Jeremy Weisz 15:56
Yeah, it was funny. I forgot I had a past guest Dilara talk about this a little, you know, core values a little bit. And I was like, you know, and we’re talking about, actually, and we were talking, before we hit record, about our kids a little bit. And I was like, we should have a family core values. And so the other week, at one of the dinners, we kind of just went around and I said, if we had core value, like, what would be a core value. We kind of all went around and just shared what our core values, what a core value is from, like, our family perspective, right? And a lot of it, like you said, it’s kind of like looking at the personal piece, but that also translates into the business piece, because that’s what’s important. So it was a very interesting conversation, and we kind of mapped out family core values.
It was interesting what everyone had to say, and then even calling people out on behavior based on the core values, right? So, one of them was like, humor, right? And so someone was being funny, and obviously being nice and humor. And there’s a gray area there of where someone’s being funny, but maybe it’s a little bit mean-directed. So it’s like, hey, that’s against the nice core value, but that is the humor core value. So how do we mix those? So it’s a very — I love that conversation, and I love how you said that is also comes from kind of a personal standpoint, from a core value perspective.
Dilara Cossette 17:21
Yeah, and to be honest, you can’t really, you can’t practice what you approach if you don’t truly believe in what you’re trying to, just like, build at the company. So they have to be related to your personal value, let’s say empathy if you’re not empathic. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest to put it as a company core value if you are not empathic right, or transparent if you can’t share publicly your failure. I mean, most probably that’s not a best core value to select for the company. I mean, that’s at least like my perspective. That’s where when I was putting those core values, I was thinking, what important to me, what I value as a person. And it’s the same thing personal value. It’s applicable to family, to your friends, to parents, to everyone you live with, right or you talk to every day, including your coworkers.
Jeremy Weisz 18:11
Dilara, what are you know you’ve worked with, obviously, we’re talking about HR tech, but a lot of B2B SaaS in general. What are some when you go in and you’re looking at the company under the hood and assessing some of the strategy, what are some of the big mistakes you see B2B SaaS companies making?
Dilara Cossette 18:30
I would say they focus a little bit too much on company rather than on people, and that’s related to HR. But let me explain what I mean. Because people buy from people, they don’t buy from companies. And the thing is, it’s very competitive. There’s so many companies out there. And when you just, like, try to compete, company versus company is becoming, like, very saturated. I always suggest to have someone who will become the brand advocate. So just to put and promote health, leadership content through that person. That person has to be authentic, experienced, not necessarily in sales or marketing, someone who is very flexible and comfortable being on camera, like, eager to share his experience and expertise.
And in that case, when people just like focus and help that person to put like in front of the audience that will have way better and based on our experience in AB testing, it’s like 10 times more engagement and impression when exactly the same post is boosted from the company page versus the personal post. So I would say people too much focus on brand, on promoting the brand trying to get quick wins. Which I get it when, especially you are in early stage, like a seed series A or just bootstrapped and really want to get quick wins, but it’s getting more and more difficult because it’s saturated. The cost per lead becoming extremely expensive. But when people try to shift from lead gen to dimension. This is where they see success, because it’s a very long game, so you have to be ready to that.
Jeremy Weisz 20:11
I want to highlight and understand a little bit more on what you do. But through some companies you worked with, and it could be any one of your ones that stick out for me Kudos seems like a really cool platform and company that you worked with, I don’t if you want to talk a little bit about what you did with Kudos and what they do.
Dilara Cossette 20:33
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s employee recognition and the reward software, and it helps companies to improve the performance and also decrease the turnover ratio as well. And we were using Kudos at Kudos, and I saw really significant improvement in collaboration with team members. And when people can, just like, recognize and publicly recognize you for the project that you’ve worked together for some help, right? And it’s incredible how you feel after that. It’s something very hard to describe, if you never use such type of platform, but the way how you feel is just like, you know, to the moon and back, and it’s peer-to-peer recognition. Could be manager to employee.
So it’s really like very different type of the recognition that you can give to your coworkers. But it’s amazing how you can just like, publicly, share, and I think appreciation is important, especially in the remote world before, when people were just passing and said, like, hey buddy, great job, and everyone was hearing because we’re in the open space now, we’re just like, our bubbles so entire people just don’t know what their colleagues are working on. And I think this creates the appreciation, recognition, but also awareness of what people do and their hard work they are spending like 8, 10 hours per day to just like, contribute to.
Jeremy Weisz 21:59
What kind of things did you do and work with Kudos?
Dilara Cossette 22:04
Oh, it was demand generation. So I was supporting their demand generation initiatives. And I think going back to the demand gen it’s important to explain, if someone never heard about employee recognition rewards, it’s becoming very popular term, but it’s important to increase the awareness of the company and the importance. So it has to be related to the pain point of your target audience. Let’s say mainly we’re targeting HR leaders, and for them, turnover ratio is a big thing. And what’s happening right now the job market is really like changing, I would say, like every month. So I know someone who just like, went on a mat leave, came back nine months ago. She was like, I just like, came back to completely different job market.
So I have to figure it out the way, how it works now, because it’s shifting and changing, especially with people deciding to be fractional. There’s so many fractional folks out there. I think turnover ratio is a big thing. So when you try to increase rent awareness or create the demand, you have to always think about that. What is the pain point of person you’re trying to reach out to what they’re struggling with every single day? When you leave this to and increase the demand gen, then the conversion is way easier.
Jeremy Weisz 23:20
Got it. Dilara, I have one last question before I ask it, I just want to thank you for sharing some of the journey lessons knowledge, and encourage people to check out focusimagepro.com, to learn more, and if you’ve watched the video you saw, we pulled it up on the page here. My last question is, I’d love to hear your favorite tools, software resources. It could be your tech stack that you use. What are some of your favorites? It could be an app, whatever, software tools or apps that you like as a person or company?
Dilara Cossette 23:56
Great question, I would say, for the last 10 years, I keep on saying, HubSpot. HubSpot should pay me like a referral. I’m kidding. It’s just like, I’m a huge fan of the tool. I think they’re great in terms of the customer support about the product. They’re always evolving. We are actually their official service provider. So for me, it was like, the honor to get into the platform, and just like, you know, through this partnership, because I’m advocating, and this is a great example, actually, of demand gen. So when you create the amazing support, amazing opportunity, so people using your app or your platform, they become brand advocates.
So exactly what I did right now with Kudos, what I did like for HubSpot, because when you use something and you kind of like, enjoy and see the value, you will definitely share and spread the word out there. I think this is a very organic demand gen, without even paying any single penny for that. And I think this is important nowadays when we see like when we scroll LinkedIn, or like any other social media, the feed is like plotted with paid ads, right? And how one companies are not different from another. When someone is sharing their feedback, it’s priceless.
Jeremy Weisz 25:08
And then anything on the project management front or communication team front that you like to use?
Dilara Cossette 25:15
We use Trello internally. I like the tool. It’s very easy to use UX UI. It’s very simple, straightforward, and we love it. I used to use different tools, similar. But, I mean, we ended up with Trello, and I’m happy with that.
Jeremy Weisz 25:30
And then, from a communication, do you use any tools with the team to communicate?
Dilara Cossette 25:34
We use Slack. So we are in the Google workplace. We use Slack. We use Trello. Yeah, that’s basically our core set of the softwares that we use internally. And obviously, when the client, our partners, they use their own instances, we always want to be part of their CRM. We always want to be part of their communication channel, because we truly believe that the way how we work is like extended part of your team. You have to communicate with them. I don’t think like sending emails and then just getting response within 48 hours is the way to communicate. So we always ask access to their instances as well. So obviously they are on ClickUp. If they are using Asana, we will be there as well. So we know all the tools. Is just internally, we might have different tools.
Jeremy Weisz 26:23
Love it, so I want to be the first one to thank you ever check out focusimagepro.com to learn more and more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Dilara, thanks so much.
Dilara Cossette 26:34
Thank you so much. Great questions.
