In this episode, Jason Niedle interviews John Head, CRO of Aetos Imaging, discussing the importance of building predictable revenue engines and the challenges of marketing innovative solutions. John shares insights on customer-centric growth strategies, the significance of micro-segmentation, and the role of AI in enhancing business efficiency. The conversation emphasizes the need for a focused approach to problem-solving in sales and the importance of continuous improvement in business practices.
Takeaways
- Building predictable revenue engines is essential for tech companies.
- Aetos Imaging provides innovative 3D scanning solutions for various industries.
- Micro-segmentation helps in targeting specific customer needs effectively.
- A myopic focus on the customer can drive significant growth.
- Understanding the Math of Business is crucial for creating predictable revenue streams.
- AI can enhance efficiency and effectiveness in business operations.
- Sales strategies should focus on solving customer problems rather than just features.
- Curiosity is a vital trait for success in enterprise sales.
- Continuous improvement is necessary for long-term success.
- It’s important to approach business as a marathon, not a sprint.
Sound Bites
“AI can enhance business efficiency.”
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
“We need to be 1% better each week.”
BeyondSaaS Transcript
Jason Niedle (00:00)
Today we’re talking with John Head, CRO of Aetos Imaging, about building predictable revenue engines.
Welcome to Beyond SaaS. I’m Jason Niedle, founder of Tethos, and we solve growth problems for tech companies through strategy design, cold email, educational campaigns, and more.
John Head (00:15)
Thank
Thank
Jason Niedle (00:22)
Today I’m excited to explore tech company growth with John Head. He’s the CRO of Aetos Imaging, which is 3D scanning and visualization platform for the built world, which means they create visual space scans and then they put it all into a single piece of glass like your phone or your laptop so that companies can manage assets and energy and maintenance and training and safety and more. And you have to see their 3D demo. It is so cool that you can just walk through a space and twist around and look at things and circle them and have communications about them. So it looks…
John Head (00:23)
Thanks.
Jason Niedle (00:49)
Truly amazing. As chief revenue officer, John brings 20 plus years of SaaS sales leadership. And John, I hear you’re known for your strategic measured approach, which is mirrored possibly in your golf and your tennis game, and that you’re known for building predictable revenue engines through pipeline management. So I definitely want to hear about that. Welcome today.
John Head (00:56)
Robert.
Hey, thank you. Great to be on. Yeah. ⁓
Jason Niedle (01:08)
Yeah, I appreciate it. Hey, I’d to offer listeners
some kind of a quick tip. Do you have anything fun for them, a golden nugget?
John Head (01:15)
Golden Nugget. Yeah, know, a podcast I picked up recently, it’s kind of a spin off of the Pavilion group. A guy named Kyle Norton, who’s just a fantastic podcaster as well, he’s got a podcast called the Revenue Leadership Podcast, started, I think, sometime in middle of last year or so. Just really phenomenal. Really good practical advice, gets great guests on, and it’s truly enjoyable to listen to. I would highly recommend that one if people get a chance.
Jason Niedle (01:29)
Mmm.
The Revenue Leadership Podcast.
I love it. Awesome. Well, Aetos looks really amazing in your demo. Tell me more about what you’re creating there.
John Head (01:47)
Yeah, you bet. So, Aetos is very much focused on helping what we really classify as boots on the ground. You know, the operators, the technicians, the contractors, the teams of people that keep plants and the power grid and power generation facilities, even commercial real estate buildings, even hospitals.
All the work they have to do to keep these facilities up and running 24 seven is a giant job. And if you’ve never had a chance to really work with reliability engineers and safety engineers and plant managers and those that have the responsibility of maintaining these really complex facilities 24 seven, it’s a true honor and privilege to serve them and work with them because without their effort,
we wouldn’t have the clothes we get to wear. We wouldn’t have the phones that we get to use, the toys that we enjoy, and the building products. I was at a building products organization earlier this week. We wouldn’t have the materials to build the homes that we live in. And so it’s a real testament to the ingenuity of America and around the world. we fortunately have a pretty innovative platform we get to bring to them to make their jobs more simple and even enjoyable in terms of what they need to do.
Jason Niedle (03:00)
I think it’s easy now that you bring all that up to take for granted the spaces that we have around ourselves, right? I’m in this really cool 1920s building and every once in a while I look around and I see in this brick wall back here, you can’t see it, but up there there’s a place where at some point someone had to cut out and put in metal beams so that it would be earthquake safe in California here. And there’s all these things that maybe no one would have any idea of whatsoever and maybe there’s 20 or 30 or 50 buildings that someone’s managing, right? And tell me like…
John Head (03:18)
Yeah.
Jason Niedle (03:28)
How would your platform make that easier?
John Head (03:31)
Yeah, so let’s just, I’ll just use the example. I’ll use the example that I just referenced a second ago. I was in Dallas, south of Dallas on Wednesday at a site for an organization that’s pretty well known, at least in the general marketplace, they make shingles for our homes. And if you’ve never seen the line that actually produces shingles, it’s one continuous line. You know, on the one end they’re taking in
the beginning raw material, but this line it’s probably the length of a football field. If not, maybe a football field and a half, this entire line, it’s a continuous manufacturing process. And all the steps that go in between that line, or as part of that line, to take raw material on one end and produce packages of
shingles that go on a pallet to go out the door to get to our homes. It’s an amazing process. It really is so, what a lot of times people don’t realize is that entire line and all the equipment and all the various different stations as part of it, it’s got to keep running. It’s got to be continuously running. Because if any part of that shuts down, right, has an issue, that entire line shuts down, right? And that plant’s impacted. I was talking to the plant manager and
Jason Niedle (04:31)
Hmm.
It all will shut down,
John Head (04:41)
Him and his team are measured on daily output of feet of shingles. That’s how they’re measured. And so how this is different is all the operators, all the mechanics, all the engineers that have to keep that line up and running, we bring a much easier way to visualize and see that entire line in a 3D world and have all of the necessary procedures, activities, documentation,
Jason Niedle (04:47)
Mmm.
John Head (05:07)
maintenance requests and asset data in one place. So they know exactly how that line is running right now. And if there’s an issue that’s beginning to pop up based on the data that they’re seeing from it, have the immediate procedures of what to do to actually solve for that so that anybody can access that data and be able to use that to keep that line up and running 24 seven. Because at the end of the day, that entire team is measured
but the linear feed of shingles it produces on a daily basis, which obviously impacts their families. So it’s really, it’s special. It’s an honor to know that we’ve got an innovative platform that serves the boots on the ground. They have those kinds of jobs that, this is a large factory that’s got a tin roof, or know, it’s a large tin building, if you will.
Jason Niedle (05:41)
Absolutely.
John Head (06:00)
South of Dallas and it’s getting really hot in Dallas and there’s not air conditioning in that building, and there’s dust kind of in the air if you will because it’s a lot of material being put on shingles. You just recognize and see, wow, these people signed up for a pretty doggone tough job and if we can do something that makes our job easier, you know, that’s pretty special.
Jason Niedle (06:15)
Hmm.
Jason Niedle (06:20)
Hey, it’s Jason with a 10 second note from our sponsor, Tethos. I wanted to offer you our Hypergrowth Playbook. It’s a free guide that I put together, a compilation of our first 20 or so episodes of learning from the show, which includes book recommendations, golden nuggets, and the amazing learnings from all these tech leaders. Simple to get it, just drop the word GROWTH in the comments and I’ll send it to you, or head on over to tethos.com/playbook and that’s T-E-T-H-O-S dot com slash playbook, and you’ll have it right there. All right, back to our episode.
Jason Niedle (06:50)
Let’s talk about growth for Aetos because I think as a marketer, I look at this as kind of a challenging position. You’re clearly solving real problems and there are absolutely those problems, but somebody doesn’t necessarily go out and say, 3D scanning solution to solve my line operational problem, right? And so how do you reach and how do you find people when it’s a solution that’s not, at least in my worldview, and maybe I’m just not in the right space, that it’s not something that people are specifically searching for?
John Head (07:19)
Great question. And it’s definitely the topic that keeps me up day, night, weekends, constantly from that standpoint. That’s the reason listening to the podcast from Revenue Leadership Pavilion, all the different sources, like, man, how can we continue to innovate and stay unique and message appropriately? And so, the great thing is that, and I was on call just a little while ago talking about this in a different way is,
the problems and challenges that these people face are kind of age-old problems, right? It’s not really gone away. But how can we tap into the specific need relative to the individual and what they’re trying to solve for? So let me give a good example. We’re working with a very, actually a proposal I’ve been working on all day today, a large energy.
producer, specifically renewable gas. And they have a bunch of sites across the country that are remote sites, but these sites have to run 24/7 And so the challenge for them is from a management standpoint, how do I make sure I stay on top of how these sites are running? And then when I begin to see an issue, when I begin to see an issue with a digester or a pump or a valve or something of that nature, how do I get the right people deployed
to that location with the right information, the right procedures, the right startup shutdown procedures, how even to access the site the right way? how do we actually solve for that in a unique way that allows me to keep that site up and running 24/7? And so to your question is I think it’s, at the end of the day, it gets down to micro segmentation, it gets down to a really fine definition of your ICP and even specifically a really fine definition of your persona.
And as you begin to get into that, as you begin to understand what are the specific needs for a reliability engineer versus an engineering manager versus an OSHO or an EHS leader versus a plant manager, how to speak to them in a specific way, recognizing what their role and responsibility is, the more and better you do that in the very beginning.
You’re gonna engage in a conversation. They’re at least gonna respond to you in a way that hopefully will definitely at least encourage a conversation and encourage some discovery and encourage something that, hey, you may actually have something that can help me because you’re thinking about my problem, you’re thinking about my responsibility, and you’re coming at me with something that I care about, and you’re very focused on that topic.
Jason Niedle (09:46)
Yeah, that makes sense.
John Head (09:46)
I think just with
the world of content and email and branding and everything else, if you lose focus on that I don’t care how much you spend on branding and content and great emails and commercials and tchotchkes and everything else, you’re not going to have the impact that you really need.
Jason Niedle (10:03)
Yeah, it makes sense. Instead of being broadly like, hey, look, it’s a 3D space solution. You know, okay, fine, I don’t need that. But hey, if you’re an OSHA inspector and you’re hitting these type of facilities and you have this type of problem, I solve that, right? And so one is like micro focused and very clear. And it gets back to the same old marketing thing as like, we’re solving problems, right? How am I solving your problem? ⁓ But in your case, you have to get
John Head (10:16)
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. Yep.
Jason Niedle (10:29)
It looks like hyper-focused, micro-segmented, as you said, down to really show that these problems are specific in this realm. So how do you execute on that? How do you fill your funnel if there’s 100 micro-segments?
John Head (10:36)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and it can be if you kind of take the dimensions of industries, sub industries, personas and processes and functions. You can blow a stack pretty quickly trying to figure all that out. And so, what I did when I first came to Aetos almost two years ago now is, the intention at that time and we were in the company just decided to kind of really focus in the industrial market, which is where I have a lot of experience.
Probably the first thing I did that was, looking back on it pretty successful is to your point, people don’t care that it’s a 3D model. People don’t care that you have a pretty innovative way of actually displaying data or actually adjusting data and showing that with them. They don’t care, but they care about the problem. So what I began to do is really inventory use cases. Hey, let’s listen to what they’re saying. What’s the problem they’re actually trying to solve? And so we began documenting a whole library
use cases and says, for reliability engineer, this is actually what they’re trying to really pay attention to, to keep the entire plan or facility up and running. And what’s, what’s germane to a reliability engineer, that, will get their attention and at least connect that dot in the beginning. And as we had defined that problem, as we describe what that really means to them, what’s the impact of that, then you can actually have the corollary to, well,
here’s what we do to actually solve for that. And as a result of doing that, here are the results. And so we’ve done a really good job inventorying all of our use cases across a few different attributes. So we have that context. So now we have everybody speaking to, and even the proposal is working on a second ago, speaking to use cases and what we’re specifically solving for. I think that’s where I was on a call earlier with a group of founders, just this kind of
Jason Niedle (12:06)
Mm-hmm.
John Head (12:26)
monthly call that I joined every once in a while. It was interesting listening to this because some of them were just talking about the features of their product and the capabilities of their product. And I could tell they hadn’t made the transition to, well actually how does it solve problems? And they hadn’t learned exactly how to position and message and focus in that venue as opposed to this really cool thing you developed, leveraging AI in the wine industry.
Jason Niedle (12:43)
Mm-hmm.
interesting
because we have this conversation, I think, on the podcast regularly that it all has to be about solving the problems. And then I look at 70% of the websites and it’s talking about the cool features. it’s kind of like what you’re saying. We all know deep down that we need to be focused on, solving this problem and this is what I need to talk with you about. And then we all, not all, but many of us get back to the, well, but here’s the cool things that it does.
John Head (13:06)
It is.
Jason Niedle (13:18)
And I think that’s such an interesting challenge of, talking about me versus talking about you in many ways.
John Head (13:25)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s funny, when I interview salespeople and people ask me, what are the key criteria? There’s a few things that I have top of the list, but be curious. Be curious is top three. Depending on kind of the situation, the role and everything else. It may be first, it may be third, but be curious is always top three. If I don’t have somebody in that role who’s highly curious, then you know what?
It’s it’s a lot, especially for enterprise solution sales. Yeah, if I’m selling a widget, right? The widget is the widget is the widget. you know, that’s probably not necessarily as important, but enterprise solution sales. Yeah, you have to be highly curious.
Jason Niedle (14:02)
Yeah, you better shut up and listen and figure out what their problem is. Yeah. So what are you looking at in terms of growth goals for the year?
John Head (14:06)
Yep, you better. Yep.
Yeah, so for this year, we’re looking at, so we tripled last year. We’re looking to triple again this year. I think it was the mantra, it what? Triple, triple, triple, double, double, double, right? Is kind of the model you want to have. So we’re looking to triple again this year. We’ve got the pipeline, we’ve got the coverage to do it for sure. It’s all about execution, it’s all about timing, it’s all about getting that lined up. And then obviously look to triple again next year.
Jason Niedle (14:20)
Mmm.
John Head (14:35)
And then obviously kind of set us in motion to take advantage of that from a market standpoint, from a race standpoint, and continue to innovate and just get into more organizations and bring that value.
Jason Niedle (14:45)
I mean, that’s an amazing growth curve. What would you say is one of the keys to making that happen? Like not many companies are on triple, triple, triple, right? What is your key? What are you guys doing differently?
John Head (14:56)
Myopic focus on the customer, which comes at a cost a lot of times. outside of just a couple of situations, I can think of even in the last almost two years here at Aetos, that has paid off in giant dividends. We have a very large top three utility client,
they’re looking to expand dramatically with us across a few different dimensions. And the number one thing they’ve told us is that your team is stellar. They’re miles above a lot of different types of vendors that we work with, partners we work with. And it’s just a myopic focus on the customer. From the initial engagement from a prospect standpoint to the follow-up and the way we actually just
engage and have conversations, way we actually structure projects with our platform and then we actually how we deliver and drive success and just the personalities of people that we have and all the key roles across that function. Very, very important.
Jason Niedle (15:52)
I love that. if, I mean, I don’t know that you even want to grow faster, but if you wanted to grow faster, what’s the constraint? Like what internally might be holding you back from either reaching that three X or growing faster? What’s the internal constraint?
John Head (16:05)
Well, you know, one is, you we definitely have a platform. We’re not a PLG platform. We definitely have a roadmap and a strategy to get there. so, people is definitely a constraint, you know, for us getting there. Because there is an implementation effort behind what we do. You got to go scan the facility.
in this proposal I work on, it’s 26 facilities across the US. We gotta think about the timing and the sequence and the load relative to doing that. So there’s that piece in place. But probably the biggest thing is
not getting too far ahead of our skis in terms of the different types of use cases and the different focuses that can take us off course a little bit. Sometimes if you try to go too quick, and what I’ve seen is that means that you’re taking on scope, you’re taking on expectations, you’re setting expectations that get outside your wheel really quickly. And then when you start doing that, not only are you putting
demands and issues on the product. You’re obviously putting demands and issues on the people who actually have to get us stood up and no doubt support it. We’ve got a long way to run within our sweet spot and the challenge and the focus is just definitely staying within that sweet spot.
Jason Niedle (17:22)
Yeah, so that sounds like mostly delivery issues, not issues, but constraints to some regard. Are there any sales marketing constraints?
John Head (17:31)
The need to reach more people and get that message and just kind of create more and more conversations with the like organizations that we have on board as customers. Yeah, I that’s always an opportunity, something you want to do. And so we’ve spent a lot of time here recently with what we kind of call marketing infrastructure, really improving our SEO, really putting a much better site map in place,
beginning to invest in paid ads in those particular areas, being much more focused around the campaigns that were running by industry for the most part. We know the industries we go after. And so, yeah, there’s always opportunity and challenges with that.
And then as you engage a conversation, really understanding how best to structure that conversation and say, listen, is this something that really has meat to it right now? I mean, we’re kind of small, we’re scrappy. You get excited about a lot of different conversations from the different folks on the teams. And so putting a much better rhythm in place in terms of, listen, this is the type of opportunity with this criteria.
But when you’re smaller and scrappy and trying to still kind of create your motion, some of those things need to evolve quite a bit to make sure you’re really understanding where is that sweet spot.
Jason Niedle (18:48)
Yeah, that makes sense. So I read that you’re known for your creating predictable revenue streams. What’s your of your MO, your theory behind that?
John Head (18:56)
Yeah, what I’m very focused on, I learned from a number of years ago, the CEO of, at the time it was Host Analytics, it’s now Planful, and now Dave’s actually gone on to be an EIR at Boulder Concapital, I think it is, over in Europe. And he had a very impressive, what we call, MotB model, Math of the Business, right? Very, very well architected
MotB model and something that I’ve, just really connected with, really understood, really appreciated. So I’ve brought forward that MotB model, number of different times in my ventures since those days to truly look at what are the key factors and the dependencies of those factors to actually create a predictable revenue stream. So when I first got engaged here at Aetos a couple of years ago, we had a pretty good notion that we would have
a pretty good land and expand capability, right? Because we were new, innovative, we’re trying to crack into a market that’s already pretty well established, but we’re doing something different. We knew that, but we also had a product that wasn’t nearly very mature yet in that area. So we knew we had to get after a bunch of discussions to land some opportunities, create value, that then gives us the platform to actually get after the enterprise.
Jason Niedle (19:46)
Mmm.
John Head (20:11)
So when you think with that mentality, then there’s a lot of things you need to architect upstream to identify, how do we get into a good number of land opportunities at facilities? And then what’s the model to actually land those, get them implemented, create the value, and then how does that actually begin to unfold from a portfolio standpoint? So there’s an entire MotB model that I built
Jason Niedle (20:34)
Mm.
John Head (20:36)
around the land and expand strategy that speaks to what are the number of MQLs we need to have on a weekly basis, which predicates the number of people we need to be outreaching to and the number of calls that need to be made and the engagement strategy around that that then leads to SQLs and then obviously all the transition of that down into landing a facility, growing that footprint and getting us into an enterprise portfolio opportunity. So if you think about it,
I know that was a lot, this model speaks to all the way from the number of people we need to be calling on a weekly basis and reaching out to on a weekly basis all the way to how many enterprise opportunities will I have anywhere from 9 to 18 months from that call being made, that entire integration of the MotB model.
Jason Niedle (21:24)
Right, it’s interesting because a lot of startup companies, and I’m not saying your startup, but a lot of startup companies come to me and they’re saying, we want three times growth, so we’re just going to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. And you’re saying, yeah, 3x growth comes from this complicated chain of events, and I’m going to work that backwards and make sure it’s starting at the top of the chain, because that’s the only way that you reach the bottom. Yeah.
John Head (21:26)
Okay.
it does.
Exactly, absolutely.
That is definitely the science of the business. The art is making all that happen, but that’s the science of the business, without question.
Jason Niedle (21:54)
I love that. in every one of these conversations, we end up talking about AI and you and I haven’t talked about it particularly much. Any thoughts on AI and what that’s doing to the world right now?
John Head (22:03)
Yeah, I was listening to a podcast, actually, I think it was one of the ones with Kyle a couple weeks ago. Across even that chain, obviously across content, no doubt, even the development efforts with some of the things we’re, Connor, our CEO is putting together for kind of meshing together all the lead gen data. The first source should be, can AI do this for me? Not necessarily.
Can I do it faster or how can it complement me? But can I actually package up this task, I package up this body of work and give it to an AI model to actually solve for that for me on a go forward basis? That really should be kind of our sort in the way we think about these days. No doubt it’s extremely helpful in content and efficiencies relative to looking at go to market models and
ICPs and we were even looking at a second using yesterday to really analyze the pulp and paper industry In a much more distinct way because we’ve got a couple of pulp and paper manufacturers clients so yeah, those are kind of the knee-jerk reactions these days, but it’s more about how do I think about AI first to help me be a lot more efficient and get things done the way We’ve taken me forever to do in the past
Jason Niedle (23:12)
One of the things I’ve been pondering on that your answer sparked a thought of is how do you see AI affecting hiring in the future?
John Head (23:21)
Outside of obviously the technical discussions and evaluation that you do in terms of how are you using AI to help you cover just a tremendous amount more territory, help you do your research, be even more effective in your communications and discovery and preparation for a new client from that standpoint.
For us, the world’s our oyster in a lot of ways. We’ve got a giant TAM and obviously a small team. So how are they using it to get into those micro segments? Chevron’s a client of ours, okay, well, how do we actually leverage Perplexity or Claude or anything to say, okay, how many similar type of use cases do we have in Chevron type of organizations
to find this kind of business problem because of the infrastructure or sites or just overall footprint that other organizations have that are like Chevron. That’s where you get really, really good. And again, micro focus around, hey, listen, I’m seeing this consistently. You seem to have a similar type of portfolio. Have you thought about this? Are you struggling with these issues? Because it’s a very specific application that we’ve seen solved well.
And I’m just curious if that resonates with anything you’re trying to solve for today.
Jason Niedle (24:33)
So do you think in terms of hiring in the future, like my first thought was, people will hire less through, because of AI, but maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe we all just grow faster because of AI.
John Head (24:44)
I think that’s, yeah, I think you get an opportunity to move through, like just in the world of sales, right? You get to move through territories and evaluation and analysis on your territory so much more effectively. The one thing we can’t get back this time, right? So the more efficient and the more I actually enable them with the ability to say,
We’ve got this organization, this other organization looks exactly like it. So what facilities and tools and how are you gonna leverage AI to try to identify that potential fit as fast as possible? And guess what? They may already be doing something similar to this in some way that we’re not aware of. Okay, but let’s find that out as fast as we can. And if they are, okay, let’s move on to the next one. But it’s gonna give us a speed and an efficiency that we haven’t had before to work through,
truly the most ideal ICPs that we can serve in the marketplace.
Jason Niedle (25:39)
Any final closing thoughts?
John Head (25:41)
All these topics and everything, it just makes me think about all the things that we’re not doing quite honestly, that we need to be getting better at because you just get so consumed with, the immediate pipeline or the next hire, enabling somebody, or the next big presentation or the contract you got to solve for. But at the end of the day, you got to recognize it’s a marathon, not a sprint, right?
Jason Niedle (26:01)
Mm-hmm.
John Head (26:02)
It’s a measured and heart rate stays pretty high up in the marathon still, but it’s a marathon. And if you’re measuring the right things, you were focused on the right activities and you’re constantly learning, where can we have more impact with the clients and the prospects that drive that value? And that’s where you see the real results. so maybe this discussion, just gives me a renewed focus around that going into the weekend
to think about how can we pit Monday morning with a slightly better, 1% better approach to what we need to do next week than what we did this week.
Jason Niedle (26:36)
I love it. It’s perfect. Where can our audience find you?
John Head (26:38)
Yeah, I’m decently active on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, I was one of the first million members, I think, or even maybe the first 500,000 members of LinkedIn a long, long time ago. So been on there for quite some time and definitely try to stay on top of that inbox as best I can.
Jason Niedle (26:52)
And that’s John Head, Aetos Imaging. And Aetos Imaging is A-E-T-O-S imaging.com. aetosimaging.com, John. Thank you so much for being on Beyond SaaS. For tech leaders out there, we’re committed to exploring tech growth. So we drop episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And you can find me, Jason Niedle, at tethos.com. T-E-T-H-O-S.com. If you got value today, I’d love if you could share the episode or drop any questions for me or future guests or feedback below. Until next time.
This is Beyond SaaS.
