Pipeline Heroes ft. FreshBooks

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Hey everyone, welcome to Pipeline Heroes.

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I'm Sarah Flora and I'm a Qualified Success Architect.

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It's so good to be here today with Nolan McCowasky,

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who is a marketing manager at FreshBooks.

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We're so excited to hear a little bit about their success

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since switching over to Qualified last year.

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Before we dive in, Nolan, for those that don't get the chance to work with you

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on a weekly basis,

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tell us a little bit about how you can

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refresh books, the company, and your role on the team.

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Thanks, Sarah, so excited to be here, be here with you at the Pipeline Summit.

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So, I'm the marketing manager of the man generation over at FreshBooks.

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I reside in Toronto, Ontario.

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Before this, I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana,

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so I'm newbie to Canada.

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And before I was here, I worked for the Indian Department of Health,

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where I worked on a mobile app called Live,

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which was a fun app that we had for new mothers, new families,

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and helping them with their pregnancies, with parenthood.

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I had some really cool education materials in there.

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And so, naturally, I made the switch from women's health to accounting software

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So, FreshBooks is an accounting software company,

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formed in 2003 by Mike McDermott, who had a pain of his own,

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and he ended up to make a company to help business owners like himself.

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And so, within the team, I am the marketing manager of the man generation.

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So, in short, my role is to find the most quality leads that we can

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to give them the most personalized and really just best experience that they

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can,

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and then equipping our sales team with the tools that they need

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so that those website visitors become customers and that the end advocates of

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FreshBooks.

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Amazing.

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So, it's been awesome seeing your success with Qualified

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since we started partnering together.

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But tell us a little bit about the website before implementing Qualified.

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What were some of those pain points that you were experiencing,

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both as a marketer overall and just with some of the past tools that you were

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using?

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Yeah. So, what we really struggled with was the speed to lead that gets talked

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about a lot.

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And really, having the issue of our website, we were very reliant on forms

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when it came to visitors to our site.

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You'd fill in your information.

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We'd say, "We'll get back to you in 24 hours."

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Hopefully, our tech stack works well with the sales team, and maybe you'll hear

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from us.

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It was a really broken experience.

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And so, what we've really tried to work on since then and with Qualified

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is really creating messaging that matters.

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And based off of Qualification segmenting things, I'm sure we're going to go

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over.

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We've really just tried to make sure we do create that messaging that matters.

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Sometimes you need to hear a joke.

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Sometimes you need to just get right to it and hear exactly what you need

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or read exactly what you need.

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A really good example of that is I tell the story all the time by Donald Miller

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who wrote the book Building a Story Brand.

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And he talked about imagining your customers like a hitchhiker.

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And you pull over to give him a ride, and the one thing that he just wants to

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know is where are you going? Can I get a ride?

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And as he approaches, I just go and I talk to him, and I talk to him all my

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mission statement.

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I talked about how my car was made by my grandfather in 1960,

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and I tell him that I promise this can be the best ride of your life.

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Hitchhiker probably is going to take that ride.

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Instead, really just creating messaging of just being that guy.

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And make sure that visitor is always the hero of the story, the hero of the

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messaging.

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And that's really what we're trying to do with FreshBooks, and is that pain

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point in that work that we're doing on a daily basis.

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Awesome. Yeah, that's definitely a great perspective to keep in mind.

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Let's talk about your audience.

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So you have a pretty high number of sessions, one of the third months.

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Who is your target audience?

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And what is your approach to segmenting those audiences?

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Especially when you're dealing with these large session numbers and these

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different channels.

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Yeah, so that's probably the biggest thing that we talk about daily.

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When you do have all these visitors, how do you decide who does just want to

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hear that joke?

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Or someone who does just want to know exactly how much do I have to pay?

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Here's my credit card.

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And so, overall FreshBooks, like I said, we are targeting for business owners

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and accountants all across the world.

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We break them down based off the amount of time they give to their business.

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Whether they're a part-time, maybe it's a side gig business.

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Maybe I'm starting my business just now, and it's just me as a freelancer.

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Or maybe I am a scaling business owner, and I'm up to 25 employees that I'm

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looking to expand.

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So going off of those, then, it's from there, how do I do exactly what I talked

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about before?

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And how are we able to give them the most personalized journey?

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Not off of that, but then also other information that they may give us.

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So, you know, with Qualti, we're able to talk about how many visits they've

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given, where they came from, what their full digital experience has been,

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and really just creating segments off of that.

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Because as much as we like to think that the random web visitors to our site,

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we know exactly what they need.

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That's someone who needs a direct buy offer.

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That's when they need to trial offer.

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This person needs sales.

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We really don't.

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So instead, using the demographic data, using any information to their type of

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business that we may have,

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equipped with what they are telling us themselves with how they interact,

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merging all of that together to create the best experience that we can.

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And, you know, really how we do this, by giving them as many options as we can.

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Again, we're the guide.

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We're not the hero.

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So we want to give you all those options in the method visit or choose their

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own path

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for how they want to engage with our brand.

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Awesome.

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So let's take into a little bit about how you got started with Qualified.

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What were your initial impressions?

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What was going through your mind when you first started learning about the

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software?

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So it's funny.

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You know, what really sold me on Qualified was Qualified.

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So I always say, as we started using Qualified, that the experience that I had

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as the potential buy offer

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is exactly what I want to create for visitors to FreshBooks,

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where I was, you know, not the happiest with our past tool

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and knew that we were looking for something new.

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No budget had been approved for anything.

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It was purely just discovery.

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And so, you know, within five minutes of being to a Qualified site,

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I was having a conversation with a live sales rep.

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We were having a video call.

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I was able to connect with another Qualified employee who had worked with

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businesses similar to ours

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before, and we had already set up a follow-up meeting with some of my coworkers

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So Qualified kind of hooked me from the start because exactly how I felt of it

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took five minutes

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to get every answer that I needed, at least to this point, is exactly how I

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want small business owners to deal with FreshBooks.

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So from there, you know, what has really sold us on Qualified is that I just

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personal touch that brings.

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But also the technology advancements that Qualified has brought, especially the

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integrations,

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we're a company that's very reliant on Salesforce and using Salesforce within

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our different instances.

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And so the abilities that we have with Qualified to have those two systems talk

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to each other, integrate with each other, has been huge.

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It has really even helped us with, you know, some of the different experiences

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we've been able to build from all of that.

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Awesome. So talk to us a little bit about what are some of those top

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initiatives and your keys to success thus far with Qualified.

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Yeah. So, you know, it's been the experience building is really bad what we've

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been up to, right?

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So, you know, we've really done a good job in creating experiences that are as

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engaging as possible

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and are really doing a good job into making sure that they're having as much

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fun as we can sometimes.

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And other times, you know, going off, you know, just getting straight to the

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point.

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And really good example of how we're able to do that is through our Google Ads

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integration.

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You know, so from before, we weren't really know off of the web visitor

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entirely again,

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their intentions, where they came from, what they're interested in.

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With our Google Ads integration, we're able to know if somebody came to our

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website because they clicked on an ad called Small Business Invoicing.

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And maybe now that visitors on our pricing page.

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So we've done so many tests on it and we've had so many different experiences

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with it where now when we see that someone came from there,

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they're on the pricing page.

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Like I said, our sales rep has so much information already to talk about.

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So it's not just, hey, welcome to our pricing page. Can I help you today?

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And said it's, hey, did you know that with FreshBooks, you can do a B and C

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with invoicing.

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And with this plan, here's all that you can accomplish for your business.

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We're able to have such better conversations and have such better engagement

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with potential visitors that a year ago,

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I couldn't even imagine we could have done for the visitors to our site.

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Awesome.

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So the last piece of this puzzle is all of the data that you're starting to

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collect.

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So how do you think about the data and the insights and then really sharing

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that with the rest of the organization?

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I have so much really, go off to different levels of information our audiences

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want.

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It became clear pretty quickly that we made a good choice with qualified.

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And definitely helped some sleepless nights at first of all this investment we

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made into this tool.

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How are we going to do?

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And so we're able to show the fact we're able to show the leaders of our

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business.

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Here is the ROI that we have on it.

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And here's a way through really using Salesforce with dashboards that we have

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set up.

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Here's how you can see that in an easily digestible way without going into the

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weeds.

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But then what we're able to do for those that do want to go into the weeds, you

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know, obviously the two of us in

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then different project stakeholders is that's where we really use qualified

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self and we use email digest a lot.

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So when we have an experience that we set up for a specific landing page, let's

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say,

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and there's a project or that really own that landing page and the strategy

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behind that,

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we've been setting up email digest for them so that they can see exactly with

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what they did.

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They know what are the conversations then that the people on those pages are

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having,

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how many leads are created, what is the full ROI.

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So one benefit that we've really found is the ability to get as granular as

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possible

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and then also be as general as impossible for some of those more high level,

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exact kind of conversations.

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Great.

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So this is the last question, but what is the team at FreshBooks the most

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excited about in the year to come?

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So I'm probably not the first one to mention this for anyone here that has

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heard about it,

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but qualified GPT, I couldn't be more excited about.

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As we know AI is it's the topic of conversation for marketers everywhere and

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qualified surely is not Mr. Beaten

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being a part of that.

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Specifically, I'm really excited for the ability for qualified to auto pounce

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on visitors.

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We're someone they have now clicked on chat with us and our rep may not have

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identified that visitor yet,

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but qualified says no, this is someone that we need to talk to.

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And the ability to auto personalize our website, the ability to auto summarize

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meetings that we have in qualified.

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Using AI to create this tool is going to save so much time.

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And at the end of the day, it's going to do exactly what we talked about all

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day long, which is personalize the experience for that journey.

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I don't really get to why I talk about the beginning of at the end goal.

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I want Sarah, the web visitor to come to FreshBooks and see exactly what she

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wants and have the best experience possible.

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And I firmly believe that with qualified and fresh books together, we're able

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to do that for everyone that comes and interacts with us.

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Amazing.

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Well, I am equally as excited to work on that and other initiatives with you in

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this year to come.

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So, Nolan, it's been so great giving a chance to tell FreshBooks pipeline cloud

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story.

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We love working with you and the rest of the team at FreshBooks and we're so

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excited to see what the rest of 2023 brings.

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Thanks so much, everybody, for joining us,

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and we'll see you at the next pipeline summit.