. It's like this person is no different than anybody else, you know? So you have to separate yourself. One thing I do want to bring up, though, is I have a lot of guests on the podcast that are, you know, with all due respect, like full service agencies that work with everybody.
And you work at companies that have a defined ICP and that are 34 people that they can actually reach out to a full service agency would like, they would like lose their mind. Only 134 people. What the heck? Like I can work with way more businesses, but who are your top five best customers? Who are the five clients that closed the fastest? Who do you have the best case studies with? That's your ICP that you should go after. Right.
Vlad Blagojevic:17:32
Mm-hmm.
Jordan:17:56
We had another individual come on the pod and this was pretty mind boggling. I'm sure you can like back this up or like testify like dialing in your ICP does wonders, but long story short, he works with B2B SaaS companies. And whenever he was first brought on as a fractional CMO, they closed like three accounts in three years. I didn't even know how the hell they were surviving as a company, but like that, that was the guy was the case.
He stepped in, he dialed in the ICP, niche down to like 300 accounts max, and he closed like 19 accounts in six months. From three in three years to 19 in six months by dialing in your ICP. Like I love that story. It creates so many benefits because like you said, if I'm creating content, if I'm creating thought leadership and creating awareness, I cannot make posts that resonate with everyone. That's literally impossible.
Vlad Blagojevic:18:44
Hmm.
Vlad Blagojevic:18:48
Hmm.
Jordan:18:49
But if I speak to 300 people, their problems, their solutions, their dreams, their fears, all that fun stuff, I can get way more engagement. Please piggyback off me, go for it, yeah.
Vlad Blagojevic:18:59
I mean, just think about the example that I shared at the beginning. Corporate Learning Solution, OK, you can sell it to any company, right? But they decided to focus on FMCG companies that wanted an acquisition and that are now struggling with onboarding, kind of aligning culture, whatever these kind of companies need to do, right? With the kind of corporate learning programs. but basically onboarding all those new employees. It's a very, very specific ICP. In their case, it's a combination of industry, a significant compelling event, I guess they call that, or a business trigger, in this case, the merger and acquisition, and then the related challenges. Now, if I start, like you said, if I start creating content, it's not going be relevant for everyone. But if I talk about these specific challenges, know, post acquisition, onboarding people. I can also share other examples of other clients who are in the exact same situation. that case study or testimonial, whatever, it's going to be so much more relevant. mean, it just so much, it resonates so much better. And these days when there's so much AI slop, when there is so much noise outside, when it's like super hard to get anybody's attention, suddenly having such a niche relevant content sets you apart. Now, that's why it's important, that's why we always pre-qualify at least 50k plus because otherwise, I mean, you won't be able, need with when you have high ticket, you're able, you don't need a lot of clients, you need the right clients, right? So that's when you can do that. That's why we always pre-qualified.
You know, otherwise it's very difficult if I'm an agency owner. I mean, it depends what kind of agency, right? But I would also doubling down more on like what we do for our brand, which is just a lot of, you know, content production, weekly podcasts, webinars, LinkedIn posting every day, engaging with the target accounts and newsletter. We do a lot of content creation, distribution via these different channels.
Vlad Blagojevic:21:22
to create this kind of, see you guys everywhere. But again, we are very, very focused on, you know, high ACV, B2B tech, whatever. And that's the only thing we talk about, right? We talk about account-based marketing and whatnot. So it's like also very niche, but still a lot more, let's say awareness, especially when you're selling services, which is kind of like selling yourself. People need to trust you as a person. You need to also kind of... position yourself as a real expert, like a go-to expert in your field. So that's kind of a different tactics than what I would do, different approach, different strategy probably than what I would do as a B2B sauce.
Jordan:22:04
No, absolutely. And one thing that I've learned just through trial and error is you brought up personalizing the email, they've been personalizing the LinkedIn outreach. You relevancy, that is one tactic, one way to personalize it. Like you don't have to know 15 years about their freaking point history or anything and then bring up things that happened years ago. But just whatever you're saying, whatever you're articulating in your message, as long as it's relevant to
Vlad Blagojevic:22:20
Mm-hmm.
Jordan:22:33
person. That is some form of personalization.
Vlad Blagojevic:22:36
Yeah, mean that is probably the most important one but also like what I think what I see a lot of especially these days like you can run AI research clay, whatever and figure out specific signals triggers, whatever you call them and then but the problem is like how these are used. So what people do is Hey, I noticed that you just whatever raised or hired or whatever that could be relevant. But then the rest of the message is just like their generic pitch. It's almost like, hey, I saw you, know, breathe air. No, no, I saw it. So I thought, no. But it's like completely like the two are not connected. It's like, I saw this trigger.
We have companies like yours, the one, two, three, would you like to book a call next Monday? You know, no, that's personalized, but I think that John Miller said like nowadays everybody receives, excuse me, uniquely irrelevant message. So personalized, unique, but still like WTF, like, okay. Okay. How is that relevant?
Jordan:23:40
my gosh.
Jordan:24:01
No, no, I love what you said because the way I'm gonna tell you pissed me the hell off of the other day So I got I got a connection request. I accept whatever and then this guy personalized his LinkedIn DM He's like, dude, I freaking love the YouTube video. You just put out with Rebecca I thought that was so cool. I watched it the whole way through here's like the key finding I learned the last sentence is like do you have this problem? I'm like, dude, like I'm gonna beat you up. Why did you just do that to me? Why did you make me read that personal?
Vlad Blagojevic:24:30
And that was actually quite sophisticated. This was actually quite sophisticated. It's usually, I saw that episode directly to pitch, and pitch is like 80%. At least that person said a specific thing they liked about it. They actually did deeper research, whether themselves or AI, whatever. And then they asked you a question. I mean, that's much more, I guess, like,
Jordan:24:33
Yes.
Jordan:24:52
That's your brother.
Vlad Blagojevic:24:58
So most of it's again in 90 % of the messages that go out.
Jordan:25:02
I will say I did DM him back. I'm like, dude, I'm okay, but I love your approach. Thank you for sending this. I took a screenshot. I have a scheduled post on his DM. I'm like, if you want stuff to work, take a look at this example. This is perfect. Anyways, how sticky are your clients' SaaS products to these B2B businesses?
Vlad Blagojevic:25:10
there you go, there you go.
Vlad Blagojevic:25:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go, there you go.
Vlad Blagojevic:25:30
Very sticky. mean, retention, in most cases, in most cases, I mean, it will vary obviously from product to product, but in most cases, you even just implementing it is going to take so much time that you don't to go through that again, if it's working. I think that...
Jordan:25:31
That's what I thought. You don't really support corporate.
Vlad Blagojevic:25:53
You know, in some specific cases, like I mentioned examples, for example, of an ERP system implemented in a production company linked to all those machines and processes and like all the customizations, that's like fucking super, super, super sticky, right? But most of these B2B solutions are. In our market, like marketing technology, we have seen actually something different. Like we have seen...
Some solutions like HubSpot or whatever you are implementing, marketing automation, you've put in so much work into that, et cetera, which also makes it sticky. But some solutions like the ABM platforms are quite expensive, actually don't really get implemented properly. And then, of course, they are not going to be sticky. But if it's like solving a real problem, people actually implement it, it's being used, it's difficult to change.
Jordan:26:51
No, right. You brought up Clay, and I have to ask, what tech stack do you encourage your clients to use or what tech stack do you use internally? You're gonna have to share.
Vlad Blagojevic:27:02
Yeah, good question. Question that comes up very frequently. The way we always go about it. Look, the typical situation that our clients is they are struggling, marketing is struggling to generate pipeline. They're struggling to show their impact on revenue and on pipeline. Sometimes it's just because of the last click attribution that all the early influence disappears in the CRM and they don't get the credit. That's another story. they're usually able to generate and we are not a general engagement, really doesn't really convert. And there are some systemic reasons for that. And we have to do a lot of change management. So we have to change the way that they're working. They need to work closer with sales. So it's a difficult thing. And because it's a difficult thing, we say, you know what?
We can't like just completely change everything. We can't cause a revolution here because like you're going to get fired. Right. So we always start with the simple pilot. Right. And very scoped down, you know, three months, you know, a few people, one person from sales, one person probably from marketing, maybe somebody from content, a few other people to help, but like maybe two or three people like core team working part time during these three months in a different way. Right.
And then showing that this can work on a small scale before scaling this up. And for that type of a pilot, you don't need a lot of technology. You may just be engaging 10 accounts. That's it. Or in some cases, we had a client, it was just about one account. Now, this was like a pharmaceutical account, like with 120,000 employees. So we're talking about a market of one. But really, very frequently we are not talking about more than maybe, know, 10, 20, maximum like 30 accounts. And so a lot of these things, because it's like the first time you do it in this way, you actually want to first do things manually. You want to do things that may not scale right away because you want to figure out what works, what doesn't work before you scale it. So technology is not that important.
Jordan:29:07
That's your set.
Vlad Blagojevic:29:29
You know, even like simple CRM and even without like even using a spreadsheet or whatever. And whatever tech stack that most of these companies already have is enough. So nothing special. Obviously, there's stuff that you could implement that you could use, especially if you start scaling. A lot of companies now are, you know, trying to implement the AI, but it's the same principle. Yes, yes, it does make sense to implement it.
But only after you really understand the process, you also can show the AI what good looks like, like kind of a quality benchmark, like this is the example of a good result. These are the actual steps we have tested. We know it works before. Because otherwise, you're just scaling broken tactics. You can do more of what doesn't work. And that's obviously not what we want.
Jordan:30:22
Absolutely. we utilize our tech stack is we basically built clay, but internally. Okay. Let's do that.
Vlad Blagojevic:30:29
You cloth-coated clay. You're not the first one.
Jordan:30:36
Right, right. the only reason why we did this is just to save frickin' money. Like, please be taken...
Vlad Blagojevic:30:42
No, I get you. I totally get you. No, I know. I know. A lot of people have done it, yeah, for the same reason.
Jordan:30:44
But, Long story short though, like AI, Claude, whatever LLM you use, it's only as good as the input you give it. Right. So Vlad, to your point of, if we're scaling broken systems, right. I don't know what I'm doing as a marketer or what I'm doing as a, an SDR rep, right. Whatever the case is.
Vlad Blagojevic:30:57
Mm.
Vlad Blagojevic:31:02
Mm.
Jordan:31:09
then the fricking output that you give it, the AI is also going to be horrible. It's going to be dog shit. You know what I mean? So especially in your pilot program example, if we're targeting 10, 20, 30 accounts max, why would I use an automated process? Like I have, I hope I have enough time in the day to do some manual research, maybe use AI to do the research part for me. I'll craft, I'll hand craft this puppy.
Vlad Blagojevic:31:24
Hmm.
Vlad Blagojevic:31:33
yeah.
Jordan:31:36
I'll handcraft the LinkedIn message, whatever the case is, right? And you can do that. And like you said, whenever you have good examples, hey, we sent these three messages, these three converted, we sent these messages, these did not convert. Good examples, bad examples. Now you can scale up, I don't know to how many people are in your ICP, but then you can scale up what actually freaking works. I kind of have a question though, if you don't mind, from a... business modeling pricing standpoint, because you serve a very specific niche, how do you structure pricing? it base plus performance, base only, if you don't mind me.
Vlad Blagojevic:32:15
Look, we are a consulting company, right? So our delivery will help you figure out how to make it work. We'll create a pilot program with you. We'll kind of hand hold your hand. Hand hold you? Whatever. And so it's fixed pricing, right? So it's just a fixed fee. are restructuring a little bit our offer and how we deliver.
Jordan:32:31
Yeah
Vlad Blagojevic:32:45
Usually it's just like a fixed pricing starting at 40k a quarter.
Jordan:32:48
Gotcha.
40k quarter, I like it, high ticket. Okay, right, right, right. I was gonna ask, is it a six month, 12 month, but is it quarter to quarter?
Vlad Blagojevic:32:55
I think it was...
Vlad Blagojevic:33:01
It is. And if it's a smaller client, usually a quarter and then maybe a smaller retainer to help them out. But usually, they might just get enough with the initial pilot figuring out, working differently, and then doing this internally. For larger clients, it could be like six, nine months up to a year. But we don't really live. from longevity. It's different than an agency, for example. It is a very specific form, right? Consulting is different than servicing, like doing it for you. Let's put it like that, yeah.
Jordan:33:43
Right. Out of curiosity, just because I'm curious, have you tried, experimented with maybe having the core services consulting, of course, but like adding on one to two done for you things to make it more sticky or because the consulting fee is a pretty good amount, you're okay from a financial sticky point.
Vlad Blagojevic:34:07
There, I mean, we, what we do is we do also training. So there is, you know, online and, you know, face to face workshops and stuff like that. So that's actually the second source of income. But yeah, so it's, different. We just didn't want to do it. Like that was like how Andre, myself, my co-founder and me, when we started FullFunnel, we came from execution as well. and we didn't like doing more of that. It's actually the way that the perception and the power dynamics, I guess, are different, you know, because the moment you start executing, they treat you more like, you know, it's kind of more as a commodity, usually, it depends, right?
Jordan:34:40
Mm.
Jordan:34:50
value.
Jordan:34:54
Yeah, yeah.
Vlad Blagojevic:35:06
It's difficult to pull this off. And it's just a very different relationship, very, very different relationship. And I know amazing agencies who are crushing and who are doing amazing work for their clients, and they're absolutely needed. I have nothing against the model for people for whom that works. We just honestly just didn't want to also be bothered by having to manage our own internal teams, all of that.
We just want it, it's more for our lifestyle that we chose the model and what kind of like resonates with us as personalities, as people, rather than some very specific strategic reason.
Jordan:35:50
No, thanks for the context. And I also think it depends on who you're selling to, where consulting makes more sense or done for you, Sy. I think. If you're selling to obviously sophisticated companies, sophisticated individuals that sell high ticket B2B tech.
Vlad Blagojevic:35:59
Yeah. yeah. 100 %
Jordan:36:09
they're probably okay if you just give them training, one-on-ones, consulting advice, and they can just execute it. Where if you work with someone that's kind of new to the game, and they don't know they're doing, it's like I have to do everything for you. I have to run your business for you. And then they still complain. It's like not even worth your time. Yeah, yeah, so.
Vlad Blagojevic:36:29
I'm gonna eat it. don't know. I don't know.
Jordan:36:34
I do like the business model and you can always scale up because you're not trading time for money.
Vlad Blagojevic:36:40
That's true. That is true. But again, like we are, we're just like, look at it differently. We also have this idea of like, we're both really heavily into this, you know, lifestyle because, you know, both have family people prioritize that, you know, we don't, mean, it's not our starting point isn't, you know, how much like what, what are the different ways in which you can like make more money? No.
What is the best way for me to live, really honestly? And to feel like good about my work, to feel good about myself, my family, everything. It's just a different mindset, I think. And everybody has their own kind of priorities, values, I would say. And you should make that work. Like what's aligned with what you want out of life and out of business, out of work, out of purpose, whatever drives you.
Jordan:37:21
We talk.
Jordan:37:40
Let's let Vlad, please, can we stay here for a moment? Because you and I connected on our first call about this exact topic, that Americans, like nothing will satisfy us, dude. Like we love to work. And even when we have way more than enough, we want to work more. You have a completely different approach. it's just a culture that we have, right? It's like, how can I actually spend more time with my family? make sure the same money but work less. It's like America, our families, I put work 80 hours a week. You know, it is just an ass backwards mindset. So.
Vlad Blagojevic:38:17
Well, I don't know. it's fine being ambitious. I mean, where would we be as a species if we weren't ambitious? Where would we be as trying to have to create more, to create something better, bigger? It's natural. We all have that drive. But yeah, there is some difference also in culture.
100%. 100%. And yeah, you might also like, I know that for some Americans or like people from North America, like Canada, United States, some European countries, especially I live in Spain, like that might be, that might be the case. People might be like, oh, you know, and I'm not like that. I mean, I wish I was a little bit more like Spanish, like more tranquilo and more, you know, just Zen.
I'm not. But they would be like, they're just not ambitious. And the way that it would say it is like, they're just like, where's the spark? Where's the ambition? But it's just a completely different value system. And it's the culture. And they are, I think, the longest living. I mean, again, whatever drives you, you have to. align with yourself, not try to be anybody else. But yeah, there is there is also some value in that for sure.
Jordan:39:55
Do you know Pat, uh, bet David, I think his name is PD, uh, PBD Patrick. No, he's, I'm sure if he saw his face, you would know what I'm talking about. He brings up basically what you're articulating. If you look at the people who live the longest, they live on the coast. I think it's near like, I don't know if it's near Spain, but it's like a place where like there's water nearby. The sun is always shining. People walk every day. People are like,
Vlad Blagojevic:40:01
No.
Jordan:40:26
enjoying life. You know what he didn't say? They're not behind a desk working 80 hours a week.
Vlad Blagojevic:40:29
I think there's the social component is so important. know, being with other people, this is like probably like, you know, what they say, you know, longevity and what are the things that impacted the most and like things like VO2 max, you know, the whatever, fitness, self, cardiovascular health and fitness, whatever. But also like social, like
Jordan:40:35
Hmm
Vlad Blagojevic:40:58
If you're isolated, if you are lonely, it's like, I don't know, like your chance of dying earlier or all cause mortality or whatever they measure this. It's like double like crazy how much it impacts. Yeah. Like being isolated. And then you can of course imagine, especially if as you get older, you know, you're young, you may be, you know, also having a lot of social contacts in your work, right?
But especially for all the people who stay alone and, you know, may be living in a city or in a community where they don't really have contacts with others, you know, alone somewhere in a flat, in an apartment, a condo, whatever they live, house. But that's just, yeah, that is what I think is devastating for people and causes also. And the cultures such as Spain, I think also like... read that about like Japanese in a different way. The society and these connections and you know the community is it's one of the top values as well. So even if they might stay alone in their old age they will not be alone. They will be connected to their local community their family extended family is going to take care of them. They're going to visit them. They're going to be with them. They're not going to be alone. I think that's another one. Why did we end up here. How did we end up from generating pipeline and high tickets to avoiding loneliness.
Jordan:42:32
philosophy. Exactly. Exactly. I was just thinking to myself, this is why I love this show. Cause we actually connect and talk about real life. Like sure. Generating pipeline is real life, but like this is real life as well. And people are battling this internally, especially here in the States. Like, so you offer new perspective. So legit, thank you. Like, thank you. Give me back to business. So what are you and the co-founder, guess, looking forward to over the next 12 months?
Vlad Blagojevic:42:54
you
Jordan:43:01
with the help of AI, maybe like conferences that you guys plan on hosting, anything like that. Goals and forward thinking.
Vlad Blagojevic:43:09
So we have just launched our book that has been a long time coming. We actually started working on it back in 2023 and that we just didn't have the time as like anybody else doesn't nobody has the time to write a book, especially these days. then my Andre mentioned like last year, you know what, we should write that book that we want it. And I was like, hey man, but everything has changed everything, you know, We went through several VC and other crises in our industry. Now the AI, there's a lot of FOMO, marketers are like scared. Things are changing. How does it even make sense? So we had to really rethink a lot. We had to do research. had a lot just reflecting on what's actually going on in the market. The foundation stays the same. That's one of the conclusions, right?
Jordan:44:05
Really?
Vlad Blagojevic:44:06
But that's why we also titled the book, the, know, how to survive as a B2B CMO in the era of AI and long sales cycles, which is our audience, right? And it's just out this Tuesday. So that's one thing promoting the book. The other stuff is like I mentioned, are restructuring our offer. You're going to, I don't know if you know the guys from Fletch, they're really nice. company. They're like product marketing, have a very nice productized service. You should definitely check them out. They're great guys, have awesome content, very knowledgeable about their stuff. It's not really copyright, it's messaging. It's more strategic messaging for SaaS companies. And they have a very cool way of offering their service, very, very productized. So that's a little bit something that we are also working on. towards just two hours ago was writing on our new consulting page. Conference, we ran every year since 2020, big virtual conference, we call it the Full Funnel Summit. And this year, we had one behind our back in March, but we see that there is less and less demand for virtual events. And thinking, why maybe we'll run the next one live.
Jordan:45:17
Nice.
Vlad Blagojevic:45:33
And even if it's smaller, I'm also just looking forward to all the face-to-face interaction. It's just so different. Another inspiration there, I don't know if you know, I'm Pip Elia from Winter CXL, used to be Conversion Excel. Actually a very big name in our niche in B2B marketing. He has this beautiful conference called Spring with a Y because it's like his brother is winter so everything is instead of I he writes Y and it's such a beautiful conference in Austin and it's just like in the middle of like March April beautiful weather You know, they rent I guess like a big bar You know and just hang out not a lot of talks much more focused on just talking to each other at the table, sitting down with speakers. So I don't know. I'm really looking forward to doing that live as well. In terms of AI, we are obviously doing a lot with our clients, hoping to not necessarily productize or make anything out of that, like offer that as a product, but actually helping also the teams adopted in just a better way. So that once we kind of go through this process of defining a pilot, we actually end up with the playbooks that we normally teach them how to use to also have some support for AI. Because like you said, even at the beginning, even when you're doing things manually for the first time, there's so many things that you can still do with AI from the very start. Like you mentioned research.
You know, you have like whenever you're working on content, even if it's not writing the final version, just getting that information. mean, things that weren't possible, like if you want to create whatever. A post where you're quoting, like the people from the industry, just finding, you know, the good quotes and then extracting this knowledge from your subject matter experts, like internal people who know about their shit. there's so many things you can do.
Vlad Blagojevic:47:53
And then obviously, as you kind of nail the process, doing that properly in AI and a lot of the companies that we work with have some sort of initiative are building very sophisticated systems. Unfortunately, what we see also a lot of these systems are not really being used. So like really like changing the way that they use this technology because it is amazing, but you do need to approach this properly. because otherwise you may end up like one of our clients. I cannot describe, it's such an amazing system they built. It's beautiful. The guys who built it, they had so much fun. I mean, they had so much fun. Unfortunately, and they're like, that's all the research, all the signals, collects it, interprets it, puts it in. And then we speak to their salespeople and it's awesome. Okay, so how are you using it? How are you using what? They don't even know about it. It's a pity. It's a pity. Okay.
Jordan:48:49
Thank you.
Vlad Blagojevic:48:52
It's being worked on. We are trying to help them also fix that. So yeah, lot of things. Was that?
Jordan:48:59
No, you did. First and foremost, I want to say in-person events are back, I wanted to say that because COVID was COVID, but in-person events are back. Let's full swing into that. So I'm happy. I'm excited to hear that you guys are attending those and also hosting those. Second thing is, you probably know this more than me, like, SaaS, software, are tools. And if we don't use the tool, what the hell is the point of the tool?
Vlad Blagojevic:49:05
yeah.
Jordan:49:26
You know, or if we don't know, if we don't know how to use the tool, it's not going to be as effective or efficient as you would want it to be. Like you said, it sounds like you're one of your clients built intent data, high value intent data, which is like invaluable to a fricking company whenever you're doing outreach, right? And the sales guys are like, nah, I didn't even know that exists. That's cool.
Vlad Blagojevic:49:50
I mean, yeah, it really exist. Also, the problem there was like things that are missing. You have this amazing information, but they didn't really do the next step, which is like separating the signal from the noise. You know, not all data is relevant. And for that, again, you need to step back and you need to go back to your ICP and say, okay, for this ICP, you know, for my FMCG, you know, Merger and Inquisition, what are the actual relevant signals for them that may indicate that I mean for the market or that they have a specific problem for that type of company that, okay. So that's like starting to really identify what matters, the, you know, 20 % of those signals that actually have 80 % of relevance. And then the other part is like, Okay. But how do you use those signals? Because I mentioned, you don't want to propose marriage on a first date, which is like what a lot of people do. What we discussed like, I see the signal. Do you want to have a sales call with me? Okay. That's the mismatch. So you need to also think about, for which signal, like what is the level of intent behind that signal? You know, is it a real buying intent or is it somebody, you know, maybe just exploring, trying to learn something?
And how do I align my next action with the level of intent with what they actually are looking for? I think this is usually missing in those types of intent data signal Tools or platforms or whatever, right?
Jordan:51:34
Yeah, no for sure. I I feel like Vlad you and I can talk for a long time I'm I'm sure we have to jet here, but you know, where could they purchase the book? Where can they find you they want to explore your work further?
Vlad Blagojevic:51:39
Yes.
Vlad Blagojevic:51:47
Yeah, I think the easiest is fullfunnel.io, our website. We're also very active on LinkedIn, posting almost daily, especially my co-founder, Andre, is much more, is better, more consistent. We're both posting on LinkedIn. You can always reach out to us there, any question, just chatting. And the book you can find via the website, we're also obviously promoting on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn these days in our B2B marketing space is full of the book promotion, like a lot of amazing network, like people really reaching out, helping us, sharing. I'm so grateful. So fullfunnel.io, our LinkedIn profile, somehow LinkedIn in the show notes. don't know. People will find us.
Jordan:52:33
I got you, I got Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us, Vlad. We'll have you back in like 12 months if you're open to it to see how things are going. But nonetheless, thanks for hopping on, Tons of gems.
Vlad Blagojevic:52:44
thank you so much, Aaron. Keep doing this. Keep rocking.
Jordan:52:48
Appreciate you. Audience, we'll talk soon.
Vlad Blagojevic:52:51
Talk to you soon, bye.
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