#347 - Mark Fershteyn, CEO, Recapped - on transforming complex B2B sales

This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to make buying and selling in B2B remarkably easier. My guest is Mark Fershteyn, Founder and CEO of Recapped.

Mark is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He has a passion for building things from scratch. He specifically prefers going from "zero to one" rather than maintaining existing systems, describing himself as someone who enjoys "bushwhacking through the jungle" and forging new trails.

His entrepreneurial journey includes diverse experiences: He co-founded Tryhard Games LLC. Led sales at App Academy, a coding bootcamp, and has a remarkable history of taking on challenging situations. At Citrix, he volunteered to manage their worst-performing sales team - one where no one was making quota. Within 6-9 months, he transformed it into a top-three revenue-producing vertical.

In Jun 2019, Mark founded Recapped, a customer collaboration platform that helps B2B sellers work more effectively with buyers.

Their mission: to solve the "messy middle" of sales and change the way how B2B sales teams collaborate with buyers and close deals.

And this inspired me, and hence I invited Mark to my podcast. We explore how he transformed Recapped from a side project into a game-changing deal collaboration platform, achieving a remarkable 44% win rate for customers - far above the industry standard of 15-18%. He reveals counterintuitive insights from his sales process optimization at Citrix and elaborates on his approach to building a remarkable software company. Last but not least, he shares his unusual incentive approach that helped him and his team to significantly grow a high-quality pipeline.

Here's one of his quotes

I fundamentally believe 90% of your Salesforce data should be client-facing and should be shared with the prospect... if you're not on the same page, get them out of your pipeline and go focus on deals that are actually going to move the needle.

During this interview, you will learn four things:

Why he would split the focus 50/50 between product and distribution if he would ever start again?

How he's increased close rates by deliberately blending in more professional services

How 10% of features but 10x the marketing can outperform having more features but less visibility

How the science of selling is 80-90% of success, while art is only 10-20% - making the process repeatable matters more than individual talent

For more information about the guest from this week:

Mark Fershteyn

Website: Recapped

Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices