Irv Shapiro. He’s responsible for the overall business strategy and corporate leadership as the CEO of DialogTech. DialogTech provides the industry a leading, actionable, marketing analytics platform for businesses that value inbound sales calls. The company was named an Inc 500 company in servicing close to 5000 businesses worldwide—ranging from emerging companies to the world’s largest enterprises. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Purple Cow What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? —The Top Inbox How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I should have stayed in architecture school”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:04 – Nathan introduces Irv to the show 02:51 – DialogTech is Irv’s third rodeo in the industry 03:10 – Metamor Technologies is a system information business that built large office systems 03:35 – It scaled to 500 people and was sold to Corestaff 03:51 – It was sold in 1997 for $38M 04:11 – After Metamor, Irv started Edventions which was in the early days of the internet when schools were concerned about internet safety and its environment 04:40 – Edventions provided a safe internet environment 04:51 – In 2000, everything crashed and it was sold to Edison Schools 05:17 – DialogTech’s team size is 150 05:20 – Current revenue is at $40M 05:25 – 2016 revenue was $35M 05:30 – DialogTech raised a total of $60M 05:45 – DialogTech did their A round in July of 2007 06:15 – DialogTech helps companies who receive inbound calls to become more effective, efficient and close more sales 06:37 – DialogTech does four things technology-wise: 06:59 – It tells the customer’s behavior on your website 07:04 – The data then can be used by the marketing team 07:33 – An example of this is a life insurance call 08:18 – Tracking is by a unique phone number 09:38 – When a website is visited, a unique phone number is shown 10:14 – DialogTech is a SaaS model, but is in essence a cloud model 10:32 – Charges vary if the calls are in a batch or if it is an unlimited plan 10:37 – Customers pay between $150K a month to over $100K a month 10:55 – DialogTech has almost 5K customers 11:19 – Irv shares a growth tactic they tried that didn’t work 12:36 – They sent burner phones to over 200 marketing executives that have videos on them that will play after opening the phone 12:55 – They’ve spent over $20K for the campaign but they were not able to get a single sale 13:20 – Annual logo churn is around 8-9% 13:35 – Monthly revenue churn on the enterprise side is around .4% 13:47 – DialogTech has around 98% revenue retention 14:59 – 3K of their 5K customers are legacy customers who are at a lower price point 15:09 – Irv believes that they will reach $40M in revenue by end of 2017 15:30 – The volume of calls that DialogTech processes requires a technology that needs funds 15:55 – Gross margin is around 65% 16:38 – CAC depends on segment 16:43 – Gross margin payback is 18-24 months 16:59 – Irv explains how they compute it 17:45 – LTV is 5-7 years for enterprise customers 18:13 – DialogTech has around 40 engineers, 50 in sales overall, 12-15 customer support, and the rest in back end 19:50 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Target goals can be reached with a consistent model and growth tactics in play. We learn from our mistakes, so don’t be afraid to make them. Weigh the pros and cons of raising capital; if there is a need, then go for it.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track