➡️ Summary ➡️

In this conversation, Kathryn Castle, founder of Candybox, shares her journey of establishing a consulting firm focused on RevOps for early-stage tech companies. She discusses the launch of their free application, Custom Quote Sync, on the AppExchange, and the marketing strategies employed to promote it. Kathryn also delves into her experiences with team building, leveraging LinkedIn for growth, and the importance of considering broader marketing and support plans when launching a product.

➡️ Guest ➡️

Kathryn Castle https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryncastle/

Candybox https://www.candyboxcrm.com/

➡️ Takeaways ➡️

Candybox specializes in consulting for early-stage tech companies.

The idea for Custom Quote Sync emerged from recurring client needs.

Marketing strategies included leveraging LinkedIn and Reddit for promotion.

Building a team from contractors to employees requires careful consideration.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and growth.

Paid promotions can be effective, but should be budget-conscious.

Community engagement through events can enhance networking opportunities.

It's essential to have a nurture plan for leads generated from app launches.

Support plans are crucial for the success of a new product.

Giving back to the community can enhance brand awareness.

➡️ Youtube ➡️

Watch this episode on our Youtube channel

➡️ Keywords ➡️

Candybox, Quote Sync, AppExchange, RevOps, Consulting, Marketing Strategies, Team Building, LinkedIn Growth, Paid Promotions, Salesforce Community

➡️ Hashtags ➡️

#salesforce #isv #appexchange #revops #quote #marketing

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Today I'm joined on the show by Kathryn Castle of Candy Box. Thanks for joining Kathryn.

Thanks Scott, I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, so I'm looking forward to getting into your history and background of Candy Box and how you all built your newly released custom Quotesync app on the App Exchange. So maybe we can just start from your background, ⁓ how you founded Candy Box, and then transition into the application itself.

Yeah, sure. So to set context a little bit, Candy Box is ⁓ a professional services company. We're consultants. We primarily work with B2B SaaS companies, mostly in the SMB to growth stage. ⁓ So they're often fairly early in their Salesforce slash rev ops journey. And then they grow through their engagement with us, if all goes well. How I started the company was really happenstance. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

I'm currently based out of Mexico, but before that I lived in the Netherlands for some time. And when I moved out here, ⁓ I left my old job and I started contracting. ⁓ so like my background was in business systems at a tech company, similar to the ones that we work at now. So I had a pretty good, ⁓ network at that point. So I started contracting for one company and.

Mm-hmm.

They told me at some point, I think now incorrectly that in order to be correctly classified as a contractor, needed multiple clients. And so I thought, okay, well, I guess I'll see if I can find another client, but I wasn't sure at that point how easy it would be to do. So I was plugging my network. ⁓ what actually happened was I ended up with, think, five different clients. ⁓ and so I started working with all of them. quickly got very busy.

Mmm.

I started hearing this similar sort of refrain from them where they were saying, wow, it's so refreshing to work with a consultant who actually understands the tech space and all of our many acronyms and like our team structure and how we do things. And so I got this idea like, maybe there is actually a gap in the market for a specialist agency that works specifically with these types of companies. ⁓ And that's pretty much where Candy Box came from.

Okay. And what year were you, ⁓ was it when you were told you need to have multiple clients and so you went out, you were voluntold to go get more projects?

wanna say...

Okay, interesting. I wonder if that has anything, I know at one point in California they had passed a law, I think there was a lot of ⁓ question marks about Uber drivers and Lyft drivers and are they contractors, are they employees and I think California passed some litigation and one of the easy identifiers was multiple clients. Perhaps that's what they were leaning into at the time, I'm not sure but.

Yeah,

it might have been that or it might have been, I think, a mix up with some Dutch lore because of where we were previously. But honestly, I don't know. Maybe it was correct. But hey, you know, it worked out for me. So no.

⁓ OK.

I mean, either way, works. Yeah, I was going to say,

it's a good marching orders there, I would say. Go and get more clients. And so could you expand a little bit on, ⁓ obviously, you were alluding to the fact that you all are specialized in a specific vertical in cloud. Could you expand on that a little bit more?

Yeah, it was a bit of a forcing function.

Yeah. So the vast majority of our customers, when they start working with us are relatively early stage tech companies. They usually say like series A or B, although we do have some companies who start at a, like a stage of more maturity. ⁓ They will often already have Salesforce in place, although some of them are looking to do a migration or an implementation.

Mm-hmm.

And they may have somebody doing rev ops in house, but sometimes they don't. ⁓ but usually the struggle is like, even if they do have a rev ops, ⁓ persona in house, there's just so much to do. ⁓ when you're setting up the foundations of how you're going to operate your go to market systems, you know, so one, one person, ⁓ has to fulfill this kind of strategic role, like how.

Mm-hmm.

going to work at this company and then they also have to do the execution ⁓ and it's really difficult to split your time that way ⁓ even if you have like both strategic experience and technical capabilities but a lot of people don't have both of those capabilities so we will often come in to sort of fill that gap in a way and work as a you know a thought partner to whoever is in-house and help companies avoid a lot of those early pitfalls.

that come from not thinking, well, not having the, like the time or the right personnel to, to set up your revenue operations and your go to market systems correctly. So like, if you don't set up a firm foundation, usually what will end up happening like a year, a couple of years down the line is you just have a load of tech debt, or you have processes and systems and technologies that don't work for the company anymore.

Mm-hmm.

And you'll end up with a situation like you have five deal desk reps that you've had to hire because every single quote has errors because things weren't set up correctly and you need somebody to check every single one of them manually or people are using Salesforce, but they go to do their reporting outside in spreadsheets because they know that the data isn't trustworthy. ⁓

So we're hoping to avoid those types of problems and various others.

Sure, I imagine too at the size company you're talking about, early stage growth to SMBs, there are so many fires to put out that it's easy for employees at that company to just build up that technical debt just to get something done, anything done, and go back to focusing on whatever their core service offering or product is, right? So that makes sense that if they can't offload to someone like Candy Box to get things done properly, that's a good idea.

it's okay.

Mm-hmm.

OK, so you're helping out ⁓ specifically with rev ops with early stage growth, SMBs, ⁓ specifically kind of as an SI partner. Obviously, though, you and I are chatting about this new application that you just released on the AppExchange, Custom Quote Sync. ⁓ So can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, for sure. So custom Quotesync, it's a free application on the AppExchange and it was born of ⁓ one of my team, actually Brent. ⁓ I want to make sure I give him a big shout out. ⁓ So yes, very, the biggest of all props. ⁓ So essentially, ⁓ like there, we actually use the quote object a lot in our builds with customers.

Big props to Brent.

It's not always the most popular object. think sometimes it's overlooked, but it can be really, really useful when you're building out early CPQ processes before, you know, going to the extent of actually buying like a full fledged, ⁓ CPQ solution. But the native syncing functionality in Salesforce is a little bit limited. ⁓ custom fields don't sync out of the box.

Mm-hmm.

So if you want to sync custom fields, which most companies will end up wanting to do that, you have to kind of build work arounds or you end up with a lot of errors that you're always having to fix. So the RQuotesync app, it addresses that issue. ⁓ Brent told me that it was kind of inspired by the idea of twin fields in CPQ, which I have to admit I'm not super familiar with, but I imagine it follows a like a similar architecture.

Mm-hmm.

and

Basically, this issue came up again and again across our accounts. And we do find that to happen a lot, like because we're specialists, we end up addressing the same issues over and over again. And that leads to us being able to develop almost like packaged solutions in a lot of cases, know, like best practices for how to address X scenario or Y scenario. So I got to a point where we would just

doing the same thing over and over again to address, ⁓ customers who had issues sinking, ⁓ quotes and opportunities. And Brent had the idea, you know, what if we just turn this into, you know, an app exchange app and we offer it for free seeing as we're more or less doing that on an ad hoc basis already. and yeah, that's essentially where, the idea came from.

Mm-hmm.

That's great. I can see how, you know, one of the challenges people have with consulting in general, think, and a lot of S-Site partners can hit, is they cast too wide of a net and they try to be generalists. And then ⁓ first off, it's difficult with marketing because if you do everything, then it can be perceived that you're an expert in nothing.

Mm-hmm.

And similarly, if you do narrow your focus and you pick a specific niche, like you all have, then it naturally leads to, like you were saying, very similar problems creeping up again and again and again. And whether or not you build an application, a managed package to distribute on AppExchange like you all have, whether or not you do that, it at least allows you to kind of...

Yeah.

productize your service offering, even if it's all in-house. And I feel like that's a smart way to actually be able to scale. Because if you have bespoke implementations and projects for each and every client, that's a model that just won't scale long term. You can grow your company, you can get more consultants, of course. But without the ability to train everyone on this is our model, this is how we handle this problem, and this is our exact target ⁓ ICP.

I think it's very difficult ⁓ to really hit that growth lever with an SI partner. So it's very cool that you guys early on realized, this is our swim lane. We're going to focus on this. And naturally, that led to ⁓ your application ⁓ that Brent was so crucial in helping form. So OK, could you walk me through the decision to earmark it as a free application?

Thank you. Yeah.

Your story, I've heard your story a number of times from consultants and essay partners that find an issue that recurs, but they end up deciding to build a solution and charge for it. You all went in a different direction. Could you explain how you decided to keep it free?

Yeah, I guess in the greatest scheme of things, it's a relatively like small niche solution. and it's not something that it's something it's niche, but it's like broad, ⁓ in terms of how companies may use it or what type of company might use it. Like, it's not just going to be like our target ICP who's going to be using it. ⁓ and I think.

Mm-hmm.

The decision to make it free was partially because it wasn't going to be a huge amount of additional work on our side to get it out the door at the point that we already had it. We already had most of the build, like I said, from the previous engagements that we'd done. ⁓ And wanting to, in a sense, give something back to the community, I think that...

The Salesforce community and also like the rev ops community are very big on sharing solutions and like making interesting builds and like helpful fixes kind of publicly available. So obviously when you run a business, you want to make money, but I think it is nice when you have a bit of flexibility, you kind of like give back to the community. So there definitely is an aspect of that. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And then third, mean, if I'm honest with you, it's a little intimidating to figure out how would we go from a company that gets all of our revenue from professional services to getting a portion from like software, probably recurring revenue. I'm not an expert in this area, but I think that there are a lot of just logistical things that you have to take into consideration when you start to like split your income that way.

I don't know if I'm ready to do that. So that's definitely one aspect, but really at this point, we see it more as like a way of giving something small back to the community, a way of learning something new, you know, internally, like how to build an app exchange app. And also ⁓ sort of like a way to build additional brand awareness.

Mm-hmm.

Sure, that makes sense. I mean, certainly if nothing else, could maybe be a lead gen tool, right? And then work toward you with demand gen for your services. ⁓ But did you build out the application? ⁓ It's completely free and not like a freemium model where there are a few features that, you got to work with us if you'd like to have this enabled or anything like that.

Thank you.

No, it's completely

standalone. Like if you want to work with us, please. My, my LinkedIn DMs are open, yeah, it's like a standalone, there's no freemium. It's just pure like free download the app, get it up and running.

Very cool, very cool. ⁓ so we actually got connected ⁓ through Peter Ganza, another shout out to the, this time to the AppExchange whisperer. ⁓ So I'm assuming that he was instrumental in helping you guys create that listing. ⁓ So could you talk about that process maybe and how the kind of lead gen has been going and the traction you've seen?

you

with each other.

Mm.

Yeah, so I have to admit this isn't my strongest area because it's really been my, like my team who's been instrumental in getting things, ⁓ set up and running. ⁓ so like I said, Brent and my team is really like the technical mastermind, ⁓ Mark who runs up, who heads up delivery on our side. Like I think he was one of the ones who sort of identified this as an opportunity as well.

⁓ and then, ⁓ my, my marketer as well, like she really helped in, ⁓ you know, figuring out like, Hey, what should the launch campaign look like? So, ⁓ I felt like I would be remiss in acting like, you know, I was the driving force here in any, in any extent. ⁓ but yeah.

Well, it sounds like you're

still the glue, ⁓ you know, managing all these folks that are helping everything. And it's interesting too, I think a lot of early founders, ⁓ they form their own business, whether it's solely services or whether it's an application, they find themselves, they initially start for the added freedom that entrepreneurship can provide, ⁓ only to essentially build the walls around them.

and get locked into all the day-to-day ⁓ and operations. It sounds like you've done an amazing job though at keeping, about delegating and making sure that you're focusing on building the business and using your talents where they can provide the most value. So maybe we could take a pause and just talk about. ⁓

how you went about with your first hires at Candy Box, who they were in terms of role, mean. And maybe give us a sense of the size of the team when you founded versus today.

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you. That's very kind. I feel like most founders, I think that you get into the mindset of like, things can always be better and like focusing on the things you don't feel are working how you want rather than thinking ⁓ about the things that have gone really well. So it's always nice to get a reminder. ⁓ Yeah, so yeah, when I founded Candy Books, it was just me. ⁓ In the early days, I relied

quite a lot on contractors. I used a few trusted people that I knew from ⁓ companies that I had worked at, so like people I had worked with in the past, or even people where I'd like interviewed at their company and stayed in touch with them because we got on really well. ⁓ So I started out like that. ⁓ I think that using contractors can be a really good way. ⁓

for consulting businesses to keep some flexibility. Cause you often don't you don't know exactly how much business you're going to have at any given time. You know, you might have one month where nothing happens and you might have another month where suddenly you get like three new customers come in. And so you need to be able to flex up and down. But I was always interested in having an in-house team. Like I do know of people who have

Sure.

decently large consulting practices and it's all contractors still. So it's definitely viable, but I wanted to have a, like a team of employees. ⁓ so I think the first time I looked into that was about a year into running the business. And what I experimented with at the time was having some people, ⁓ based out of Europe. ⁓ these days, the majority of our businesses in the U S, ⁓ but back then, you know, because of the fact that I'm

from England originally and I was living in the Netherlands. Like I had a lot of business ⁓ with companies ⁓ like in the Netherlands, Germany, UK, countries like that. So I set up a small team there. I hired two people, I think to give me some optionality. Both of them were technical consultants. It was definitely good to hire two because one of them decided after a few months that he wasn't.

Mm-hmm.

feeling consulting anymore. He'd been doing it for too long and he went into like an in-house role. ⁓ But the other one stayed with us for a while. And from there, I guess I was able to ⁓ start feeling out, building out the US team. ⁓ I definitely don't think I would be alone in saying it was really intimidating the first time I hired people.

Mm-hmm.

You know, with contractors, it feels more like, you know, a lot of them have multiple clients or they're even doing things on the side and have a regular full-time job. it's like, if I don't give them work or the work dries up, it's not the biggest deal. They'll find another gig or they'll just, you know, focus on their full-time job for the moment. But, you know, when you actually hire somebody, they're usually leaving another role to come.

Mm-hmm.

and work with you. so like, really didn't want to put somebody's career at risk. Like I wanted it to be a good experience for them to come and work with Candy Box, even though we were just like a very fledgling company. And in many ways we still are. ⁓ How did I get over that? I guess it be a logical follow-up question. I don't know. I think maybe we just hit an inflection point where it's like, no, we really do need to hire somebody. You just need to.

Mm-hmm.

You you just need to do it and do your best and like learn as you go. And we definitely have made, I we, I have definitely made lots of, ⁓ you know, mistakes along the way. ⁓ I did have management experience before I started the company, but I think it's very different when you're managing a team at somebody else's company versus managing people at your own company. And you are really the one in charge of everyone's careers. Like the buck stops with you.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

When you're a manager at a larger company, sometimes you can just, you can sort of like push decisions off to somebody else like, no, I can't do this because the higher ups say no, or, this won't be possible because the company structure doesn't allow it. But ⁓ like at your own company, no, it really is all about you. ⁓ So you have to. ⁓

Yeah, you have to get good at figuring out what direction do you want to go? Like, where are your boundaries? you know, what kind of, I don't know what kind of values and behavior do you want to encourage versus discourage? Uh, yeah. So don't know if that answered your question, but those are.

Sure. No, it

does. It does. And I understand it's a lot of responsibility, right? ⁓ You mentioned how it was intimidating ⁓ specifically because you felt responsible for these ⁓ new hires careers. I'm curious too, I know you had been building up using contractors, a very common model, regardless honestly of ⁓ consulting firm stage. ⁓ But when you decided to start growing your in-house team,

Were you, you mentioned the intimidation for their careers. What about ⁓ intimidation of the financial level? Did you feel you had built up enough of an internal war chest and you had ramped up and by hiring those folks, ⁓ you had enough breathing room or were you thinking also like, I'm just hiring, hoping the work will be there because we need the capacity in order to get the new work or would you?

go out and seek the work and then seek the employees, if that makes sense.

Yeah, so I suppose if I look back now, I didn't really have too much to worry about because let's say, I don't know, I had like

three full-time people's hours and I was spreading them across contractors. Obviously I had enough business to replace one of those theoretical head counts with an employee. ⁓ But I did worry a lot at the time about that, a lot like, what if the business just kind of dries up or I...

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

hire somebody and it doesn't work out and I have to let them go and I've kind of like impacted their career. I would say that if I were doing it again now, I don't think I would have so many worries because now I would be able to say, okay, well, we have these many hours, we've been doing these many hours for the last X months, even if one of our customers...

reduces their commitment or they turn or whatnot, we're still going to have enough for myself and for another person and probably for another contractor. I think I would be looking at things differently. ⁓ I was probably very, ⁓ like I probably had a very low risk tolerance back then, even though it didn't feel like it. ⁓ Like I had built up

Mostly just through not having a life myself while I was starting the business. I built up a cushion of cash and I think that it was definitely that in part that made me feel more confident ⁓ hiring somebody. Yeah, was just, in that stage, was just like work, work, work and basically nothing else. So nothing really to spend the money on.

Sure.

And the cushion that you built up, was it all bootstrapped or did you do any fundraising from friends and family or investors?

Mm-hmm.

No,

it's all bootstrapped. ⁓ Yeah, I I never know what to call it for consultancies, because I think I do think it's really common. ⁓ You know, not to raise money. do I do know of a couple ⁓ consulting practices that have but I think it's not really the norm. Unless there's something specific that they want to do like building some kind of product or maybe like launching in a new geo.

Mm-hmm.

Um,

like one of the benefits of this model, as opposed to, you know, starting a tech company, say, is that you start generating income immediately. So you're immediately, uh, unless you're doing something wrong, like cashflow positive, which is not the case for a lot of software companies. You know, you have to, you have to actually build your product first, and then you have to find your first customers and get your product market fit and so on and so forth. Um, but if you start a consulting company as just an, like a solo

Mm-hmm.

printer or what you want to call it, then you're just immediately generating income and you can save it, you can invest it in the business, you can hire people with that. It definitely gives you early flexibility.

Right, right. The flexibility of having that war chest to grow the team is paramount. So, okay, so getting back ⁓ to custom quote sync. So ⁓ you mentioned earlier that you had a team member that helped you with the campaign launch. Could you talk a little bit more about what y'all ⁓ did together to do that?

Yeah.

Mm hmm. Yeah. So we, we did a bit of exploration prior to the launch, ⁓ like some paid options, which is quite, is quite interesting. Like there are a lot of companies out there, ones that either do like they publish reviews on their websites or they publish video reviews, ⁓ or sometimes like LinkedIn posts. and you can get them to.

Mm-hmm.

provide a review of your product for, I mean, the prices vary. Like some of them are sort of like 300, $500. Some of them are thousands or even into like the tens of thousands. So for us, it was definitely a case of, this is a free product. So I don't think it makes sense to spend that much on the marketing side. So we decided,

to mostly use more budget-friendly channels. So I have a decent following on LinkedIn. The company page also has a decent following. So we were primarily using that ⁓ to kind of launch the app. ⁓ We also made a Reddit post, which got actually a lot of traction. Like the post on, I think it was on just like the Salesforce community in Reddit, like got a load of views and some downloads. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

We did a little bit of paid promotion on LinkedIn. Like you can promote individual posts to get wider reach. beyond that, like we are still looking into, ⁓ like getting the app picked up and published on, ⁓ you know, some, some of these sites that will review things like that. ⁓ but it's been a bit slower because a lot of them will have, ⁓ kind of like a backlog.

of things that they publish on a certain schedule. So I guess a tip for companies that do want to pursue that route is definitely, ⁓ you know, get, get your ducks in a row ahead of time. You know, if you want to make sure that it's going to be live by a certain date.

Mmm.

Sure.

Are there any sites in particular that you could name that are good resources for Salesforce app reviews?

I'm trying to remember. ⁓ I mean, Salesforce band is obviously a really, really big one. ⁓ but there were a lot of other players, they're either smaller or more focused on a specific, ⁓ like vertical or, ⁓ like type of product. I'm afraid I can't remember any of those off the top of my head. but

short.

Yeah, I can, I can always look them up and give you them to put in the episode description if we need them. We can add afterwards. Yeah. Or add like a text over or something.

Sure, that'd be, sure, sure. Maybe we can add later in the show notes if it,

sure. ⁓ Very cool. Okay, so and you mentioned you also did some paid promotion on LinkedIn, ⁓ as well as you mentioned that you have a fairly large following on LinkedIn. So ⁓ I think, know, the problem a lot of founders face when they release their new app is they focus so much on the development.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ which is easy to do. It's easy to just get heads down, go in the lab ⁓ and work there. But then you have your eureka moment. You've finished the application and you realize no one's around to appreciate it, ⁓ So could you talk first maybe, how did you start building up your network on LinkedIn? Was that intentional? ⁓ Because I do think that's a great resource to have when it comes to product launches.

Yeah.

Yeah, so let me see. I've had LinkedIn for a really long time now. And I guess when I was in in-house roles, I wasn't super active in adding people to LinkedIn, just some colleagues that I was close with or people that I'd studied with in the past, things like that. ⁓ When I started Candybox, I got a bit better at

at adding people, prospects, contacts, partners. So I think even though I wasn't thinking too deeply about LinkedIn at that time, I did start to slowly build things up ⁓ back then. ⁓

Were you posting

regularly too or mostly just reaching out for connections? ⁓

Yeah, when I, when I started the

company, I did start posting more. Um, although at the time it would, sometimes it would be, if I remember correctly, like, Hey, this is an interesting tool or an interesting technical solution. Other times it would just be. Shouting out my team, uh, you know, announcing, uh, hiring, you know, like we're hiring for this role or we just hired this person and kind of introducing them by LinkedIn.

Mm-hmm.

or sometimes celebrating, ⁓ like customers raises or, ⁓ like something they achieved. ⁓ but I, I could see, I have seen for the last couple of years that. Founder led marketing or founder led thought leadership, whatever you want to call it is really, really valuable. It can be super impactful on LinkedIn. Like there are a lot of people that I follow who.

Mm-hmm.

I genuinely believe they've primarily grown their companies through LinkedIn posting and sort of gaining awareness ⁓ through LinkedIn. So I've known for a while, like, hey, I should be doing more here. ⁓ But I think it took, it did take for me ⁓ investing a bit more in marketing and starting to work with fractional marketers for me to be able to do it. ⁓ It's not.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thank

Well, some, some people, think they can always just rattle off a LinkedIn post, but for me, I often need to think about it. I'm like, what do I want to write about? And what would be the angle and like, what are some ideas that I might have? And so work is working with marketers. helped me get over, ⁓ like some of those initial hurdles and we would do things like have, content calls where we would just throw some ideas around like, Hey, what are some things that happened with customers this last week? What are some interesting things that you've heard?

Mhm.

talking to prospects recently, what are just random things that are on your mind? ⁓ And then we would generate ideas and sort of like draft posts from those. And ⁓ like that really helped me sort of being able to be like, okay, this is actually what I want to be posting about and, ⁓ you know, finding my voice. And also somebody in your ear who's like, Kathryn, you haven't posted this week, you need to post like this. I also find that to be

Hahaha.

a very good forcing function. Yeah. Although I haven't posted all this week, so I probably should do that.

Yep, getting the homework assignment helps.

Well, that's very cool. And I think sometimes people get in their own heads and don't realize they have a lot of valuable information and knowledge and wisdom to share. So there are far too many folks staying silent. But although one trend that seems to be popping up more and more is the use of AI to generate these posts. So it'll be interesting to see too long term.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

if LinkedIn remains ⁓ a great channel for folks to be growing on. know you mentioned that you know many people that have specifically grown their company on it. ⁓ I've seen that as well. It'll be interesting to see how AI changes that among a number of other things.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think it's tough because, so I, I, my personal stance is like, it's fine to, it's fine to use it maybe to like generate some ideas or just like, you know, what would be a framework for talking about this particular topic, but just like doing the entire content generation using AI, not so much my style. Um, but I do think.

Mm-hmm.

I know there's a lot of posts on LinkedIn where just the way they're written, it sets off those alarm bells, ⁓ but you can never, you never know for sure. And there are some things about the LinkedIn algorithm, at least from my understanding, that I think causes people to write in a way that does seem a little ⁓ stilted or unnatural. Like, and I've, definitely do this from time to time too, where you like,

Yeah.

Yeah.

split your content over multiple lines. And with the first two lines of a post, you have to kind of, you don't have to, but it often can be valuable to turn it into a bit of a hook. Um, so you try and grab attention with those first two lines so that people will then like click into the post and read more. Um, and I do think that some of those tactics, sometimes they're just AI, you know, like somebody has been like, Hey, write me a post on topic X and do it.

Sure.

you know, in LinkedIn format. Um, but sometimes it's just people trying to, um, not game the algorithm exactly, but make sure that their post just doesn't get lost because that can happen easily on LinkedIn. Sometimes you'll post something and it just, it just vanishes and it gets, I don't know, like a hundred views when other posts you've written get, 5,000 or 10,000. Um, and so I think people

people who are serious about posting on LinkedIn, definitely want to avoid things like that.

Sure. You mentioned that with launching the application, you also boosted and promoted a few posts. ⁓ I think a lot of founders are curious about paid promotion, whether it's Google AdWords campaigns, whether it's promoting Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads. I'm curious, how did that LinkedIn ad campaign work out for you all? Did you feel?

Hmm.

Thank you.

⁓ Like it did drive a lot of eyeballs toward your listing and drive a lot of installs.

So for us, yes, it did. ⁓ I think I couldn't tell you exactly how we did it ⁓ because my marketer set this up, but there's ways of being more or less budget conscious on LinkedIn and sort of getting views or eyeballs, like you say, without spending a huge amount of money. So we were sort of pursuing that avenue.

⁓ but yeah, the post as far as I know that got the most traction out of everything so far was the Reddit one, which that might just be because of the type of application this is. you know, perhaps people who are on Reddit, ⁓ like found it more intriguing than the people that we have on LinkedIn. ⁓ you know, I think on, on Reddit, you have a lot of technical folks, a lot of admins, developers, people who are like,

Mm-hmm.

hands-on in Salesforce day-to-day. And at least on my LinkedIn, I do have some people like that, especially candidates, people that I've worked with, but I also have a lot of more senior rev ops people who are maybe not as hands-on anymore and might not be, you know, as intrigued with a solution like this. So yeah, in summary, TLDR, I should say, seeing as we're talking about Reddit. Yeah, the Reddit post was the like,

the biggest attention getter for us.

That's interesting. was going to ask if there are, I know you'd mentioned Reddit earlier. I was going to ask, ⁓ beyond LinkedIn and Reddit, are there any other channels or social media that you're active on ⁓ that you've seen as a growth channel?

I'm not really right now, ⁓ but there are some where I think, if I had more time, I would definitely get back on these channels. So there's some Slack communities that are amazing and I have previously been on and I found contacts, even customers through them before. I just don't really have time to be in and out and like engaging in those at the moment.

Thank

Mm-hmm.

Are these public

⁓ Slack workspaces that you could share?

Yeah,

yeah, I think so. So this is more specific to rev ops as, as opposed to just Salesforce. ⁓ But there was one I used to like a lot called wizards of ops. I think rev genius has one. ⁓ There's one for women, which is women in revenue, I think it's called I can go and double check these afterwards. ⁓ And then there's a lot of

Mm-hmm.

⁓ communities as well, where I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, which ones are free and which ones have a paid membership, like rev genius, rev ops, co-op, there's pavilion, which is not as far as I know, that's not slack focused, but, ⁓ like they do in-person events, they have, ⁓ sort of like management and exact tracks. ⁓ so yeah, if I, if I were going to.

to focus in that area a bit more, I definitely pick one or two of these communities to be part of. ⁓ But I will say something I've seen in the last year or so, coming back more as in-person events. So obviously one's ability to go to those is gonna be dependent on, know, do you have the budget as an individual or as a company and where are you based as well? ⁓

Mm-hmm.

But you know, if you can make it to say just like one or two of these events, it can be hugely beneficial in growing out your network. ⁓ yeah, yeah, I will give a shout out to Mexico dreaming as well, because I went, so they, when was it? It was in November, I think. ⁓ they did a great job. It was really fun. ⁓ I think a lot of dreaming events.

Isn't there a Mexico Dreamin' event coming up fairly soon?

⁓ they're always different. They always have their kind of local flavor. ⁓ And the thing I really liked about Mexico Dreaming was it was super friendly, ⁓ super, super personable. Like everybody was talking. ⁓ The organizers made sure that you got introduced to people as you arrived so that you weren't just kind of meandering around, ⁓ you know, trying to find somebody to speak to.

Mhm.

They had a mariachi band in the closing ceremony. So yeah, if you ever need an excuse to come out to Mexico, then Mexico Dreaming, I definitely recommend that.

Yeah, it's a business trip. Very cool. And have you ⁓ with either Salesforce sponsored events or Salesforce directly sponsored events or some of these Dreamit events, ⁓ has Candybox been a sponsor?

Exactly.

We haven't been a sponsor so far. I wouldn't rule it out. But mostly I've just, I've just been a speaker. Yeah. So I've spoken at a couple. I was a keynote, well, not a keynote speaker, but like a panel speaker at another, at another one. ⁓ I think if I continue to do that, ⁓ the way I would approach it is by

Mm-hmm. a speaker. Okay.

Maybe thinking a bit more about what topic I really want to cover and how that ties back to the business. ⁓ so like find a topic that's interesting for people and sort of topical, ⁓ but also is relevant to the work that we do. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Sure, that makes sense.

mean, it can be a great way to showcase expertise and again, kind of leads back to demand gen.

Yep.

Yep. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I've seen, I've seen some interesting presentations as well. ⁓ some people are really good at putting in some kind of lead magnet or lead generation, asset as part of their presentation, but in a way where they are, ⁓ delivering something of value to the listeners.

So for example, it's, you know, I'm thinking about one presentation particularly where they're talking about a certain type of It was like introduction to this type of tool. What are your options? What's the history? How should you think about it? ⁓ And the person giving the speech, you know, is the founder of one of these companies. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

but they offer as a lead magnet. Like I've done all this research on all of the options that are out there in the market. And I have a spreadsheet. ⁓ If you want me to share it with you, you just need to give me your email address. And obviously they get the email address and sort of a potential connection with somebody who they know is interested in this space. But the person who's giving the email address actually gets like something that's very valuable in return. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

almost like competitive analysis that not competitive, but vendor analysis that would have taken a really, really long time for them to do otherwise. ⁓ so I might consider something like that. Like, I don't think that, I don't think that dreaming present presentations should feel like a sales pitch. And I think a lot of organizing, a lot of organizers are, they do their due diligence to make sure that isn't the case. ⁓ but at the same time, like there are.

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

opportunities to share things that are of value to your listeners that also, you know, give something back or get something in return for, ⁓ you know, the company that's presenting.

Thank

Yes, that makes sense. And for a company like Candy Box, too, where ⁓ your revenues are 100%, at least today, coming from pro services, you really are selling your expertise and your knowledge and not an application. The application you have, as we've discussed, is free. So when a vendor that's ⁓ selling licenses for a SaaS application

Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm. Yep.

talks about their tool solely in their presentation. I think it's a little bit more of a sales pitch, but you could give a talk on any sort of rev ops ⁓ topic and it would likely serve to create some leads just for Candy Box because they want to work with you because you've been seen as an expert in the field.

is actually.

Yeah, I mean, in an ideal world, ⁓ yes, but you obviously, never know in advance exactly how ⁓ popular your talk is going to be. ⁓ So it's always a bit of a guessing game, like what type of people are going to be attending? What are they going to think is interesting? ⁓ What can I speak to ⁓ insightfully?

Mm.

that people are also going to want to listen to.

Sure, yes. That's something you can't always plan for. You don't know what other talks are going on too. This is years ago now, but I gave a talk once at Dreamforce when, I found out, unfortunately, I think the night before I found out my talk was going on at the same time as a fireside chat with Michelle Obama. So, you know, I felt bad. I wanted to reach out to Michelle and tell her that probably no one's going to show up to her talk, but I wasn't able to contact her ahead of time.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ Very cool. So ⁓ we talked about the demand gen, lead gen from going to these treatment events. ⁓ Also, obviously, we also talked about the app exchange. And that's another avenue where when people install your application, you're receiving ⁓ emails and possibly could turn into future services. I'm curious. ⁓ I can't quite recall the exact launch date of your application.

Mm-hmm.

Have you seen some installs come through that led to new business for Candy Box?

Do you remember us with you? yet. ⁓ We've quite a few, two months maybe? Yeah, it's early days. So we've got our installs. I see them come through. have them set up to ping my Slack channel. ⁓ But not all of them are RICP. ⁓ And like you said, it's early days so far.

Okay, and how long have you been?

okay, so it's very early days.

Sure. Sometimes it takes a while to you plant the seed and you're to have to wait a long time before that sapling starts to grow. ⁓ So it makes sense to at least get the ball rolling even if it's not going to be this quarter or even this fiscal year. ⁓ Just kind of it can help ⁓ start that sales cycle I With little to no effort from your team because the application is just up there.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yep.

So very cool. Well, we should start wrapping up here. But ⁓ before we do, just want to ask, is there any advice you would give to a fellow SI partner that is considering dipping their toe into the ISV space and creating ⁓ a package for the App Exchange?

Yeah, I feel like maybe I'm stealing a bit of what you said earlier, but maybe making sure that you're not thinking just about the technical aspects of launching an app, but also more holistically, what does your marketing plan look like? Do you have a nurture plan for any leads that you generate? What's your support plan?

⁓ you know, once you've launched it and people are actually like asking questions, know, do you have, somebody who has time allotted for those kinds of things. So. Yeah, I think it can be easy to get wrapped up in, ⁓ like the development side and, know, the security review and all of that. But, ⁓ you know, you're really launching a product. So it will, I would say, think it's worth the extra time and energy to think about, ⁓

the wider aspects of supporting that product and making it a success going forward.

Sure, that makes sense.

That makes a lot of sense. Well, Kathryn, thank you so much for taking some time to join us, talk about your experience found in Candybox and the custom Quotesync application. Where can folks go to learn more about you or Candybox or the application?

So anybody who's listening who'd like to add me on LinkedIn, please feel free. ⁓ There are not many Kathryn castles based in Mexico, so I think it should be relatively easy to find. ⁓ And then our rev ops is candyboxcrm.com.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much and best of luck to Candy Box team and the new custom quote sync application.

Thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate you having me today.

Cheers.