Brandon Bruce. He’s the COO and co-founder of Cirrus Insights, the sales plugin for Gmail and Outlook. The company is number 41 on the Inc. 5000 and the fastest growing company in Tennessee. Brandon once raced his bicycle 508 miles across Death Valley in 35 hours and 7 minutes. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Energy Bus What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Google Drive and Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I would’ve tried to start a full-fledged company earlier”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Brandon to the show 02:25 – Brandon was in Episode 226 of The Top 02:38 – They had $550K in funding 02:48 – The team back then was 55-60 and now it’s 70 02:59 – No additional funding has been raised 03:16 – Cirrus Insights is a fast-growing company that didn’t rely too much on VC 03:35 – 5 years ago, Cirrus Insights wanted to solve the problem of going back and forth between Gmail and Salesforce 03:53 – Cirrus Insights brings Salesforce into the inbox 04:05 – They also help sales reps to seamlessly update Salesforce from the back end 04:13 – Salesforce isn’t actually a CRM 04:38 – Cirrus Insights just launched Flight Plans, which is an extension of their philosophy 04:42 – It is fully built-in to Outlook and Gmail 04:44 – It allows people to setup a sequence of sales touches 04:58 – It’s personalized and low scale 05:51 – Cirrus Insights’ growth is mostly from the Salesforce app exchange 06:00 – Continued growth is still from word-of-mouth 06:31 – Cirrus Insights has passed 100K seats with an average seat price of $6 06:53 – The average seat price has gone up now 07:19 – Flight Plans is a new tier 07:24 – Cirrus Insights is the product name and Flight Plans is going to be an addition 07:27 – There are now 3 additions to the product 08:18 – Cirrus Insights has just passed $1M in MRR 09:00 – Customers are choosing Cirrus Insights over others because some are overpaying and underutilizing marketing operations 09:29 – Marketing and sales are now working as a team with Cirrus Insights 09:58 – Cirrus Insights now charges $8 per seat 10:32 – Marketing operation has 4 big, unicorn companies 10:49 – There are now hundreds of tools in marketing operation and it will be interesting to see a consolidation 11:04 – Brandon is thinking customers will just utilize the best tools for the job 11:33 – Cirrus Insights is trying to position themselves to be the best at what they do 11:43 – They’re also continuing to offer more in the future 13:00 – Gross customer churn: 15-20% annually, but they’re targeting to lower it down to 10% 13:30 – There’s a lot less churn in the enterprise 14:17 – Net annual revenue churn is still negative and net seat churn is below 10% 15:16 – Most of the new leads are from word-of-mouth, with some small scale paid acquisition 15:22 – They’re more focused on the content that can drive more people 15:25 – Brandon has read The Slow Sale which is about how slowing down can win more deals 16:30 – Budget for paid marketing is $25-50K 16:43 – They’ve done sponsorship for conferences, but the ROI is getting low 17:25 – Check out their podcast: Our Love Hate Relationship with Sales, which drives sales as well 18:22 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: As saturated as the market is, there’s still a way for your business to stand out. Marketing and sales teams are looking for tools that will not just help them with their workload, but encourage them to work together. If your company constantly adds value, word-of-mouth will be your driver of sales.   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 S