How SalesMind AI Gets 42% Reply Rate on LinkedIn x Work Optional (Part 1)

Great. It's Saturday, June 7th. I'm here with my friend Julian Gadilla.

Very excited because Julian, we've been trying to book this uh conversation for some time now. Uh so Julian Gadilla is the uh CEO of a company called Salesmind. Amazing background.

He's French but study and worked in China and now he is having his uh fast growing business out of Thailand. So uh welcome Julian. Uh work optional mastermind is really about uh learning and interviewing folks such as yourself that are building uh AI applications that are going to transform the future of work.

So today if you if it's okay with you love to find out more about your amazing background uh want to pick your brains about how you see AI is transforming business and work uh sort of where the trends are going. Uh then certainly uh have you tell us what uh salesmind is doing. I know that you you're getting amazing traction.

My understanding is your your sales to has sent some 3 million messages on LinkedIn and your response rate for your clients is more than double the traditional 20% is what I'm learning. So I'd love to learn more about that. Um how does that sound?

We'll cover those three topics.

That sound amazing. Really excited to get started.

Okay. So we're both in Bangkok, but you're French and you study in China. How tell us more about Julian.

Yes, sure. So Julian always wanted to travel basically. So the the university offer me a possibility to study in China and I know that that country is really fast growing.

They have rapid innovation and they are leading the innovation. So doing computer science um as as study was like going to China to study this field was actually a very very wise choice um looking back now. So I've been studying China for for several years and um and my background in France lies on and fas on ethics data protection regulation compl compliance and everything.

you know the the the Europeans they like to put low before we find use cases. Um so the the blend of both of them is actually look like Thailand to me.

and um and then this is where I identified the opportunity that um led me to build salesman actually but I guess we're going to get into that.

Where did you study in China and how many years and was it a a master's degree in comsai? Yes, it was a master. I I did my third and fourth and fifth year back in China.

It was in Tanin, Beijing. And I and I finished my my time in China in 2020 right before COVID actually.

Wow. Wow. And was it in Chinese or is an English program?

No, it was in English, but I I do learn Chinese.

Oh, okay. Okay. Fantastic.

Did you launch salesmind immediately or did you do something else and how did you start salesmind again? Then tell us about salesmind. Yeah.

So no I haven't learned sales mind right after my study basically I've worked in several companies before big corporate and always as a project or product manager. My my skills and passion lies in product themselves. So I've been building products for businesses um for the last five years before I started uh salesmind basically.

And then at some point um it led me to identify uh a gap and problem in the sales software industry where the sales rep do still a lot of things that is manual and where the automation where promising scale it just bring actually spam. So we identified that the AI will actually be much more effective in some part of the sales funnel and uh and in the lead generation uh sphere basically where where it will be the easiest part to leverage the capacity of AI. So this is where we started.

We identify one specific use case where people need to reply all their messages and at some point we added more features that that people wanted right you you have to defend your customer and just build the product they they want. So we started this way and uh we we keep uh we keep iterating and improving the product on on a weekly basis.

And so what was the exact problem or case study that you were that sort of triggered you to start this company? I think uh the trigger was really strong. We were at one point I was project manager for marketing agency.

I faced the same problem over and over and over again with the client. They were not able to handle the number of lead we were sending them. So at some point we found a strategy that were generating thousand of lead per month for them.

Obviously not all of them were like extremely excited but but they needed to move in the funnel of conversion. And that time it was a sport manufacturing uh sport equipment manufacturer the client that we had and we get him in touch three times with the Olympic organizer in Paris. So it was a client in France and we get him in touch with the organizer of the Olympic game in in the same year and they were all super excited about the opportunity that that our client brought to them but our client just never replied.

So it mean that that golden opportunity to actually do something meaningful with the with the the Olympics game. So we identify that if the AI was able to identify which conversation need immediate attention and draft a reply or even reply itself to make the lead move forward and just offer simply either the resources that the person is asking is the meeting link for people to book is just a simple reply to make the people understand better. it will be extremely easy for the AI to do this this part and and that what the use case we identified.

So we started with just an agent that was replying to the message and then we add the qualification and the real time and the trust connection and so on.

okay

that's correct the time the time you spend between the time the lead is replying and the time you you have to reply it cannot be You have to be

sure. It needs to be instant. It needs instant.

Okay. So, the agency was being being paid by by the clients to to to do marketing to do socials getting the leads but not capturing enough. So, can you talk about the product and I sort of how that carry into LinkedIn and why LinkedIn?

So when we were providing the go to market strategy, we tested all the channel for B2B, B2C and so on and and what we saw that has the most success is LinkedIn because they have been able to build a very comprehensive acquisition funnel. Um so we automated the outbound because it was the easiest way to scale how many people you can get in touch with. Now LinkedIn is like we automate one part of the acquisition on LinkedIn which is the outbound.

Now if you create content, if you engage with uh the the content of your prospect, if you invite them to like podcast like this one and if you like basically do social warming, you are able to really skyrocket the number of leads that LinkedIn generates for you because you use it as a very comprehensive inbound, outbound, organic and and paid. We never did paid any time but because the organic is strong enough there.

I I know you've got many clients. I'm not sure if you're eligibility to disclose how many but I know you're growing fast. Julian um maybe describe the typical client.

Is it direct to client to the brand or are you working through intermediaries or agencies for for sales mind?

Yes. So I think initially we built the product for agencies uh lead generation agency B2B marketing agency because that was where we were and what we what we the problem we identified we wanted to solve. U but at some point for the first year we understood that it was way too early for a product like sales mine to actually uh fulfill all the requirements of the lead generation agency.

So we started to target and business users. So small businesses uh founders, small uh sales team leaders as well. So five 10 15 people and and that was working really well because we automate most of the path in the lead generation, the capture and the qualification.

So that was bringing up a lot of their time. They were even replacing the VA. they were hiring in the in the Philippine and so on because uh they were able to manage all the outreach by themselves because the AI was making that so much easier for them.

I know you you're using sales mind to prospect your own clients within LinkedIn. I love that. So what's working?

Is there certain vertical certain you know client size or and what's this most most popular use case if you will? I would say we are not uh we're kind of industry agnostic. Uh we can serve most of the industry.

LinkedIn have 1 billion users so far. So if you want to reach someone in certain industry, the sense that this person is on LinkedIn and active on LinkedIn is really high. Now what we see is there is certain industry we cannot target like the manufacturing, agriculture, uh nurses, hospitality.

Yeah. All those industry are not really active on LinkedIn. So it will be very challenging to scale.

So the best use case we're seeing is with the SAS we have been proving it with salesman. We use salesman and that generates 60 70% of the leads that we're generating come from salesmind.

I love that. I love that. I was talking with someone with a VC this week and he told me why don't you eat your dog own dog food and and I told him that exactly what we are doing right because sales mind is generating the lead for testine itself so at some point we were able to send so much traffic into the application itself what was funny is at some point we were seeing people we were messaging them we were getting in touch with them they were not replying but they were complaining in the support for something because they were signing up into the application even though they didn't reply to to the engagement we are creating.

So the SAS work really well, IT services consulting works really well, cyber security works really well, financial services works really well and that the primary uh type of client that that we had now we are leaning uh a little bit more toward the agency that have larger accounts stick a little bit more longer engagement and so on. So this is the market that now we're tackling the the agency for that that is selling to people.

Okay. Can you give examples of I mean you don't have to give names of clients in those two verticals that are actually using salesmind and what are they actually doing?

We have a a client called Zebra in France. Uh he's is happy to to share the the case study with us. He have been satisfied with the product really early adopters.

So he faced a lot of challenges that we that we let let him face. But basically what what what he's doing is helping company to drive change. So it's a change management software.

He helped to organize all the change in the in the company and uh and basically we generate a lot of meeting for him because he have a sign up free signup page. So we just send constant flow of uh of lead into his page and and people sign up and then after we do not have so much effort after the people sign up right we stop more or less there for the SAS and it's only to the product to to see how much uh the conversion rate of the product is and and then that how we calculate the ROI. Now for the IT services, consulting, cyber security, um people are are offering like services, development, market development, design and so on.

Uh and and that what works really well because those service uh companies they need a regular flow or client. They need a predictable pipeline and that what we're providing them. we able to understand what was the the success we had before and improve the machine to ensure that we we understand what are the the next the next batch of lead that we are bringing.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Um every business, every entrepreneur, every investor needs to build brand and sales.

So maybe I'll toss out a few. Uh so on work optional I've got a partner his name is Michael Block and uh we are looking to acquire property management companies in the USA right so uh specifically DMC's that manage multif family apartments and there's 326,000 of them in America and so we want to reach a certain criteria maybe 10,000 of them okay if they have a certain financial standing whatnot. Um, now some of these can be found in LinkedIn, some cannot.

Um, but if we were to then engage salesmind to help us uh identify the targets and then prospect the targets, that's something that you can do within LinkedIn, right? Can you walk me through the process of onboarding this project if we were to use salesmind for that?

Yeah, sure. So, I will I will start by asking a quick question. And do you have that list of 10,000 people that you want to reach or you you want us to find out for you?

Uh we have 2,000 on a CRM system. Um and then we can use uh services like Apollo, right? io to get them or we buy lists from from property management associations and obviously each of these have certain quality of prospect and certain cost of all of that.

yes definitely so that that actually works if you have past data of the profile that you're targeting that's even better. So we can rely on on those profile to make a lookalike audience. Um but basically we will take your criteria.

We have the agent that is filtering the lead based on statistics criteria for job title, industry, skills, gender and BTI. I mean a very comprehensive set of of criteria to assess if the person is the right fit for you or not. and and then basically the you will we will train the AI for it to actually remain compliant with your brand value guideline and and tone of voice.

Um so basically reading your website, reading your inbox help us to to do that. We will ask you to validate and and I think that what the AI has brought in the last in the last few years. It moves human from doer to validator and then basically we'll ask you to validate what the AI understood out of your business your audience and the people that it it gather for you and then the engagement will start rolling automatically.

We start engaging up to 200 300 activities per day and and let you handle the the rest. And I mentioned this use case because acquiring a company and co- calling them is obviously harder to do than selling a SAS service or selling a a a health product. The prospecting and the training uh part you mentioned, how does that actually work?

Does your agent ask us questions and then we answer them? Do we create some kind of dossier to then to then you then ingest into our specific agent?

Yes. So basically the agent is not yet asking you question to validate what he understood. So you still need to navigate a little bit through the through the interface that we build for you to actually validate what the AI generated.

Um so the way how we will tackle this problem and and I think uh what you mentioned also there there is a big component of the timing in in what you're providing like if it's not the right timing people will just not not do it right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this this is going going to be a little bit uh the tricky part I would say because identifying the right trigger might might be the challenging if we mon channel on on LinkedIn. Um now the way how we will ask you to to to do that will be to um just go through the different things that the AI have done for you. The lead that it gathered we we give you access to the list.

We give you access to the entire knowledge base. So you just like read online uh document everything that we can find about you online.

and we make it match.

Okay. So, just one more question on this use case, and I may have one more for you. So, so let's say we gave you 2,000 and we've got emails and and phone numbers.

" So, so then I would imagine your sales mind would help us prospect within LinkedIn. But let's say the 2,000, some of them are not on LinkedIn, some are, but you're starting with 2,000 from a database and 8,000 that you prospect. That's 10,000.

that's a very good question uh we currently only do LinkedIn and that actually one of the reason why we're trying to raise why we're raising basically that to open more channel where we see the most significant traction is in the calling like the email is really crowded now so doesn't really matter how good the email is people end up with thousand of email per day while calling will be having a significant impact if you can if you can have that that scale and and people are asking for that. to voice voice. Okay, gotcha.

Out of 2,000, let's say 1,000 you sort of match LinkedIn and then you then we purchase another 9,000 from you. There's 9,000. Uh then you would uh ask for more information.

We would train it and then you would then contact them over LinkedIn. When when is the handover to us like because if you if you send initial messages and intros to 9,000 maybe 10,000 is interested to learn more, right? Does your service stop at saying ah now I'm going to I'm going to bring in my client so that maybe we have a conversation or it bring this email or does it all happen within LinkedIn like how far can it go?

Yes, currently where we so the all the automation stops when someone reply then the AI take over

and draft for you the the next message for you to reply. So we make it very easy for you to go through the conversation and and make the lead move forward in the funnel. So we drop the reply and we ask you to validate the AI replies before it's being sent early July we're going to release the entire autopilot that is actually conversing within minutes and replying within minutes to every single project.

Okay. And all within LinkedIn, right? Okay.

All within. So, so again in this case, and again I picked a more complex situation, we would train salesminds AI to say, "Hey, we're looking to buy PMC's. " Most will say no.

But they're interested yes. Then within the LinkedIn messaging, we would reply. But at some point, at some point, we need to take this off LinkedIn, right?

Do a a call. So salesman would stop once we get that to that stage. Is that correct?

you hand it over. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. But maybe you could explain to the audience how you guys charge what we pay as a client.

Yeah. Sure. So the the business model is very straightforward.

We have a monthly subscription fee and uh that I'm sure you have access to the entire application which is one fee per LinkedIn account that we supercharge and we have planned for unlimited uh LinkedIn account for agency that are really loud basically.

Okay. Okay.

and if I recall it's one fee monthly and there's a LinkedIn limit to the number of prospects but but not a salesman limit and what was the limit per month for LinkedIn?

Sure. So the the only hard cap that LinkedIn is giving is actually 200 connection request per week. Now it doesn't really matter how many messages you send per day.

Uh we have users that send up to 150 messages per day. But the the really important thing is the delta how many messages and activity you done yesterday and how many you done today and and that what make raise flag from LinkedIn.

So uh how many unique contacts can can we do per day or per week or per month?

It's around 190 per day.

What's what's the fee again?

Yeah, we start at $89 per month for a year commitment.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So, so 89 a month and I think you you're getting a 42% reply rate on your CL existing clients.

Yes, correct. Over the the the 3 million messages that we send that that what we observed. Yes.

Okay. Just to clarify, is it reply including don't spam me or is it more replying saying yes, I want to talk to you?

No. it's the entire the entire reply reply pool that we're getting. Now what what's really important and uh to to monitor and and I think that was one of the differentiator of salesmind is we identify the opportunity.

So people who are interested people who are uh warm people who are on open deal and we identify that now what we see is realistically between 25 and 35% of interest rate which is a much better metric to try. M your your typical client typically buys monthly or six months a year and what's the renewal rate just so we get a sense of the satisfaction level?

Sure. So I think most of the users are six and 12 months package. Um it doesn't really make sense for a business to that have actually a sales cycle of six to eight months to test a lead generation tool and say okay it doesn't work after one month.

So people are usually committed for for longer term because they know that it takes time for them to close the deal. U now I think the retention rate we must be around 50 to 60% since we started.

that's fantastic. Those are good numbers.

It it sounds to me actually yet I would like to increase that to 100 but I know I cannot serve anyone yet.