BeyondSaaS Transcript
Jason Niedle
Today we’re talking with Josh, see, start off right already. Today we’re talking with Josh Snyder, VP of Sales for Field Apps AI about how simplifying your operational challenges can lead to growth.
And now I will do both of our intros, make sure everything is recording OK. We look good? All right. Welcome to Beyond SAS. I’m Jason Nidale, founder of Tethos. We’re a growth agency, and we’ve been accelerating tech company growth through strategy, branding, lead gen, and conversion with a 20-year track record of success. If you’re looking to grow, check out tethos.com slash podcast for our paper on hypergrowth tactics, or simply drop the word growth in the comments below.
Today I’m excited to explore growth with Josh Snyder. He is VP of Sales at Field Apps AI, and they craft custom software solutions designed to simplify operations which enable businesses to scale more efficiently. do this through mobile offline data collection for, sorry, they do this through mobile offline data collection for field inspections, research, compliance, and more. I’m sure Josh will have a lot to tell us there.
And Josh has a deep expertise in sales leadership and tech trends, helping companies focus on what matters most, how to grow. I also hear Josh that you have a passion for classic American cars. So welcome.
Josh Snyder
That is true. Thanks Jason for having me. I appreciate it.
Jason Niedle
I love to offer listeners some sort of a quick tip. Do you have a golden nugget to start us off with?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean, really my golden nuggets seems kind of simple. It’s reading. I’m a big reader of sales books, human psychology books, business books, so that I can then take that to my team and just set us up for success in the best way possible. There’s lots. mean, I read regularly to really that stand out. think that are worth absorbing if you haven’t already.
Chris Voss’s book, Never Split the Difference. I just think it’s a great book for communicating effectively so that both sides feel heard, they feel understood, and they see this clear path to a mutually beneficial solution. The other one I think would be Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset.
Jason Niedle
Mm.
Mmm.
Josh Snyder
Really our greatest tools up here, right? So if you have Positive growth oriented mindset and you’re living that all the time You know sky’s the limit for what you can accomplish and what you’re the people around you can accomplish if you’re living that way and showing them that path
Jason Niedle
I loved Mindset, I think that was a great book and I haven’t read the Voss book yet, but you’re the second guest to bring it up. And I’m also wondering if it would help me with my marriage. maybe it’s good all the way around. think I definitely need to read that.
Josh Snyder
Yeah.
Yeah, it probably is helpful for more than just sales.
Jason Niedle
Got any tips for us for cars?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean my love really is like pre 1964 like traditional hot rods like 1932s 30 model a is things like that Hot rod them out, you know Take the four cylinder out of the 30 model a and put a nice flathead v8 in it with a t5 behind it and you’ll have a lot of fun
Jason Niedle
That sounds like a lot of fun. A friend of mine ran an event called the Muscle Car 1000 and these guys would jump in their muscle cars and drive up and down the coast. In that case, I went on one of them to California, all through California. And one of the guys brought a Cobra that had originally had 5,000 miles on it and by this end of the trip had 6,000 miles on it. And he decided to take me on a ride through the Napa curvy’s up there and
Josh Snyder
Yeah.
Jason Niedle
Man, that car, it just was screaming with fire coming out the side pipes and we’re going 120 miles an hour and the tach and the speedometer go the wrong way. was heaven.
Josh Snyder
Yeah, mean, that’s the key, right? Lots of power, little weight. So yeah, and loud. Yeah, right. In my mind, you should drive them, right? They’re not made to be wiped down with a cloth and never driven in your garage.
Jason Niedle
and loud.
It was very visceral. was definitely an experience. So tell us a little bit about more than my poor intro about FieldApps AI.
Josh Snyder
For sure.
Well, little background. So, FieldApps AI is a venture started by Zerion Software. So that’s really like the parent. And we have been around for 15 years and we have this legacy product called iForm Builder.
But last year we started Field Apps AI and that’s our AI offering to the market. And so we’re in this funny place where we have this 15 year legacy software and then we also have this like garage startup that we’re funding ourselves, right? And so we’ve already gone out to market. We already have some clients on it and it’s a real exciting time for us because really what it allows us to do.
is build bespoke solutions to solve, you know, lots of times operational problems via software. And our clients don’t have to shoehorn themselves into like an off the shelf solution. We’re literally at the point where we can transcript a meeting with a client and have them just verbally describe to us what they’d like to do. And we can take that transcript from that meeting and plug it into an AI code.
build engine and present within an hour or two back to them a front end prototype of what they were talking about. And then we go through iterations of that with them. And then we go into the true build process to actually build an enterprise grade piece of software for them.
Jason Niedle
mean, that sounds pretty mind blowing. What would be like a real life example? Like how might that work?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, so we’re working on something at the moment in the ag space where they want to be out in trial fields for all the varieties that they have and be able to note what’s going on during the grow process for those varieties in order to then pick what they’re actually going to take into production. Right. So these are trials. And so we built a piece of software to do just that. You know, they were coming from
kind pen and paper and now they have a software solution to do that in a much more efficient way and they’re able to utilize the data that comes out of that much more efficient way as well.
Jason Niedle
That’s what I was thinking. Once you actually have that data, then you can have it also parsed and sorted and analyzed by more AI and have vastly different results.
Josh Snyder
Yeah, and it can go twofold, right? It goes internally so they can make better decisions as a company. And then it goes externally to their customers, their end client, in order to have them see much more quickly than their historical methods, what’s going on, what they need to choose, and what they need to partner.
Jason Niedle
can’t imagine what our world looks like in 10 years.
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean, what’s going on just in the last year, even the last six months is to your point before kind of mind blowing. And so we’re just embracing it. We’re running with it. This is the growth engine of our company. And yeah, I’m really excited to see what comes, not even 10 years from now, but even another year from now.
Jason Niedle
So your title is VP of Sales and clearly you’re growth focused, but like what is the heart of that role? What makes, what’s special about what you do that you can apply there?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean, the real special part is working with the team, right? It’s getting everyone on the same page to perform consistently. That’s one of the highest values is consistency, that they have the right positive attitude, the right tools in place, be able to utilize those tools effectively to do their respective jobs, whether it’s account management or account executive or an SDR function to then find the right people who have need and fit for what we do.
and speak to them effectively. So I really just embrace the team atmosphere and having everyone kind of be on the same page about what the common goal is and then give them the space and you know the support, remove any blockages that they may have and allow them to go do their thing and we meet regularly and have slack for any issues that come up for quick stuff but yeah it’s a great role to be in just to work with the team.
Jason Niedle
I feel like this idea of removing obstacles might be my theme for this year, because it just keeps coming up over and over and over again. Like, where can we remove an obstacle? And I always find that really fascinating. You are in a company that is mature in some regards and has a 15-year history and then has this startup phase. How do you kind of straddle those two lines? Like, a mature company usually wants to preserve growth and make sure their clients are existing, and then the startup usually wants hyper growth and wants to
change everything every other day, maybe, like how do you balance that in your life?
Josh Snyder
First I meditate twice a day, so that helps. But I really do have to kind of like split my brain a little bit. So when I’m dealing with the account management team, that’s a different conversation, right? These are clients that some of us, some of them have been with us for 15 years, like the whole time. And we have to make sure that they’re in a good place, that they’re, if they’re looking to grow and expand, that we support them in doing that, that they’re aware of any…
Things that we’ve tinkered with to make the product better that they’ve been using all this time, give them guidance in that way. And then I have to put on the other hat and go to like say the account executive side on the field apps AI side and make sure that the work effort metrics are being achieved consistently, that the messaging is being conveyed consistently and in the right way, that discovery is being done in the right
because these are all perspective clients that maybe have never heard of us, certainly never worked with us before, and we’re presenting something to them that is brand new. A lot of them are used to like real old school traditional methods of software development that you have to get a bunch of humans in a room, you have to take the effort and the time to type out your requirements in a very long doc.
You have to go back and forth with humans to go through the iterations of that and sort of just really walk them through effectively how you don’t need to do that anymore. And then times have changed. It’s a different conversation than they’ve ever had.
Jason Niedle
I imagine maybe sometimes even deeper than that, like these people are walking around sometimes with a pen and notepad, right? So they might not even have software development experience and you might have to really educate.
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean we have conversations very regularly where pen and paper and then they do double the work and they enter that into some excel sheet and then that excel sheet gets, you know, manipulated by someone else in the back office. It’s just really kind of slow kind of like, you know, early 90s way of doing it. So yeah, like sometimes we’re making such a huge leap that multiple conversations have to be had just to get their heads wrapped around like
Hey, you don’t need to do it this way anymore. There’s a new way.
Jason Niedle
So how do you clarify
or make, how do you show the value of going from something that clearly has worked for them for 20 years into something that seems potentially risky?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, that’s a great question. mean, a lot of it comes down to time, right? Where do you think, and I’m asking the prospective customer this, where do you think your time is best spent? What is the most high value thing that you do? If we can take the non high value things away and you can spend more time doing that, is that going to benefit your business? And so when we show them that
You know, going back to the hotel at night to do the double work and enter in what you put down on the clipboard earlier in the day, and then getting that email to the back office that that all doesn’t need to happen. And you can actually spend more time out with customers out the field, taking on more projects, because you can use the same team that you already have without hiring additional, but actually take on more work. and thus make, you know, your whole organization more efficient.
That’s usually the path that is kind of like the easy path to see once we kind of reveal it to them.
Jason Niedle
I feel like this is a through line of every AI conversation I have is that as humans, as workers, if we don’t figure out what our highest value is, we’re going to be replaced because much of my business is in, includes design and the design process is rapidly faster and in some ways being completely automated.
We have another company where we do Photoshop tutorials and a third of our tutorials were like how to select someone, click, click, click. We would select around the bodies one by one by one and there’s all these selection things. And then last year they’re like push a button and it selects what you want. And so like a third of our tutorials were useless at that point. So yeah, that question of like what is our highest value is gonna be critical I think for every worker in the next 10 or 20 years.
Josh Snyder
Huge like so, you know as I’m pointing one finger out talking to perspective clients of what they could be doing better I have four fingers pointing back on myself. So I need to check myself as well Like where am I? What are my most high value things that I should be spending my time on? What can I offload to an AI automated function? That’s gonna help me. So I have to think about it myself, too
Jason Niedle
So in the new company, how rapidly are you looking to grow? What are your growth metrics and what’s your goal, say, for the next 12 months?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean, really, we’re still going zero to the first million, right? So, you know, zero to the first million is our goal right now within the next, say, 18 to 24 months. And so, you know, we’ve just started the end of 2024 with this venture. So, you know, we have a lot of work to do. And usually the biggest blocker to all that is, you know, humans, right? Are we speaking to enough humans? Do we have the right?
group of humans on this side doing the work to hit those growth goals. yeah, it’s aggressive, but I think we can get there.
Jason Niedle
So what are you doing in sales and marketing to reach the initial layer of new humans?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, so we have tools here like everyone else does. You know, there’s lots of tools out there. The tools that we use specifically on the marketing side or say something like a Zoom info. That was a tool we chose. Really any tool is only as effective as the people using it, right? So be very clear on your ICP, set up your intent signals very, you know, specifically to that. And then…
You find the people that, you know, you hopefully you’re taking an ABM look at it or you’re catching all along the buyer’s journey, right? Certainly want to catch them at the beginning when they may not even know they have a problem or don’t want to realize it. And then you’re catching them also.
And then you’re catching them additionally when they’re maybe taking that first step to seek out solutions to solve that problem and so on and so forth down the buyer’s journey. You know, you want to be there every step of the way. So you’re the advisor, right? So when they do say, raise their hand to want to talk to someone about, okay, this now is high enough on the priority list that we’re going to, you know, put some investment towards it to solve that you’re there as the person who’s been or the company that’s been.
providing valuable content, educating them, and now they feel comfortable raising their hand and speaking to you. So we’re using the tool ZoomInfo to gather all those people to do that outreach. And then our CRM is Salesforce. There’s a lot of great aspects of Salesforce to do the outreach and the opportunity creation and all that in an effective way, making sure you’re on point with tasks, making your own point with the reports that you create to see that…
Sales opportunities are moving through efficiently and closing in as tight a frame as possible based on your sales cycle. yeah, those are the tools we’re using from a sales and marketing standpoint to try to hit these growth goals.
Jason Niedle
And how do you continue to stay along with your buyers through that journey without being annoying? Some companies are pinging you all the time and you know, it’s like frustrating. And then other companies, you know, I got an email from somebody and I hadn’t heard from them for three or six months. And I was, I don’t even remember, did I reach out to you at some point? You know, so there’s obviously that fine balance. How do you manage that?
Josh Snyder
It’s hard. mean, there’s so many emails that go all day long from everybody to everybody. I mean, I don’t even know how many emails I get a day, right? Lots go to junk. Some make their way into my inbox. Most of them get ignored. You I think everyone can say that, you know, open rates and reply rates are very, very low, right? So, but again, to my point earlier, you are trying to hit the right eyeballs of someone who sees the value of what you do.
Sees in themselves and their organization that you know, they’re ripe for change and so The frequency of it, you know, you do I think have to be a little careful with you don’t want to be hitting people every day You you know you’re getting blocked and then you know They are no longer gonna see valuable content that you’re providing to them So you do have to be a little careful with that and how often you do that But to your point a couple minutes ago, you can’t just show up twice a year and expect someone to find value
doing. It has to be a lot more regular than that and then what you provide has to be valuable, right? You just can’t and you can’t make a bunch of asks with no value behind it. Provide some content without asks, educate them without asks and then you know when you get further down the line a little bit and you’ve made you know some consistent outreach that’s not annoying hopefully that you’re credible enough at that point to make an ask and they’re gonna receive it in a positive way.
Jason Niedle
So you’re launching a new company essentially, but you have the case studies and the proof that it works from the parent company. If you had a magic wand, what obstacles would you remove to really skyrocket you to that growth goal?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, I mean, I think that comes down to my point earlier about like blockages being people. Let’s face it, no one bats a thousand in building their team that they choose the right person every time to build that team or the right outsource partner. You know, we do both here. That’s going to help you with those growth goals. So if I had a wave of magic lawn, if I had that power, it’d be that everyone that I choose is the absolute right fit for the team, knows exactly what’s expected of them and then goes and executes on that. And,
You everyone’s contributing at a high, level to the team. So I’m going through that motion at the moment where I’m talking to some outsource partners to help us with these growth goals. And, you know, I can have all the case studies and all the things at my disposal to evaluate at the end of the day, I have to make a plunge and choose a partner or two. so hopefully that choice, right. is the right one, but, you know, I’ve been at this long enough where sometimes that doesn’t work out. So,
If you get a hold of one those magic wands, let me know.
Jason Niedle
Hahaha
I mean, like to, well, I don’t, being careful of self-promotion, like I like to think of my company as one of those magic wands, but that’s up for everybody else’s opinion, What’s, what, is there anything that surprised you that either is working really well in terms of marketing and sales or just doesn’t work anymore and used to work? Is there anything you’re like, whoa.
Josh Snyder
I despite the fact that connection rates have gone down over the last say five years I still love cold-calling maybe that’s because you know that’s how I grew up in this business and I’ve done a lot of that
And I actually as a VP of sales, I still do that. I’m not going to ask anything of my team that I wouldn’t do myself. So I still do that every week. Connection rates have halved in the last five years. We were at about a 14 % say 2019 before the pandemic. Now it’s hovering around seven or so. So that same hundred dials that you make a day or whatever it is, you know, you’re talking to less people. That being said.
I still believe in the value of human-to-human connection, communicating effectively human-to-human and having that produce business at the end of the day. There gets beneficial out of it. We get to grow our company because now we have a new customer. So I really still believe in it. And I see it every week that it’s an effective tool. So despite the fact that we’re going down this AI road and everything’s going to be done by the bots.
Jason Niedle
Mm-hmm.
Josh Snyder
still I’m seeing a lot of value in.
Jason Niedle
I love that. And I think it sounds, it seems fairly unique to me. Like I haven’t seen high level people picking up the phone and making calls. And so if I get a call and it’s somebody whose English is not so great, and if I mentioned one thing that they clearly is not on their script and they’re lost, like I’ve lost all respect and I’m done, you know? But to get someone who knows what they’re talking about and who can actually help me grow is like kind of magical these days.
Josh Snyder
And you should.
Yeah, I think there people can hear the different kind of levels of expertise, know, second expertise, knowledge about their role within their industry. If they hear that right away in the first, you know, 10 seconds of the call, they’re going to stick around for the most part. If they hear you reading the script or there’s this big pause because they said something, you have no idea how to respond. It’s all over. you know.
Jason Niedle
You’re done. Yeah.
So cold calling. That’s pretty cool. What other lead gen is working?
Josh Snyder
Well right now so we know we need to improve on things we’re doing a big YouTube launch for field apps AI We’re making content both human content and AI generated content So we you know, I use YouTube for everything if I don’t know something I go and search and someone’s made a video of it somewhere and Most likely several so I like to absorb content that way
to find out something that I don’t know about. And so we’re hoping the same, right? Like I think a lot of people fall into that category. So we’re going down that road, hoping that, you know, the YouTube channel is going to be something for us. We’re also going obviously down the road of consistent LinkedIn messaging and content. I don’t think we historically were as consistent at that. I can say that very definitively actually. And so this time around with this new launch,
field apps, I think we’re being much more intentional and we’re doing it consistently and I can’t wait to see when we have enough data to look at the comparison between the legacy product I form builder and field apps AI and what difference that kind of makes in the professional social world.
Jason Niedle
Yeah, very cool. It makes me think a little bit, and this is slightly a side topic, but my wife is a voice teacher and she said, students that come to me now are so much better than when I was a kid and it’s because they all have YouTube. so 20, 30 years ago, when you wanted to learn something, you had to find the right instructor. And then if you were lucky, you had an hour a week with them. And now you can obsess and say, I’m going to learn the song. And you could spend eight hours a day on YouTube watching 500 people who sang the song and
hear their tips and hear everything. And so people can learn at such a greater rate. Right? So not only do we have bots taking off some of the things that we don’t want to do and in five or 10 years we’ll have our robots that fold our laundry for us or whatever. But then we also have the opportunity to grow at a really radical rate. And I think it gets back to your original point that if you have to be learning, you have to be reading, you have to be growing.
Josh Snyder
Yeah, that goes back to my point earlier about the reading thing, know, reading books and absorbing valuable educational content on YouTube. It will accelerate, you know, your growth in that way. And doing it again consistently, you know, it’s just going to benefit you.
Jason Niedle
So how are you using AI to grow? Not necessarily personally, but well, either way, guess grow yourself or grow the company.
Josh Snyder
Yeah. I mean, to the point of using AI where you can very quickly and, we’re all very used to Googling, but now it’s what, you know, how are you using chat GPT to get it instantly? What you’re looking for based on the prompt that you give it. Right. So I’ve instructed my team and I do it myself. use chat GPT to educate yourself on.
person that you’re calling in their role within that industry and their role within that industry, what are the pain points, right? What do they suffer from the most, right? So as an educational tool, a quick search on chat GPT is actually much more effective than a search on Google where you have to sit through websites to try to find what you’re looking for. And so using AI in that way, it has been definitely a time saver and just, you know, to the point about education, like you get that education much more quickly.
And then, you know, the other things that we don’t necessarily want to do, but they still need to be personalized a little bit. You know, there’s ways to use AI for like, you know, personalized replies to things that save a little bit of admin time. So again, that you can have more time talking to real people, you know, having meetings, pushing sales motions forward. So those things AI wise are very valuable. So we’re using those on our side.
to, again, to the point of like, use your time and the most high value thing that you do, offload everything else to automated AI tools.
Jason Niedle
Do you have any, that’s great advice, do you have any other advice for people just starting out in sales leadership?
Josh Snyder
Yeah, that’s a good question. I would say, you know, be open to being wrong and being okay with being wrong. So you have these ideas that you want to do, test them, get some validation that they either work or don’t work. Be okay with the fact that they might not work.
But then learn from that and then execute on something else. That’s another idea that you think is going to be more effective. I think just being OK with that.
It’s gonna make you more relaxed. It’s gonna, you you still have goals to hit and all those things, but no one figures it out the right time. You know, the first time every time, right? We have to do some testing, some failing and keep going forward, right? Don’t get stuck with something that failed, learn from it and quickly move on.
Jason Niedle
has been part of my journey. For most of my life, it’s been incredibly hard to admit when I was wrong, and I’ve been working through that. And I feel like getting better, that absolutely leaves me in a place where I can feel more relaxed and more authentic and more, you know, just go with the flow.
Josh Snyder
Yeah. And don’t think you have to do it all yourself, right? Like ask for help. That’s certainly something that I had to get better at and still do. Right. Ask for help. I follow so many people on LinkedIn that are sales leaders that I admire and you know, I have messages, they provide some content. You know, I say, yes, I would like that. And, I’ve just become a better aggregator of things that, people did better than I did before I did. Right. So.
you know, be okay with asking for help.
Jason Niedle
Yeah, why do we need to reinvent the wheel every single time?
Josh Snyder
You don’t.
Jason Niedle
So the world feels, appears pretty chaotic. What are you looking ahead at in growth? Like what trends do you see ahead?
Josh Snyder
I mean, the trend is AI, right? Like, how are you gonna use that effectively? We’re not interested in developing our own large language model. We’re what’s known as an AI wrapper company. We’re using AI to build tools, right? And we can build those tools in know, secure way so that if we’re taking, if we’re making it learn via client data, that it’s gonna stay there. And so,
Make sure you’re open-minded to AI and how it can be useful to you. Certainly don’t run from it. Sit in it and see, okay, well, how can I best utilize this? it’s not going away. It’s only going to get stronger, more powerful. And if you’re not on board, you will be left behind.
Jason Niedle
Yeah, absolutely.
Any closing thoughts before I let you get back to selling?
Josh Snyder
I always have to do that. Yeah, I mean, one, just appreciate the time to talk about this. I like talking about these things. But two, you know, if you are in that early stage, you know, even if you’re coming from a 15 year legacy company like myself, but you have this early stage startup aspect to it, or if you’re just truly starting with a great idea and you’re doing founder led sales at this point and you’re looking for angel investors and stuff like that, you know,
Be clear that you have to sell all the time, both internally and externally. Be clear that you really should know who you should be selling to and make sure you understand product market fit. you have all those things and then you have a high effort, motivated, dedicated, positive team, good things are gonna happen. So keep your eye on the prize and…
know, then make the real concrete steps and execute on the things that are going to get you there.
Jason Niedle
Perfect. This has been super intriguing. Where can our audience find you?
Josh Snyder
They can find me on LinkedIn, Josh Snyder, know, VPSales for both Xerox Software and our legacy product, iForm Builder and then Field Apps AI. They can also email me, you know, all my information’s pretty out there these days, as everyone’s mostly is. So, and they can find us on YouTube, Field Apps AI, come absorb our content and get in touch with us there. But yeah, there’s several, several places to find us.
Jason Niedle
And that’s all exactly like it sounds f-i-e-l-d-a-p-p-s dot a-i fieldapps dot a-i. Josh, thank you for being. Yeah, well, we had a lot of listeners, so they’re not seeing your shirt, Fieldapps dot a-i. Josh, thank you for being on Beyond SAS. For leaders in mid-stage tech looking to grow, we drop episodes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And you can find me, Jason Nidl, at tethos.com. That’s t-e-t-h-o-s dot com.
Josh Snyder
Yep, the one right here.
That’s true.
Jason Niedle
or can also grab a free report on how to grow your tech company. That’s at tethos.com slash podcast. And of course, I love any questions for me or for future guests and comments and feedback. And don’t forget to share this episode if it was valuable to you. Until next time, this is Beyond SAS.
